21C sunny
Around home all day yesterday.

“Forget it dummy, you’ve made your decision, everything will be just fine.” She muttered to herself.

Time passed slowly, she paced a bit, tried to watch television, paced some more the said aloud, ‘To Hell with it, I’ll go for a walk.’

She walked down to where her boat was tied, she checked it over even tough she had just returned in it earlier that day. She left and strolled along the waterfront, stopping to talk now and then with people she had known all her life. She stopped by the pie and coffee shop and had a cup of coffee, then on impulse bought a wild huckleberry pie. It was now quarter after seven, so she turned her steps to home.

Ten minutes later she turned off the street into her front yard as she reached her steps a large pick-up truck rounded the corner and sped up the street.

When it reached her house it slowed and wheeled in behind her car. It was Bob!

Alicia put the pie down on the top step and without restraint ran to the truck, Bob jumped out, rounded the front and they crashed together in an embrace.

After a few seconds of hugging, Alicia stepped back, “How did you get here so soon, I told you to drive safely!” She scolded.

Bob grinned, “I kept it down except here and there. I had the truck all loaded and ready to go so it was just a matter of shutting the door behind me and taking off.”

They started inside then Bob turned back and reaching into the back of his truck, pulled out a small overnight bag. Alicia picked up the pie and they went inside.

“Since you’re here, we’ll eat earlier. It’s all ready to go on the stove. You know where your room is and you can pour us each a glass of wine.”

“Ha, well I’m not freeloading this time, I brought along a couple bottles.” He took his bag down to the room he had used before and brought back two bottles of Australian Shiraz. He filled the two glasses that Alicia had set out and handed her one, the clinked their glasses together and raised them slightly in a silent toast.

Suddenly in the quiet room they both felt a feeling of perhaps unsureness, or shyness. They both felt it but if asked neither could have expressed it.

They sipped their wine and the intensity of the feeling diminished and in a moment they had moved on and were bombarding each other with questions.

Alicia had the dinner cooked and on the table in short order and as they ate she retold him but in more detail the story of her surveillance of the poachers.

“I’m pretty sure ‘the powers that be’ were happy so I expect there will be more contracts, there are always poaching incidents all over the island.”