“I thought we were just window shopping,” I said.
“Yes, but if I can’t go home for a while, I need more than this one change of clothing.”
“She’s right, Rafe. I wouldn’t mind picking up a few things myself,” Tess chimed in.
“You know I’m not going to tell either one of you no. Go ahead, get whatever you need.”
Cris gave me a quick peck on the lips, which obligated Tess to copy her act, and the two women hurried into the boutique. I glanced at the store’s sign, Humble Pie, yeah right. I had no business going into a place like that, but then again, the ladies might want to model something and it’d be my duty to judge each item of clothing with an unbiased opinion. Starting to whistle, I followed them inside.
The shopping took more than an hour, but I had to admit that I definitely had some guilty pleasure in watching two women pick out things that they thought would please me. The few times Tess wanted to buy clothes, I had dutifully gone with her, but it had been more to protect her than to watch her try things on. Now I was thinking I’d been missing out. There was definitely male satisfaction in observing a woman trying on nice clothing.
The ladies picked out a few things to keep and each paid for her own purchases. Luckily, everything fit into two normal sized shopping bags. I was going to have to come up with some way for us to carry more stuff. Perhaps something like a bag of holding. I thought I remembered seeing something like that in Walt’s grimoire. I’d research it when our current problems were settled. In the meantime, we made a brief stop across the street at Blue Ridge Adventure Wear and picked up a couple of large canvas bags with shoulder straps.
We made one more stop, a quick one, at the local Publix and picked up a few groceries, enough to tide us over for the next day, or two, and three bottles of red wine. Then we followed the GPS in Cris’s phone through a dozen turns onto smaller back roads until at last we pulled onto a dirt drive that led up a slope toward a large log cabin.
A black Cadillac Escalade stood in the drive behind the large structure. We stopped beside the SUV and dismounted our rides. The vehicle was empty so we followed the walk toward a screened in porch. We were half way there when a woman appeared. She smiled and waved excitedly. “Cris, I heard you drive up. It’s so nice to see you again. I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear from you when I got up this morning. Come on up and introduce me to your friends.”
“Hi, Marge. This is Tess and Rafe; they’ll be sharing the cabin with me for the week. They’re old friends from out west,” Cris said as she led the way up the four steps to the porch.
Marge held the door open until the three of us were inside.
“Pleased to meet both of you. Any friend of Cris’s is a friend of mine. Has Cris told you that we went to college together? We even roomed for two years,” Marge said after she’d hugged Cris and shaken Tess and my hands.
Marge was a thirtyish woman with nearly black hair, epicanthic folds over blue eyes, and I thought she was Cris’s height, until I noticed the four-inch heels she wore.
“I’m glad you were able to find us something at the last minute,” Cris said.
“Anything for a fellow Tri Delta girl,” Marge said. “Now let me show you around the cabin and I’ll get out of your way and leave–” Marge stopped suddenly and clasped Cris’s shoulders with both her hands. “Girl, what have you done?”
“Ah, what do you mean, Marge?” Cris asked.
“Girl, you look like you’ve dropped a decade off. You must tell me your secret.”
“Oh, that. It’s just good diet and wholesome living,” Cris chortled.
“Don’t give me that. You’ve done something amazing. I can’t believe you look younger than you did when we shared that room in the Tri-Delta sorority.”
Cris laughed and blushed. “Stop it; you’ll embarrass me in front of my friends.”
Marge studied her for another moment or two and then glanced at us. She dropped her hands from Cris’s shoulders and stepped back. “Yeah, well a lot of girls experimented in college. We never did anything to be embarrassed about.”
I hid my smile behind my hand and stepped past the two old friends while I studied the porch and the exterior of the cabin. There was a large stone fireplace on the porch and a hefty stack of seasoned wood beside it. The cabin’s wall was mostly glass and a pair of French doors. I could see a great room and kitchen from where I stood. A pair of ceiling fans hung from rafters below the porch’s cathedral ceiling. Several Adirondack chairs and a couple of cushioned rattan sofas were arranged around the exterior fireplace.
Marge moved to the French doors and opened the right hand one.
“Please, let me show you around,” she said as she held the door.
I motioned for the ladies to precede me and then followed, allowing Marge to bring up the rear. She left the door open to the porch and joined us in the great room. It was furnished rustically with lots of wood and leather. There was another stone fireplace to our right and it rose at least sixteen feet to the tongue and groove ceiling. To our left was a glass wall that faced the soon to be setting sun. The land dropped off to the west and the forest had been cleared for a good quarter mile, leaving a view of the distant mountains that were already green with new
