Chapter 4: Making a Few Decisions
Reed managed to propel herself down the meandering length of driveway, trying not to lean too far forward, as there was a slight downhill grade, and she didn't want to get going too fast and fall, especially as she was sure he was watching her, and she was definitely feeling a little dizzy from the pain pills. The ocean was starting to turn wonky colors, too, but she doggedly continued, feeling herself beginning to perspire as she neared the huge, glass doors.
They opened as she got to the porch, and Duncan himself was standing on the threshold, hair in crazy corkscrews all over his head, indicating that he might recently have been lying down. He was using crutches, and wearing baggy shorts and a loose T-shirt. His hazel eyes looked tired, irritated and surprised in equal measure.
"Ms. Halliwell," he said. "I'm very surprised to see you here. I thought you'd be recovering at your home."
"Well, that was my intention," Reed replied. "Thanks to some crazy girls that I believe are your fans, though, I no longer have a home to recover in."
"Sorry?"
"Well, I should hope so," Reed responded acidly. "May I come in? And maybe have some water? I'm a bit thirsty from my trek down your driveway."
Without thinking, Duncan opened the door wider and did his best to get out of her way with his crutches so Reed could come inside. "Sorry," he said again, "but what did you say about my fans?"
"May I have the water first? I'm parched."
Duncan clumped to the kitchen of the spacious, light-filled house and clumped back, saying, "Please, have a seat—" as he entered the main living space. He stopped when he saw that Reed had already sat down on the large, comfortable sofa. "Oh. Well. Here you go." And he tossed her a blessedly cool bottle of water.
Reed surprised herself by reaching up and actually catching it, one-handed. "Thank you," she said as she cracked it open and took a long swallow.
Duncan sat across from her, setting his crutches aside. "Now, what were you saying about my fans?"
Reed capped her bottle. "When I got back to my apartment, I found that it had pretty much been burned to the ground by some absolutely rabid girls who seem to think I murdered you with my car."
"What?"
"You heard me. I pulled up in the car with Ramon and the place was crawling with police and the fire department. My little apartment was a smoking ruin, and all of my stuff is gone." And, even though she had no intention of doing so, Reed began to cry. The pills were definitely affecting her. "Some of the girls saw my face and began to chase after the car, so I had Ramon drive away. I had nowhere else to go, so I had him bring me here." She flapped her hand against her thigh in a gesture of futility. "I have nothing left, Mr. Browne. My clothes, my furniture, my books, my novel, all of it was in that little apartment, and now it's all charred ashes."
Duncan sat back, nonplussed, obviously not sure what to make of the weeping woman in front of him.
"I'm sorry, but are you serious?" he finally asked.
"Do I look like I'm joking?" Reed responded, reaching into her purse for a tissue. "I got to my apartment and the fire department had just finished putting out a huge fire, Mr. Browne! Everything I owned was in there, and now it's gone!"
"Have you been drinking? You're slurring your words a bit."
"I took some pain pills in the car, if you must know, but I assure you I'm as shober—sober as a judge," Reed told him with dignity, trying to stop crying.
"Tell you what," Duncan said, pulling out his phone. He punched in a number and spoke into it for a few seconds.
"Yeah, listen, I need you to check on something for me," he said. "Find out what happened this morning at—" he looked expectantly at Reed. "Your address, please?"
"Oh." Reed gave it to him, and he repeated it into the phone. "Thanks. No, just tell me if anything happened there this morning, early." He listened for a few seconds. "I know it's still early, you wanker." He laughed. "Yes. This morning. Ring me back as soon as you know. Yeah, cheers." He ended the call and looked at Reed. "He's going to ring me back shortly."
"So I heard." Reed sat up and tried to open her water bottle but found for some reason she couldn't. After she fussed with it for a few moments and got nowhere, the bottle was taken out of her hands suddenly as she looked up with surprise.
Duncan was laughing as he twisted it open and handed it back to her. "How many pain pills did you take, if I might ask?" His eyes were merry as he asked the question.
She took a long drink as she eyed him with suspicion. "Why? If you're implying that I'm impaired in any way, I assure you, shir—sir, I'm not." Reed handed the bottle back for Duncan to cap as she spoke with all the dignity she could muster. She took a deep, shivering breath of tears not long ended and tried to keep her chin from quivering.
"Okay, you're completely fine," Duncan agreed with a nod. "Just for fun, though, show me what you took, hm?"
Reed blinked at him, huffed out a breath of irritation and rooted around in her purse, one handed, for the bottle. She found it and thrust it at him.
Duncan read the label, then shook the contents out in his palm, quickly counting how many of the yellow pills were left. "So you took two of these?" At her nod he continued. "And I'm guessing you've never taken Hydrocodone before, have you? Or any kind of narcotics?"
Reed shook her head, but the motion nearly made her fall off the couch. Things were definitely weird. The colors in the room were off, and suddenly she couldn't keep her eyes open.
"Just wine," she answered, which for some reason made him laugh.
And why was she here again?
"Oh lord," Duncan said to the ceiling. "You're lucky you're with someone who knows about this sort of thing."
Reed leaned against the back of the sofa, except there was nothing there. Somehow she'd turned and was sideways, trying to lean against the arm of the sofa instead.
"Whoa, you're okay, you're okay," Duncan murmured, catching her head before it struck the arm. "Just rest your head and close your eyes, you're fine."
Reed closed her eyes. She just needed to sleep for a bit. Just before she slid into slumber, she felt something soft being floated down on her body, and turned on her side, clasping it to her.
***************
Reed opened her eyes, momentarily confused by the orientation of the sun. What was it doing on her left side? And why was there so much of it? Her apartment gave her morning sun on her right side, and just a tiny bit. She was looking into the sun glowing over the beautiful ocean in all it's gorgeous glory, filling the entire room with an ethereal orange light.
Ocean?
"You're awake, wonderful."
Hearing Duncan's voice brought the events of the morning rolling back into her brain, up to and including her crying jag and how she'd basically passed out on the Englishman's couch.
Duncan came into the room on his crutches, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and with his curly hair tamed and in a pony tail.
"Oh my god, did I sleep all day?" Reed asked in dismay. She pointed outside at the sun. "That looks like a beautiful California sunset."
"You did, and it is," Duncan responded. "You took way too much narcotic for someone who's never taken any, and you were out cold for nearly eight hours."
"I'm so sorry."
"For what?" Duncan sounded honestly surprised.
"For arriving unannounced, yelling at you, crying, and then passing out on your couch for an entire day," Reed answered, equally surprised.
"Oh. Yeah, there is that, I suppose," Duncan responded with a grin. "Your phone's been going off quite a bit. Probably to do with your apartment, I imagine. My PA called me back, by the way, and confirmed what you said. I'm so sorry about what happened."
"Your PA?"
"Personal assistant," Duncan elaborated.
Reed nodded. A sigh escaped her, but she managed to keep it from turning into a sob.
"Look, you must be hungry, and we obviously have a lot to talk about," Duncan said from where he stood, balanced on his crutches. "How about if you take care of some of your phone calls while I order a pizza, and we'll try to get some of this sorted, yeah?"
He looked at her expectantly, holding his phone as he waited.
Reed nodded, taking a deep breath as she reached for her phone. "Sounds like a plan," she said with a shrug. "And thank you," she added.
After half an hour on the phone with the police and her landlord, Reed felt marginally better, and like she'd begun to get at least a slight handle on her life again. She debated emailing Sam to tell him what had happened, but she knew that if she did, he'd just want her to come home immediately, and, with the state she was in, she'd probably just bleat out, "okay" like a little sheep and go.
And she felt like her last chance to be Reed Halliwell, a person in her own right, would be gone. She'd marry Sam, and become Reed Rogers, Sam Rogers' wife, and help him run Rogers' Bakery, and probably have three or four kids, and never have anything of her own for as long as she lived.
"Pizza's here," Duncan told her.
Reed nodded, put her phone away and rose, but sat back down when the delivery person came into the living room and set it down right in front of her.
"Thanks, mate," Duncan told the man, casually passing him a twenty dollar tip.
"Anytime, bro." He smiled and waved as he left.
Reed smelled the pizza and suddenly realized she was famished.
"Bet you're starving," Duncan guessed as he set his crutches aside and sat across from her, passing her a plate.
Reed nodded as she accepted it and helped herself.
"So, first, would you mind to tell me a little about yourself?" Duncan began, talking as he chewed. "I mean, all I know about you is that you're of limited financial means and that you're taking a year off from something and trying to write a novel."
Reed swallowed the bite she had in her mouth and took a deep breath, trying to look like she was thinking. "Well, I'm from Florida," she finally said, reaching for the lie she told in the ambulance. "I'm an only child, and I have no close family. I'm twenty-three, and last year, right after I graduated from college, my parents were killed in a car accident, and the insurance money I got from that was just about enough to fund a year in Los Angeles and try to write the novel I've always wanted to write, if I lived on the super cheap. So I loaded up my worldly possessions in Rhonda and drove here to do just that." She took another bite of pizza and looked at Duncan, shrugging in a "that's that" manner. "The year will be up in September, and I'd like to give myself the whole year, you know? Stopping now feels like giving up on myself, like quitting, somehow." She took a drink of water. "But I feel like I'm getting all these signs that maybe I should just let this stupid dream go," she said wryly, gesturing toward her arm.
"Oh no, don't say that," Duncan interrupted. He grabbed another slice of pizza.
"Come on! When screaming girls burn your house down, along with the novel you've spent seven months working on, I'd say someone's giving you some pretty strong hints," Reed insisted, reaching for another slice herself. "And the police say there's really no way to catch them, since there aren't any cameras or anything, and they could've come from anywhere. All we know is that they're fans of yours who found out who I was after you tweeted about our accident."
"Dear god, so this is my fault?" Duncan asked, his pizza half way to his mouth.
"No, no, nothing like that," Reed assured him. "You just tweeted that you'd been in an accident, and some of the more lurid celebrity news sites sort of exaggerated your injuries, and the rest, as they say, is history." Reed sat back, feeling exhausted and hopeless once again.
"No, wait, don't do that," Duncan entreated. "I was thinking while you were having your beauty sleep, and I came up with a plan. How about if I just set you up in a new apartment for the next five months?"
Reed sat up and stared. "Are you out of your mind? Do you know how expensive that would be? I could never accept that."
"Why not? It's my fault you're in this situation, and it would just be part of the whole 'thanks for not suing me' thing we've got going on," Duncan explained.
"So you're going to pay my bills, buy me a car, and rent me an apartment?" Reed ticked off.
"Right," Duncan agreed, pleased that she'd understood at last.
"No."
"No?"
"I'm not a money grubbing opportunist, and I won't take that much from you," Reed said firmly.
"But you can't give up on your dream, like you said," Duncan protested. The pizza sat forgotten between them.
"I still have some money left, I'll work something out," Reed said uncertainly.
"Oh, I know, I know," Duncan said, snapping his fingers as a new thought occurred to him. "You can live here!"
"Here? With you?" Reed sounded even more uncertain than before.
"Yeah. I mean, not exactly. I have a little guest suite back there. There's a corridor that goes to a bedroom with a sitting area, it's even got its own bath, no one uses it, and you being there won't cost me a thing!"
Duncan was grinning at her in a "So there!" way that was very endearing, and Reed could almost forget that she was very angry with him.
"And you wouldn't mind my being here?" Reed asked. "I mean, you must have a very active social life. I wouldn't cramp you in any way?"
"I wouldn't even know you were here," Duncan assured her. "It's really tucked away. You'd have all the privacy you need to write your novel and everything. You want to take a look at the space?"
He sounded like a realtor.
Reed smiled and shook her head. "I don't need to. I'm sure it's perfect. The only issue is that my laptop got melted into a puddle of metal in the fire."
"Not a problem, we'll get you a new one," Duncan promised.
"Great. Do you know anything about the cloud?"
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