Here we are again! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, followed or favorited, as well as a massive hug to the ever-wonderful Teanni!
Kat pulled her car onto the long driveway and sighed. It was good to be home. The trees were all awash in color and she could see some of the horses out in the pasture behind the barn that split the property in half.
She paused briefly at the fork in the driveway, glancing over at the other house that resided on the twenty-some acres she shared with her undergrad roommate Janie and her family. It was a bit of an unorthodox arrangement, having two separate households on one piece of land in two separate houses, but it worked well for them. Janie, her husband Brent, and their two children BJ and Raelynn lived in the two story house that was at the end of the right fork in the driveway. Going straight at the fork would lead back to the stable where they had horses, as well as the wooded half of their acreage that was filled with trails. On the end of the left side of the fork was Kat's humble abode. It wasn't anything too fancy, just a single-story ranch where she lived with her cat, Moxie.
Kat pulled into her garage and stepped out of the car, popped the trunk to get her suitcase, and headed into her house.
"Aunt Kat! You're home!" Kat couldn't help but grin as Raelynn practically tackled her. It wasn't surprising that Janie and Rae were waiting in her living room.
"How was the speaking tour, anything exciting happen?" Janie asked from the couch, not really wanting to move due to her ever-increasing pregnant belly. She and Brent were expecting child number three.
Kat set her bag down and moved over to the couch. "It was pretty uneventful," she said, which wasn't technically a lie. The speaking part was uneventful. "Did quite a bit of networking though."
"Oh that's good! By the way, Maria called while you were gone wanting to know if you were planning on going back home for Thanksgiving and Christmas."
Kat groaned. Her sister Maria was constantly harping about how she wasn't home enough, being as she lived and taught in a different state. If it was up to her sister, Kat would have never even left the state for her undergrad degrees, let alone gone all the way across the country to get her doctorate. Of course, being as she didn't start teaching until the spring semester in January, Kat really had no excuse not to make the drive back to Illinois for an extended family visit. She loved her family, they were just a lot to handle at once, even for someone who had lived with them her whole life. Maria had stayed at home, gone to a local college and then joined the police department. She was twenty-four and a great cop, but there was a bit of underlying resentment that had always been at play because Kat had gone away.
"Are you sure nothing happened while you were gone, Kat? You seem different," Janie observed, pulling Kat out of her family-related reverie and tossing her right back into the pool where her thoughts had been for the last day and a half. Jon Good.
"Yeah," she said quickly. "I'm totally fine."
"Katharine," Janie always could tell when Kat was lying, and she was lying like a rug.
"Okay, fine!" she said, mentally preparing herself for Janie's reaction. "I may have met a guy."
"WHAT?!" Janie exclaimed, not expecting that from Kat the hermit who "never got involved with anyone because she was too busy and didn't need the attachment".
"Shhhh!" she admonished. "Calm down, it wasn't anything major. There was a fire alarm, he lent me his sweatshirt. Then we happened to meet up again at Starbucks the next morning before my presentation."
"And?" Janie asked, paying rapt attention to her former roommate. "I know that can't be all of the story. C'mon!"
"Rae, Mommy and Aunt Kat have to have a talk, why don't you head home and have your daddy make you some lunch, okay?" Kat said, not really wanting to corrupt her adoptive niece.
The little girl nodded and rushed out the door.
"Okay, now you really have to spill," Janie said.
"Okay, okay, so we may have flirted a lot at Starbucks and he may or may not have given me his room number…"
"Oh my God, did you sleep with this guy?"
Kat bit her lip and nodded.
"Katharine Christine Tyler, you did not!"
"I did," she said sheepishly.
"And? Has he called you, what happened?"
"You see, that's the thing," Kat said, again bracing herself for Janie's reaction, this was going to be much worse than the first. "I might have left without leaving a note or my number or anything."
"Kat! Seriously?"
"I know, I know! I feel bad about just leaving, but I kind of panicked! You know me, Janie, I'm not a one-night stand kind of person!"
"You're not an anything kind of person. The last thing you had that could be considered a relationship was your fling with Dylan sophomore year of undergrad."
"Yes, thank you for reminding me, as if I hadn't repressed that memory enough," she said wryly.
Now that she had told Janie about the situation, the gravity of it was hitting her pretty hard. She had literally just left without a trace. For someone with so many pieces of paper in fancy frames that proclaimed her intelligence, Kat sure felt stupid.
After Janie had calmed down a bit, she left Kat alone to unpack and deal with her thoughts. She started a load of laundry and put her kettle on the stove, suddenly craving tea. No matter how guilty she felt for leaving, she was still deserving of tea.
"What am I doing, Mox?" she asked the cat who had hopped up onto the kitchen island and situated herself right next to the warm air output of Kat's laptop. "Eh, who am I kidding? People do that all the time, why is this any different?"
Halfway across the country, Jon hadn't spoken to his brothers about what had happened between him and Kat, leading them to make the assumption that the woman had either not shown or had left. Ever the curious one, Colby made it his mission to actually find out what had happened. The best way to do that would involve Jon and lots and lots of alcohol.
"So bro, what happened with you back there?" Colby asked an already intoxicated Jon.
"Back where?" he slurred, taking another drink of his beer.
"With Kat. Did she not show or what?"
Jon chuckled humorlessly. "Oh, she showed all right, but she left. No trace of her whatsoever. It was like she never existed, man."
Colby's eyes widened bit. No wonder Jon had been weird. He was usually the one who left in the night without a trace. Having the tables turned was obviously not a good experience for him.
"What would you do if you saw her again?" he asked, a plan slightly forming inside his brain.
"I dunno, man," he paused, looking off into space for a moment. "I mean, I'd…I dunno. I'm never gonna see her again anyway."
With Joe's help, he got Jon back to the hotel and later, in his own room, Colby dug out his laptop. For this plan to work, he had to find out where Katharine Tyler was. Thank God for Google. One of the first results was a press release. Gratton University is pleased to announce the addition of Katharine C. Tyler, Ph.D. to the faculty of the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Tyler received her Doctorate in Anthropology from the University of California and has two Bachelor's Degrees from Gratton.
Colby mentally fist-bumped himself. Now he knew where Kat was, and they just happened to be having a house show on the campus in a little over a month. All he had to do was get her there and somehow get her in the same area as Jon, even if that meant barricading the door to the locker room until someone came out alive. Whatever it was, Colby knew he had to do something. Jon never, ever got this distracted by a woman, and there was no way he was going to let his brother pass up on something that could potentially help him out. Even if Jon would want to kill him for meddling.
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