"For real?"
"I'm not an American anymore. I'm Canadian."
Loden rolled her eyes. "I've been American for the last two hundred years or so."
"What were you before that?"
"Irish a couple of times. I liked being Portuguese. I didn't like being Czech. American is what I'm going to stick with, though."
"Why?"
"Because it's home. It can be a thousand things in a thousand places a thousand different ways and still be good."
"You stay in one place for a while-until you can't conceivably stay there without 'aging' and then you move on?"
She nodded.
"I fought in the War Between the States and both World Wars and Vietnam."
"Busy boy. I've been around since men stopped clubbing people. I can trace my ancestry back to the time when the continents split."
"You win. I'll let you know if I remember farther back than that."
She laughed.
"What special skill do you get with being an elf?"
"I can move pretty quietly in the woods. Get a sense of things from surrounding wildlife. Hear trees talk. And I'm pretty good with a bow and arrow."
"I think I might have used to be a lumberjack."
"That blows. I might have to take you in the woods someday and dump you."
"I'm a wild animal, too. Won't I be okay?"
"Unless you're part beaver we'll work through it."
"But you're just going to hand over your banking information to me?"
She shrugged. "It's just money, Logan. I can make more. People are irreplaceable. Cash isn't."
"Spoken like someone who has lots," the waitress chirped.
Loden tapped her glass. "Keep 'em coming and you'll find me very generous."
"She's going to want some fried cheesecake for dessert," Logan supplied. "Do you serve that here?"
"Nope. No desserts here. But the wing place down the street will have some. I think."
He drained his bottle and placed it on her tray. "I'm very grateful," he told her.
She smiled, basking in his magnetism, before simpering away.
"You do that well."
"Practice."
She handed over her card to pay for their meal and the drinks that had accompanied it. The waitress hovered helpfully as she signed the check.
"Loden Greenleaf, huh?" The card was for an LLC - - Loden Legal Associates.
"Yeah," the woman muttered. "You could say that my parents were the original flower children. His name is Logan Keukuatsheu."
"Wow."
"Yeah. I'm just grateful they stuck me with the 'Greenleaf' and him with the Native Inuit heritage."
"Okay. Well, then, if you need anything-I'm Kimmie. With two Ms and an I E."
"Thanks, Kimmie," Logan told her as he slid off the bench. Outside he laughed about it. "Kimmie. That's Kimmie-M-M-I-E."
"You probably left her number on the back of the receipt she slid you."
"I don't need the Kimmies in the world."
She nodded. "Logan, I'm sorry. I'm just not done sleeping it off and now I've got three beers in my system and-"
He regarded her in the gaudy neon lights lining the street. "If we have tons of money to throw away, why are we staying here?"
"Because coughing up a couple hundred untraceable cash to shack up isn't going to draw as much attention as two people dressed like we are paying a couple thou in cash."
He nodded. "I'm sorry to have brought your life into such scrutiny."
"It was time again, soon, anyway."
"Will they not be able to trace your name from the accident at the farm to the card you just used?"
She shook her head again. "I have lots of personas. But right now-"
He scooped her up and carried her inside before settling her gently down at the foot of a bed. "I'll take care of you for a change," he promised. "Do you want me to run you a bath? Rub your feet?"
She shook her head. "Just get out of my way if I tell you to."
"Always."
With that she drew herself farther up on the bed and curled up, not even kicking off her shoes or pulling a sheet over herself. Those chores he took care of while she slept. Then he sat and planned and wondered.
