/* This series takes place after the events of "The Consultant - Neighbor Wives". It is certainly not necessary to have read the first series to enjoy this one, but I won't give a lot of background here since much of it is already done.
As always, all characters engaged in sexy sex are 18+ years old */
It was good to be home.
I'd spent over eight months in Rock Hill, South Carolina on a project management contract, with only a handful of trips home. It had been a great work experience and quite profitable. I had actually managed to squirrel away some decent money coming out of that job, even though I'd had to pay for my housing there. The project had been very successful and I was sure I'd be considered for future work with the customer.
All that was true, but I had missed my home. I had missed my little college town. And I'd missed my neighborhood, although I found that it had changed a lot in my absence. My friend Joanie and her husband Mark had moved out of the neighborhood and into a downtown loft in Durham, Ramona had moved in with my friend Ben, Alli and her husband had decided to close their open marriage and there were a lot of new folks around.
I was back working for a previous customer that I liked a lot. The money wasn't quite as good as the South Carolina gig but I loved the hours. I was again spending a couple of early morning hours on the phone with the folks in India, then talking to the team in the UK, then taking a long mid-day break before picking back up with the West Coast team.
I was also happy that my tendinitis had subsided enough that I was starting to run again. Before I got into contracting (that is, before I was unceremoniously laid off), I used to be an early morning runner but I liked having the time to go for a run at noon, take a shower, eat a quick snack and make a 2pm meeting (11am for the team in San Jose).
I've previously mentioned the university-owned woods that back up to our neighborhood. It was riddled with trails, both a double-track maintenance road and lots of single-track mountain bike/running paths. There was a cut-through from our neighborhood to the woods that ran past Alli and Scott's house that I could take to get to the trails and it was easy to put together a nice three-mile loop.
I had been back in town for a couple of months and was working myself into reasonably good running shape as the weather warmed up into a nicer-than-usual spring. The annual pine pollen blizzard had just ended and the azaleas were blooming and the dogwoods were just starting to open. Beautiful weather for getting outside.
I'd also gotten back into the groove of this project. Most of the players were the same as before and having spent eighteen months together on the first phase of the project, we knew each other's ways of working. This phase of their migration would be trickier but I was confident that we could manage it as well as the previous one.
So I was feeling pretty good as I loped through the woods for my mid-day run. I finished my loop and crossed the drainage ditch separating the woods from our neighborhood, continuing down the trail towards home. The path was separated from Alli's back yard only by some low shrubs and a couple of small trees.
I glanced over at the back of Alli's house, then my mouth dropped as I saw her on the back deck, completely naked, waving at me. I mean, totally sans clothing. Completely nekkid. Staring at her instead of the trail was a mistake, because next thing I knew, I had tripped on an exposed root and was coming down hard. And badly.
I managed to twist a little on the way down, hoping to take the fall on my left hip instead of my face. And I did, right onto a couple of decent-sized rocks. There was a disorienting moment of sharp pain and then I think I blacked out.
I doubt I had been out for more than a minute before I opened my eyes again, trying to peer through the strobing spots still flashing around my eyes. I had rolled over a little and was looking up, and swore I saw an angel backlit by the mid-day sun, leaning down to either comfort me or to signal my end.
Then I realized that the wings I was looking at were really a thin white robe that the naked but probably not angelic blonde was shrugging over her shoulders while she leaned down to see if I was okay. I still couldn't see very well, but I looked up and half-whispered, "Alli?"
I was not prepared for the reply. "No, Mr. Kennerly, it's Zoey. Alli's daughter." She had me by one arm and was trying to help me up. "Let's get you inside and get you some bandages." I managed to stand up on my right leg but when I tried to put any weight on my left, it almost buckled from the pain. The second try was a little better so with Zoey's help I limped back to her house.
She got me up onto the low deck and then into the eat-in kitchen, sitting me down on a vinyl-covered kitchen chair before handing me a bottle of water from the refrigerator. I finally got a good look at her and I immediately understood my earlier mistake.
She looked remarkably like her mom, with a couple of exceptions. She was blonde and thin like her mother, with maybe a little less chest but a little more of an athlete's build. And she had the same caring smile. But she was at least five inches taller than Alli, probably 5'9" and looked like a high jumper or a hurdler.
Then I followed her eyes down to my injured left thigh and got really queasy. There was a wound about as big around as a softball covered in blood, dirt, pine needles and ooze. It was way too many shades of red and purple and it hurt like crazy.
I looked back at Zoey to see that she had pulled a stepstool over in front of the refrigerator and was stretched up to reach into the cabinet over it. I could see every inch of her through the thin robe and felt more than a little tingle despite the pain in my leg. She pulled out a prescription bottle, checked the label, and brought it down with her, then held it up in front of me.
"This is Tylenol 3," she said. "Heavy dose of acetaminophen along with codeine. You don't want to take it for long but it acts quickly and it will help." She handed me some (2? 3?) and motioned to the bottle of water, so without thinking too much about it, I swallowed them.
She took another look at the wound and looked back up at me. "I'm going to go get the first-aid kit. The big one. You just sit as quietly as you can and let the Tylenol do its thing." She disappeared into the house and I just leaned back in the chair, trying to will the pain away.