Too Hard To Handle

At the sound of a sunny contralto greeting, Christy had said, “Brandy? Thank God!”

“Christy? Hey, I’ve been meaning to call. How’s the fianceé?”

“Ex-fianceé. But that’s not why—”

“Ex?” Brandy cleared her throat. “Isn’t that the third man you…? Never mind. How’s the job going?”

“Gone, but that’s not why—”

“Gone? When?”

“Actually, the same day I got rid of fianceé number three. I was more upset about the job.”

“But you’ve been writing for that magazine for the last two years.”

“Yep, but it got caught up in a merger, and it’s dead meat,” Christy said succinctly. “Brandy, that’s not why—”

“So what are you going to do?”

This time, Christy’s sigh was long and loud. She should have known she wouldn’t control this conversation; she never did when talking with her cousin. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m a little stressed here. When my magazine bit the dust, the editor of a travel magazine called me with an offer.”

“Christy, that’s terrific!”

“You haven’t heard about my first assignment.”

“Nothing can be that bad,” her cousin said in a firm voice. “In the major scheme of things, a year isn’t that long.”

“A day can be that long if I’m working with Aunt Tillie.”

“Working with…?”

“Aunt Tillie,” Christy confirmed grimly. A fey, spry, enchanting, adventurous, hair-raising dynamo of a woman. A woman fascinated by aliens and UFOs and…a psychic. She had daily conversations with Uncle Walter, a man whose exuberant spirit was apparently undaunted by the insignificant fact that he had passed on to another plane years earlier. She was also a matchmaker, who wreaked havoc in the life of any niece or nephew unfortunate enough to become the object of her attention.

But that had all been family lore, at least as far as Christy was concerned. Born into a military family that moved with regularity, she’d had only intermittent contact with her infamous aunt. So minimal, in fact, that she had always thought the stories were highly exaggerated.

Until this past year.

“She’s gathered a herd of senior citizen extraterrestrial believers and organized them into a caravan. The plan is to visit the Nevada and Arizona hot spots of UFO sightings. The seniors, of course, fully expect to find proof of visitations.”

“Good grief.”

“My thought exactly. And since my first assignment is to write an article on seniors traveling together, I got stuck with Aunt Tillie and her goofy friends.”

After a thoughtful pause, her cousin asked cautiously, “How’d your editor know about Aunt Tillie?”

“She didn’t. But Mom certainly does. Among other things, she said I couldn’t turn Aunt Tillie loose on the rest of the world in an RV.”

“Aunt Tillie got her driver’s license back?” Horror lifted Brandy’s voice a notch.

“Last week.”

“Good grief.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. So, with the family breathing down my neck and designating me as the sacrificial lamb, I cleared the idea with my editor. She thought it might have a nice, light touch. I’m leaving in about ten days.”

Before her cousin could recover, Christy circled back to the original reason for the call. “Brandy, have you ever heard Aunt Tillie call me her little wanderer?”

“Sure. Not lately, but all the time when we were kids. I figured it was because you always meandered away and the family had to send search parties out for you.”

“Yeah, I did too.”

“Did? Past tense? Not now?”

“No indeedy. She said something yesterday that put a whole new light on the subject.”

“Don’t tell me. Aliens again?”

“What’s with her, Brandy? The woman is obsessed with E.T.s. Now she seems to think I’m one of them.”

“Oh boy. Did you ask Aunt Tillie about it?”

“You bet your sweet patootie I did.”

“And?”

“She said she knew the moment I was born that I was what UFO buffs call a wanderer. She’s just been waiting for me to bloom. Damn it, Brandy, this isn’t funny. I don’t want to bloom.”

Her cousin’s snort of laughter was not comforting. “You’re doomed, Christy. There’s not a darned thing any of us can do when she goes into high gear. One consolation, though, she’ll find you a husband—one who’s good with aliens, of course. That’s always a top priority with her. After all, she’s still convinced she married me off to a real, honest-to-God E.T. Just be grateful that Uncle Walter isn’t involved.”

“I don’t want a husband, especially one who hangs around with aliens. I’ve sworn off men. Three ex-fianceés are more than enough for any woman. And the thought of Uncle Walter sending me messages from the great beyond is the stuff of nightmares,” Christy said with a shudder. “Good grief, the man has been dead for at least fourteen years. Is he ever going to quit talking to her?”

“Has she mentioned his opinion of your wandering soul or a husband?”

“Well…”

Her cousin’s laughter was no longer muffled. “Doomed, Christy. That’s what you are. Doomed!”

Earlier, other cousins had laughingly warned her that she, too, would one day be drawn into her aunt’s sphere of influence. And her life would never be the same.

Just as they’d predicted, it had happened. The fateful meeting had taken place one rainy afternoon a year earlier, after her move to San Diego, not far from her aunt’s home in Rancho Santa Fe. Less than an hour into the visit Christy had been hooked. Enchanted by the tiny woman who loved so openly, she became her staunch supporter and as fiercely protective of her as the rest of the family.

Now, wincing as she remembered Brandy’s prediction, Christy tried to rein in her overactive imagination. Granted, this stop had not been on their itinerary; they had been scheduled to drive another fifty miles similar to the last hundred since leaving Las Vegas. Miles of heat-shimmering road carved through stark landscape covered with chaparral and dotted with stumpy Joshua trees and yucca.

True, Aunt Tillie had been sitting beside her in the passenger seat humming a bit off-key when she’d spotted the lush oasis ahead—which coincided with the end of the barbed wire fence—and directed her to pull off the road onto the grassy slope.

But there was no way that Aunt Tillie could have known a man like Shane McBride would be here.

Absolutely none.