Nothing. He taps something into a small electronic tablet and keeps going.
“How long do you plan on staying in the country?”
“For the week,” I say quickly. “Through the weekend. Leaving Tuesday. Staying at the Odyssey Hotel where the conference is.”
“Bringing any alcohol, tobacco, or cannabis with you?”
I blink. “Wait…people can bring weed into Canada?” Timantha’s mom wouldlove ithere.
His eyebrow twitches.
“I mean—no! No, sir. Nothing to declare except my unrelenting enthusiasm. Officer.”
He does a slow lap around my rental, probably wondering how a grown woman can be this enthusiastic about a book convention. Eventually, he hands back my passport and waves me through.
I glance down at my phone and pick it up. “Tim, you still there?”
“Of course I am. I had to make sure you didn’t get arrested.”
“Seriously, you’ve got to stop watching true crime and reading all that dark romance. Not every encounter ends in a tawdry escapade with kidnapping or capturing…or sexing. Smut is turning you into someone I worry about.”
“Whatever. You don’t complain when you’re reading the same smut as the rest of us.”
“I mean, I partake,” I admit. “But the billionaires don’t do it for me. I think I’m starting to prefer my men…a little rugged.”
“Excuse me?”
I lean into the fantasy, because Timantha and her friends seem convinced the only men worth wanting are dominant billionaires with unlimited amounts of money and too much ego. I want something different.
“I don’t know, Tim. I’ve been getting into small-town cowboy romances, and I think I’m starting to like the ones with rough hands and a soft heart,” I say. “I picture my car breaking down on a quiet country road. A beat-up pickup pulls over, and the handsome man, who also happens to be the town mechanic, leans into the window and says, ‘You need a ride?’ And I say, ‘I’ve got your ride, big boy.’”
Timantha smacks her lips. “Oh God.”
“Then he takes me to his garage-slash-house, makes me pancakes, and ravishes me on the hood of his truck—”
“MAXINE!”
“What!?” I screech.
“Not truck sex, Max. That’s just dirty and tetanus.”
I shrug, passing aWelcome to Canadasign. “A little dirt ain’t never hurt nobody, honey.”
She groans dramatically. “I need to jump into a meeting, but what’s the code for the website? I have to make a few updates while you’re away and pull some data for Sunday’s board meeting.”
I narrow my eyes at the windshield like she can feel my judgment through the phone. “What did I tell you about working on a Sunday?”
She exhales like I’m the difficult one. “That Sundays are for giving thanks and zero fucks.”
“Exactly. So why are you acting like I raised you wrong?”
“Because, darling—badassery never sleeps.”
I can’t help but laugh. Classic Timantha. She runs at a pace most people couldn’t survive, and somehow expects the same from me. But to be fair, she never demands more from anyone than what she demands of herself. I respect the hell out of that.
“Your birthday and your favorite word: badassery.”
“Maxine! That’s so easy to guess. What if we get hacked for real?”
