“About as rustic backwoods as you were when you first showed up?”
I laughed. “Worse, sweetheart. I’d gone through college before that, remember. First Slade—”
“—this century, yes, I know, my fave nebbish. You mentioned it a time or two, probably because your whole family mentions it every time you go home, yes?”
“And on the phone. Look, I sorta committed us to go visit. You don’t argue with Mamma.”
“Yeah, sounds like my mother. When are we supposed to get there, so they can get a good look at what a horse you’re bringing home?”
Jodi’s sensitive about her height—she’s taller than me by two inches or so, and I’m almost six feet tall. This doesn’t bother me, but when she’s nervous she tends to fret about it. As well as her weight, which for her height is just fine. “Don’t you worry about that, Jodi. When they get a look at you, Father’ll be tellin’ me how lucky I am, and I’ll have to watch so Adam doesn’t try to steal you. Next week.”
“What? Are you totally meshuggeh? What about work?”
“Mamma knows I can take the time off. What about you?”
She made a sort of growling noise in her throat, and then hummed several bars of a Streisand tune—a sign she was both thinking and calming herself down. “Okay, yeah, I think I can do that. They won’t be thrilled, but if we want to make your Mamma happy, I can live with it. Oy, I have packing to do! Do you have electricity where you live?”
I managed to keep from laughing. “Yes. We have our own generators, actually. Every month Father or Adam trucks in to town to buy the fuel. Had to have the phone line run in special; these days I suppose we’d have done something like get a satellite link, but not back when the family first decided to get one.”
Jodi blinked. “Running out a phone line just for you? That’s pretty pricey, Clint.”
“I said we was backwoods,” I drawled, emphasizing my Kentucky accent. “Didn’t say we was poor backwoods. If the Slades ain’t the richest family in Crittenden County, it’s only ’cause we’ve spent a lot of it the last few decades.”
“I never knew, Clint.” Jodi looked at me with surprise. “How’d your family get rich?”
I realized my big mouth had me dangerously close to the secret. Time to follow the honorable Slade tradition of ducking the truth. “One of my ancestors, Winston Slade, made a ton of money mining, and brought it with him to the homestead when he settled down.” That was, as one of my online friends would put it, “telling the truth like a Jedi”—it was true “from a certain point of view.” If I’d done the casual voice right, though, she’d never suspect a thing. Once we were married, we’d be living near New York and just visit the family homestead once in a while, so the chances were she’d never have to know.
“Well, that’ll be a relief for my more cynical relatives,” Jodi said, throwing back her long black hair. “They were kinda worried about just what your background was, especially with your nickname.”
I wasn’t very surprised. “I suppose ‘Crowbar’ Slade does sound either like a real honest-to-god Good Ole Boy, or like a wannabe wrestler.” Truth was, I’d gotten the nickname in college because my roommates noticed I had a crowbar in my baggage when I moved in, and that I had that particular bag with me most of the time.
“Look,” Jodi said, “if we’re leaving to get there Monday like I think I heard you say, I gotta get moving. We just got tomorrow to get ready. And like I didn’t already have a busy schedule tomorrow? You know what sort of planning I have to do for the wedding, and now we have to schlep all the way to Kentucky.” She leaned slightly down and we both shut up for a while for the good-bye kiss, which lasted for several kisses as usual before she finally got out the door.
I sighed and grinned. Hey, maybe this would be fun.
2. Meet the Slades