She walked onto the marketing floor and her entire team stopped and stared at her, surprised to see her back in the office once more, and she knew it. They all knew she’d been invited to that wedding and had even asked her how she’d gotten the invite. She’d shrugged it off, but they’d all seen over the years Chester in and out of her office, and had likely put it down to that.
“Didn’t you have a wedding to go to?” Tallah, the head of her team asked. She was a tall, dark-haired woman with brown eyes who was now leaning back in her chair looking at Wynta.
“Mm, I can’t get there, the weather is too bad.” She nodded and then just shrugged it off as she headed for her office and removed her jacket and pulled her hair out of that bun, she’d only pulled it up so it wouldn’t get messy in the wind.
She started her laptop and then headed for the break room. “You should have just stayed home for the afternoon,” Monica told her. “That’s what I would have done.”
“My powers out.” She answered. “I can’t even make coffee there. So here I am, and it’s not like I don’t have work to do,” she told them.
“Ah, and you live like local, huh?” Howie nodded.
“Yes, just a few blocks,” she answered.
“Well, you look lovely.” Tallah smiled at her. “All made up.”
“Thank you,” she nodded. It was unlikely they had ever seen her with this kind of make-up on, and it did make her feel pretty. She thought it was a nice compliment, and she could accept it. She made her coffee and returned to her office to get some work done. She held on to that coffee cup with both hands and let it warm her hands as well her insides as she sipped the hot liquid.
Jared
His flight was delayed coming into landing, due to the storm that was going on out there over San Francisco. The pilot had just announced that they were finally given permission to land almost an hour after they were due to land. He apologized for the long delay, and they were on the ground 15 minutes later.
Thankfully, Jared only ever brought carry-on luggage with him, he had everything he needed in his suite in the packhouse. So he always traveled light. He breezed through customs, seeing as this was his home country and city, just stated he was returning home from a business trip.
Then made his way to the car rental place to pick up the organized car for him to use. He could see it was absolutely bucketing down, and he made a quick call to Dwane to state he’d finally landed. But it was chaos here at the airport. He was going to be late, it couldn’t be helped.
He stood in line and listened to the car rental people persuade their travelers to get insurance due to the wild weather and reported accidents out there on the roads today. He finally stepped up to the counter and gave his name and booking number, and it was looked up. He held up a hand to halt the man on his insurance spiel. “Enough, just give me the premium insurance, I’m in a hurry. I’m going to be late for my brother’s wedding, and your incessant chatter about insurance with everyone before me, and which I accept, is holding me up even further. I don’t need all the finer details, just charge my card and print out the paperwork,” he’d told the man.
Who’d then gone on to ask about whether he was bringing the car back fully fueled or not? “Bill me for the gas.” He’d leaned on the counter “and please hurry it up.”
He’d stopped and picked up an umbrella before stepping out into the downpour. He was going to need it and not just for himself, but for this, Wynta Morgan she-wolf he was to pick up at his father’s insistence. If he didn’t have an umbrella, her dress would surely get soaked and likely ruined. He didn’t need his father blaming him for her disheveled appearance on arrival.
He found the hire car, tossed his bag in the back seat and climbed into the drives side, closed that umbrella and got very wet. In the few seconds it took him to shut it and get in the car and close the door. He ran a hand through his now wet hair and slicked it back and kicked the car over, his shoes and socks were wet, there had been several puddles getting to the car.
He took a moment to lean over the back and pull a towel from his luggage and run it over his hands, face and hair, over his clothes where he could. Got his phone out and punched Wynta Morgan’s address into the GPS; Near the office that was good for him, he could get from the airport to the head office without assistance.
He’d only need it when he got closer. Though it looked pretty easy, almost a straight line from the office, he mapped it in his mind and left the airport.
It was already three thirty, and he was an hour behind his schedule now. He should have picked her up already and he knew it. His estimated time to pick her up had been two-thirty, but an hour late, she should at least be dressed and ready to go, no holdups on her end; knock on the door, state who he was and put her in the car. Two minutes tops, he thought to himself.
Though he was still 30 minutes out from her place, give or take a few minutes due to the heavy downpour and traffic. And then they had another hour to get to the pack. He was doing the math in his head. They should get there by 5pm, and the cut-off was 6pm, so all was good at this point.
His father had told him he had to see this Wynta Morgan right into his office inside the packhouse, that he needed to see her prior to the Luna Ceremony starting, and informed him that she had never once set foot inside the pack before and so needed an escort to his office.
He got held up in traffic just ten minutes from the airport, there was flooding along the road, and the traffic was being diverted on to a detour. As he turned on to the detour he could see it wasn’t just water on the road, but some of the embankment had collapsed and was laying across the road. There had been a small landslide.
He did know it had been raining for nearly a week now here in San Francisco, likely to see a fair bit of those he thought absently as he followed the predetermined detour that everyone else was also now on, and it was slow-going, having to merge and let others in and then take back streets.
Jared closed his eyes and pushed his annoyance down. No one could do anything about mother nature, but as he drove slowly like everyone else out here, taking into account the weather and the road conditions, the traffic was at a crawl and it took him 25 minutes to get back to his destination route that would take him to the head office and then to her apartment from there.
The wild, windy weather did not let up once, some areas of roads were being directed by police the power appeared to be out in certain parts of the city. That also slowed him down. He looked at his watch as he finally pulled up out the front of the apartment complex, a three-story building, and it was now four thirty a normally 20-minute drive; had taken him an hour.
He was now two hours late. Jared parked right out the front in the no-parking zone, uncaring of getting a ticket, he didn’t think the parking police were going to be out in this weather. He hurried across the footpath and pushed into the building. It was old but looked clean, and he wondered why a she-wolf would live there.
He located her apartment here on the ground floor, and realized the power was out here too. It was quite dark in this corridor. He knocked on her door and then pressed the doorbell twice and stood waiting. He got nothing in return and frowned, put his hearing to the apartment. There was nothing coming from it.
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