I normally parked in the rear parking lot near the recreation center because that’s where four different trails converged. I ran them all, a total of about ten miles, and when I finished, I was at my car. Today, however, I pulled into the parking lot near the ball fields where Carolyn parked yesterday. As I put the SUV into park, I wondered if she’d show up or if she was just feeding me a line yesterday. I’d give her fifteen minutes and then Bailey and I would be on our way. The weather was a little cooler today than yesterday and I was wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt. If she didn’t show, I had my running shorts on under my pants and a ragged T-shirt in the car I could change into.

I was sitting Bailey’s bike on the ground when I heard the rumble of a V8 approaching. I turned and smiled as Carolyn’s blue Mustang rumbled to a stop two spaces over, a shaggy white head appearing in the back seat.

“You can take off,” I muttered to Bailey. “We’ll take the same path, but we’re walking, so stay close.”

“You got it, Dad,” he said as he rode away.

“How’s your knee?” Carolyn said as she opened the door.

“Fine,” I said as I approached, hunched over to the right, dragging my foot along the ground like my leg was broken, my right arm hanging limp at my side. “What really hurts is my shoulder.”

She giggled, a very pleasant sound. “Stop. You’re making me feel guilty. Do your knee and shoulder really hurt?”

“Not too much,” I said as I straightened and stopped clowning around. “How do you feel?”

“Okay. A little sore,” she said as she got Hoover out of the car. “At least I wasn’t bleeding.”

“How’d he do yesterday?” I asked with a nod at the dog.

“Fine. Of course, he didn’t give me any trouble until I brought him to the park, so the real test is about to start.”

“You’re going to behave yourself today, aren’t you?” I asked as I crouched down in front of the bear-like dog and scratched him good. He looked at me, his mouth hanging open as if he were smiling. “Shall we?” We started walking. “How far do you want to go?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. How far do you run?”

“Ten miles.”

“Ten miles?” she exclaimed in a way that made me grin. “I don’t think I’m up for that. How about the loop this path makes? If I remember right, that’s about three miles, according to the map.”

“Okay. The big loop it is.”

We walked along in a slightly awkward silence. Carolyn was so damned pretty she made my heart beat faster. She stood about 5’5”, maybe 5’6”, with short, dark brown hair and big brown eyes. She had a lush figure that made me think naughty thoughts, and her pixie nose added cuteness to the list of her appealing physical attributes. Today she was wearing a double layer of shirts, a white stretchy looking shirt underneath that showed off the swell of her breasts, with a blue denim shirt over the top buttoned half-way up. Tight jeans and brown ankle boots completed her look.

As the silence grew more protracted, I decided I needed to say something, anything, to get the conversational ball rolling. “So, Ms. McDowell,” I said, trying to impress her that I remembered her name, “are you from around here? I haven’t see you at the park before.” I left out the part that I’d remember someone who looked like her if I had.

She looked at me, her eyes merry. “If you’re going to call me Ms. McDowell, I’m going to have to call you Mr. Thomas.”

“It’s Gregg,” I corrected with a ghost of a smile.

“That’s what I mean. I’m not calling you by your first name if you’re going to call me by my last.”

I snickered. “No. The name is Thomas Gregg, not Greg Thomas. I know, it’s confusing with two first names. I’ve been dealing with it my entire life.” Her flush made my smile grow. “How about I call you Carolyn and you call me Thom?”

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“Don’t worry about it. If you getting my name backwards is the worst thing that happens to me today, I’ve had a pretty good day.”

She jerked to a stop, then leaned into the lead, starting Hoover walking again. “Come on, dog,” she growled.

“So, Carolyn…or do you prefer Carol?” I began.

“Carolyn is fine.”

“So, Carolyn, are you from around here?”

“Here, as in Charlotte, yeah. Here, near the park, no, not really. I have an apartment over in Hampshire Hills.”

“Not that far away, then.”

“No, not really, I guess. What about you?”

“I live in Elwood Creek.”

“Isn’t that north of Charlotte?”

“Yeah. I like to come to CityWalk to run because it’s peaceful and there isn’t a lot of foot traffic.”

“What do you do that you can come here to run every day during the day? Work nights?”

“Hardly. I’m an angel.” I looked down at her and smiled as she looked at me like I was crazy.

“An angel?”

“Yep,” I confirmed, my smile growing.

She was obviously wondering what kind of nut job I was. “Like with wings? Messengers of God that come down to earth to spread good joy among men? That kind of angel?”

“In a way,” I confirmed. “An angel is an investor in small companies that are just getting started. I take a look at an idea someone is trying to get off the ground, and if I like it, I invest in the company.”

“Oh!” she said, clearly relieved I wasn’t a total whack-a-doodle. “So you’re like, what’s that guy, Warren Buffet?”

I scrunched up my face as I considered. “Similar but not really the same. The biggest difference is Warren Buffet is worth God knows how many billions, and I’m not. But another difference is I invest a few hundred thousand to maybe a million dollars in very young companies. Warren, he plays on an entirely different level. He invests billions in big, established, companies he thinks will make him a lot of money. My investments are much smaller, and I help grow the company so someone like Warren wants to buy it.”

“Still, a million dollars isn’t chump change.”

“In this game, it’s nickels and dimes. I can’t complete with the Warren Buffets, George Soroses and Carl Icahns of the world, so I don’t even try. They could swallow up everything I’ve invested and it wouldn’t even be a blip on their balance sheets.”

“Invested in anything I’ve heard of?”

“Probably not. I’ve only been doing this for a couple of years, so nothing I’ve helped get off the ground has become a household word yet.” I grinned at her. “But someday, some of them might.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there’s this one firm I bought a forty percent equity in. They’re doing some amazing things with machine learning. They’re definitely in the race to produce the first computer to pass the Turing Test.”

“Turing Test?” she grunted as she pulled on the dog to keep him moving.

“Yeah. Ever heard of Alan Turing?”

“No.”

“He was a computer scientist back in the forties and fifties. He came up with a test to prove artificial intelligence. You put a person in a room with a computer terminal. If the person can’t tell if the person he’s talking to via the screen is a person or a computer, the computer will have passed the test and would be considered intelligent.”

“And no computer has been able to do that?”

“No, not yet,” I replied as Bailey zoomed by on his bicycle.

“I’m not sure how I feel about that. I can’t get the computer at work to do what I want even when it isn’t intelligent.”

I grinned and nodded in sympathetic understanding. “Yeah. In some ways it will be an amazing breakthrough that could open up possibilities we can only dream about now. On the other hand, as you said, it’s hard enough to make computers do what we want without them having a mind of their own.”

“Then there’s that whole robot overlords thing,” she said seriously and looked at me with a grin.

“That too. So, what do you do?”

“I’m the service writer at Harley-Davidson of Charlotte.”

“No kidding?” I exclaimed.

“What?” she demanded. “Can’t a girl work in a service shop for motorcycles?”

“No, it’s not that. I’m just surprised. I didn’t see you as a grease monkey.”

“Well, I’m not the one spinning wrenches. I’m the person the guy talks to when he needs his hog serviced. Mostly I enter information into the computer and recommend services.”

We stopped as Hoover planted a land mine, and I had to turn away to hide my smile as her face twisted in disgust. She retched softly as she picked the waste up in a bag and tied it off.

“That’s so disgusting. Yuck!”

“How did you get involved in that?” I asked when we started walking again.

She shrugged. “How does anyone get involved in anything? I went to work for them right out of high school as a parts runner, then I—”

“What’s that?” I asked. “A parts runner?”

“We’re the local distributor for Harley parts. If another dealer orders a part they don’t keep in stock, or another repair shop ordered parts, I”—she made tick marks in the air with her fingers—“ran the parts to them.”

“Oh, okay. That makes sense.”

“From there I started working the parts counter, then I became the service writer. I’ve been with them over ten years.”

“That makes you twenty-eight?” I asked.

She looked at me and grimaced. “I just told you my age, didn’t I?”

“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”

“So answer me this,” she said after a pause. “If you’re this big investment guy, then—”

“Hardly,” I muttered over her.

“—why do you live here in Charlotte instead of New York or someplace.”

“Because you don’t have to live there, not anymore, and they don’t print enough money for me to live some place like New York. I was born and raised in South Carolina and have no interest in moving up to Yankeedom.”

She snickered. “Fair enough. But why Charlotte?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “It’s only a couple hours to home, Florence, where my folks still live, plus Charlotte is second only to New York for financial services. It’s a good fit.”

“Really? I didn’t know that. I would have guessed Chicago, or Los Angeles, or someplace like that.”

“Really.” The conversation began to lag. “Want to see if he’ll sit?” I suggested to fill the growing silence.

We stopped and Hoover went to the end of the leash, stopped, then came back. “I worked with him on this last night. Let’s see if he remembers. Sit!” she ordered. He didn’t do it immediately, but as she reached to push his butt down, he beat her to it and sat down. “That’s a good boy,” she purred, bending over to put her face close to his as she scratched.

I took a furtive glance as her ass, wishing she was holding my face that close to hers and telling me I was a good boy. I’d be willing to sit up and beg for that kind of attention.

“Now you need a release command. Something like ‘okay’ or ‘good job’ or something.”

She looked at Hoover a moment. “That’ll do,” she said as she bumped the lead, and Hoover stood.

I grinned. “That’ll work.”

We started walking again, talking more about computers, a safe subject that prevented the divulging of too much personal information too quickly. As her car came into view I screwed up my courage.

“I had a good time, and Hoover is doing a lot better,” I said as an opener.

“Yes he is. Thank you very much for the help.”

I mentally took a deep breath to fortify myself. “Can I call you sometime? Maybe we can grab dinner?”

She smiled at me and looked down. I knew immediately she was going to turn me down. “Thanks for the offer, but, I don’t know.”

“I won’t bite, I promise.”

She grinned. “It’s not that. I just got out of a bad relationship, and I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

I forced a smiled. Sure she did. It was one of those ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ responses a woman used to let the guy down easy. “I understand,” I said, not letting my disappointment color my tone. I’d been turned down plenty of times and it didn’t bother me. Not much, anyway.

“I did have a good time, though. I enjoyed the walk.”

“Here every day from three until five, unless it’s raining,” I said, my tone teasing.

“Thanks again for the help with Hoover.”

“You’re welcome.” I looked at the dog. “Be good for Carolyn, and no more knocking people down,” I scolded him playfully. He stared at me with his shockingly blue eyes as he panted.

She opened her car and Hoover jumped into the back. As she circled the car, I opened her door for her. I closed it after she slid in. She started the car and rolled the window down.

“Thanks again.”

I forced a smile. “My pleasure.”

I watched her back away and checked the time on my phone. It had taken us about an hour to walk the three miles. I thought about it a moment, then opened my car as I pulled off my shirt to change. I removed my glasses, shrugged into my running shirt, and slipped out of my pants, tossing them into the car and shutting the door. I could get in about five miles before it was time to go.