I Am Happy To Be Here

She looked out at the flowers in brilliant bloom, at the peacocks strutting across the lawns, the blue arc of the sky and the stunning turquoise sea. Soon the rainy season would come to Vancouver, it's chilly southeasterly gales stripping the trees of leaves. People would be scurrying about under a forest of umbrellas where, just few weeks before, they'd been lying on the beaches taking in the last of summer's sunshine. "No," she said. "I'm happy to be here."

"Good. Then you have no excuse for wanting to leave early."

She thought not, either, until the beginning of her second week there, when Chris reappeared as suddenly as he'd left.

"So, this is where you're hiding," he said, coming upon her as she sat reading in a wicker love seat on the patio. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

Though startled, she managed to hang on to her composure enough to meet his glance coolly and reply with commendabl