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“You do and you will. We’ve got things we need to discuss.”
Chapter Nine
Natalie
* * *
“What can I get you honey?”
“Just coffee,” he says, his voice a low growl.
She turns to me. “What about you, Natalie?”
“I’ll take a couple of pancakes, Annabelle. Oh, and a milkshake.”
“Strawberry?”
“I’m feeling crazy today. Make it chocolate.”
“You got it.”
She walks off, leaving me alone with Angelo. He leans back in his seat, glancing out at the window at the town square. “You like living here?” he asks.
“Only place I want to be. Don’t you like it?”
“Too small, too quiet.”
“Then forgive the probing question but what are you doing here?”
“I have some business to attend to, in the short term.”
“What about the longterm?”
“Who knows what’ll happen there. Life gets unpredictable fast, don’t you think?”
“You’re not wrong. Listen, about your book.”
“It’s inside the store which is boarded up, right?”
“How did you know I was going to say that?”
The coffee appears alongside my milkshake. He takes a sip of his drink before answering. “How come it’s boarded up?”
“That is a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Well, my stepmother owns the building its in and when my father was alive, he paid for each year’s rent for me and that was up a couple of weeks back. She wanted another year upfront and when I told her I didn’t have it, she had the place boarded up to try and make me pay.”
“How much do you owe?”
“I don’t owe anything. I paid her last night but she’s disappeared off the face of the earth. I tried to call her to get the boards taken off but no one at her office knows where she is.”
“Where’d you get the money to pay her?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?”
“I guess not. You said your dad was dead, you got any other family?”
