AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Miranda smiled at Nate. “I work at a real estate office in town. Your father came in looking for some commercial space to lease. We spent a lot of time together looking at one building after the next.” She eyed Nate. “After all that, he ended up leasing the very first space I showed him and asked me out to dinner.”
Summer turned to her dad and caught the utter look of love in his eyes.
“I didn’t need to see the other ten properties. I just wanted to spend more time with her.”
Summer sighed. “That’s really sweet. And you’ve been together ever since.”
“Twenty-two years together,” Miranda confirmed. “We celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary in April.”
Summer had never seen her mother look at a man the way Miranda gazed at her father, her eyes filled with love and adoration. “How did you celebrate such a momentous occasion?”
Miranda gave Summer’s dad another knowing smile. “We went to Belize and stayed in this private villa right on the ocean.”
“I love Belize. I have a house there.” Summer noted that everyone stared at her.
“You do?” her father asked.
“My great-uncle left it to me, along with seven other homes around the world. Wherever he went that felt right, he bought a place so he could go there whenever he wanted.”
“Do you travel a lot?” Haley asked.
“When I was young, I’d spend school breaks with my uncle somewhere in the world, when I wasn’t with my grandfather.”
“Where was your mom?” Haley asked.
“Somewhere else. With someone else.” It had been a long time since acknowledging a truth like that broke through the numbness of it all and made her sad.
“She did that a lot, I guess.” Her father fumed beside her.
She shrugged. “It’s hard to complain when I’d visited twelve countries by the time I was eighteen. The things I saw, the adventures I had. My uncle and grandfather did their best when she wasn’t around. And school kept me busy most of the time.”
Her dad turned to her. “I would have liked to see your amazing volcano.”
She giggled.
Apparently Cody hadn’t left out any details about what they talked about earlier.
“You’d have liked it. I used a robotics kit that had these hydraulic-like arms. I made the volcano in five pieces, each attached to an arm. I programmed them to move so it looked like the mountain quaked before it erupted. The boys were so jealous that I got better distance with my lava explosion than they did. It made a huge mess, but I won first prize.”
Miranda’s eyes filled with delight. “You take after your dad.”
“I’ve always liked to tinker with things. Grandfather never got upset when I took things apart, except the one time I took apart a sixteenth-century clock made out of gold parts.”
“Was he mad you couldn’t put it back together?”
“No. I put it back together, it just took me a few tries to get it right. He just wanted me to stick to modern things, like the toaster oven, that could be replaced. While I liked taking things apart, putting them back together often got pushed aside because of homework and stuff.”
Haley leaned in. “But how are you at freshman algebra?”
She leaned in toward Haley with a big smile. “I rule at algebra. Math has always been my thing. It helps a lot in business.”
“You definitely take after him, then,” Natalie grumbled.
Haley looked superior. “Natalie sucks at math. I’m really good at it. Like you.”
“Everyone is good at something. You just have to find what that something is,” Summer encouraged Natalie, hoping to score some points, or at least cool some of Natalie’s hostility.
Natalie ignored her.
