AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, he’s not a drug dealer. Never has been one. Never will be one.” Zara’s voice has a shoo-shoo command as if she’s trying to get rid of a pesky raccoon rummaging through the dumpster.
I bite into a piece of fermented cabbage, holding back what I want to say to the girl. Is this what it will always be like? Because the cops found drugs in Lucas’s house? “God, this kimchi is incredible.” I level a scram glare at her.
The girl gets the hint and scurries from our table.
Zara watches her leave the café, then waves her fork at Kim. “Thanks. Kim’s mom taught me how to make it. She taught me how to make all of the South Korean foods I rotate on the menu.”
Kim laughs, the sound bright and carefree. “Yes, she hasn’t let me forget that you make a better kimchi than I do.”
Zara grins like a girl who just got straight A’s on her report card.
“For your business social media photos, what are you thinking of doing?” Kim asks. I explain my vision for them. I’ve had time to do some research over the past few days and narrow things down. “If you want, I can regularly take photos of you and Lucas together to post on the sites. Assuming he’s okay with that.”
“Thank you. I’m sure he will be.” I assume he understands that would be part of our business arrangement of being husband and wife.
“Does the wedding consulting business mean you’re quitting your job with Kellan?” Zara digs her fork into her rice.
Shaking her head, Em picks up her glass of water. “No. Not right now, anyway. It’ll take time to develop a clientele base to the point where it will be worth it for me to leave my job, which I still love doing.”
“What exactly do you do for Kellan? I thought you were teaching elementary school in Maple Ridge.” I take a bite of my sandwich.
“I was until two years ago, thanks to budgetary cutbacks. Since then, I’ve been doing this and that for Kellan.”
Zara releases a deep-throated laugh. “Don’t even try to get more than that from her. She likes to keep an air of mystery about what she really does with the big guy.”
A blush spreads up Emily’s neck and pinkens her cheeks. “You make it sound dirty.”
“No, it’s only you who has dirty thoughts when it comes to your boss,” Zara says.
A weird sensation prickles the back of my neck, and I glance over at the table with the fiftysomething women. None of them are paying attention to me. No one in the café is looking my way.
But knowing that still doesn’t smother the feeling that someone is watching me.
12
Lucas
“You want to explain why we’re going to Eugene?” Troy asks from the driver’s seat of his truck. He pulls onto the quiet street from my driveway. A few doors down, a neighbor is mowing his lawn, and the two young kids across the street are chasing each other around their mom’s rock garden.
If I had my way, I’d be in the driver’s seat. But the agreement was, if he came to the city with me, he was driving. “I need to get an engagement ring for Simone, and I need your help.”
“Not sure where to start with any of that. How about with you needing my help. Why the hell would I know anything about engagement rings?”
“I dunno. I figured between you, Garrett, and Kellan, you’re most likely to have a clue.”
“They shot you down, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. That, too.”
Troy laughs, shaking his head.
An ache twitches in my injured shoulder, and I attempt to knead it out. I don’t even have to look to know storm clouds are gathering in the west.
“Why are you really marrying Simone?” Troy asks after we’ve been driving for about twenty minutes. A mix of farmland and woods stretches in all directions along the highway, the vegetation swaying in the wind. “And don’t give me that crap about you two reconnecting after sneaking around together all those years.”
“Hey, weren’t you the one who suggested only yesterday that I marry her to keep our bid for the land alive?”
“I told you I was joking. I didn’t think you would actually ask her. Especially after you told me she wasn’t the solution to our problem.”
