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“Yes, and you know they are the best nut available. His loss. Me and walnuts!”
“You are walnuts, Mia,” Mandy accused with a smirk.
“Thank you, because they’re the best. And I know you were making a dig at me, but I don’t care. Want to watch a movie tonight? I just happen to have a frozen pizza that I know you love waiting in my freezer.”
“You mean the type of pizza you love?” Mandy raised an eyebrow in question.
“Maybe,” Mia admitted. She figured everyone liked what she liked since everyone loved her specials at the café.
“Can’t anyway. I have plans to meet up with a few friends in Grand Forks.” Mandy looked at the clock on the computer since there wasn’t one in the waiting room. Nobody needed to know the time when they were out there. Instantly, she started shutting down the computer.
“Cancel,” Mia whined. Why was everyone abandoning her suddenly?
“No.” Mandy jumped up from her chair and shrugged off her white jacket, hanging it on a hook behind where she had been sitting.
“For me?” She gave her best pathetic smile.
“How about tomorrow?” Mandy suggested, and she grabbed her jacket from the same set of hooks and shrugged it on. The jacket was in a nice black, and Mia knew from the logo it was expensive.
Not that Mia was jealous.
“Fine, but you pick up a pizza for yourself, then. I can’t stock everything we both like.” She followed her cousin out the door. It seemed once Mandy was done at the office, she was done. No hours of cleaning for her to do like at the café.
“Deal,” Amanda agreed and waved as she walked to her car in the other direction.
The weather hadn’t warmed up one bit since she had gone into the office, but it was a good thing it was only a few more feet to her apartment stairs door.
Talking to her cousin had improved her mood for a few minutes, but once she hit her apartment, she was back to being the woman Damion “let’s split the bill every time” Paulson dumped. The only thing that could fix that was ice cream, and luckily Mia had a lot of that.
CHAPTER4
Drainingthe glass of beer in front of him, Rafferty set it down and waved at the bartender for another. He and his friend Anderson had come to the bar after Rafferty had let Anderson in on his personal assistant’s deepest, darkest secrets. Well, not the darkest maybe, but for some reason, she had never told her boss that she lived above the office they worked in.
Angel was going to be pissed at him when she found out Anderson knew. In truth, he had no idea Anderson didn’t know the woman lived upstairs. She had lived up there for more than a dozen years now—where did he think she lived? Didn’t they talk during all those hours they spent together?
Anderson had offered him a place to land, a job and a work place. But it was Angel who would get in the way of that. She was Anderson’s personal assistant and would walk away if Anderson hired Rafferty. He knew she would, too, and her job was all she had. She had never married, never moved, barely drove, and went to her mother’s every weekend. Her life outside of that building was nonexistent. He wouldn’t take that away from her. She was his sister.
So here he was, nursing a beer, trying to figure out his future when the door to the bar burst open, and Angel and Mia tumbled in from the frigid night and landed in a heap on the floor. Mia yelled out their drink order to the bartender as they got up and stumbled to a table. Her purple hair was all he could see for a moment, then he instantly replaced it with the chestnut it actually was in his mind.
He could feel the moment they both noticed him. The daggers that were sent his way were a little more painful than usual.Just ignore them, he thought, but then he decided he had to take another shot at Mia today. You can’t catch a fish if you’re not fishing.
Motioning to Paul behind the bar, he took the glasses over to the women. Setting them down as Mia was on the phone texting, he turned his attention to Ruth. “And I thought you were against favors, Angel.”
“Rafferty, just leave them alone. Ruth is going to throw her drink at you.” Anderson pushed Rafferty back to the bar and relative safety.
Back on his stool, he chatted about something with Anderson for a while, not taking his eyes off the woman. Silently, he just watched Mia, who was drinking her drink and talking animatedly about something. Or anything; it was Mia.
When the outside door opened again, bringing with it a swirl of cold air, a woman walked in. Rafferty recognized the bank president, Tess Thorn, immediately. She was dressed like this was downtown Minneapolis instead of a hole in the wall in the middle of North Dakota. Mia called out to her as if they were friends, and she acknowledged her but stopped at the bar on the other side of Anderson to order a drink.
When she got her drink and sat with Mia and Ruth, Anderson said quietly, “Looks like the book club is having a midweek meeting.”
“Book club?” Rafferty had heard that they were friends suddenly, but not why. It made sense—Mia and Angel had never been in the same circles, bit lately they were talking a lot more than they used to.
“These three and three others get together ever few weeks to talk about books and drink,” Anderson filled him in.
He noticed that Mia was drinking more than she probably should be, but Anderson kept bringing the table more rounds, and she just kept drinking them. Not that her friends weren’t matching her drink for drink.
Rafferty ordered another beer as Tess from the bank went to the other end of the bar. He watched as she spoke quietly with a man sitting there after she ordered. He knew that man’s face but couldn’t remember his name. He was a few years older than Rafferty and wasn’t one of his customers. He was probably Anderson’s customer—the joys of having only two insurance companies in town. The man was drinking some mixed drink, and she ordered him another, as well as four whiskeys for the table. Paul poured the drinks and gave them to her. Paul set the drink in front of him, but the man pushed it away with anger. Rafferty had no idea what the woman’s expression was because she was turned away from him, but she took the glass and drank it in one go. Setting the empty glass on the bar, she grabbed the other four with ease and went back to her table.
