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“Not friends. I just…met someone who looks a lot like Ruric.”
“Two years ago? I don’t recall,” Ruric said.
Fiona wasn’t sure she believed him. She wished, in a way, that he had said yes. Then she would know she wasn’t just imagining things. On the other hand, if he said yes, wouldn’t that be a bit worrisome?
Emma tried to pay for the meals, but Ruric wouldn’t hear of it. He just smiled in his captivating way, paid for the food, then carried the tray of burgers and drinks to a booth. Emma and Fiona sat across from him.
Once he’d passed out their drinks, he said, “You both attend Portland High, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Fiona said, poking her straw into her soda. “How did you know?”
“The sticker is on the car’s bumper.”
“Oh,” Emma said, her voice a moan. “Can we pleeeease talk about something other than my mother’s car?”
“Really, no harm done to me or the car.”
“You say you live with your brother?” Fiona asked.
“Yep. He’s twenty-one, three years older than me. He can be as demanding as a mother and father combined.”
“And your parents?”
“They died in Wales.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I never knew them. My aunt raised us. Then when my brother turned twenty-one, he brought me here when he’d found a good job.”
Fiona held up her cheeseburger to take another bite. “Doing?”
“Working with a local mortician.”
Emma choked on her drink, then wrinkled her nose. “Creepy.”
“There’s good money in it. I might go into the business myself someday.”
Fiona nodded, though the idea that anyone made a living at working with dead people didn’t interest her. She fingered a french fry. “What school do you go to?”
“Eastside, but I’m transferring to Portland. The girls are much prettier there.”
Fiona smiled. “I’m sure you’ll break a lot of girls’ hearts if you leave.”
“The girls had boyfriends already. A guy with a foreign accent and a strange name didn’t appeal to any of them.”
“I think the name Ruric sounds great. It’s a name with character.”
Ruric leaned back against his seat.
Emma nodded. “And he has a cute accent, don’t you think?”
Fiona’s gaze met Ruric’s dark eyes. “It’s very?—”
“Entrancing? Magnetic?” he offered. A slow smile edged upward, and his eyes seemed to smile.
Fiona quirked a brow and mirrored his expression. “Disarming.”
“Ah. Well, you see, Fiona, I believed I could use my powers of persuasion on you, but you seem to have an unusually powerful way of holding your own. Which is refreshing.”
