Things Left Unsaid: A Small-Town, Arranged Marriage, Enemies-To-Lovers, Romantic Suspense

1. Zee

Pompeii MMXXIII - Bastille, Hans Zimmer

“Iswear you’re a masochist, Susanne McAllister.”

My hand, seizing from pushing royal icing through a #1 tip, tightens on the piping bag. “Firstly, don’t call me Susanne. You know that I hate my name. Secondly, I think I’d notice if I were into whips and chains, Tee.”

“You’re sooooooo funny.”

“I know.” I shoot my BFF a glib smile. “It’s all in the wrist.”

“No, that’s the premature arthritis you’re going to give yourself by doing this sugar-cookie shit. I mean, seriously, Zee, it’s not like you even eat the cookies afterward!” she drawls, her focus on the letter in her hand so she bumps into me.

Because our apartment is tiny, she’s like a foot away from me at all times while I work.

I’m used to it now, but boy, was there a learning curve when we first traded space-rich Pigeon Creek for space-poor New York City. My piping hand doesn’t even falter after our collision.

“Ohhh, so leaving the cookies for you is what makes me a masochist and not the winner of ‘the best friend in the world’ title?”

Technically, I can eat the cookies with my type 1 diabetes, but I tend not to.

Maintaining a low-carb diet makes for an easier life and I’m all about easy.

Plus, after dealing with this shit since I was four, ease is the only thing stopping me from losing my mind.

“You’re definitely the best friend in the universe but I’m not privy to what goes on between you and your bedroom walls. Since, ya know, you won’t tell me anything about your love life.”

“I don’t tell Parker either if that makes you feel any better.”

Parker Henshaw’s our mutual best friend. We have a weird setup—Christy ‘Tee’ MacFarlane and I endured the hell of school together, traversed the continent as a daring duo, stuck fast to one another through college stresses, breakups, and career lows—but we know Parker through me as I met her at work.

Technically, I’m the cream filling in our passion flakie, but we’re all super close.

“How is Parker?”

I stick out my tongue as I pipe fronds onto my palm tree-shaped cookie. “You haven’t spoken to her?”

“Not recently.” She shrugs at my shocked expression. “She’s still mad at me.”

“Why you don’t leave her alone is beyond me. Let her be who she wants to be?—”

“She’s agoraphobic! She needs help.”

“She doesn’t. She’s perfectly fine in her safe spaces.”

“She’s missing out on hockey games.”

“It’s not like she even lives in New Jersey anymore, babe. You couldn’t attend together anyway.”

“Sweet Lips.” She harrumphs. “It’s not right for a man to be called that. It means something.”

She’s been pissed at Sweet Lips since he swept Parker off her feet, onto his hog, and took her to Coshocton, OH.

“Just because you’re not getting any sugar, there’s no need to be bitter. He makes her happy.”

“I don’t need sugar. I get plenty in my diet.” She wafts her letter to her pen pal. “And Butch Cassidy might be deployed only God knows where, but he’s with me in spirit and that’s like a direct shot of glucose to the heart.”

“Sounds deadly.”

“He is a soldier.”

“Thought he was a pilot.”

“He is. Pilots are soldiers too.”

“They’re technically pilots first.”

“Whatever. Sweet Lips isn’t good enough for Parker. That ‘sweetness’ has nothing to do with candy and everything to do with his oral skills?—”

“You don’t know that.”

“—oral skills he practiced on God knows how many women. I’ve seen Sons of Anarchy?—”

“We watched it. Together.”

“No one is good enough for you or her. It’s a fact. Specifically not some Sam Crow wannabe.”

“The Sinners make Sam Crow bikers look like child’s play. You should see the stuff I deal with as part of their defense team.” I make a motion of zipping my mouth shut when she peers at me with interest. “Anyway, whether he is or isn’t good enough for her, he had to get past Rachel who, you can’t deny, is utterly terrifying. She’d kill Sweet Lips if he hurt Parker. And Rex would sanction the kill.”

Rex is my boss’s husband as well as the leader of the New Jersey chapter of the Satan’s Sinners’ MC—an outlaw band of misfits.

“Murder one… so reassuring.”

“As if she’d let herself be caught. You know she’s one of the country’s best criminal lawyers,” I reason. “I’m almost offended on her behalf.”

Rachel Laker is Lady Justice’s version of a Valkyrie. Or do I mean a Fury?

Either way, I’m both proud of being her employee and?—

“You’re scared of her.”

Yes. Yes, I am.

“Wouldn’t you be? She’s terrifying in a Machiavellian way.”

“Parker loves her.”

“Parker needs a therapist. As we’ve already established with the whole ‘never leaving the house’ thing.”

“I wanted her to come to the All-Star game with me,” she whines. “Was that so much to ask?”

“For an agoraphobic, yes. Duh. Talk about shoving her into the deep end without a life raft. Not only would she have had to come up from Ohio to watch it, but then there was the whole ‘being in a crowd with twenty thousand people’ disaster waiting to happen.” I wiggle my hand that’s cramping from working on this sugar cookie for the past twenty minutes. “Just leave her alone.”

“She loves the New York Stars. Do you know how expensive those tickets were? All-Star tickets. On home turf. With Liam freaking Donnghal as one of the team captains!” With true Italian flair, her hands waft wide and free. “It was a travesty! Even more of a travesty that you fell asleep halfway through the game.”

I grace her with an eye roll. “You should have taken your brother. Anthony loves hockey too. Knowing him, he’d have flown in for the occasion.”

“Where’d be the fun in suffering through a game with him? I had a better time with you snoring next to me.”

As thoroughly outraged as she’d been in February, she graces me with a sniff and then snags an unfrosted cookie from my pile. She proceeds to take a bite before I can slap her fingers.

Smirking, Tee wiggles away as I holler, “I was doing six!”

“Now you’re doing five. Your hand will thank me later.”

On the brink of cussing her out, though she’s technically correct, my cell phone rings, announcing, “Grand-mère,” to the apartment.

She freezes mid-bite. “The she-devil’s summoning you.”

Tension crawls along my shoulders. “She’s not a she-devil.”

The last thing I need is to manifest that into being.

“I’m the sort of Catholic. I’d know. Aren’t you going to answer it?”

Both our gazes are locked on the damn thing as if it’s cursed.

“This’ll be the third call I’ve accidentally missed.”

Tee hisses. “You don’t piss off a demon!”

“She isn’t a demon! Don’t be mean to Satan’s minions. You’ll offend them and they’ll terrorize us too.” When she elbows me, I grouse, “You know I hate talking to her. She’ll either anger me, upset me, or, worse still, guilt-trip me into coming home.

“My blood sugar has been all over the place the whole day—do I look like I’m in the mood to be agitated?”

Tee pulls a face. “I can’t blame you. There’s being agitated and then there’s being riled up by her. But she’s summoned you three times so you have to make the ultimate sacrifice and answer the damn phone before Bloody Mary makes an appearance and messes with your cookies.”

“Gee, thanks,” I snipe, but I keep my gaze locked on the cell screen until it stops flashing.

When the call disconnects, I release a soft, relieved breath, though I know I’m compounding my problems.

“What do you think she wants?” Tee whispers like Grand-mère could overhear from Pigeon Creek, Saskatchewan.

“I don’t kn?—”

The phone rings again.

Tee and I share a look.

“You’re going to have to answer.”

I wipe my sweaty forehead with the back of my hand but make no move to pick it up. “Yeah.”

“She’ll be getting angrier and angrier.”

“I know.”

“So, answer her!”

“I don’t want to!”

“You have to!”

“I don’t! I’m a grown woman!”

“A grown woman who’s terrified of her grandmother!”

“Like you’re not terrified of her too!”

“Well, babe, she’s a piece of work. How could I not be when I”m as smart as I am?”

There’s no denying that.

With another grimace, I snatch up my cell phone but I don’t hit ‘connect.’

Instead, I toy with the case. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”

“I don’t know what kind of business goes on in hell, but nothing’s as bad as we imagine.”

“Helpful, Tee. What would I do without your moral support?”

“I live to serve. Oh, wait, that’s her. She probably gets a real kick out of sucking off Satan in her spare time.” At my glare, she mumbles, “Okay, she might not be a demon but she’s surely one of his lieutenants.”

Wishing I could argue in Grand-mère’s defense when I know she”d terrify a Satan’s Sinner, I swallow, close my eyes, gulp, then hit the ‘connect’ button.

“About damn time!”

That’s Grand-mère’s greeting.

Ninety-two going on forty-two, my grand-mère has been terrorizing the small town of Pigeon Creek in Saskatchewan for each and every one of her years. The only break the gen pop got was after her folks shipped her off to a boarding school in Switzerland when the family had money.

Even as a baby, she was worthy of doomsday stories—I have that on good authority from the priest who baptized her before he died.

No, she didn’t have anything to do with his death.

Although…

Juliette McAllister is more petrifying than a sawed-off shotgun and has a worse bite than a rabid dog.

In fact, gimme the rabid dog bite over this phone conversation.

“Sorry, Grand-mère, did I miss your call?” I greet, keeping my voice nice and light.

“You know you did,” she growls, forcing a shiver out of Tee and making her sign the cross on her chest.

Shoving her aside, I press my finger to my lips to hush her. “I’ve been very busy at work.”

“If you say so.” I can tell she doesn’t believe me.

In her opinion, the only thing worse than a lawyer is a murderer…

Go figure.

And being a paralegal in her eyes is worse still because I’m not good enough to be a lawyer, ergo I might as well be a murderer.

Double go figure.

“Is everything okay? Are the triplets alright?”

She harrumphs. “You’d know if you ever visited the Bar 9.”

“It’s not so easy to get home, Grand-mère. You know how expensive the flights are. It’s not as if we’re the Korhonens and have a helicopter.”

“That fool boy of theirs, the youngest, broke that damn toy. They got themselves a plane.”

I can hear the jealousy in her voice—it’s practically oozing from every word she utters.

“Maybe you can hitch a ride in that plane,” Tee whispers in my ear, making me jolt in surprise at her proximity.

Then, I get why—she’s stress-eating another damn cookie.

I flip her the bird but, to my grandmother, murmur, “Is there a reason you phoned, Grand-mère? I have to take a work call in five minutes.”

“Liar, liar,” Tee sings.

“Is someone there?” Grand-mère demands.

“Just Christy.”

“Bah. That hussy. I’ll never understand why you’re friends with her.”

With a smirk at Tee, I answer, “I don’t know why either.”

Grand-mèrehums in approval. “Whether or not you can afford the trip home because of work, Susanne, I need you up here.”

“Do you have the money to spare, Grand-mère?” That’s usually the best way of getting out of this situation.

As terrifying as she is, there’s little she can do long-distance with how miserly our bank accounts tend to run.

God help me if we ever strike oil.

It’d be just my luck if we did.

“I do,” she retorts, tone smug. “I’ll wire it over. I’ll expect you at the ranch before the end of the week.”

I gape at Tee, whose eyes are as wide as mine.

Horrified, I sputter, “B-But I-I need more notice than that, Grand-mère!”

“You never take a break as far as I know, Susanne, so that shark of a boss of yours can cut you some slack while you visit your dying grandmother.”

“You’re dying?! Is that why you need me to come home?” I cry, aghast.

Yet again, Tee marks the sign of the cross on her chest. “If she’s finally dying, there is a god.”

Grand-mère, on the other hand, barks out a laugh. “I’ll die when I’m good and ready, Susanne, and that won’t be for another decade at least.”

Tee and I gulp.

My grandmother’s the only person in the world whom Death is probably scared of.

Unaware of our thoughts, Grand-mère intones, “No, you tell that Rachel woman I’m ill and she’ll spare you.”

“I’ll… see what I can do.”

“You’ll do more than ‘see,’ child. Safe travels.”

I’m given no chance to counter that warning—there’s dead air in my ear.

Tee passes me a can of soda. “I need to call my nonna and thank her for not being… that.”

Because her offering means she checked my blood sugar on the app we use to monitor my level, I pull the tab and take a big gulp of Coke. “Is it too late to be adopted?”

“Much too late. Do you think Rachel could fabricate a reason to keep you in the city?”

“No. You know that I do most of my work from home anyway and only commute twice a month. I use work as an excuse not to go north.” Tee checks the weather app on her phone and I glance at the screen. “The triplets said it’s been crazy warm recently.”

“I dunno. Looks like refrigerator temperatures to me. New York winters are tepid by comparison?—”

“Good thing it’s spring then,” I drawl.

She shivers. “I don’t miss Pigeon Creek’s version of winter or spring.”

“Me either.” Collecting my piping bag, I restart my earlier task—making tiny coconuts and using a scribe to replicate the husks—because I need the stress relief. “I wonder what’s going on.”

“Could it be the boys?”

“Maybe.”

My triplet brothers are nightmares on wheels who only obey my grandmother.

The funny thing is, of course, I used to be like them.

Until I wasn’t.

Until that goddamn night when everything changed.

My personality included.

Shuddering at the memory, I jolt when Tee places a hand on my shoulder. “It won’t be too horrific, Zee. It’s been so long since you were home that you’re building it up in your head. They’ll have let the whole arson thing drop by now.”

‘They’ being the folks of Pigeon Creek.

Anxiety coalesces into a big lump that clogs my throat.

There’s no way I’ll be able to stay clueless until this weekend.

Plunking the piping bag on the counter, I snag my phone and type out:

Me: You guys know why Grand-mère wants me to come home?

Calder: Nope

Colby: When are you coming?

Me: This weekend

Carson: Huh. Weird that it lines up with us going to Saskatoon for an open-house event.

Me: At the university?

Carson: Yup

Colby: Sucks we won’t see you

Carson: If you’d come down last weekend, you’d have seen us win the butter tart eating contest.

Me: So proud.

Carson: As you should be ;)

Calder: Let us know what she wants?

Me: Will do

I tip the phone at Tee. “They’re as clueless as we are.”

Because I can’t catch a break today, my cell buzzes. Then, spying Parker’s picture illuminate the screen, I whisper, “Do you think we should start calling Parker ‘Pee?’”

“PeeTeeZee. Sounds like an anti-anxiety medication.”

“I could use some of that.”

“Parker likes her name. It’s us who don’t.”

Hence the abbreviations.

“Speak of the devil,” Tee taunts when she connects the call.

“I’m still not talking to you,” is our mutual BFF’s grumble.

“Sounds like it to me.”

I rub my temple. “Can we not bicker, children, please? I already have a headache.”

Checking my blood sugar, I sigh when I see my level has reverted to normal. Because she’s nearer the cupboard where I keep my snacks, I ask, “Hand me a granola bar?”

“Zee’s grand-mère called,” Tee informs Parker as she tosses one to me.

“What does the old witch want?” Parker’s fingers clack as she types in the background. “Blood? Eye of newt? A bible bound in human skin?”

“Don’t put that into the universe, please,” I grouse after taking a big bite of my granola bar and continuing with my task.

“She wants Zee to come home.”

“Why?”

Grunting when my coconut turns into a brown banana after applying too much pressure to the piping bag, I let Tee explain the situation.

“She didn’t say. Just expects her there by the end of the week.”

Parker whistles. “I could ask Rachel to construct an emergency?”

Anxiously, I grab the bag of powdered sugar. Scooping a couple teaspoons into a clean bowl, I tip milk and dye in next. As I stir the concoction so I can work on the sand surrounding the palm tree, I mumble, “You don’t need to do that. Rachel has plenty going on without my drama.”

“Maybe you’ll luck out and some serial killer will need a lawyer?” Tee asks, tone hopeful.

Parker hoots. “You’re sick in the head, Tee, I swear to God.”

“That’s why you love me. Isn’t it, Parker? Huh? Huh?”

“I do when you don’t try to drag me out of my house. Where I’m comfortable. Where I can wear pajama pants all day. Where I don’t have to see people.”

Tee sniffs but my eyes widen in horror when my screen lights up again, this time with a notification from my bank, informing me that I’ve been wired enough cash to buy business class tickets, never mind economy for the flights home.

Tee whistles. “That’s a lot of zeroes.”

“What is?” Parker, ever nosy, demands.

“Zee’s grandma wired her over some cash to buy plane tickets.” She holds out her hand to high-five me. “Hey, we could fly home together! It’s been ages since we’ve been back.”

For a reason.

My brow puckers in confusion until she drops her hand. “Where did she get all this from? She was asking me for help with a mortgage payment two months ago. No way she’d have swallowed her pride if she had this kind of cash on hand.”

“Maybe the ranch had a better season than expected?”

“The ranch never has a good season anymore, Tee,” I dismiss.

“What else could it be? It’s not as if you have alternative income streams.”

“No, we don’t.” My stirring reaches an agitated fever pitch.

“You’ve never told me why you both hate going home,” Parker inserts, fingers still clacking against her keyboard.

“It’s cold, Parker,” Tee says with a mock shiver. “Real cold. Have you ever heard of seasonal affected disorder? You think it’s bad in New York, but it’s nothing compared to Pigeon Creek.”

“You make it sound like you were raised in the Arctic Circle,” Parker chides.

“Might as well have been. I hate the cold.”

“You should have moved to Florida, then.”

“Or Aruba,” Tee says dreamily.

“Juilliard is in neither of those places,” I point out.

Tee’s scholarship was what brought her and, as a result, me to the States in the first place. Tee”s a virtuoso. A walking oboe-wielding genius.

I”m not. I”m me.

“One day, when I have a record deal, Aruba’s where I’ll live,” is my sister from another mister’s vow.

“Okay, so Tee hates the cold but what about you, Zee? Why do you hate going home?”

I let loose a deep sigh. “Nothing’s been the same since I got accused of being an arsonist and a serial killer.”

For a second, silence greets my words.

Then, Parker starts chuckling.

It morphs into outright laughter.

Evolves into wheezing.

Turns into thigh-slapping, choking barks of amusement that are somehow louder than ever over the airwaves.

“Parker!” Tee reprimands as she pats me on the shoulder, but it’s cold comfort.

“You’re not being serious. You?! A-A-A serial k-killer?”

“Why would I lie about that?”

“Ms. ‘Goody Two-Shoes’ Zee?” She breaks down into more laughter.

“If you don’t stop, I’m going to drive to Coshocton so I can slap some sense into you!”

“So, you’re a mass murderer, Ms. ‘Jaywalking should be a capital offense.’ Ms. ‘It’s illegal to return a library book late.’” She hoots. “You’re so good, it’s painful, Zee. How are you supposed to be a psychopath? I’m not sure how you work as a paralegal for an attorney who makes it her mission to get criminals off on legal loopholes! Zee, ha.”

“Well, the good folks of Pigeon Creek don’t have as high an opinion of me as you do,” I snipe, tone bitter with the pain that lingers from their accusations.

It’s always stung that the people who’ve known me my whole life could think I was capable of something so heinous.

That one night has shaped me in ways I can’t begin to unwrap. Being a Ms. Goody Two-Shoes is one example of cause and effect.That whole nightmare taught me that good people can go to jail unless someone speaks out for them… which is why I became a paralegal. It’s also why I work for someone who screws with the law for shits and giggles.

“She can’t be for real, Tee?”

My best friend of twenty-four years clears her throat. “She’s not lying, Parker. The whole thing’s pretty nuts. She’d lost her parents and then her brother was announced PKIA?1. The fire was classed as her having ‘an episode.’

“You okay, honey?” Tee asks.

“Been better.”

Parker’s silence is all the more shocking for her amusement of before. “But this is Zee.”

“She was only sixteen.” Tee hugs me harder. “And the stables that burned down were like… You know the Ewings?”

“From Dallas?”

“Yeah. The Ewings hated the Barnes, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Except, in this instance, the Barnes lost their fortune after the war and the Ewings have gazillions. The Pigeon Creek Ewings are the Korhonens and Zee’s a Barnes.

“Zee was found… People spotted her hanging around outside so they thought she set it. But she didn’t.”

“Of course not. This is Zee we’re talking about.”

“I was different then. Grieving,” I croak, staring blankly at the tiny sclerified cells I’d piped earlier onto the palm tree”s bark. “It’s why they tried to tar and feather me even though they’d known me my whole life.”

“Rachel never mentioned you having a juvie record. I guess it’d have been sealed?—”

“It was an accident.” Tee presses herself tighter into my side. It”s invasive and exactly what I need. “No one was ever arrested. They said it was some faulty wiring that caused the fire.”

Nobody, aside from Tee, had ever believed that.

Colton didn’t have faith in me.He’d lied to make sure I wasn’t punished.That, more than anything, broke my heart.

Faulty wiring, my ass.

But who was going to believe me, the troubled girl who’d just lost her brother and was acting out? Not a single damn person. That’s who. Hell, the town didn’t even believe the alibi Colt gave me.

“It took a while for that report to come out,” Tee continues. “Especially with the bodies and the insurance. The barn was full of horses.”

Parker flinches. “Oh.”

“They say my grandmother bribed the RCMP?* sergeant to keep me from being arrested.”

The shame of those days makes the prospect of returning home a thousand times worse.

Parker whistles. “Is that true?”

“She never told me if it was. They didn’t pull me in for questioning.”

Personally, I thought Colt’s alibi held more weight than anything Grand-mère might have done…

My grand-mère, after all, still believes I did it.

If anything, she’s more ashamed that I got caught hurting the Korhonens than the fact I could have committed such a horrible crime.

“Zee, this is nuts.”

“You’re telling me.” My spoon clatters against the bowl as I drop it. “I-I didn’t do it, Parker.”

“What do you think all that laughing was about? Of course, you didn’t.”

Tee squeezes my shoulder in reassurance, but before she can say another word, Parker croaks, “You said Korhonen. That’s not a common name… Are we talking about the Korhonen?”

“He’s the one thing Pigeon Creek did right,” Tee drawls.

“My God. You grew up with Cole Korhonen?!”

“Parker, restrain yourself. Jeez. You can pepper me with questions later. For now, I can only handle one meltdown and Zee’s is more urgent than your hockey-related crisis.” Though Parker huffs, Tee ignores her. “Seriously, Zee, do you want me to come with you? There’s enough money for two return tickets.”

“Even though it’s going to be the same temperature as our freezer this weekend?” I force myself to tease, trying not to jump at the offer in case she changes her mind.

“If you need me, I’ll be there.”

Touched despite being annoyed with her a short while ago, I pat her hand. “I’d say that the sacrifice wasn’t necessary but… home isn’t home anymore, is it?”

She bites her lip. “No. It stopped being that a long time ago.”

Ain’t that the truth.

* ?Royal Canadian Mounted Police