Chapter 4 #2
Sabrina ignores him and leans over the bar toward Margie, scooping away the dishes from the previous customers.
“You poor thing. You want some coffee? Tea? Breakfast? Kombucha? I have lemon scones in the oven. They’re legendary.
And we harvest our own honey here for the biscuits.
New secret family recipe. Oh, wait, let me back up.
Hi. I’m Sabrina. I’m Lucky’s cousin. Decker’s too, but he’s on my shit list. If they haven’t told you, there’s a third who looks just like them, Jack.
He knows I’m working today, so he’s definitely not coming in, but don’t let them pull the triplet swap thing on you. ”
Margie’s smile grows the more Sabrina talks, like she has no idea Sabrina probably knows exactly who she is.
Margie shakes her hand. “It’s lovely to meet you, Sabrina.”
“Samesies. So. Breakfast?”
“Could I please see your tea selection?”
“Coming right up.” Sabrina grabs a dark wooden tea case and sets it on the now-clean counter, then pours me a cup of coffee. “Back in a few.”
Lucky and Decker share a look around me, and I take an opportunity to glance at Margie, who’s studying the tea packets in the wooden organizer.
Swear to fuck, I know her from somewhere.
“Sabrina didn’t take our orders,” Lucky says.
“You know she knows,” Decker mutters back, jerking his head at Margie.
Margie slides a look at them, half-friendly, half-forehead-furrowing. “About…how we met in nursing school?”
Lucky winces.
Decker winces.
“I meant it when I said Sabrina knows everything,” Lucky tells Margie.
“She’s chaotic good,” Decker says. “She won’t do anything to cause problems.”
Lucky nods. “She uses her skills responsibly. She actually swore off gossip a few years back, but it’s in her blood, so she’s just a lot more…”
“Smart and strategic about it now,” Decker finishes. “Not that she wasn’t smart and strategic before. But she’s more honed.”
“Expert-level,” Lucky says.
Margie’s eyes pinch the barest amount as she selects a tea bag and closes the wooden case. “That’s good.”
If this woman doesn’t have a secret, I’ll pour hair dye into my own eyes again on purpose.
Where the fuck do I know her from?
Decker leans around me to nod at Margie. “Oh, hey. Hi, Margie. I’m Decker.”
The stress lines fade, her eyes crinkle when she smiles at him, and the way she leans closer, hope and a smidge of desperation touching the way she’s looking at him—fuck.
I know that feeling.
That’s longing.
Longing for a family.
The number of times I felt that after my mom married Xavier Yates, when his teenage sons would be at the house, boys who could’ve been my brothers but wanted nothing to do with me, then the way they all treated me like I was a problem to be dealt with after my mom died—
Yeah.
Yeah, I know something about wanting to belong.
Something about wanting to have a family.
“I thought that was you,” Margie says. “You look like your official author photo.”
“That’s actually me.” Lucky puffs his chest. “His assistant booked the photographer for him since he was overdue for new headshots, but he didn’t want to do it, so I grew my hair and beard out and posed for the photo shoot. I make him look good.”
“We’re identical, dumbass,” Decker says.
“Only in the outside stuff. On the inside, my vibe sparkles, and that’s what makes your author photos so magic.
The camera loves my sparkly vibe. Just like all of the people at that litRPG con loved—never mind.
” He looks at me. “Speaking of sparkly vibes, you’re rocking those lavender streaks on your face. ”
I blink at him.
It’s a slow, intentional, shut the fuck up blink.
Margie purses her lips together like she’s hiding a smile.
I shift my glare to her.
“What’d you say you used? To make the streaks?” Lucky says to Margie.
“Purple hair dye,” she tells him. “I got the idea off the internet. A girl can’t be too careful, you know? The internet said if you mark the intruders in some way, the police can find them easier later.”
“Wouldn’t have worked against a bear,” I tell her.
She lifts one brow at me like I’ve proven a point.
Shit.
Right.
The man and the bear thing.
She probably would’ve rather a bear broke in last night.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m off my game.
“I’m a little sorry about your face this morning.” She says it to me like it’s a confession, and she accompanies it with another smile that would be charming if I wasn’t certain she’s hiding something.
“Just a little? And only about my face?”
“I had a friend once who knew someone who knew someone who said their sister came home to find a guy jacking off in a box of her favorite cereal. You really can’t be too careful these days.”
All three of us stare at her.
“That’s so for real,” Sabrina says as she delivers a cup of hot water to Margie, then sweeps the tea box away.
“Totally something Theo would’ve done to Laney back in the days when they hated each other.
Maybe. Though that might’ve been too far even for Theo.
Maybe. Then again, he did some pretty messed-up stuff… ”
Now we all turn to stare at Sabrina, who shrugs, flips two mugs up onto the counter in front of Lucky and Decker, grabs a coffee pot from behind her, and pours for both of them, then disappears again.
Lucky breaks the silence. “Decker should be more sorry about Rhys’s face,” he says to Margie before glancing at me. “If he could read a calendar and communicate, you wouldn’t be wearing hair dye streaks on your face.”
Decker rolls his eyes. “I’m working on a book that happens in May.
You know I lose track of shit when I’m in the groove.
Especially when I’m writing a book in the wrong season.
In my head, the aspens are just getting buds, and then I walk out the door, and they’re turning golden. It’s fucking with me.”
Lucky squints at him like he knows Decker’s fabricating excuses. “I’m pinging Nell.”
Decker groans. “Don’t ping Nell.”
“Who’s Nell?” Margie asks.
“His virtual assistant,” Lucky replies. “She keeps his life running. She wouldn’t have let this happen.”
“Do not ping Nell,” Decker repeats.
Lucky shakes his head. “Dude. Until you can read a calendar, you can’t lend out the cabin without checking in with Nell.”
“This is a good accident,” Decker says. “Margie apparently needs a security system. Rhys is a security system. Problem solved. Everyone’s happy.”
Margie eyes me.
I eye her right back.
She’s wearing that expression again. The one that says someone please love me.
I don’t like what it’s doing to my chest. Not when I’m supposed to be suspicious of her.
“Are you sure he’d be happy?” she stage-whispers to Lucky.
“He always looks like that,” Decker says. “I mean, not the leftover dye streaks, but the scowly thing. It’s why he’s good at his job.”
“Hey, you two could even carpool since you’re both working at the retreat center,” Lucky says. “Margie, didn’t you say your car was making a weird noise?”
“It hasn’t since I got here.”
“Have you driven it since you got here?”
“Well, no, but I’m sure rebooting it solved the problem.”
Why am I suddenly picturing her with blond hair? Dark blond. The kind that’s dark enough that it could be brown but that people still call blond. Full. Straight.
Am I losing my shit, or am I onto something here?
“You don’t reboot cars,” Decker says.
Margie flicks her wrist. “Reboot. Restart. Same thing. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
“Dude, lighten up,” Lucky says to Decker. “Cars are half computers anyway these days.”
“Not the parts that make weird noises.”
“What kind of car is it?” I interrupt.
I didn’t look in the garage, but I’d bet that’s where it was when I pulled up last night.
“It’s an old Toyota minivan,” Margie tells me.
“Wait, it’s a minivan?” Lucky says. “Do you have kids?”
She dips her tea bag a few times. “My mom’s friend sold it to me cheap when my last car died. Her kids had grown up, and she’d already been thinking of upgrading to a Lexus.”
She’s lying.
She’s lying through her teeth.
It’s a feeling. A sixth sense.
There’s something too rehearsed in her answer.
“Remember when Jack wanted to get a minivan?” Lucky says to Decker.
Decker smiles for the first time all morning. “For his band equipment.”
“That he didn’t have.”
“Didn’t have the bandmates either.”
“Only because you were terrible on the guitar.”
“You were terrible on the guitar. I was pretty decent.”
Margie props her cheek on her fist, watching them with a soft smile while they bicker about the band that wasn’t.
The steam off of her tea fogs her glasses, and she wrinkles her nose, one eyeball rolling slightly toward the sky as she does it.
Like she’s not used to having steam off of tea fog up her glasses, and it’s an annoyance she doesn’t want.
A memory flashes so hard and fast, my brain almost cramps.
Hoteliers Association dinner.
My last assignment with Technique Group.
I was tasked with staying close to Imogen Carter, the ancient matriarch of the family who operate Carter International Properties. First time we’d worked for the family in any capacity.
I’d been shocked Xavier gave me the assignment.
Figured he would’ve put one of his sons on someone whose family would’ve made great long-term clients, but I started thinking he’d finally figured out I was better than they were.
Didn’t realize he was setting me up to fail so that he could blame me for losing business and fire me.
Before things went to shit, though, midway through dinner, some other late middle-aged dude approached Imogen Carter, and whatever he said to her got her so agitated that I had to step in.
But I wasn’t the only one.
While I was leaning over to ask Ms. Carter if she wanted to step outside for air, another guest arrived at the table and intervened so smoothly with the dude that he didn’t realize it was happening.
She made that same nose wrinkle, with one eye rolling upward, right before she got his attention.