1. Emma #3
I serve grilled chicken with couscous and caramelized pears, then take the chair across from him.
He devours everything on his plate while I push pieces of chicken through the couscous, my appetite lost somewhere between his arrival and the way his eyes keep dropping to my barely touched food.
“Eat.”
“I am.”
“You’re just moving it around.”
I lift a bite to my mouth just to stop him watching me.
It doesn’t work.
Alex refuses to leave the table until I’ve cleared most of my plate. Then he rises without a word and heads for his study.
Bee jumps down and trots after him, tail held high, but he closes the door before she can slip inside. She sits there staring at it, apparently as offended by his dismissal as I am.
Then she stalks back to me, land we are left alone with the remains of dinner and the uncomfortable warmth his attention stirred beneath my ribs.
I’m putting away the last dish when my phone rings another time today.
Sophia’s name flashes across the screen.
A smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it. I accept the call, dry my hands on a towel, and head toward my room where Alex won’t overhear us.
“Hey,” I say as I close the door behind me.
“Tell me the city hasn’t eaten you,” she says.
“It’s chewing.”
“Good. Stay tough. Tell me you’ve heard from Maria.”
“Not today.”
“Good. I want to tell you before the family group chat becomes evidence in a criminal trial.”
“What happened?”
“Luis met Alex today.”
My shoulders draw toward my ears. “What do you mean, met?”
“No one will tell me what happened,” Sophia says. “Luis claims it was nothing, which pretty much guarantees it was a disaster.”
I settle against the pillows. “What was Luis doing meeting Alex?”
“Well, he wasn’t trying to meet Alex. He was there to see you.”
I straighten. “Where?”
“At your place.”
“Here?” My gaze flicks toward the bedroom door. “Luis was in Dallas?”
“Yes. He came to check on you, but the concierge made him wait forever. Kept saying someone had been informed. Then Alex came instead.”
The events of the evening fall into place.
Alex hadn’t come home early by accident.
He had come back because Luis was here.
“From what I managed to piece together from all the yelling Luis was doing with Brennan and Roman, Alex told him off.” Sophia lowers her voice dramatically. “I think Alex believes Luis is some stalker ex-boyfriend who followed you across county lines.”
I rub a hand over my forehead.
“Set him straight, would you?” she continues. “My brother is many things, but he’s mostly harmless.”
“Mostly?”
“He leaves wet towels on the floor. No one is completely innocent.”
A smile slips out before I can stop it.
Then it stops.
What must Luis have thought, coming all this way only to be confronted by Alex?
Sophia keeps talking, but I catch only the end.
“Still, I wanted to ask you something.” Her voice loses its teasing edge. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not being held there against your will, right?”
“What?”
“Say the password, and I’ll come get you.”
I blink. “What password?”
“Exactly. We need to create one for situations like this.” She pauses. “Seriously, Emma. Are you actually okay?”
“I’m fine. Alex just tends to overreact.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“So what’s the story there?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Please. I can hear the tension through the phone.”
“He’s an old friend.”
“Is he the friend?”
My stomach tightens. “What friend?”
“The guy you were pining over when you first moved to Pinehaven.”
“I was not pining.”
“Emma, come on.” She laughs. “You were moping so badly that even sixteen-year-old me knew you were going through some catastrophic breakup.”
“It wasn’t catastrophic.”
“It showed up in your paintings.”
My fingers still against the blanket.
Sophia continues, softer now. “All those examples you made to teach us brushwork. The ones you kept painting over before anyone could see them properly. The ones you thought you were hiding.”
“They weren’t good.”
“They were beautiful.” Her voice gentles. “They were just sad.”
I look toward the wall, though all I can see is Alex’s face the first time he found me again.
Sophia inhales sharply.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“It was him.”
“Sophia—”
“Alex was the man in those paintings. Why would you dump him?” Sophia asks. “Or was it the other way around? Because I refuse to believe a man that rich could also be a complete idiot.”
A laugh escapes me, small but real. Sophia has no idea what happened, but her loyalty makes my heart happy.
“We were young. It didn’t work out.”
“And now you work for him.” Her voice rises with every word. “You live in his house and cook his meals. What’s that like?”
“Lonely.”
The answer escapes before I can catch it.
Sophia goes quiet for half a second. “Ouch. That bad?”
“It’s not?—”
“What’s his deal? Is he trying to reconnect? Rekindle some old flames?”
“There are no flames.”
“I don’t know. The way he chased Luis away today, I’m guessing that’s less of a flame and more of a forest fire.”
“You’re inventing drama where there isn’t any.”
“It’s called artistic license.”
“Your imagination is running wild.” I pull my knees closer to my chest. “I know his family’s recipes. The man was surviving on takeout and needed someone to cook for him. He pays well, so it works out.”
There. Simple. Ordinary. Almost believable.
“Wait,” Sophia draws the word out. “All those dishes you made at Maria’s and called family recipes—they were his family’s?”
I hesitate. “His mother taught me.”
“Everything?”
“Pretty much.” My thumb traces the seam of the comforter. “I wouldn’t have half my recipes, or much sense in a kitchen, without her.”
“How come you didn’t learn any of that from your own mother?”
“I was too young when she?—”
The words catch too late.
Sophia knows my parents died when I was eighteen. That is the story I gave Pinehaven. Eighteen is hardly too young to learn how to cook.
“Eighteen was too young?” she asks.
My mind scrambles for something to cover the mistake, but Sophia barrels on before I can build another lie.
“What do I know? Cooking is the one Moralez gene that looked at me and fled.” She groans. “I’m a disgrace to the family. Everyone else is practically a Michelin-starred chef. Even Diego can throw together a decent meal, and I can barely operate the stove.”
The knot in my stomach loosens by a fraction.
“Thankfully, I can make coffee,” she adds. “Otherwise, I would have died years ago.”
“I don’t know. I distinctly remember you forgetting to put the mug under the machine.”
“That happened once.”
“It is a common occurrence.”
“Maybe I was under emotional distress.”
“You were hungover.”
“Exactly. Emotional distress. And there seems to be a lot of that going around lately.”
I shift against the pillows. “What do you mean?”
Sofia exhales. “It’s a mess here, Em. Fiona’s gone.”
My stomach drops before my mind catches up.
“Gone?”
“Family emergency. Somewhere back East. She packed up and left in a day.” Papers rustle on Sofia’s end.
“Maria’s covering mornings with Elena and a prayer, and the church ladies have started offering opinions about the coffee.
And you know how bad that can get. First you, then Fiona.
Maria says the kitchen is cursed, and I’m not entirely sure she’s joking. ”
First you.
I know she didn’t mean it like an accusation, but I still feel the words punch through. Before I can recover from that blow, it keeps piling on.
“And guess which other Moralez is currently drowning in emotional distress?”
“Diego?”
“No. The smart one.”
“Luis?”
“Usually, yes, but right now, he’s behaving like someone poured his common sense down the drain.”
“Sofia, slow down. What happened?”
“Somebody is suing him.”
I sit up straighter. “What?”
“Malpractice.” The joking drains from her voice. “It was a boy from that high school party crash on the west side. They had to amputate his leg.”
My grip tightens around the phone.
“He had a football scholarship,” Sofia continues. “That disappeared with the leg. Now his family says the amputation wasn’t necessary. They think Luis could have saved it and didn’t.”
“What does Luis say?”
“That there was no other choice. The damage was too severe. Ana went through the medical history and the surgical notes, and she agrees with him.”
“Was she there?”
“Not during the operation. She was working a different shift. But she took over his care afterward, and she’s seen the entire chart.” Sofia’s voice lowers. “She says he wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t amputated.”
“Then why is there a lawsuit?”
“Because a Dallas law firm with three names on the letterhead decided it should also become a licensing issue.” Her voice rises. “A licensing issue, Em. Luis. The man apologizes to spiders before carrying them outside.”
“Why would a firm in Dallas care about a doctor in Pinehaven?”
“Some social justice organization brought them in. Pro bono representation or impact litigation or whatever they’re calling it.” Sofia exhales sharply. “The family doesn’t have two pennies to rub together. There’s no way they could afford a firm like this on their own.”
“So the lawyers volunteered?”
“From the sound of it, this is their charitable cause of the month.” Bitterness roughens her voice. “Except Luis is the one who’ll become collateral damage while they congratulate themselves for helping.”
Doubt begins as a pinprick beneath my ribs and spreads steadily outward.
A powerful Dallas firm choosing a case in a town most people have never heard of.
Nothing about this feels accidental.
“I keep telling the idiot he needs to take this seriously,” Sofia continues. “But no, he’s using some local lawyer who looks like he’s barely out of diapers. We need to bring in someone who knows how to fight people like this. Someone with actual resources and?—”
“Sofia—”
“Because if he thinks being innocent is enough, he’s lost his mind. Innocent people get ruined all the time, and Luis is standing there acting like the truth will stroll into the hearing and defend him personally?—”
“Sofia.”