Chapter 12
Saturday, dinnertime, Greene household
G abby’s makeover had her flying high. Who knew she could pull off bangs? She was a superspy in training, a supermom, and she was done up like the actress in The Queen’s Gambit . She could do it all. To celebrate, she was going to make Justin and the kids dinner. Tonight, it would just be the four of them and one screen, rather than the usual one-to-one ratio of people to screens.
“I’m home!” she called, louder than normal, ready for the kids and Justin to come running and wrap her in hugs like she’d returned after a month away. Of course, for her, it’d been a journey. For them, it had been one day.
Justin walked around the corner in an apron with a spatula and gasped. Slow and deliberate, he said her name like he was lifting a prayer. “Gabriella Greene! Look at you!”
“You like?” She duck-faced and posed like an Insta model.
“I love!” He walked around her, taking in her new pants and blazer and her hair. “Did you get a makeover at work?”
“My boss gave me a gift certificate to a spa as a… signing bonus.” That didn’t make sense, but it’s not like she could tell him that the EOD gave her a makeover to look like a dead spy.
He narrowed his eyes, clearly suspicious. “What aren’t you telling me, girlfriend? Are you working for someone in Hollywood?”
Gabby laughed, savoring her secret. “I wish. It’s just some boring financial place. I just knew I needed to look more professional.”
Justin smelled a rat. “All this, over lunch? It looks like you had a whole team of beauty professionals working on you…”
Everything was different—hair, makeup, clothes, shoes. They’d even done her nails, and he was right. It had taken hours, longer than her self-defense training.
“Where are the kids?” she asked, changing the subject like she’d been a spy for years.
“Cleaning their rooms and doing homework.” He looked smug.
“Did you drug them or beat them?” As a mother, she had no bargaining power, and she knew it. Kyle and Lucas knew that they could never really truly lose her love—at least that’s how the internet psychologists explained why they never listened. Bargaining power was important.
He was still eyeing her new look. “Is there a guy?”
“I wish.” A vision of too-hot-to-be-a-spy Markus popped into her head. If he was too hot for international espionage, he was definitely too hot for her, but was she rational? No. Her subconscious was just another child she had to deal with, and it seemed like it might be a horny teenage child.
At least she could make dinner. “Justin, I’m making you dinner to thank you for today.” She had some frozen pizzas and a bag of salad in the fridge. She could elevate it with some good wine.
Justin flashed her side-eye. “Too late, Gabs. I already made bouillabaisse and a crusty baguette. I had it at this little café in Marseille on my last trip.” He made a chef’s kiss. “You’re going to love it.”
She would. Justin was always going to Italy and raving about tiny restaurants and art museums. All the statues in his yard arrived after he’d visited the Boboli Gardens a few years ago. Gabby hadn’t been anywhere except the Pottery Barn in Orange County and an all-inclusive resort in Mexico once.
“Thank you, Justin.” She couldn’t ask for a more loving and supportive friend.
“And it was good you were out of the way, because I fixed your house.”
“Really?” Every time Justin came over, he made the most incredible food, and reorganized everything “the right way.”
“You’re going to love it.”
She wasn’t going to be able to find a thing for a month, but she gave him a big hug. “Thank you.” The least she could do was break out the best bottle of wine. She had bought it to celebrate her anniversary with Phil. It had been bottled the year they were married.
As she opened the wine, Kyle walked in. For the first time in a while, the look of teenage boredom was wiped clean off her face. “Mom, your hair!”
Gabby struck a pose. “You like it?”
“It’s so… not you.”
“That’s the point.” She was now Agent Darcy Dagger.
She gave Kyle a hug, and her daughter molded to her side, which melted Gabby’s heart. Her big girl was still her baby.
“How was work, Mom?”
“Boring,” she lied. “I’ve never done so much filing in my life.”
Justin shook his head. “Ugh. That sounds like a nightmare.” Justin didn’t do paper.
Gabby sat down heavily on a kitchen stool. “Let me tell you. I definitely need a glass of wine.” If they only knew. None of them would believe she spent the day working on hand-to-hand combat and target practice. They would believe that she couldn’t shoot and gave her trainer a black eye, though.
Lucas and Kyle looked at their bouillabaisse with confusion. Gabby hadn’t introduced them to the finer things in life. It was good for them, though. Everyone would remember this day for a different reason: Gabby shot a hole in the EOD’s ceiling, her kids had to eat some weird octopus soup, and Justin reorganized all of her spices.
After dinner, her mom called. At the sight of the number, Gabby’s stomach turned. Before she even said hello, her mom said, “Gabby, it’s about your grandma.”
“Ohmygod.” Gabby’s stomach dropped as she prepared to hear that her grandma had passed.
“She’s been kicked out of her retirement community.” Her mom announced it as if it was as bad as death.
“Did she run out of money? What happened?”
Her mom groaned. “Her boyfriend moved in.”
Gabby laughed. “Who cares? Can’t Grandma have a little fun?”
“Well, Grandma’s ‘hot piece,’ as she called him, moved in and started using all of the services, the cafeteria, laundry, and he’s not paying for any of it. Your grandmother wouldn’t make him leave, so the home is kicking them both out.”
Gabby smiled hard. She only hoped that she’d be getting kicked out of a retirement community at eighty.
“I was thinking…”
Uh-oh. Gabby heard a request coming on. Her mom was going to ask her to take care of her grandma.
“You’re home all the time anyway. If we moved Grandma in with you…”
“Mom! I can’t. I just got a job.”
“I’ll pay you. You know it’s bad for older people to live alone. I never liked that she was in a retirement community.” Gabby hadn’t liked that either, but it made more sense for her grandma to move in with her mother.
“Sweetie,” her mom said, “your father and I aren’t lonely, and we don’t need the money.”
Gabby hung up with a promise to think about it. Justin poured another glass of wine. “Are you sure you’d have to watch her? I’ve met Granny. I’m pretty sure she could watch all y’all.”
Justin might be right. Granny was a pistol. She’d defected from Moscow long before Gabby was born. Gabby had picked up a few words as a child, mostly things like der’mo (shit), yebat’ (fuck), and Ya ub’yu tebya (I will kill you). Granny had been asking Gabby to help her escape from the old folks’ home since moving in, as if it was a prison.
A plan formed in her mind. Sienna’s mom could take care of the rides to horseback lessons. Her grandma could be here when Lucas got off the bus. This could be the perfect opportunity to learn how to make her grandma’s famous piroshki. Grandma was eighty. If the kids didn’t hang out with her now, when would they?
Justin asked, “My only request is that she stops trying to set me up.”
Gabby laughed at the memory. Her grandma just couldn’t believe he was gay, because he was “too handsome.”
Granny was going to either turn the house into a three-ring circus or be the answer to her prayers.
Circus or not, Gabby looked around the dinner table with a new sense of contentment. She was surrounded by love—Justin, her kids—and for the first time, she had something of her own, something that had nothing to do with the family. The EOD needed her. Valentina had said they were only using her for her looks, but there was a flip side to that. She had the leverage. The EOD needed her to complete this mission. And she was getting a job and training in the deal.
With a secret tucked behind her ear like a flower, Gabby didn’t feel just happy or renewed, she felt downright sexy. It was good to be mysterious.
Mr. Bubbles hopped up for a pet and made a big show of sniffing her pants. No one else knew a thing, but he could smell the gunpowder on her.