Chapter 3 #3
He’d asked her to dinner. She hadn’t been on a date for three years.
While his offer hadn’t been for a date, her body had reacted as if he’d reached across the table and touched her.
She’d been eating dinners alone—with the exception of Priss for company—for so long, she’d forgotten how not to panic if a handsome man invited her to share a meal.
What is wrong with me?
She failed at concentrating after that and locked up shortly afterward. When she arrived at the rental, Priss met her at the door with her usual catalog of grievances, which Katherine answered by feeding her, before changing into sweats and putting her hair up.
She made the tea she had been craving for three hours, shoved a frozen meal into the microwave, and shoveled it down standing at the counter.
She called Emma at seven sharp.
Sundays were their deep-end days, the calls where they traded the small pieces of Emma’s week for the small pieces of Katherine’s.
The girls had a school fundraiser in two weeks and Mari was selling raffle tickets with a determination George said was alarming for a six-year-old.
Cordi had a loose tooth that had been refusing to come out for nine days.
George had a new dad joke about the orthodontist that Emma was going to make him stop telling.
“They miss you, Kat. When are you coming home?”
Emma was the only person she allowed to call her by that nickname.
At least with her, Katherine didn’t have to be careful about what she said.
She couldn’t talk about confidential information, but Emma didn’t care about the inner workings of the Agency, anyway.
“I don’t know. I still have a lot of work on this assignment.
“Are you okay? You sound…lonely.”
“I’m fine. Everything’s great.”
“You are not fine. They sent you to Montana to read an old guy’s memoirs.”
Katherine sighed. “I’m fine enough. I had a productive day.”
“Reading papers?”
Katherine took a breath, the memory of Jasper’s smile making her pulse kick. “Yes. I’ve hired a research assistant. A consultant, really. He’s helping me sort through the papers more efficiently.”
There was a small, suspicious silence on Emma’s end. “A consultant?”
“Yes. He’s good with computers, which, as you know, I’m not.”
“So he’s some computer geek who lives in his mom’s basement.”
“Definitely not. He’s…interesting.”
“You never mention the people you work with. You’re mentioning him—a guy with a computer. Not exactly your type.”
“I don’t have a type.”
“You certainly do.”
She did, and they both knew it. Unfortunately, her type was a rare creature.
Katherine fiddled with the hem of her shirt and huffed. “He’s less of a tech-bro and more of a, I don’t know, a thinker. He respects paper. His mother was a librarian. He’s going to be useful.”
Emma’s tone was amused. “Useful.”
“Yes.”
“Is he cute?”
Of course she would try to turn into romance. “Goodbye, Emma.”
“Oh, come on, Kat. Let me live a little through you. Tell me one thing about him.”
Katherine sighed again, more theatrically this time, the way she had sighed at her sister since they were both children. “I told you, he’s interesting. That is all I’m saying.”
Emma laughed, the laugh that always sounded a little like their mother’s. Katherine hadn’t heard that sound in nearly a month. “Get some sleep,” Emma said. “Love you, sis.”
“Love you back,” Katherine said, and ended the call, a silly smile on her face.
She went to the bathroom to wash up for bed and stopped at the sight of her reflection.
Her cheeks were flushed. Two warm patches across the cheekbones that had nothing to do with the temperature of the rental and everything to do with the fact that just talking about Jasper made her blush.
She pressed a cold washcloth against her face for a count of ten and waited for the color to fade. It didn’t.
She got into bed and pulled the burgundy notebook into her lap to make a list of things to check tomorrow.
She wrote Caldwell follow-up and Vance trips ’98-’00, and she’d just started a third line when Priss leaped onto the bed with too much enthusiasm, skidded across the comforter, and tumbled back off onto her own face on the other side.
The cat’s outraged trill at her own miscalculation cracked the air.
Katherine laughed the same surprised laugh from the library.
The cat was okay and the sound made her remember the slow smile that had crossed Jasper’s face when she’d laughed at his joke this morning. As Priss made a second attempt at the bed and landed it this time, Katherine set down the notebook because she just wanted to remember Jasper’s smile.
Priss recovered her dignity by climbing into the crook of Katherine’s arm and beginning to clean her leg. A heartbeat later, she began purring.
“We are not doing this,” Katherine told her.
Priss purred louder.
Katherine reached over, switched off the bedside lamp, and lay in the dark with her cat and her notebook. She still felt the warmth in her cheeks that hadn’t fully faded as she closed her eyes and fell asleep thinking of Jasper.