by Helen Hoang
A skeptical look crossed her face. “Happy people don’t wear all black.”
His clothes again. He tightened his fingers on the steering wheel. “I disagree.” Black was perfectly acceptable at weddings, and those were happy events. For other people, anyway. He’d rather have a prostate exam. Physicians only tortured you for a few seconds, whereas weddings went on for hours and hours.
Her lips thinned, and a tense moment stretched out before she asked, “What work do you do? Do you like it?”
“It’s complicated to explain, but yes, I like it.”
Her lips moved quietly for a moment, and he was fairly certain she was testing out the feel of the word complicated. But then she glanced about the car, took in his black suit and shirt again, and gave him a funny look. Her lips curved ever so slightly. “Are you a spy like James Bond?”
He blinked several times. “No.”
“An assassin?”
“No, I’m not an assassin.” What was wrong with her?
“Too bad.” But she didn’t look disappointed, not with that smile on her face. What weird things were going on in her brain?
Shaking his head, he said, “You’re stranger than I am.”
She confused him even more by hugging her arms to her chest and laughing down at her lap. It was a pretty sound, musical in a way. When she crossed her legs, his eyes were drawn helplessly to her thighs. Her skirt slid up, revealing another inch of flawless skin.
Rule Number Six, Rule Number Six, Rule Number Six.
He wrenched his eyes away and stared blindly at the dashboard. “I was an accounting major in school, but I’m more of a tax specialist now. My friend and I started an accounting software company. He’s in charge of the programming, and I handle the accounting, which means I need to stay up-to-date on generally accepted accounting principles and tax law as set forth in the Internal Revenue Code. Lately, we’ve added transfer pricing analysis to our software package, so I’ve had to get particularly familiar with section 482 of the IRC. It’s very interesting figuring out how to test if business transactions are at ‘arm’s length’ when you have large multinational corporations. Sometimes, they’ll create tax shelters in low-tax jurisdictions in, say, the Bahamas, so you have to—”
He forced himself to stop midsentence. People got bored when he talked about work. He even bored other accounting people from time to time. The intricacies and elegance of accounting principles and tax law weren’t for everyone. He had no idea why.
“Accounting,” she said slowly, this time in English.
“Not exactly, but I do have a CPA license. I’m certified to provide tax documentation for public companies in the United States.”
“Me, too.”
He took a surprised breath. She was an accountant? That was unexpectedly wonderful.
The hem of her dress became very interesting to her, and she fiddled with a loose thread as she said in Vietnamese, “In Việt Nam. Not here. It’s probably really different.”
“I bet it’s different. I don’t have any experience with Vietnamese tax regulation. It’s probably fascinating. Do they expense bribery as a cost of doing business? Is it tax deductible?” It would be entertaining to see bribery as a line item on an income statement. This was why he liked accounting so much. It wasn’t just numbers on paper. If you knew how to look at them, the numbers meant something and reflected culture and values.
She hugged herself like she was cold, saying nothing.
Had he accidentally insulted her? He replayed his comments in his head, trying to pinpoint the offensive thing, but it was no use. After an awkward pause, he asked, “Can we go now? I don’t enjoy chitchat like this.” And clearly, he was bad at it.
“Yes, let’s go. Thank you, Anh.” Sinking back against her seat, she stared out the side window.
He pulled out of the spot, paid for parking, and exited the garage. At first, his muscles tensed in anticipation of more probing questions, but as he left the airport and merged onto the freeway, she was blessedly quiet. Unlike his mom and sister, who could maintain one-sided conversations for hours.
Maybe she’d fallen asleep, but every time he glanced her way, he found her watching the landscape beside the freeway, which consisted of squat office buildings, scraggly grass, and the occasional bunch of eucalyptus or pine. Not very glamorous. Well, at least to him it wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine what it might look like from her eyes.
“Uni-vers-ity Av,” she said out of the blue. She straightened in her seat and torqued her body so she could see the exit he’d just passed. “Is that where Cal Berkeley is?”
“No, that’s where Stanford is.”
“Oh.” She turned back around and slumped in her seat.
“Berkeley is an hour north of here. That’s where I went for undergrad and grad school.”
“Really?” The enthusiasm in her voice caught him by surprise. A lot of people around here weren’t impressed unless you’d gone to Stanford or an Ivy League school.
“Yeah, they have a good accounting program.” He continued driving, keeping his eyes on the road, but he could almost feel the weight of her gaze on his skin. Sending her a sideways glance, he asked, “What?”
“Are the students close there? They know each other?”
“Not really,” he said. “It’s a huge school. Each year, they admit more than ten thousand undergrads. Why do you ask?”
She shrugged and shook her head as she peered out the window.
He returned his attention to the early evening traffic, exited at Mathilda Avenue, and drove down streets lined with tall, leafy oaks, townhome complexes, apartment buildings, and strip malls.
Ten minutes later, he turned onto the side street that led to his two-bedroom fixer-upper with demolition potential. Compared to the other remodeled and newly built homes in the area, his was a bit of an eyesore, but he bet no one else had the finely aged shag carpet. He pulled up next to his section of curb, cranked the parking brake, and turned the engine off.
“This is it,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
Esme still couldn’t forgive herself for lying like that. Did she want to get struck by the heavens? Why had she done it?
She knew why. Because she was a janitor/maid, and he was so much better. She’d wanted to impress him, to show him she was worth his time. But now she had to pretend she worked in accounting, when she didn’t even know what it was, and continue to keep her baby a secret. She was a liar, and she was ashamed of herself.
If she were a good person, she’d confess right now, but this feeling of being his equal was too addicting. It didn’t even matter that it was fake. She liked it anyway. She was already pretending to be something she wasn’t—a worldly sexy woman (though not very successfully, judging by her failed attempt at flirting earlier in the car). Why not go all the way and add smart and sophisticated to the list while she was at it?
When she died, demons were going to torment her for eternity instead of letting her reincarnate. Or worse, they’d let her reincarnate, but she’d be a catfish who lived under a river outhouse. It was only fair. That was what she got for wishing food poisoning on people.
Khải got out of the car, and she followed suit. The crunch of her shoes on rocks was unnaturally loud to her ears, and her head spun as she looked down at her feet. When was the last time she’d eaten? She was too tired to remember.
Working her jaw to wake herself up, she forced herself to take in the surrounding area. The houses were so plain compared to the mansions she’d imagined. And short—one level only, for most of them. The air. She filled her lungs. What was this smell?
After a moment, she realized it was the lack of smell. She couldn’t smell garbage and rotting fruit. A haze of exhaust didn’t darken the sunset to tamarind-colored rust. She rubbed her jet-lagged eyes and admired a sky painted in bright hues of apricot and hya
cinth.
What a difference an ocean made.
Homesickness hit her then, and she almost missed the pollution. Something familiar would have been nice as she stood there, on an unknown street, in an unknown city, in a world far away from everyone she loved. What time was it in Việt Nam? Was Ngọc Anh—no, it was Jade now—sleeping? Did she miss her momma? Her momma missed her.
If she were home, she’d lie down next to her, kiss her little hands, and press their foreheads together like she always did before she went to sleep.
She tripped and would have fallen if it weren’t for the mailbox, and Khải aimed a disapproving look at her shoes after he pulled her suitcase out of the trunk. “You’re better off walking barefoot than wearing those.”
“But they’re so useful. It’s like having a shoe and a knife.” She slipped both shoes off and made a stabbing motion with one of them.
He considered her for a serious moment, not laughing, not even smiling, and she pursed her lips and stared down at her bare toes. There she went, failing at flirting again. In her defense, it had been a long time since she’d dated a man, and she’d forgotten how.
As she gazed at her unattractive toes—she hated the unshapely hands and feet she’d inherited from her green-eyed dad; there was nothing elegant or appealing about them—she noticed the scary weeds choking Khải’s yard. “What if I step on all the thorns?” She sent him a smile that she hoped looked sexy. “Will you carry me?”
He brought her suitcase to the front door without looking at her. “Stay on the concrete, and you’ll be fine.”
Skipping after him, she said, “I can clean the yard for you. I’m good at it.”
He fished his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door. “I like it the way it is.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the yard again to make sure she hadn’t imagined everything, and, nope, it was still a jungle of thorns, tangled vines, and dried-up bushes.
He’d been wrong earlier when he said Esme was the stranger of the two of them. He won that contest without even trying. He was easily the strangest person she’d ever met. She didn’t know him well yet, but she’d picked up on his strangeness right away. He didn’t look her in the eyes when he spoke, he wore all black, he liked this wasteland of a yard, and he said the oddest things. It gave her hope.
Odd was good. Odd was an opportunity.
Besides, she was odd, too. Just not as odd as he was.
“You’re very . . . open-minded,” she hedged.
He looked at her like he thought she was crazy, and she mentally kicked herself.
“Why do you park on the street when you have that?” She pointed to his garage. Judging from the size of the door, he could fit two cars in there. It didn’t make sense that he parked his nice car on the street. Not unless he had three cars, which she doubted he could afford based on the state of his yard and house.
Instead of answering her question, he let them into the house. She wondered if he hadn’t heard or if he’d purposely ignored her, but she let it slide. The inside of his house was stranger than the outside, with thick carpet that looked more like grass than his lawn, exercise equipment all over the main room, and fixtures and blinds from a different era. After setting her shoes on the floor, she followed Khải down a narrow hall, and the soft carpet fibers hugged her bare feet with every step.
He set her suitcase in a small room that contained a desk, sofa, and closet. When she noticed the old wallpaper, tears stung her eyes. Teddy bears, beach balls, dolls, ballet slippers, and building blocks. This used to be a child’s room. She touched her fingertips to the ballet slippers. Jade would love this.
“This is your room,” he said. “You’ll have to make do with the couch.”
“It’s nice. Thank you, Anh Khải.” She’d never slept on anything as nice as a couch in her life. She’d never owned a couch. But she didn’t mention any of that. She was sophisticated Esme in Accounting now. Esme in Accounting probably had a nice apartment with two or three couches and had never slept on a straw mat over a packed-dirt floor.
The lonely country girl inside of her looked at the big empty couch and felt homesick all over again. She wanted the straw mat, the dirt floor, the single-room house, and the sleeping bodies of her little girl, grandma, and mom. She was exhausted, but she didn’t know how she was going to sleep by herself.
“The phone on the desk is for you.” He pointed at the desk before turning to leave.
“Wait a little, for me?” She hurried to the desk and lowered a hand toward the shiny silver phone but curled her fingers into a fist before she made contact. It would be a shame to smudge the fancy phone with her fingertips.
“My mom said you needed a new SIM card, but a new phone is easier. If you don’t like it, I can probably exchange it for the larger model.”
But that would cost even more. “It’s new,” she said.
He stuffed a hand in his pocket. “Yeah.” He said it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“Can you return it?”
He frowned as he tilted his head to the side. “I don’t think so. You really don’t like it?”
She wrung her hands together. “No, I like it, but—”
“Then it’s not a problem. Just use it.”
A wave of anxious heat washed over her face, but she made herself say, “I’ll pay you back as soon as I’m working.” She hoped she’d make enough to pay for it. Back home, she’d have to save for the better part of a year to pay for something this nice.
“You don’t have to.”
She lifted her chin. “I do.” It was important he knew she wasn’t marrying him for his money. This had never been about money to her. If anything, she liked that he didn’t have as much money as his neighbors. They were a better match that way. She didn’t need a rich man. She just needed someone who was hers. And Jade’s.
He merely shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m going to heat up dinner. Come out when you’re hungry.”
Her shoulders sagged. He didn’t understand she wanted to earn things herself. “I’m going to call home first, okay?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
As soon as he left the room, she carefully shut the door, unplugged the white charging cable from the phone, and sat on the couch, staring at her unbelievably fancy new phone. She hadn’t expected this at all. It was the best gift he could have gotten her, the absolute best. And he didn’t even like her.
He was strange and tactless and very possibly an assassin, but when she looked at his actions, all she saw was kindness. Cô Nga had been right. Khải was good stuff. Very, very good stuff.
She’d memorized how to dial internationally from the United States before she left and dialed her mom’s cell phone number. Her mom picked up on the first ring. “Hi, Má.”
“Already, already, tell me everything.”
“First, how is Ngọc Anh? Can I talk to her?”
“She’s fine, excited to have a dad soon. Talk to me a little. How are things? Do you like him?” her mom asked.
“Yes, I like him.”
A pleased hmmmmm sounded on the line. “That’s good. What about his house? Is it nice?”
“I like it,” Esme said. “The room I’m staying in has pretty paper on the wall. If Ngọc Anh saw it, she’d like it. There’s a couch for me.”
“You’re not sleeping with him?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, Má, I’m not sleeping with him. Do you remember? He doesn’t want a wife.”
“That doesn’t mean he wants to sleep alone.”
“I just got off the plane,” she reminded her mom. She needed time to work her seductive powers on him. If she even had such powers anymore. Working as much as she did, she didn’t have the time to date. Or the desire. Just the memory of her mom’s and grandma’s faces when they’d found out about her pregnancy was en
ough to make any man look uninteresting.
“Oh, that’s right, long flight,” her mom said. After a quiet moment, her mom continued. “Can you unscrew one of the legs off the couch and say it broke?”
“Why would I do that?”
“So you can sleep with him, daughter of mine.”
Esme pulled the phone away and stared at it. Who was this woman she was talking to? The voice sounded like her mom’s, but not the words. “I can’t do that. It’s wrong.”
“Fine, forget I said it,” her mom grumbled. “Here, talk to your girl.”
“Má.” The little voice made Esme’s heart melt even as it broke her. She should be there, not here on the other side of the world chasing a man.
“Hi, my girl. I miss you too much. What have you been doing since I’ve been gone?”
“I caught a big fish in the pond yesterday. Great-Grandma killed it by slamming it against a tree, and after that, we ate it for dinner. My fish was good.”
Esme covered her eyes with a hand. Killed it by slamming it against a tree . . . Esme in Accounting would be appalled by this conversation. Not only would she not have a five-year-old daughter out of wedlock, but her daughter wouldn’t be catching her own dinner. There certainly wouldn’t be any killing by slamming anything against a tree.
But at least her girl was happy. It was sinful to take a life, even a fish life, but Esme would gladly sacrifice an entire school of trout to distract Jade from missing her momma too much. She put her feet up and rested her heavy head against the couch’s armrest as Jade rambled on about fish, worms, and crickets. When her eyelids drifted shut, she could almost sense the Việt Nam sun on her skin, almost feel her baby in her arms. She fell asleep with a smile on her lips.