“Yes,” I said, crossing toward him. “Now I have the time. And sorry about earlier. It’s been a bad morning.”
“What’s happened?” he asked as he settled into the couch, angled so he could face me as I sat next to him.
“Well, I had to get up early, for starters. Chloe was going to make me work out—she does that too.” I rolled my eyes. “We found a…body, though. And then I ran into you.” I felt my eyes bug out as I realized what I’d said. “Not that you’re like a corpse! I like you. I mean… We’re… It’s just—“
“Awkward,” Stan supplied. I nodded and we went quiet for a few moments. I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t bringing up the disastrous end to our marriage, but I wasn’t sure how to get into it, or even if he’d want to talk about it. He’d been the one who’d been hurt and abandoned, and if he didn’t want to relive what I’d done, I didn’t want to force the issue.
When the silence got too much to bear, Stan took a quick breath, straightened minutely and reached down to the fawn-colored messenger bag hanging by his hip.
“I actually was hoping you could help me with something.”
“Anything,” I said. Though Stan is the nicest, least vindictive person one could ever meet and I knew he wouldn’t demand something embarrassing or painful of me, I would have gladly agreed if he had.
“I’m having an issue. I’m guessing you know about my books?”
“Yes.” I didn’t go into detail about my embarrassing and expensive habits.
“Well, my fan base isn’t large, but they’re very loyal. And they’re always very nice, though one of them is…” He seemed unsure of how to say it, so I gestured like Vanna White.
“Crazy? Obsequious? Purple?” I quirked my lips, unable to resist the reference. “Clairvoyant?”
On a soft laugh, Stan shook his head and continued simply with, “Off.” He lifted the flap on his messenger bag, pulled out a manila envelope, and held it in his lap. “I’ve been getting worrisome letters. The last few have been talking about being excited to meet me.”
“Are they threatening? Have you gone to the police?”
“No, nothing like that. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble if there’s no problem. But, there’s a convention this weekend,” his cheeks pinked, “for my work, and she—Norma is her name—she says she’s going to be there. I wouldn’t ask if—I mean if you don’t—“
“Don’t. Whatever it is, I’ll do it. I owe you at least… something.”
“I don’t—” Shaking away the argument he’d been about to make, he continued. “I appreciate it. Since she’s going to be there, I was hoping you would be, too.”
“At the convention?”
“Yes.”
“Because…?”
“Because I don’t know who she is, and while I’m sure she means no harm, I’m still just a bit concerned.” He handed me the envelope carefully, as if it was might spontaneously combust. “Your empathy isn’t the only reason I thought you might be able to help. You’re trained, you know people. You’ll be able to tell me there’s nothing wrong. Perhaps she’s just more enthusiastic.”
He went quiet for a moment, his eyes straying to the door, and I knew he was thinking of Chloe’s explosive greeting. I fought off a smile and tapped the envelope in my lap.
“This is...?”
“Oh, her letters are in there.” Focused on me, Stan continued. “You can look them over, and if you think I’m overreacting, just let me know and I’ll drop it. If you see something that concerns you, though…” Worry spurted out and smacked me in my chest. I gave my most encouraging smile.
“You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met. I’m sure no one wants to hurt you. I will absolutely look these over and come make sure no one’s interested in keying your car or something.”
“Thank you, Gwen.”
“It’s no trouble.” I thought about it for a moment. “This convention, is it big?”
“Oh, no. I’m not that popular.” The fact that he felt no shame or envy at his assessment of his popularity made my heart melt a little. Sweetest guy I’d ever met and I’d run him off. “It’s no more than, at most, two hundred people.”
“That’s not big?” I’d never braved a convention before. The idea of standing in the middle of a sea of emotions didn’t appeal to me.
“I don’t think so,” he stated. “It’s entirely fan-coordinated, and people are coming from all over. I don’t get to attend many of these, only four over the last few years. Please, though, if you’re not comfortable—“
“I’m fine. I’ll be there.”
“Okay.” Relieved, Stan smiled. “I’ve included my contact information and directions to the hotel in the packet.”
“Thanks,” I said, turning my attention to the envelope. I was curious, but I didn’t want to tear into it with him sitting there. Ignoring him to read when we’d only just made contact again after so long would have been rude. Stan said nothing further about his predicament and, at a loss for further questions on the subject, I lifted my gaze to his. This time the silence got to me. “How are your parents?”
“They’re very well. They finally got themselves a farm. I can’t count the number of animals they’ve got now.”
“That sounds like them,” I said with a grin.
“And your family?”
“Good!” I grinned at the thought of my sister and her kids. Before I could elaborate, Chloe knocked on the door twice before pushing in and smiling down at us.
“Sorry, Gwen. Ian wants to know if you can see him early?”
“What time? How early?”
“As soon as possible.” Her eyes strayed to Stan, and I felt a jolt of giddiness shoot out of her. Her shameless fangirling made me roll my eyes.
I nodded. “That’s fine. Let me just…um, finish up here.”
“I’ll get my books out!” With an excited wiggle, Chloe twisted and left the office, leaving the door ajar. I laughed and turned back to Stan.
“You must be used to that by now.”
“Not really,” Stan admitted, sheepish. “She’s a different sort of fan than I’m used to.”
“She is pretty unique.”
“Thank you again for the help,” he said as he pushed to his feet.
“Really,” I said, getting up as well. “Anything you asked me to do, it wouldn’t be enough.”
Stan’s lips tightened and, for just a moment, I felt a splash of embarrassment squirt forth. I shook my head, wanting to tell him he had no right to feel that way, that he’d done nothing wrong. Instead, I hopped forward and yanked him into a hug. He hugged me back without hesitation, and I felt the tension I’d been holding since he walked in seep out of my shoulders. I held onto him for a few seconds, surprised when he didn’t push me away and when I felt nothing unpleasant in his emotions. I pulled back, intent on apologizing again, maybe throwing myself at his feet and wailing, “I’m not worthy!” at the heavens. Chloe rushed in before I could speak, a stack of paperback novels in her arms.
“I just happened to have these in my desk. I read them over and over. This one?” Chloe waved a copy of Murder in a Time of War wildly in the air, which made Stan’s eyebrows draw together. I got the feeling he would have only reacted more harshly if she’d been shaking an infant. “My favorite!”
“Thank you,” Stan said, trying his best to be gracious in the face of her enthusiasm. I felt his embarrassment and it made me sigh wistfully. He was proud of what he’d accomplished, but I could tell he wasn’t sure what to make of Chloe’s unmitigated glee.
Chapter Three
Stan made it to the door and out of the office without too much harassment, which I took to mean Chloe was saving it all up for me. I stood by the door, took my time in shutting it, and then tried to work up the courage to turn around. When I finally did I found Chloe standing next to her desk, fixated on me like a laser.
“So. Next client, right? Any minute now,” I offered, hoping she would let it go.
“How do you kno
w Stanley Sneedley?”
“Yep,” I said instead of answering. “Next client. Any time. Ian’ll be here. Any minute—in fact. I should go prepare.” I cleared my throat and walked toward my office as casually as I could, despite my desire to run and slam the door like a horror movie cliché.
Chloe just reached a hand out and took my arm gently as I passed her.
“Dammit,” I whispered. I turned to Chloe and found her watching me with both brows up. Curiosity was rooting around inside her like pigs looking for truffles, but I could feel concern, too. I flailed my hands at my sides for a moment and then shook my head. “It’s going to take a while to get through it, okay? We can talk about it after work.”
“After Ian,” she said, reaching out to tap the phone on her desk. “I rescheduled your last appointment for the day. I figure you could use the break.”
Torn between relief and guilt, I squinted at her.
“You’re serious?” I asked, despite the fact that my empathy would have told me if she was lying. “This isn’t a ploy to lure me into a false sense of security and then drag me to the gym? It’s still early. I know you; just because I don’t have my two o’clock doesn’t mean you won’t make me spend that hour lifting weights.”
“I’ve never made you lift anything heavier than a bran muffin,” Chloe said, placing a hand to her heart as if she was insulted by the implication. “And I’m not lying. Does that sound like me? Would I stuff you in a burlap sack, shove you in the trunk of my car, and then handcuff you to a treadmill for forty-five minutes?”
“That’s suspiciously specific,” I pointed out.
Sucking in a quick breath, Chloe snapped her fingers. “Perhaps I’ve said too much.”
Despite the fact that I could feel Ian closing in on the office door, I glared at Chloe and reached past her to grab the bowl of peanut butter cups off her desk. “Just for that, I’m going to each every one of these.”
“Certainly not ninety-five minutes.”
##
It occurred to me as we stepped inside The Internets that Madeline was absent from the building. I wondered as Chloe and I made our way toward the end of the line if she’d been gone that morning as well, but I couldn’t remember. The shock of seeing Stan had stopped my brain from forming proper memories.
“No Mad?” I asked Holly as we got to the front of the line. She shook her head and handed a receipt off to a girl behind the counter who I didn’t recognize. She had no nametag yet.
“Nope. I got a call this morning asking me to come in and take her shift. I’m not even supposed to be here today.”
“Dante Hicks is just like you,” I said in a sing-song to no one in particular. Chloe glanced at me, unsure about my reference. Realizing no one found my joke funny, I moved on. “She’s really not here? Just…not at all? She didn’t explain herself or anything?”
“She doesn’t really have to,” Holly said with a casual shrug. “She’s the boss.”
“But she’s always here,” I insisted. “Always. From six in the morning to two the next morning she’s here. Right? But she’s not here at all? And you’re not even curious?”
“I’m curious,” Holly said, punching a few things into the register. “But no one cut off her pinky finger and sent it in with a ransom note, so I’m not worried. She’s a grown woman.”
She was something else, too, though I’d never had the guts to ask what. As I stewed in silent curiosity, Chloe nudged me out of the way, sliding a fifty-dollar bill across the counter. Holly nodded, knowing Chloe’s generous tipping habits better than to try to give change, and turned her attention past us. “Morning, can I help you?”
“I didn’t order,” I said, despite the fact that Chloe was already steering me out of the line.
“She knows what you want. It’s fine. Come on.”
“But I wanted cake!”
“You always want cake. You have a desk full of candy; you don’t need cake. You’ll survive.”
“I don’t have a desk full of candy!” I protested, reminded of the mystical sugar thief that had been sporadically haunting my every stash since November. I’d never actually seen the creature, but I knew from its stealing habits that it had as big a sweet tooth as me. “Not anymore.”
“Come on.” Chloe ignored my complaining as she pushed me toward a table along the back wall. I realized as we closed in that it was the same one Stan had chosen that morning. I let her sit me down and stayed quiet as she slid into the seat across from me. “Now. Tell me about you and Sneedley.”
“Of all the things that happened this morning, that’s not really the most important,” I said, hoping to avoid the subject entirely. Chloe lacks my empathic powers, but she can still tell a lie from the truth. I couldn’t fib, but I certainly didn’t want to tell her about my past. “Let’s talk about the dead guy instead! Heart attack, right? That sucks, man. You just never see it coming.” Chloe just continued to watch me seriously. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Or, hey Madeline’s missing. She was at QFC this morning but she can’t make it into work? What do you think’s up with that?”
“She’s not missing. She’s probably just taking a day off. Even a succubus needs time away from work.”
“Even a—” Realizing what I was about to parrot back to her, I gasped. “She’s a succubus! Let’s talk about that!”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“You bet I am! Do you know how many times I’ve sat in this place trying to figure out why just drinking a hot chocolate made me so horny?”
“That’s probably just because you refuse to date. Madeline’s very careful about her influence. Now.” Chloe snapped twice in front of my face. “Stan. Explain. Or I’m going to have them dump your triple chocolate mocha down the sink and bring you an apple instead of a cherry muffin.”
My carbohydrates in jeopardy, I gasped, sitting up straight as an arrow. “You wouldn’t.”
Chloe just smiled. I wanted to take up arms at the idea of Chloe forcing me to eat fruit, but I caught sight of the new girl bringing over our order. I gave her a stiff smile as she slid the muffin in front of me, and surreptitiously gripped the side of the plate in case Chloe got any ideas.
Chloe thanked her with a grin before looking appreciatively down at the plate of vegan donuts she’d gotten. I considered snatching one in case she tried to feed me broccoli later. Once we were alone again, I forked off a chunk off my muffin and lifted it to my lips before speaking.
“You know how I was married?”
“Mmhmm,” Chloe responded through a bite of her lemon-scented Mighty-O donut.
“Stan was him,” I said, finally sinking my teeth into the delectable crumbly morsel. If I had to talk about the most shameful thing I’d ever done to another person, at least I got to do it while packing my face with sugar-topped breadstuffs.
Chloe watched me normally as she chewed, but when she took another bite I felt shock spike out of her and jab me hard right in my left eye. I winced and rubbed at my eyelid. She blinked hard, swallowed, and then carefully set her donut down.
“You?” She didn’t continue, just stared.
“Me what?”
“You were married to Stanley Sneedley?”
“Don’t make that face.”
“You were married to Stanley Sneedley?” she repeated, her voice barely even a shocked hiss. “That’s what you just said? I thought I was imagining it for a second. You? And Sneedley?”
I squirmed in my seat, taking another bite to distract myself from how uncomfortable I felt.
“It was… you know,” I said around the muffin before swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat below my snack. She was right to be shocked. From the outside, from the point of view of someone who really knew me, it must have seemed ridiculous for Stanley Sneedley to have even been interested in Gwen Arthur. And yet, we’d been each other’s first everything when it came to young love. “We were kids, okay?”
“Were you also two different peopl
e? Because that’s the only way this scenario makes any sense,” Chloe said, still watching me with her mouth agape. There was a grin pulling at the edges of her lips, though, and her emotions spoke of affectionate teasing. I blew air out in a raspberry.
“Okay, look. We met in high school and he was adorable and I was kind of an idiot and we dated for three years. Then we got married at eighteen and I cheated on him and ran away like a coward.”
Chloe flinched like she’d been slapped, her brows drawing together in confusion.
“You—“
“Cheated! Yes! I’m awful!” Even though I felt no disgust on her part, I had enough for the both of us. “It was—I was—I don’t want to get into it. He deserved better than me, always has. But I saw him and liked him and decided he was better than any other boy because have you met teenagers?” I let out a groan of disgust at the memories of being a sixteen-year-old empath sitting in the roiling stew of hormones that had been high school. After a second, I let out another, louder sound of revulsion, and Chloe laughed.
“He was different?”
“He was… quiet, you know?” Ever unsure how to describe my empathy, I wiggled my fingers next to my forehead. “He was calm, pleasant. He wasn’t sure of me at first, and I don’t blame him. But I’m very persuasive and, well, he was too polite to say no.”
Chloe snorted at my statement and I smiled at the mental image I’d conjured of chubby teenaged me and bony, over-polite teenaged Stan.
“So what’s he doing here?” Chloe asked as time passed and it became clear from how I was going at the muffin that I didn’t know what else to say. “Did he just come to say hi because the convention is in town?”
“Um, not really. Well, sort of—no.” I shook the stammers out of my mouth. I didn’t want to assume he’d only shown up to ask for help, but I couldn’t fathom him wanting to see me socially after what I’d done. “He asked me to go to the convention to help him with something. He has a wayward fan—"
“A wayward Sneed?” Chloe asked, leaning in to test the temperature of her drink. “I doubt that.”
“Sneed?” I blinked over at her. She waved a hand and set the soy latte down.
Business With Pleasure (Empathy in the Preternatural PNW Book 2) Page 3