Wager: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 4)

by H. E. Trent

  With his eyes narrowed, Marco gave his head a slight shake as if to say, “And?”

  “And she’s talking now?”

  Marco made a face. Maybe he didn’t get what Jasper was getting at.

  Jasper typed, “Say something else to her. I want to see what happens.”

  Shrugging, Marco scooped up another spoonful of stew. “Where’d your sisters go? I don’t think I’ve seen them all day.”

  “Into town with Amy, Eileen, Precious, and Fastida.” Sera bent and vigorously rubbed at what must have been a troublesome stain on the counter. “They wanted to do some trading.”

  “For good stuff, I hope, and not the basics. Eileen and Fastida get back?”

  “Yes,” Salehi called out in a sour tone.

  Uh oh. Jasper shoved a hand through his hair and shook his head. Jasper knew a little something about women behaving as though he didn’t exist, but even he’d felt the chill coming off Eileen when she’d passed them before lunch.

  “Eileen said hello but didn’t even look at me when she came in,” Salehi said. “Fastida told me not to take the snub personally.”

  “Damn,” Marco said.

  “Perhaps he should have gone with her,” Sera said. “She wouldn’t mind such initiative.”

  “You sure about that?” Salehi asked from the doorway.

  She turned slowly toward him and actually looked him in the eyes, or at least, somewhere in the general vicinity of them. “I am…reasonably certain.”

  “You couldn’t have told me that an hour ago when she was moving so fast to get out of here that she left a trail of smoke behind her?”

  “I—”

  “I’m kidding. Don’t answer that. Not your job to speak up and keep me in check.” Salehi groaned dramatically and returned to his station beyond the door. “I blame Escobar.”

  “Say what?” Jasper sat up straight like his commanding officer had stepped into the room and called them to attention. “How was that my fault?”

  “You witnessed the whole thing, man. You’re supposed to be so smooth, and yet you couldn’t give me a single pointer?”

  “Aw, shit, man.” He gave Salehi an apologetic shrug. He’d been distracted by Sera sliding her fork between her lips, and there was really no good way to defend himself on the issue with the woman in earshot.

  “You want anything else, Marco?” Court asked. “I’m about to shut the kitchen down for a few hours. I need to go haggle with Trigrian about holding my baby.”

  “I think I saw him heading out to the orchard with Murki and Kerry,” Sera said.

  “Then that’s where I’ll go, too.”

  Sera shooed her away. “Go. I’ll finish cleaning up.”

  “But I need to—”

  “I’ll get it. I’ll get the chickens into the brine. That was your next task, yes?”

  Court propped her hands onto her hips and smirked in what Jasper was coming to suspect was a typically McGarry way. “You’ve been reading my meal plans, huh?”

  “I assumed that was why you pinned them to the corkboard—so that no one would have to ask.”

  “I like you, lady.” Court squeezed Sera’s shoulder as she passed. “Never leave.”

  Sera chuckled and fetched a deep pail from a shelf. “I don’t intend to. I have big plans for this farm.”

  “And a deadline?” came Court’s disembodied voice from the hallway.

  “And a deadline.” Sera set the bucket into the sink and retreated into the pantry.

  Jasper met Marco’s gaze and canted his head toward the doorway.

  Marco nodded and kept eating.

  She emerged with an arm full of salt and spice canisters. She set them all on the counter and Jasper watched her methodically measure and dump contents from each into the pail. Then she turned the water on in the sink.

  “How many times have you watched Court do that?” Marco asked.

  “Hmm.” Sera’s fingertips drummed a staccato rat-tat-tat on the side of the sink. “Quite a few. Usually when Elken takes her very short nap after lunch, I linger here in the kitchen. This used to be my mother’s favorite room.” She turned a bit counterclockwise and lifted her chin toward the window near the house’s side door. “There used to be a padded bench there. She wasn’t the best cook. My fathers tended to take turns handling most domestic chores, including feeding us, but she liked the noise, I think. She’d sit on the bench with a book and would look up every so often and smile, and perhaps shake her head at the silliness of all of us.”

  “I can’t imagine any of you being silly,” Jasper said.

  She turned back to the sink.

  Damn it.

  “I mean,” he quickly corrected, “I wouldn’t exactly call Trigrian dour, but silly isn’t the word that comes to mind when I think about him, and your sisters don’t seem to have the proclivity, either.” He was rambling like a kid, trying to climb out of the hole he’d dug for himself. Even the most benign of statements seemed to be conversational landmines. He didn’t understand where he was going wrong.

  “Things have changed,” she said flatly, and turned the water off.

  Jasper grimaced. “Yeah, I guess they have.”

  She opened the refrigeration unit and bent into it.

  Marco drew freeform shapes with his fingertips on the tabletop. His food was all gone. He’d, at some point in the conversation, consumed all that bread, and Jasper hadn’t seen him take a single bite.

  Jasper nudged his foot beneath the table and when Marco looked at him, he gave him a “What’s up?” gesture.

  Marco shrugged, and then pantomimed talking, as if Jasper should do some.

  “About what?” Jasper mouthed. Obviously, he was doing a shit job on his own. His abuela had told him when he was a sullen, morose teenager that he wasn’t suave enough to talk himself out of a dark closet. He’d spent the next three years proving her wrong.

  Marco shrugged again.

  Sera bumped the chiller’s door shut. Beneath her arm was a large bowl containing what looked like whole chickens.

  “Aw, hell,” Marco said. “Court didn’t butcher them?”

  Setting the bowl on the counter, Sera sighed. “She may have forgotten.”

  “Want me to? You can talk me through the steps, I guess.”

  “No, you haven’t slept. You were going to—”

  “I’ll do it.” Before Sera could beg off, Jasper sidled over to the sink, lifted out the bucket, and washed his hands. A guy couldn’t get by on Jekh if he didn’t seize opportunities when they happened. Apparently, raw chicken was an opportunity.

  The woman stared at him as if he were some kind of curious lawn gnome that had suddenly appeared overnight, and that she couldn’t make heads or tails of.

  The truth was that he was pretty damn easy to figure out. He was a book open wide for her exclusive perusal.

  So peruse, woman. Look at me. Give me a chance.

  He grabbed a butcher knife from the drawer, found a chopping block, and rolled up his sleeves. “I used to do this with my grandma,” he explained. “She had this little illegal business running out of our kitchen”

  “Oh, hell.” Marco chuckled and filled his cup at the cold water dispenser. “This should be good. I like any story that starts with ‘illegal.’”

  “Well, you’re in for a treat. Abuela had all kinds of hustles, but the chicken thing was the longest-standing one.” Jasper set the first of the chickens onto the block. He started dismembering, and tried to ignore Sera’s cool stare pointed at the side of his head. To be a woman who rarely said anything to him, she certainly did a damn fine job of communicating her disregard of him.

  Soldier on, soldier.

  He separated a leg from the body, cut apart the drumstick and thigh, and tossed both parts into the bucket. “If Abuela were still alive, she’d probably put a hand on her Bible and swear that the people at the health department were out to get her. She’d always wanted to open a hot lunch business. Home-cooked meals with a de
ssert. Folks could come to the kitchen window between eleven and one, grab whatever the day’s offering was, and then get back to work.”

  Another drumstick and thigh into the bucket.

  He flipped the bird onto its back and got to work cracking the forequarters.

  “She wanted to run the business out of the house, and trust me—Abuelita kept a clean house. She’d nod off in the kitchen still holding a broom, and she never had pets that could jump up on the counters and get fur into everything. Still, every single time the dudes from the county came to do their inspection, they’d fail her. For stupid shit, too, you know?”

  “Like what?” Marco asked.

  Sera stood her ground by the counter, but she’d looked toward Marco then. Wrong man, but still probably better than the eye-daggers she’d been directing at Jasper.

  “Oh, like that she’d have to install certain devices in the kitchen to ensure there was no cross-contamination and shit like that, but none of that was in local statutes. They’d pull anything out of their asses so they could to reject her, and everyone knew the game.”

  “Why’d they have such a grudge against her?”

  “Who even knows at this point?” He butchered the wings into three parts, tossing the wing tips into a bowl to cook up later for soup or something. “All I can tell you is Abuelita had a big mouth, and if she had an opinion, she made sure people knew what it was. She probably had an enemy or two, but you can’t live to be her age without picking up some haters.”

  “So, what? She decided to run the business anyway, in spite of them?”

  “Yup.” Jasper cleared the bits of chicken detritus from the cutting board into a small bucket. There was probably a farmer somewhere who could use that stuff. Abuelita had taught him to not waste things, even if he thought an item couldn’t possibly have another purpose. Someone could find one, if he couldn’t. He grabbed the next chicken. “And she wasn’t even all that discreet about what she was doing. The sheriff would drive by the house and see folks lined up at the kitchen window waiting on plates. He’d stop the car, get out, saunter over, and stare her dead in the face.”

  Like Sera did just then. The unwanted-lawn-statue stare had transformed into a well-what-next face. The look wasn’t hostile, so he considered that a fucking victory. Soldier that he was, he knew not to squander it, though. He trimmed the extra skin from the breast of the next bird. “He’d come up to the window and say, ‘Well? Whatcha doing?’ and Abuelita would say, ‘What’s it look like?’ He’d tell her it looked like she was operating a business out of her home, and she’d put her hands on her hips and look around the kitchen. Then she’d say, ‘I don’t see no money? You see money, Jasper?’”

  “And what’d you say?” Marco asked.

  “Shit, I wasn’t stupid. I’d say no. Besides, I wasn’t lying. Folks paid her, and she stuffed the cash into her bra.” He chuckled. His abuela was a mess of the best kind, and he missed that old lady something fierce.

  “Couldn’t see the money,” Sera said quietly.

  She understood.

  He smiled for her, and nodded. “Really couldn’t see it. All the sheriff would be able to prove was that there were always people at our side window at the same time every weekday and that the neighborhood always smelled like a cookout. I handled a lot of chicken. There wasn’t anybody else to do the work.”

  “Shouldn’t you have been at school that time of day?” Marco asked.

  “School was close by—a couple of blocks away. After I started high school, I’d go home every day during lunch and put on an apron. When I got back to school afterward, the girls would come up to me and sniff me because I smelled so nice.”

  Sera shook her head and padded away to the pantry.

  Ay. What now?

  By the time he finished segmenting the chickens about ten minutes later, Sera still hadn’t come out of the pantry.

  Marco strode to the sink, rinsed his plate and cup, and gave Jasper’s shoulder a squeeze. He whispered, “Don’t sweat it,” and put his dishes in the sanitizer.

  “I’m not. That was better than what I’m used to, you know?” He just needed more, and faster, now that he was certain of his target. He was a soldier who fought to win, and he knew how to plan a long game. His worry was about his morale, though. How much smiling would he be able to do when he felt so empty and so lonely? When everyone around except him had someone?

  “Okay. I’m only making sure.” In his usual volume he said, “Heading back to The Tin Can to take that nap. See you at dinner?”

  “Unless I see you in the fields first,” came Sera’s muffled return from the pantry.

  Marco chuckled as he backed away, and then gave Jasper the thumbs-up.

  Right.

  Jasper turned to clean the knife and board.

  He started thinking about that dark closet his abuela had talked about all those years ago.

  Sera wasn’t completely hostile, but she had no enthusiasm for him.

  He needed that. Jekhan women sometimes said yes to men because they felt like someone had to, but he didn’t want to wear her down to make her think that after everything she’d been through, that she needed to take one more for the team. Maybe his ego would get in the way of opportunities, but he couldn’t help what he wanted. And he wanted to be wanted. He didn’t know if he could spend countless hours inuring Sera to his presence only for her to accept him as little more than a household fixture, and he had to be prepared to move on if there was no click.

  Jasper could go to Earth and find someone if he had to. He didn’t have to be lonely in the new phase of his life. In fact, he’d very nearly convinced himself that he deserved to have someone adore him the way Ais adored Owen.

  He set the knife and cutting board in the sanitizer and scrubbed his hands clean again.

  “Maybe I should hold my breath and wait.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Marco was walking past the barn on his way to The Tin Can after chatting with Luke on the farm office’s powerful communications console. The sudden appearance of Sera in the barn doorway, holding two eggs, tested his bladder’s integrity.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, shoving a hand through his hair. “Make some noise, will ya?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, tugging her lips into a lightning-fast cringe. She gave his chest a timid pat and then backed away. “I heard you humming as you walked near. What is the song?”

  “The song?” He hadn’t really been paying attention. Usually, he started humming and let the notes go where they may. “The song might have been ‘Smoke on the Water.’ Not sure why I picked that one, but anyhow. What are you doing out here this late? It’s after midnight.”

  “I was out until nine at the school meeting, and now Elken’s asleep, and…” She held up three eggs—two brown, one white. “Hardboiled, she said, but harder than last time. If the yolk is too yellow after they’ve been boiled, she won’t eat them. She likes for the yolks to be gray.”

  “God forbid she eat a bowl of cereal or something easy, huh?”

  “I think that way sometimes, and then I pick her up and I hold her and I feel the bones of her ribs against my arm, and I figure to let her have the fat however I can get it into her.”

  “She’ll gain the weight, Sera. Give her time. Eventually, her body will stop thinking she’s being starved, her metabolism will slow down a little, and she’ll be able to put on some padding.”

  “That’s what Dorro said, more or less.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “I…” Wearing a grimace of uncertainty, she looked down at the eggs she rolled in her hand. “Well, yes, I trust him. I’ve known him since I was a very young child and I thought him to be an honest man, but when the issue at hand is my daughter—”

  “You worry.”

  “You believe I’m… Oh.” One by one, she tucked the eggs into her sling. “What is that word? Neurotic?”

  “No. No way. I don’t think you’re neurotic.”
He turned the twisted strap of her sling over and moved the fabric closer to the balance point of her shoulder. “Honestly, I think you’re a typical mom, and sometimes moms worry even when they’re given permission not to.”

  “Does your mother worry so much?”

  Marco’s bark of laughter was so loud that he startled the chickens into squawking, and Sera’s lips twitched into a half grin.

  “Silly question?” she asked.

  “Nah, not silly.” He leaned against the doorway and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’d understand if you knew Ma. She tends to be a caricature sometimes.”

  “Caricature. What does that mean?”

  “Caricatures are exaggerated, cartoon versions of people. My ma is very passionate. Typically Italian, I guess.”

  “I still don’t know what that means—Italian.”

  He chuckled. “Trust me, I didn’t know what it meant, either, until I went into a science prep school outside of the neighborhood. I found out then that other folks had much more mild-mannered parents.”

  “Like the McGarrys?”

  “Hell no, not the McGarrys.” The very insinuation triggered Marco’s lungs to convulse in the precursor of a laugh that would probably trigger a fit of asthma if he let it out. “Why do you think our families were friends?”

  Her mouth twisted to one side. That was a hell-if-I-know expression, if he’d ever seen one. It was cute on her, and he loved that she was starting to show a more diverse repertoire of moods on her face. It hinted at comfort, and that was what he craved for her—comfort in her surroundings. She deserved to feel safe in her own home, and he’d make certain that she was.

  “For real,” he said, fidgeting the end of his inhaler canister through his pocket. “I guess folks with similar parenting styles tend to clump. The McGarrys wouldn’t be appalled if my parents got a little loud with the discipline, you know? Loudness is part of our families’ cultures. Anyway.” He straightened up from the door and looked toward the house. “I won’t hold you up. I’m sure you want to get some sleep.”

  “Yes, I suppose I should.”

  “Gotta get up early, don’t you?”