“Hey, stop, all right?” he said, breaking into her rambling. “You damsel however you damn well please. No one’s grading you on how to react after being robbed. You’ve had a hell of a night. You didn’t expect to be attacked. You didn’t expect to be saving a dog. And I’m sure you didn’t expect to have some strange dude traipsing through your bedroom at midnight.”
“With my underwear wrapped around his shoe,” she said, forcing the joke out to push back the fear, to bring this back to something she could deal with.
“What?” He glanced down at the scrap of lace hooked over his boot. “Aw, hell.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his obvious chagrin. He crouched down, but she put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “I should probably get those.”
He coughed, trying to cover a laugh. “Right. Yes. Good life lesson. No touching other people’s underwear without permission.”
She bent and snagged the lace from the floor, balling it in her hand, and then tossed it into the bathroom. “How about we pretend I didn’t panic and you didn’t see my underwear, and we can let the locksmith in?”
He gave a quick nod. “I’ve already forgotten everything. What’s your name again?”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on. All this freaking out has made me hungry.”
* * *
A little while later, the locksmith had changed the lock on the back door and was hard at work out front while Rebecca and Wes dug into their food at the kitchen counter. She tried to make small talk, asking Wes questions because she didn’t want to talk about herself. She was under no illusion that once he figured out who she was, things wouldn’t turn awkward and ugly. She didn’t have the energy for that tonight, and right now they had an easy rapport. She wanted to keep it that way. Wesley Garrett could eat his food and leave before he ever realized that they’d met before.
“So you work at a school?” she asked between bites of butter chicken. “This is delicious, by the way.”
“Devin knows what he’s doing. And not a school. I teach culinary arts at an after-school program for teens who’ve gotten in some kind of trouble—with the law, with school.” He smirked. “You know, giving kids with anger problems knives and access to fire.”
“Ah, living on the edge,” she said with a nod. “You like it?”
He was looking at his food again, but she caught his hesitation, his frown. “It wasn’t my plan to do this, and the cooking itself is pretty basic. But I like the kids, and I’m not teaching them one of the standard subjects, so they don’t mind coming to my class. It’s not too bad.”
She considered him. She didn’t think that was the job he’d had when he’d been married. He’d been some type of chef. When Devin had mentioned Wes cooked, the memory had clicked into place. But she’d won Wesley’s ex-wife a big settlement, from what she could remember. More than what a teacher could afford. “And Devin thinks you shouldn’t be doing that?”
“Devin has a vested interest in me doing something else. He’s trying to get me to buy a food truck from his uncle so that I can open up my own.”
She looked up at that, remembering the wistful look on his face when he’d stared out at the food park. “Is that something you want to do?”
His expression clouded. “‘Want’ or ‘don’t want’ isn’t really the question. I’d love to fly a fighter jet, doesn’t mean I should. I had big plans in my twenties to open my own place and I got close, but it…didn’t work out.” His jaw flexed and he looked up. “There are lots of pluses to where I work now. Regular paycheck. Predictable schedule. All that good, stable adulting stuff. But I do miss cooking my food and the creativity involved. Dev thinks a food truck would be a good compromise. Something smaller scale and, at least in theory, more manageable.”
“They seem to be all the rage now.”
“They are, which also means heavy competition. It’d still be a high-risk bet, and the truck’s in rough shape. I’d have to build the thing up from scratch on my own and do all the remodeling in between my teaching hours. I’d also have to get an investor or two to help with the up-front costs. So if it doesn’t work, I’ve lost a ton of my money, other’s people’s money, and my job.”
“There’s that.” She broke off a piece of naan and dipped it in the green sauce. “I’d say no risk, no reward, but I’m not one to talk. I’m not a gambler.”
He considered her. “Sure thing kind of girl?”
Understatement of the year. “Failure isn’t fun. Plus, I work all the time. There’s not a lot of opportunity for risks or chasing some passion project anyway.”
He ignored the wine she’d poured him from a bottle she’d found in the back of her pantry and took a sip of water instead. “All work and no play carries its own risks. You may end up seeing ghosts and chasing people in a snowy hedge maze with an ax.”
“True. I’ll make a note to avoid all creepy hotels and mazes.” Though it was a joke, she couldn’t help but think how the parallel to The Shining wasn’t all that far off. She had heard and seen some ghosts tonight. She took another long sip of her wine. “Maybe if I had a hobby I wouldn’t have been walking home so late from work tonight.”
He frowned. “That’s not what I mean. What happened tonight could’ve happened at any time, so don’t put that on yourself. But too much of anything can turn bad. If you did have the time, what kind of project would you want to do?”
>
She shrugged. “No idea.”
“Really? What are you into?”
She laughed under her breath, no humor to it. “That’s the problem. I’ve spent so much time working on school or career stuff that I wouldn’t even know where to start.” She shook her head. “And damn, that makes me sound boring.”