Page 166 of Moon's Promise

Puzzling at the tense atmosphere he detected emanating from the two women, he nodded. “Viper needed my help with a problem.”

“Were you able to help him?”

“I think so. You move your office to the dining room table?”

She laid her hand on the closed laptop, and Moon felt the tension in the room increase.

“I don’t want to get behind. Mom thought it would be less stressful for me to work from home.”

“I see.” He moved his gaze away from the laptop to slide it toward the end of the table.

“Kendra,” he acknowledged her cooly.

“Moon.”

When he first met Kendra in Bowling Green, he had sensed something was off between Larissa and her mother. Since she had come to Treepoint, he had become surer.

Larissa kept saying how close they were while he thought the mother and daughter were polar opposites. Kendra even acted differently with Larissa than she did with Lana and Priss.

The discrepancy was so obvious that he had asked Larissa if they all had the same fathers, or if she was adopted. She hadn’t talked to him for two days.

He broke the stare-down, not because he was backing down, but because he was hungry as fuck.

“Any dinner left?” Releasing Larissa’s shoulder, he started for the kitchen.

“We had eggplant parmesan.” Kendra’s lofty voice grated on his last nerve. “There’s plenty left. Larissa wasn’t very hungry, yet she managed to make some room for a bowl of cereal when I was talking on the phone with Lana.”

Turning on his heel at Kendra’s less than subtle recrimination, he didn’t bother moving closer to the kitchen. He hated anything eggplant. He actually hated anything that grew in the ground, other than potatoes. Kendra cooking eggplant parmesan after she had just made soup the day before filled with nothing but eggplant, squash, and zucchini after he had explained his dislike of the fucking things sent his blood simmering.

“Despite my attempts to get her to eat more nutritious food for the baby’s sake, Larissa still doesn’t take my advice and eat healthier, like I do.”

As he stared at the pinch-faced prune, it was everything he could do not to cut her down to size. The problem with that was he was worried the cunning bitch was somehow recording him, wanting to use it to make him look bad. He didn’t put anything past her. It would be a dirty tactic he wouldn’t be above using himself.

“Are there any left?”

Kendra looked at him like he was stupid. “I said there was plenty,” she replied condescendingly.

“I meant cereal.”

The prune-faced bitch’s face tightened. “No, I threw them out. She can’t be tempted if they aren’t there.”

And there it is.

Moon was a firmer believer in letting people sink themselves. No matter how close people watched their winning hands, inevitably, they would fuck themselves over by one slip of the tongue. He liked to call it I’m smarter than you syndrome.

“Maybe.” Moon looked down into Larissa’s clueless expression that told him she was unaware of the battle of wills going on between him and her mother, then studied Kendra’s cunning one. “Or it might make her want them even more.”

Throwing that bait over his shoulder, he walked back toward the kitchen.

“The soup is on the second shelf.” Satisfaction was obvious in Kendra’s voice.

“I’m making us breakfast for dinner.”

“I already ate.”

“Wasn’t planning on making any for you.” Uncaring of how rude he sounded, he placed strips of bacon in a frying pan before taking a bowl out of the cabinet. “I’m making it for Larissa and me. I’ve been at work since seven—I’m starving. I don’t want soup. I agree that Larissa needs something more substantial besides cereal. I’m going to make her a healthy omelet. She taught me her recipe. How does that sound, Larissa?”

“Amazing.” Using the edge of the table, Larissa lifted herself to her feet. “I’ll help.”

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