Page 33 of It's Not Home Without You

“Wait, Freya, I want to show you something.”

I made a sour face Emma couldn’t see. She didn’t know it yet, but she was stopping me from making a mistake. I should thank her, not beannoyed, but I wasn’t veryrational, and at the moment, I was trying to go have a word with myfriend.Still, I turned around to my sweet Emma. It wasn’t her fault I was a hothead.

“What is it?” I asked. Resigned, I looked at the door onelast time. It was too late to follow Max anyway. Emma smiled brightly at me when she handed me the box she had picked up. Quincy, the nosy little rascal he was turning out to be, came behind my shoulder as I opened the box.

“Oh my God!” I shouted.

“Damn, girl, you blew my hearing,” Quincy complained.

“You like it?” Emma asked with a smile.

Did I like it? Was this girl nuts? All the customers were staring at me like I was crazy. I pulled out the bright yellow apron that read Freya and immediately put it on. I was part of a team now. It felt good.

“So, getting a girl an apron is all it takes to get that kind of gratitude?” Emma froze in my arms since we were jumping while we hugged. I turned to see Detective Dex smiling at us.

“Well, it depends on the girl. Some girls want Cartier and Tiffany’s. Others like flowers.” I might have made a yuck face. “And some of us want to feel like part of the team. Isn’t my boss the best?”

“I’m not your boss. I don’t even pay you,” Emma grumbled. I let her grab Dex’s order while I put on the apron.

“Need help with the back?” Quincy asked, looking hopeful.

“I don’t think so, kid.”

“Now I’m officially a member of the team. I got to say, Dex, I’m a little disappointed you’re barely having your first cup of coffee. I can’t imagine Chief Timmy spends money on the good stuff.”

Dex laughed. “This is my second stop.I actually beat Dunnett on the quote of the day.”Never be afraid to speak what’s on your mind. There it was, proof I should have gone after Max and demanded answers. That damn chalkboard was like a Magic 8 Ball.

“How brave of you,” I told Dex.

“I asked about you,” he said.

Emma was handing him his coffee but froze for a second before softly saying, “You did?”

At the same time, I said, “Why?”

It was one thing for hot guy Dex to ask around about me; it was a whole different story for Detective Dex to ask about me. Not that I had any skeletons in my closet, at least not anymore, it was just one of those things where you got a little iffy about a cop snooping in your business.

I couldn’t be the only one, right?

Dex looked a little sheepish as he brought his hand to his neck and said, “I was making sure you weren’t a danger.”

“Me?” I pointed at myself. “A danger?”

“You and Rusty had your own police code,” he added dryly.

“Oh my God, I had forgotten about that!”

Emma jumped back at my sudden burst of excitement. Sure, whenever I thought of Sunny Pines, it was laced with bittersweet memories about Max and me, but then there were all the other ones where it was just Rusty and me.

Good times, good times.

“What did you find out about me? Better yet, who did you ask? Because let me say, if you asked Mrs. Mayer, thatwoman hates me. I allegedly killed her cat, and she’s had it out for me ever since.” It wasn’t my fault that her cat was black, and it was pitch black outside. Better question was why her cat was outside in a blizzard? The worst thing about ice is black ice; that shit is slippery.

“Did you kill her cat?” Quincy asked.

“Lucky may or may not be buried under the first tree up by the jogging trail.” Something had to be said about my ability to self-snitch; it wasn’t doing me any favors.

“Just like you may or may not have put gummy bears in the school ceiling our junior year,” Emma added. I turned to look back at Dex who was looking at me like I was nuts, and at Emma like she was fascinating.

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