Page 37 of Red Flags Only

I glare. “No.”

“Okay. Have a tee-utiful day!”

Lyra grabs my hand, pulling me out of the office before I can tell him where I’d like to shove his tee-utiful day.

“Jove,” she grumbles when we reach the sidewalk outside. “You can’t talk to service workers like that.”

I scowl. “Why?”

“Because it’s rude?” she suggests.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I ask.

Sigh. Big, big sigh. “It’s got to do with human decency,” she says. “With being kind to people who are just trying to do their jobs. With having the self-control to not take out our anger on the undeserving.”

“I never take out my anger on the undeserving,” I counter. “That kid sucks.”

“Because he didn’t produce flags from some magical back room for our mini-golf?” Incredulity laces her voice.

“No, because six months ago he and his group of friends keyed Mars’ bike at the grocery store. Mars was devastated. We needed to get it repainted and they couldn’t color match in town so we had to special order the paintonline, then Mars had to clean, sand, and repaint it himself. It took ages for the paint to come in, then ages for him to go through the whole process. Meanwhile, he couldn’t ride his bike. He was angry and sad, and it could’ve all been avoided if that little twerp hadn’t acted like a little twerp.”

She blinks, so adorable, then replies, “I think he drives that black pickup truck parked out back.”

“I’m not messing with a minor’s car,” I reply, heart warming at her quick defense of my brother. “I will, however, be as rude as I like to his stupid, idiot face.”

“As you should,” she declares, glaring through the office’s glass door.

A flick of my eyes shows the boy sitting at the desk on his phone, popping a gum bubble, not a care in the world. “He turns 18 in July,” I tell Lyra. “Four months. We can figure out our revenge then.”

“Oh,” she peeps. “If the revenge is anything more than keying his car back, count me out.”

I sniff. “An equal reaction does not a lesson teach,” I say. “In my experience.”

“Is that why you totalled Chrissy’s grandpa’s truck? He did something small, so you did something bigger?”

Chrissy’s grandfather did not do something small. Chrissy’s grandfather believed his moron of a granddaughter when she said it was Lyra’s fault that he never got any visits from his beloved descendant, so he went to the town’s social page online and called Lyra a slew of nasty, horrific curse words not even one of the mafia men in my books would repeat. Lyra isn’t online outside of her business pages, so she didn’t see it before it got taken down, but I did.

Chrissy’s grandfather is not done receiving revenge.

Neither is Chrissy, for that matter.

“Something like that,” I hedge, not wanting to upsetLyra with further proof that her ex-best friend is The Worst Person on Earth.

She frowns, bottom lip sticking out just enough to make it tip more toward cutesy than the disapproving she’s going for.

“I think mini-golf is a bust,” I say, absolutely not blatantly changing the subject or anything. “Dinner?”

She squints, letting me know she does not find me slick. “Dinner,” she agrees after a moment.

Not slick, but excused. I’ll take it.

We walk two storefronts over to Sweet & Salty, a tiny offshoot of a café duo in the city in Indiana where Brian Single lives. He blew into town one summer talking about “the best café in America!” By the end of the season he’d somehow finagled a tiny version of the place into existence in Bandera. The townies loved it so much it stuck.

Much as I hate to admit anything positive about Brian, he was right about this place. It’s the best café I’ve ever been to, and when it was on the verge of shutting down because the building owner developed cancer and couldn’t afford the building upkeep on top of his medical bills, I funneled my own funds into the efforts to keep it going – the café and Mr. Harrold, the owner. A quarter of a million dollars, anonymously given.

I earned it back within a few book launches, unfortunately.

The bell rings above our heads as we enter, and we’re immediately blasted with the warm, homey scent of apple tarts and blueberry scones.

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