Page 53 of All's Fair in Love and Blackmail

“This week is great,” he says easily.

“Perfect. I’ll—” I’m distracted, though, when I hear the door from the garage open. I roll my eyes.

“It took you long enough,” I call to Juliet. “I have the oven heating and the dishes we’ll need.” Then I grab the glass pan I set out. “Is this a cake pan?”

Juliet doesn’t answer, but I hear her slow footsteps crossing the laundry room.

“Hang on, Felicia,” I say into the phone. “Juliet! Come—” But I break off when a head peeks into the kitchen, followed by a torso.

It’s not Juliet. It’s not even a woman. It’s aman—someone I’ve never seen before in my life. He’s wearing all black from what I can see—black shirt, black baseball cap turned backward, glasses with black square frames—and an intense frown as his eyes land on me.

The pit of my stomach opens up as my heart plummets straight down; I back away automatically, stopping only when I run into the counter. My fingers curl more tightly around the heavy cake pan as the man steps further into the room, revealing a worn pair of jeans.

Crap. There is a strange man dressed in black in my parents’ house—and he’shuge.Taller than Cy, taller than Felix even, and he’s glaring at me, moving closer?—

I scream.

I am not an alarmist. I am not a panicker. But right now, I scream. It escapes about the time I see him reaching for the knife block; my phone tumbles from my hand and clatters loudly on the floor. I shriek again when, from behind me, another scream sounds, followed by the sound of many things hitting the ground at once. I whirl around to find Juliet, her eyes wide, our baking supplies at her feet—a whisk, a sandwich bag of now-broken eggs, and a bag of flour that has split and sent a poof of white dust into the air.

And look. Of the four Marigold siblings, some of us are better at handling crises than others. Juliet is our precious (twenty-four-year-old) baby and we love her, but she should not be allowed to make critical decisions in an emergency.

Unfortunately, we haven’t yet found a way to stop her.

She screams again, but this time it’s more of a war cry that clearly alarms the intruder—his brows twist as his hand is halfway to the knives. Time stops as Juliet then does exactly what I’m praying she won’t do: she rushes at the man, empty handed, half his size, and completely devoid of martial arts skills.

She charges at him.

Only she trips over all the baking supplies that are now scattered on the floor, so down, down, down Juliet goes, landing in the flour, and I don’t have time to see if she’s okay, because my fight-or-flight is blaring at me?—

So I do the only thing I can think of. I rush forward, raise the cake pan as high as I can, and smash it into the side of the intruder’s head.

He blinks, stunned, and then falls to the floor with an almighty crash and a jingle-jangle as something falls from his hands.

Things go from bad to worse very, very quickly.

“Who is that?” Juliet says as she scrambles to her feet, her eyes wide, her voice high-pitched and panicky. “India—whoisthat? Did we kill him?!”

Something sick and swooping explodes in my chest. Did Ikillhim?

“He isn’t dead,” I say as I look at the guy sprawled in the middle of my parents’ kitchen—please don’t be dead. Even if you’re a robber, please don’t be dead.Panic of my own is slithering up my throat, and my heart is trying to crack my ribs.

A sob erupts from Juliet, and I look at her just in time to see tears streaming from her animal-wild eyes, her phone to her ear.

“No!” I shout, reaching toward her. “Juliet, don’t?—”

But it’s too late. She’s already speaking into the phone around her great, shuddering sobs. “Ror—hurry”—she gasps for breath as the flour begins to settle—“I think we killed a guy?—”

“He’s not dead!” I say loudly as an odd roaring sounds in my ears, or maybe it’s all in my head. I nudge the man with my foot, but he doesn’t stir. “He’s just unconscious.”

I’m bluffing. I have no idea if he’s unconscious. But I cannot believe I have the power to kill someone with a glass pan. I simplywill notbelieve something so ridiculous.

And then another, more horrible idea occurs to me:What if he’s a new tenant?

“Oh, no,” I say. “Oh no, oh no, oh no—” I whirl on Juliet. “What if he’s a tenant?”

“Did we kill the tenant?” Juliet says through her tears, and her phone falls to the floor as her hands begin to shake even worse.

This is bad. This is so, so bad.

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