Page 22 of Sprite Wedding
He meowed and ensured I entered the kitchen.
I bent down and pet him. “You’re also a spoiled kitty, aren’t you? Nobody gets coffee or food until you have your breakfast.”
Shadow meowed and continued to brush back and forth against my leg. It was difficult to even make my way to open a can of cat food and dish it out onto the plate with him all but attached to my leg.
“There you go.” I put the plate down and refreshed his water.
After his needs were seen to, I brewed coffee. Once I filled a mug with classic rock albums printed on it, I brought it over to Zoe and gave her a sheepish glance. We hadn’t talked about my horrid romantic gesture, and I wasn’t even sure how to bring it up.
In uncomfortable situations like this, my instant defense was humor with a bad joke. I couldn’t think of anything else. Cracking a one-sided grin, I said, “I think I win the award for worst proposal in the universe.”
Zoe shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I know it wasn’t real.”
She wasn’t mad, which was good, but something about her not believing it got under my skin.
I brushed it off. “Yeah, it must be all the wedding vibes around here. After all, Nova and Diego kicked it off, and then we just returned from Sebastian and Gianna’s destination wedding.”
She slanted her head and stared at me with a questioning expression. “You didn’t mean it, right?”
Not like that. When I proposed, I would have liked to have had a ring worthy enough to present to her. Not to do so half naked without a ring and in front of an audience who’d been screaming at me to take off my clothes.
“Last night was a mess,” I replied, avoiding a direct answer. “Hopefully, we can forget it ever happened, and we can move on.”
When I proposed to her, it would be impressive. I’d have the ring and the romance. Now that it was in my head, I wanted to do it sooner rather than later.
Too bad I’d killed the vibe with such an awful attempt.
“First, we need to figure out what’s going on,” Zoe replied. “We must know if someone is messing with you and why. Or if there’s some other explanation.”
I exhaled with a huff. “I’d blame the sprites, but that only fits for the first episode. It’s days and miles later. It doesn’t make sense for them to be involved in what happened last night.”
“Right,” she agreed and brought her fingertips together.
I dashed over to a window and glanced back to make sure Diego wasn’t around before I pushed the heavy curtain aside. “I just thought of something. Something weird happened in the garden yesterday.”
“What?” Zoe leaned forward.
I’d felt strange and taken a nap. Wait, what was strange in that?
“Never mind. It was nothing. While digging, I got dirt in my eye, that was all.” I released a nervous laugh. “Look at me sounding paranoid over my own clumsiness!”
CHAPTER6
ZOE
When I went into the Network that morning, I stopped by Cassandra’s office. She was cutting and measuring herbs.
“Cassandra, do you have a minute?”
She glanced up at me. “Sure, come on in.” She put the herbs down.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Anytime.”
“Remember that incident with Lucas acting out of character on the cruise?”
She tipped her head. “Yes.”
