Page 3 of My Orc Contract Husband (Eastshore Isle #9)
Chapter Two
Sami
I heard the front door open as I was bent over at the waist, pulling my towel turban off my head. “Wine’s on the counter!” I called, although I knew my voice was muffled from the vigorous rubbing I was giving my head.
Heh. Sounds a bit naughty, doesn’t it?
But I probably only thought that because I’d been thinking of Tarkhan all evening. His forearms, in that T-shirt, his gorgeous smile, that hair that looked like something out of an Herbal Essences commercial from the nineties…
Plus, he was easier to think about than the smug courier in an expensive suit.
My brain skittered away from that encounter, even as I felt my heart begin to pound anxiously. Think of Tarkhan instead .
Yeah. Tarkhan. He was much nicer to think about…
When I came out of my room, Aunt Sharon was already pouring two glasses of red wine. “I found the opener, dear, don’t worry. You found my favorite brand!”
My smile was a little tight when I took the glass from her. “Of course I did. Lasagna demands a rich chianti, that’s what Mom always said.”
“And she was a very wise woman, I’m glad you listened to her.” My aunt’s soft smile spoke of grief mitigated by the years and memories. “Our mother preferred beer, did you know that?”
“Nana drank beer?” I pulled out the barstool at the counter, inviting her to sit, before I crossed to the oven to check on the lasagna. “I don’t remember her drinking anything more than tea.”
“Oh, she only drank at dinner. Like us!” Aunt Sharon chuckled, saluting me with the wine glass as she maneuvered herself onto the stool.
“And she’d mostly stopped as she grew older.
But one of her last meals was a sausage sandwich with a frothy beer.
” My aunt chuckled. “She knew how to live. Not like…”
Not like your mother .
I heard the words, and when Aunt Sharon winced, I shrugged and toasted her—and my mom’s memory—in acknowledgement. Propping my butt against the oven door handle, I crossed my other arm over my chest.
“Mom’s idea of living was different from…ours, I guess.” I sipped the wine, which was good—there’s a reason I bought Sharon’s favorite brand. “She wanted money, and she got it. ”
“And she knew what to do with it,” my aunt chuckled. “Do you remember that purse she had? With the diamonds?”
“Oh my God, yes !” Delighted by the memory, I pushed myself upright. “She used to let me use it!”
“ What ? With the diamonds? I remember when she showed it to me, and she said your father only let her go out with it when they were together and the bodyguards were with them!”
Nodding, I pushed aside the memory of what my father’s bodyguards were capable of, and focused instead on the joyful reminisces.
“Sometimes, when she was getting ready to go out, or if she was just in a good mood, she’d let me go into her closet and play dress up.
I loved this one pair of sparkly gold heels she had—they were impossible to walk in!
And I begged her to let me hold that purse and pose in front of her big mirrors! ”
My aunt laughed at the image, right along with me, and I tamped down on the little voice in the back of my head that whispered, She was training you to grow up and be like her.
“Oh, what a lovely memory,” Aunt Sharon announced, wiping her eyes. Over the years, we’d found comfort in sharing stories that could make us laugh—but tears were still a guarantee. “She never lost her sense of fun.”
That was the truth.
My mother and her sister had been raised in an upper-middle class family determined to do even better for them; they’d both gone to the best colleges, made the right connections, and joined the right country clubs.
My mother, as the oldest, had made her parents proud by marrying an up-and-coming real-estate investor, then standing at his side as he jumped to tycoon status.
By the time my mom died—a cancer she’d refused to acknowledge until it was too late—my father and his partner had made their millions. Her funeral had been epic…Dad threw a party for all his business associates.
I’d been in high school at the time, and the whole thing was still a blur to me. Black silk and glittering diamonds, false tears and fake hugs.
If Aunt Sharon hadn’t been there at my side, clinging to me, holding me up, I don’t think I would have made it through. It was only afterward that I realized her grief had been the only true emotion there. That realization had been the start of my quiet rebellion.
Sharon’s family might have thought her choice of careers was only a step above poverty, but that was when I began to realize that the compassion it took to be a social worker was worth more than my father’s millions.
“Dear, what does your shirt say?”
My aunt’s question jerked me from my reverie, and I glanced down at myself. “What?”
“Your shirt. I’ve been staring at your boobs, trying to figure it out. Don’t judge me.”
I snorted and crossed my arms over the acronym blazoned across my comfy T-shirt.
“I’m not judging you.”
“Then I won’t judge you for not wearing a bra. What does it mean? ”
I was definitely blushing now. “It’s just a bookish thing, Aunt Sharon, don’t worry about it.”
“Well, now I’m definitely curious. You only go that pink when we’re talking about something naughty. S-T-F-U-A-T-T-D…what’s next? Move your arm. Stufu-atted? ”
“ God ,” I groaned, mortified, and whirled about, plunking my glass on the counter and reaching for the fridge. “I’m never wearing this again.”
“I’m just saying, clearly you chose the shirt for a reason?—”
“I got it at a romance convention, Aunt Sharon! I’m never wearing it in front of you again!” I yelled from inside the fridge, hoping the cool air would hide my blush.
“Ah, so it is naughty. Stufuat? Stufuatted?”
Hearing my aunt try to sound out STFUATTDLAGG was enough to chase away any erotic imaginings I might have been having about Tarkhan earlier.
When I backed out of the refrigerator holding the cheese platter I’d made up earlier, my aunt was chuckling, and I frowned at her. “You did that on purpose.”
“Of course I did. Put it here.” She tapped the counter in front of her with a bright pink fingernail. “You were looking maudlin. Oooh , brie!”
Seeing her attack the cheese plate made me smile, and I settled in beside her. “The lasagna has another twenty-seven minutes, so have at it. Can’t have you starving.”
“Or becoming drunk!” Aunt Sharon waved her wineglass. “We need something in our stomachs. Eat up. ”
Well, I wasn’t going to turn down brie. “Did you see Riven’s text?” I asked, spreading a cracker with the creamy cheese. “I got it after my shower.”
“I heard my phone ding, but I didn’t read it. You know it’s a miracle I even know where the damn thing is.”
I knew my cousin forced her mother to keep her phone on max volume, and even then, Aunt Sharon barely remembered to check her phone. So I wasn’t surprised.
“The closer called out, so she picked up that shift. She said she doubted she’d make it before you went home, but I should send some lasagna home for her.”
“Well, poop.” Sharon frowned briefly. “Forgive my harsh language, but it’s been a while since I had my girls together.”
Riven was picking up more shifts lately, and we both knew why.
Sighing, I began to spread another cracker. “How’s she doing? I haven’t been able to hang out with her that much.”
“Because she’s always working. The Waterfront is nice, and I’m so glad she was able to find a kitchen job here on the island, honestly, I am. I know Eastshore isn’t anything like the big city, and the fact she was able to find work at all…”
“Yeah, but there are no benefits.” That’s what got her into this mess in the first place.
“And the pay is nothing like she’s used to.”
I held out the finished cracker. “The debt?— ”
“Is more than she’s ever going to be able to pay.” Aunt Sharon snatched it from me and popped it in her mouth. “And she won’t accept my help,” she said around the mouthful.
Sighing in frustration and commiseration with her, I played with the stem of my wineglass. “Would she take money from me ?”
My aunt made a noise between a growl and a snort, shaking her head.
“I know she’s stubborn—she gets that from you,” I teased. “But wouldn’t it be better to be in debt to me than to the hospital?”
Two years ago, my cousin—a popular and successful private chef—had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Since our family has such a history, we were all anal about mammograms, and Riven’s was caught early, thank God.
But without health insurance, the cost of her treatments—lumpectomy, reconstruction, radiation—was astronomical.
She’d moved to Eastshore to live with her mother to save money during her treatments, but she wasn’t ever going to make enough to pay off the debt. Not working as a junior chef at the Waterfront.
“It wouldn’t be debt to you, Sami, and you and Riven both know it.” My aunt shook her head as she brie’d another cracker. “You’d just give her the money, and Riven doesn’t want that.”
“Well, I don’t want her living in hell if I have the means to stop it. ”
Sharon sent me a mock glare. “Hell? You think it’s hell to have to live with me ? A safe place, a roof over her head?—”
I couldn’t hold a straight face anymore and began to giggle. “Oh yeah? How often does Brooke come to visit you?”
At the mention of her older daughter, who lived on the West Coast, Aunt Sharon rolled her eyes. “I don’t think even she would call living with me hell , you ungrateful niece.”
Still grinning unrepentantly, I pinged my glass against hers, where it sat at her elbow. “Brooke is just busy with her job. She visits when she’s able.”
“And one day, she’s going to move to Eastshore. Mark my words.” Sharon wiggled her finger at me. “Between the three of us, we’ll figure out a way to get Riven out of this debt.”
“She could just take money from me.”