know your way around the kitchen,” she said in surprise.
“Absolutely,” he said. “When you like good food, and you’re always traveling, you learn to make it yourself or do without. In my case, I always wanted good food. We had a lot of places where we could have restaurant food, but there were other times when we weren’t allowed to be seen, and we had to look after our own food.”
“Sounds like good skills to have,” she said.
Chapter 12
Jessica realized Greyson was staring out the windows very intently.
“Are you expecting him to be here?” she asked, nervously fingering the neck of her T-shirt.
He looked at her in surprise and shook his head. “I’m not expecting anything,” he said. “The fact of the matter was that Kona was disturbed in the parking lot, but I didn’t see anything. That’s why I was taking the photos. I want to study them on the laptop, where I can make them bigger, so I can see faces in the background.”
“That’s what I thought you were doing,” she said.
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “I haven’t seen any photos of George yet. Do you have one?”
She looked at him in surprise and then said, “Yeah, I’ll go get my laptop. I should have some on that.”
“You want me to come up with you?”
She stared at the stairway, and, with a flick of her hair, she said, “No. I need to do this.”
He nodded and watched, and as soon as she hit the third step, Kona was right at her side. She chuckled, leaned down a hand, and gently scratched Kona behind the ear. “You, I will take though,” and the two of them ran lightly upstairs. She went up to her bedroom, used the bathroom real quick, then washed up, snatched her laptop off the bed, and headed downstairs again. She showed him a picture of George. “This is from about three years ago now.”
Greyson memorized that face, so he would recognize George if he ever saw him.
Jessica quickly shut down the photo album on her laptop.
“Glad to see there was no problem upstairs,” he said.
“I half expected you to do a sweep of the house when we got back,” she joked.
“I set all kinds of traps,” he said, “ones that you wouldn’t have seen, but I checked the main floor and none of them had been disturbed.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What kind of traps?”
“Just things that would tell me if somebody had come into the house.”
She didn’t really want to know, but, at the same time, she did. “And there was nobody?”
“Nobody.” He walked over to the counter and started prepping the potatoes. “Do you mind if I roast them?”
“You do whatever you like,” she said with a laugh. “It’s a novelty to have anybody cook for me,” she said. “So I’m happy to eat whatever you prepare.”
He started whistling in a low tone, searching cupboards to find the pans he wanted, then filling a roasting pan full of the sausages and a mix of veggies all the way around. When he had it full, he stopped, then looked at her. “What about Danny? Will he eat any of this?”
“He’ll eat some of it, yes,” she said, “and we’ll cut up some sausages for him.”
He nodded, turned on the oven, and put the pan inside.
“How long will that take to cook?” she asked curiously. “I don’t normally roast my vegetables.”
“I love roasted vegetables,” he said. “There’s nothing quite so sweet as vegetables cooked this way. I cut the potatoes in big chunks, so they’ll need maybe an hour, since the sausages are fairly big too.”
She nodded, and, with Danny now sitting on the kitchen floor, wanting to be with them too, the little boy was happiest with Kona beside him. She helped put away the rest of the groceries and cleaned up Greyson’s food prep. As soon as that was all done, she said, “I think I’d like a cup of tea and then may go collapse on my bed again for a power nap,” she said with a half laugh.
“Will you sleep?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, not likely.”
“Because, if you can, just let me know,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’d much rather hold off and get an early bedtime and sleep through the night.”
“Understood,” he said. He pulled out his phone, and she watched while he seemed to send a bunch of messages.
“Anybody have any updates?”
“I checked before we left,” he said, “and there was no news