it the slowest shake as he said, in the deepest voice I’d probably ever heard other than on those insurance commercials, “CJ.”
CJ, right. “Is Zac here?”
“He’s upstairs.”
My phone pinged at that exact moment, and I looked down to see it was a message.
512-555-0199: Gimme 5. Sorry.
I showed him the screen—regretting for a second that I hadn’t saved his phone number and more than likely wasn’t going to—when I glanced back up at him and found him still looking at me funny. “He said he’ll be done in five minutes. Can I wait for him inside? Mosquitoes really like me.”
CJ nodded, his expression still careful and almost wary, but he stepped aside.
I went in, taking in how clean the place was, and waited for who I was pretty sure was a football player too to head back into the main part of the house before I followed after him, taking everything in now that I wasn’t looking through a mass of people for Zac to give him bad news.
Sure enough, the house was just as bare as I remembered.
There was only the most basic of furniture. Nothing on the walls. It was all so… vanilla. And so unlike Zac and his hoarder ways from what I could remember. His car had been a mess. Then again, this was probably just a rental he was sharing during the off-season, so why would it have personal touches in it?
Maybe one day I’d ask Boogie about the situation.
I was going to do this right. I was a—mostly—grown woman, and I could handle this… friendship. I knew what I was getting myself into. He had asked me questions. He had been happy to see me. I was ready and willing to be the kind of friend to him that I was to everyone else, for however long he was around.
Well, to an extent.
The past had happened, and it was where it belonged: back in the day. You live and you learn, and all that jazz. Once I was done here, I was going to go home and live my best life.
Like I had been.
One fortifying breath later, I clutched the bag in my hand when we got to the very white kitchen. I didn’t hesitate before asking the man I’d briefly met weeks ago, “CJ, would you like a scone?”
The man paused in the process of settling onto a stool that had already been pulled out around the kitchen island, and I didn’t miss the way his eyes flicked down to the canvas bag in my hand.
I held it up a little higher. “I promise they aren’t drugged, and they have blueberries in them. Coconut oil too. They’re mini-sized.” This wasn’t my first rodeo with skepticism. My nephew had acted like I’d been trying to feed him arsenic the one time I offered him scones with rosemary in them… and he’d ended up eating four once he gave them a chance and stopped gagging before he’d put anything into his mouth. He never doubted me again after that.
Yep, CJ’s gaze still narrowed anyway.
So I kept going. “I give them out to my coworkers, but I forgot, and by the time I remembered….” My favorite coworkers were already gone, and I hadn’t felt like sharing anymore, mostly because I didn’t want Gunner to have any, so everyone was going to miss out. But I stopped talking because this CJ guy didn’t need to hear all that.
He narrowed his eyes even more, and I made mine go even wider to keep from smiling. Jesus, he was making me work for it. All right.
Well, luckily, I was a chicken, but I wasn’t a quitter. The scones were good. They only had six ingredients and took about ten minutes to make, which were two of my most important requirements for recipes I attempted. And it was one I’d nailed years ago and had just tweaked a little more so they were even better than the original version. The blueberry scones were going in the book I wanted to publish one day in the near future, AKA plan C. “They’re mini scones. Almost cookies. Scookies, I guess. I’ll eat one if you—”
The way the man’s very handsome head reared back, with his eyes going wide, was what shut me up.
Then his next words kept me silent.
He snapped his fingers. “I know why you look familiar,” CJ said, his gaze sharpened.
Uh… “We met a few weeks ago for like a second,” I reminded him. It wouldn’t be the first time someone