Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,8

at the avocadoes, and looked away again. She didn’t need to be buying any avocadoes, fat-wise or money-wise. She didn’t need to be making beef stroganoff, for that matter, but her grandpa liked it, and she might be feeling a little bit guilty about even entertaining the Mary Tyler Moore idea. He knew about it, too, thanks to Blake’s decision to barge in and mention his plan before he’d even talked to Jennifer about it. It wasn’t like she was going to be able to put off the discussion.

She just wished her mom were still here.

Always.

Was it wrong to miss your mom so much, when she’d been struggling so long and had only been hanging on for the three of you? When you were thirty-four, with a grown child of your own?

It was just that without her, without that person who’d loved you always and would love you forever, you felt so alone. Your buffer against the world, your safe place … it was gone.

It wasn’t true. She still had her grandpa. She still had Dyma. Blake was going to help her get a new job. She was doing great. Lots of people were worse off.

She added some broccoli to the cart. Dyma had been making noises about becoming a vegetarian lately. Hopefully she’d wait until she started college for that. Broccoli was cheap in February, though. Good for you, too. Nutritious and low-calorie. It had that bristly thing going on, and all those little sandy particles, but never mind.

What kind of restaurant did the Snow Lodge at Yellowstone have? Didn’t matter. A free restaurant, that was what. Maybe she should feel guilty about allowing Blake to send her off on this obviously trumped-up vacation, but she couldn’t. She was good at her job, she’d worked hard for him, and anyway, Blake was a grown man who did what he wanted. If he wanted to send her off to look at wild animals for a couple days, who was she to object? She’d be broke again soon enough, especially with Dyma’s housing to pay for—another stab of pure fear at that one—unless she took him up on the Portland idea.

Which was impossible. It was crazy. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t even know anybody in Portland, and Portland rent was insane. She’d read about it. She didn’t even have a four-year college degree. Who was going to hire her for some Mary Tyler Moore job, whatever Blake said?

“Hey,” Stacey Bathurst said, and Jennifer jumped. She’d barely noticed she was at the checkstand, and had been loading groceries onto the belt by rote.

“Hey,” she said back. “How’s it going? How’s Isaac doing with his last semester?”

Stacey sighed and kept scanning groceries. “I keep telling him, you can still screw this thing up, buddy, and the U of I can tell you they don’t want some party kid, and they’re sure as heck not going to give you any money, and you’re going to be right back here working for nine bucks an hour, but he’s not listening. I know we were seniors ourselves once and exactly that stupid, but I can’t remember why. How about Dyma?”

“Not too bad,” Jennifer said. “So far, anyway. She wants out of here so bad she can taste it, though, so that helps. Also, you can’t work for NASA or whoever without a whole lot of school, and nobody else but U-Dub is offering realistic money, so that helps.”

She felt, as usual, about sixty-five years old. She was a good fifteen years younger than Stacey, and, no, she hadn’t been stupid when she was a senior. She’d been stupid before then, but as a senior? She’d been running home right after school so her mom could get to her swing-shift job. Starting dinner before her grandpa got home from the day shift, and taking care of the world’s most stubborn toddler, a child to whom the words, “Wait a minute” meant, “Let’s have a tantrum.” Trying to get her homework finished in between, and sneaking in half an hour to do some last-minute studying for the SAT.

“SAT prep should be a high-octane, full-on affair.” She’d read that on a test prep site. She’d laughed.

She’d gotten a scholarship too, though. She just hadn’t been able to make it work.

“So what’s new with Blake? What does the house look like? Do you have pictures? What did Dakota seem like, coming back from the honeymoon? On a yacht. In Hawaii. Can you even imagine?” Stacey asked, and the kid