A California Christmas (Silver Springs #7) - Brenda Novak Page 0,76

start the tacos she’d just served for dinner, and it had worked beautifully. No one had questioned her absence.

Now they’d all eaten, but the boys were still hanging around the kitchen table, talking and laughing while she cleaned up. “I’ll tell you later,” she mouthed so she wouldn’t draw their attention.

“They’re caught up in their own conversation,” Cal said. “Just tell me if he’s leaving.”

She nodded.

“That’s a relief. How much did it cost you?”

“A thousand dollars.”

His scraggy eyebrows shot up to indicate he was shocked by the amount.

“I know it’s a lot, but I needed some reassurance that he wouldn’t come back until January. This is really important to me. Now he will have no excuse.”

“Mom, where’s Emery tonight?” Bentley asked, breaking into their conversation.

Cal opened the cupboard closest to the sink and got out a toothpick as though that had been his purpose in going over near Aiyana in the first place.

“Still at work, I guess,” she said as she glanced back at her son.

He didn’t seem convinced. “It’s nearly nine o’clock. I don’t think the cookie store stays open that late on a Sunday. Not in the winter.”

She added more hot water to the suds in the sink. “Then I don’t know.”

“Do you know, Dallas?” Bentley asked.

Dallas glanced up from his phone. “Haven’t talked to her.”

“That’s bull,” he cried. “Who have you been texting if not Emery?” He tried to grab Dallas’s phone out of his hand, but Dallas snatched it away.

“No one,” he said with a scowl designed, no doubt, to warn his brother off.

“It has to be a woman,” Bentley insisted. “Or you wouldn’t have freaked out a minute ago when Liam wanted to use your phone so he could download that game he’s been telling you about.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Dallas said, but he didn’t sound very convincing, even to Aiyana.

She told the two younger boys that it was time to go up and do their homework—she knew they both had plenty of studying to do with finals this week—and waited until they were gone to ask Dallas, “Is Emery okay?”

He grinned. “I never could hide anything from you.”

She hoped the reverse wasn’t true. Now that she’d done what she’d done, it would be even worse for Dallas to find out about Robert. He might get angry that she’d talked to his father on her own instead of giving him a chance to decide for himself, angry that she’d spend so much to get rid of him for only three weeks or just angry that his father was out of prison despite what Robert had done. “When is she coming home?”

“She’s on her way. But she won’t be staying. We’re going out to look at the lights.”

“The Christmas lights?” she asked in surprise.

He looked confused. “We wouldn’t be going out to look at the traffic lights.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “I’ve just never known you to pay much attention to holiday decorations.”

“I like them as much as most other guys,” he said, but she knew what he liked was Emery.

“Sure you do,” she said, and she and Cal started laughing.

* * *

As soon as Dallas saw Emery’s headlights, he went outside to meet her. He didn’t want her to come in. Then his brothers would hear her and realize she was home—and that she was going back out with him.

“Where have you been?” he asked when she turned off her engine and opened her car door. He was curious since she was so reluctant to go out in public.

“On a date, apparently.”

He hadn’t expected that response. She’d been out with someone else? There was nothing official between them, but it felt like someone had punched him in the gut. “With who?”

“Cain Brennan. Do you know him?”

He struggled not to reveal the jealousy that was burning through his veins, but his jaw suddenly felt too stiff to move properly. “Never heard of him.”

“He went to my high school.”

“So his parents are rich?”

“His mother owns a window covering business that’s been around for years and years. I think she’s somewhat of a busybody in town—at least that was the impression he gave me. His father’s a dentist and does quite well.”

They sounded like an ordinary family—the type of family he’d always envied, since his had been so screwed up. “How’d this...date come about? Did he hear you were in town and call you, or—”

“He came into the cookie store earlier. It was just supposed to be dinner with an old friend, but he sort of