Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Things like the cling wrap that doesn’t stick to everything and become a great big ball of plastic. Toothpicks. Two tubs of whip cream, not one. Extra storage containers, because let’s face it, my good dishes are not leaving my house with aluminum foil over them, and of course, all the different kinds of soda and wine. I don’t do the beer; Sam takes care of that.
Normally we don’t have as much shopping to do, but this year, Sam’s mother said she was out. She was tired of cooking, and even with the help she normally got from me and Hannah as well as from her daughters, she needed a break. In our defense, she didn’t let any of us actually assist her in the kitchen. It was one of those things where she complained that she had no assistance, but whenever any of us stepped into the kitchen, she said there was nothing to do. It was a losing battle. A week before Thanksgiving, she called us all over to the house for dinner on a Tuesday and informed us that someone, not her, would be making Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone still had to bring a dish—this was a family tradition—but someone needed to step up to the plate. I took off my sweater, put it on the back of my chair, and when I turned around, everyone was looking at me.
“What?”
“It’s gotta be you, Jory,” Rachel informed me. “You’re the best cook after Mom.”
Glancing around the table, there was a lot of nodding and shrugging.
“No,” Sam said with great conviction. “That’s crap. Every time Mom bows out of something, you guys just assume Jory will do it.”
“What things do I bow out of, Samuel?” Regina Kage wanted to know.
“I just mean––”
“She already said that when she drops dead, Jory gets all her cookware and the really good china that Dad’s father brought home from the war.”
“You––”
“And the hutch,” Regina chimed in. “The china has to have the hutch.”
“I’d rather you keep it all and live forever,” I told her.
“Suck-up,” Rachel barely got out with all the fake coughing.
Regina reached out and put her hand on my cheek. “I’m going to die, love, and I want you to have it. Sam’s executor anyway, so he’s in charge of divvying things up.”
“Don’t I have a say?” Thomas asked his wife.
“Oh please, you’ll be dead long before me,” she assured him.
“This took a morbid turn,” Michael told everyone, and his date—I had to be honest, I’d stopped trying to keep track of their names––just smiled awkwardly. She seemed nice; it would be interesting if I saw her at my house on Thanksgiving. At least he wasn’t living with his parents anymore. That particular nightmare had ended with his purchase of an upscale condo in the Gold Coast in a security building with a doorman. He’d invited us to a housewarming party, but there was no one we knew there, and then a guy started giving me a lot of attention and me excusing myself didn’t work. He came and stood with me in the kitchen while I loaded the dishwasher. Glasses were cluttering the counter, and it was making me nervous. The attention of a much younger man was very flattering, but it made Sam grouchy, and I knew this because when he came in to check on me, he suddenly had to adjust his ankle holster.
“Really?” I scolded him when Brad—it might have been Chad, I was barely listening—was hightailing it away from me like I had the plague.
“What?” He was petulant, and the scowl was dark.
“You know what,” I teased him, putting a hand through the thick hair I loved. Just lately there was a lot more silver and gray than chestnut brown, and I found it ridiculously attractive.
“You need a bigger ring,” he grumbled, his brows holding their furrow.
“I do not,” I assured him. My platinum band was working just fine and had been for many years.
“Then how are we heading off all the attention you get?”
I scoffed. “It hardly ever happens.”
“It happens all the time!” he assured me. Loudly.
I moved my hand to his cheek, and he gave me a frustrated grunt before he yelled over to Michael that we were leaving.
No one was louder than Sam Kage when he wanted to be, and everyone—the whole place—turned to look at him.
Michael tried really hard to smile, and Sam yanked me after him and we were out the door. In his monster SUV, I asked if he would like to stop for pie.
“Of course I wanna stop for pie,” he groused at me.
Because we were driving by Duncan and Aaron’s place downtown, Sam called to see if they wanted to have pie at his favorite diner.
“Of course we want pie,” Duncan muttered over speaker, like that was the stupidest question ever. Easy to understand why he and Sam were friends.