Her sister didn’t look convinced. The way she nervously bit her bottom lip was her telltale sign. Ashanti knew there were no words she could say right now that would assuage Kendra’s hurt and anxiety, but her sister would eventually get past this.
“Thank you for finally opening up to me about this. You can always come to me, Kendra. You know that, right?”
She nodded. “I know.” She pressed a kiss to Duchess’s head, then hefted her up and held her out to Ashanti. “Now here, take your dog.”
31
Thad tilted his head back and let the warm water cascade down his face and shoulders. Gone were the days of three-minute showers. After the hours he’d put in at the Bywater house today, and the dust and grime that stuck to him like a second skin, he needed a minimum of ten minutes under this spray.
He finally got out and changed into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Puddin’ was waiting at the bathroom door, his way of telling Thad that it was time to feed him his damn dinner.
“I’m coming,” he told the dog, who took off for the kitchen.
He fixed Puddin’s food, then made himself a sandwich and grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry. He ate both perched against the kitchen counter, washing it all down with a bottle of beer from a microbrewery in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Switch the poodle out for a boxer or a Great Dane, and he would be the epitome of the bachelor cliché.
That had never bothered him before. But after several days of only seeing Ashanti when he picked Puddin’ up in the evenings—and sometimes not even then if she was busy in the back with other dogs—Thad was more than ready to turn in his bachelor card.
If she would have allowed it, he would have been at her house waiting for her every single night this week, but he understood her need to stick with a slow approach. She was raising teenagers. He got it. He didn’t like it, but he got it.
Thad finished off his beer and snapped a picture of the label before tossing it. He wouldn’t mind serving this one at The PX. He grabbed a Little Debbie Fudge Round from the pantry and went over to his computer. Von had emailed a revised bid from another contractor. Time was moving at lightning speed; if they didn’t find someone who could provide an enormous crew soon they could forget opening on Veterans Day.
It wouldn’t be the most devastating thing in the world to have to push back their opening date, but he had imagined a Veterans Day celebration filled with a crowd of former military friends from the moment he came up with the concept of The PX. Thad was ready to do all he could to make that part of his dream happen, even if it meant paying a contractor to do more than just the electrical and plumbing.
One thing he could count on was the crowd. He knew the support would be there based on the way their new social media platforms had blown up in the days since he’d come back from New York. His biggest problem now was that Von was as concerned with filming content as he was with getting the damn bar built.
Thad opened his email and immediately closed his eyes.
Shit.
Another one from the woman in Alabama was waiting in his inbox. Thad had hoped she’d given up, but it was obvious she wouldn’t stop until she got money out of her newfound family. She had yet to make her pitch, but he knew it was coming.
He opened the email and scanned it.
“Wait. What?”
Thad frowned, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward and read the email more closely. He sat back in his chair, thesandwich he’d just eaten suddenly feeling like lead in the pit of his stomach.
“What the fuck,” he whispered, dragging his hands from the back of his head and down his face, finally resting his fingers against his lips as he stared at the photo the woman had attached to the email. It looked as if he were staring at his own mother.
But it wasn’t his mother. According to her email, this washermother, who was one of three children her grandmother shared with her grandfather.
Hisgrandfather.
This couldn’t be real. That picture had to be the result of some kind of artificial intelligence bullshit.
But where would the scammer have gotten a picture of his mother to feed into an AI generator? The way his mom escaped the camera was a running joke in his family. She was always the one taking pictures, never in them. And she detested social media.
It was starting to seem less likely that this woman would go through so much trouble to scam his family, especially when she had yet to ask for money.
But if this wasn’t about money…
Thad swallowed hard, trying to push down the knot of anger that instantly clogged his throat.
All those long trips. Dry cleaning conventions. Sales meetings.
Bullshit.
