“Agreed. It almost sounds like she’s controlling her brother. But she’s married, so that complicates things. She probably changed her name.”
“It’s a thing in that family. We know Adam/Seth/Lloyd does it too.”
Tina nodded and sipped her water. “When she said ‘my daughter blames me for everything,’ I wondered if she was referring to leaving the island. If the kids were happy there, but were forced to leave, they could blame her.”
He’d been thinking along the same lines. “Did you notice that she never mentioned a partner at all? She used the pronoun ‘we’ once, but never said ‘my ex’ or ‘their father.’”
“Good catch,” she said approvingly, lifting her water glass to clink it against his. “And yes, of course I noticed that.”
“Damn. Just when I thought I had something.”
She chuckled at that. “Listen, the way you handled Kate, that was well done. I went in thinking I was going to chat her up about unsympathetic bosses, but you took the baton and ran with it. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut. Not easy, mind you.”
That sassy smile…so sexy.
“I felt bad for her. It’s hard to see someone suffering so much.”
“Are you…” She tilted her head at him, black hair falling across her cheek. For her role as his assistant, she’d taken her hair out its usual knot at the back of her neck. It hung mostly loose to her shoulders, with a clip holding the front section away from her face. That hair style showed off her round cheeks and made her look much younger, which was no doubt her intent. “How much of what you said about your mother is true?”
“Are you implying I lied?” He lifted one eyebrow.
“Of course not, but maybe…embellished? Exaggerated?”
“Relax. It was all true, but it was about my aunt, not my mother.”
She glared at him, but her cute temporary hairstyle took the sting out of it. He didn’t feel bad for teasing her. She could take it. It was good to see her let her cop guard down once in a while.
“My aunt’s a handful, and you could say we’re estranged. She was a jerk to Jessie when everything started coming out. But she does love crafting. I figured that I’d have a better chance of making a connection with Kate by talking about my mother.”
“Who doesn’t like crafting.”
“My mom cut herself on a crochet needle once, which really shouldn’t even be possible. She’s no crafter.”
Their burgers arrived on large plates loaded with an insane amount of fries alongside the burgers. He’d forgotten to tell the waiter to skip the fries, but when he saw Tina eyeing them greedily, he was glad for it.
“Help yourself,” he offered. “I don’t eat fried things.”
“Is that a Hollywood thing? Are you on some kind of paleo-keto-raw food diet?”
“No. I’m allergic to the oil most places use in their deep fryers. Got out of the habit.”
She gazed at him with such utter sympathy that he almost laughed. “I would die. I might even mean that literally. French fries have been my favorite food ever since my family’s first drive-through experience. Which I had to beg them to do, by the way. They didn’t approve.”
“Approve of what? Drive-throughs?”
“Too American. My father always wanted to hang on to his Chinese-ness. He believed it was important because too many people in this country would always see us that way anyway.”
“China has fast food drive-throughs, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but they didn’t when my father lived there. To him, they will always be American.” She dove into her pile of fries with a ferocity that fascinated him. Everything about Tina was fascinating to him. It was something about the intensity and energy she brought to everything, even French fries.
“Have you been to China?”
“Twice, to see family, when I was younger. I don’t have a lot of spare time to travel nowadays. Okay, enough chitchat. We’ve established that you’re allergic to deep fryers and I’m betraying my culture with my fry obsession. Moving on. Let’s check out the shots I got.”
She plucked her phone from the pocket of her hoodie, an item of clothing he’d never seen her wear before her cameo as his assistant. “I didn’t want to pause and make her suspicious when I invaded her bathroom. I randomly clicked while I passed a corkboard with photos pinned to it. Let’s see what I got.”
She positioned the phone so they could both look while she flipped through the photos. Only one was clear enough to make anything out—a photo of a cork board. They studied that one, with Tina enlarging it with her fingers so they could look at each item on the board individually.
