Beryl gave his arm a squeeze. “Okay. I’ll let you know if I can’t handle Deputy Brody. But I’m pretty sure he gets the picture now.”
“Good.”
Diesel was about to tell her why he was in the Supernova Supermarket when she asked, “What do you know about Jake Jones?”
Beryl looked ready to hang on every word he said.
“Not too much. He’s been in Alienn for about six months as the new owner of Dark Matter Metal & Leather. I haven’t been in his store, but I hear good things about it from others who have.”
“What about his recent hospital stay? What do you know about that?” Her serious, focused expression hadn’t dimmed.
“Well, I visited him in the hospital after he woke up because Cam was on leave with Ria and the baby.” He’d never seen his security-minded brother so proud of anything than when his first child had been born. Cam’s baby would never spend a day in jeopardy if Cam had anything to do with it. And he did.
Beryl nodded. “Do you know what happened to him?”
Diesel shrugged. “No idea. Jake can’t remember what happened. Until he does, I’m afraid it’s a mystery. Did you know him before his accident?”
She shook her head. “No. I only met him today.” Jake pushed his grocery cart out of one aisle and turned down the next one. Beryl’s eyes followed his every move as he shopped. Diesel thought her perusal reminded him of when he’d fallen in love with his wife, Juliana. He’d been unable to keep his eyes off her.
Good for Beryl. She deserved to find love again.
Diesel was glad she’d found someone she liked. He well knew she’d been through the wringer in the romance department. Diesel and several members of his branch of the family had been at her wedding on Alpha-Prime.
Well, the wedding that almost was, anyway.
He couldn’t imagine being left at the altar like she had been. It had been cruel.
Diesel could still see Beryl’s confused and forlorn expression when her groom-to-be watched her almost make it to the end of the aisle on her father’s arm before he shouted, “I can’t do this!” and ran out the side door of the church.
The last Diesel had heard, Beryl’s former groom-to-be married some rich Technician’s daughter less than a month later.
As with many couples on Alpha-Prime, Beryl and Henry Carrera’s match had been arranged when they were small children. Family gossip had it that Beryl and Henry had been good friends. They planned on making their arranged marriage work…until Henry changed his mind at the eleventh hour.
Diesel mentally shook his head. Not well done of the man, to his way of thinking. If he’d wanted out or had doubts, he should have said so long before they’d been in the middle of the ceremony with hundreds of spectators looking on.
In the aftermath of that debacle, gossip surged through the family grapevine as to the real reason Henry skipped out. The overall consensus was that the scandal involving Beryl’s uncle, Alrick Ashcraft, the year before her wedding contributed mightily to Henry’s hasty departure.
Diesel thought Henry should have been thrashed for his cowardly actions, but it wasn’t considered protocol in upper-crust Alpha-Prime to punish the groom. Beryl had suffered the brunt of the fallout. It was completely unfair, to Diesel’s way of thinking, and one of the many reasons he was glad he lived on Earth. He suspected the aftermath of Beryl’s failed wedding was the driving force behind his Ashcraft cousins’ decision to move to Earth.
Beryl turned her attention back to Diesel as soon as Jake was out of view. “What are you here for again?”
“Oh. Yes. I wanted to invite you to the—” he stopped talking the instant he realized he was about to disclose semi-alien business in public. “Could we go to your office?”
“Sure.”
Diesel followed Beryl to her office at the back of the store, where she closed the door behind them and he settled into a seat in front of her neatly appointed desk.
“I wanted to invite you to the belowstairs quarterly elders council meeting next week. I would have reminded you of the invitation sooner, but I forgot. It used to be a monthly meeting but now it’s quarterly. Sometimes the date sneaks up on me.”
“While I appreciate the invitation, why me?” Beryl asked, gaze narrowed in suspicion. He didn’t blame her. He had no love of meetings himself.
Diesel cleared his throat. “Well, as part-owner of both the Bauxite mine and the Supernova Supermarket, and the eldest in your family, you are the logical choice to be the Ashcraft representative at the meeting.”
One eyebrow rose, as if she didn’t know why being born first meantshehad to be the sacrificial lamb, or rather, family representative. He understood that, too.
Giving in to the inevitable, she nodded. “Okay. What day?”
Diesel told her and she wrote it down on a calendar on her desk. “Got it. Do I need to bring anything?”
