The Bride Test(14)

“No, that’s where Stanford is.”

“Oh.” She turned back around and slumped in her seat.

“Berkeley is an hour north of here. That’s where I went for undergrad and grad school.”

“Really?” The enthusiasm in her voice caught him by surprise. A lot of people around here weren’t impressed unless you’d gone to Stanford or an Ivy League school.

“Yeah, they have a good accounting program.” He continued driving, keeping his eyes on the road, but he could almost feel the weight of her gaze on his skin. Sending her a sideways glance, he asked, “What?”

“Are the students close there? They know each other?”

“Not really,” he said. “It’s a huge school. Each year, they admit more than ten thousand undergrads. Why do you ask?”

She shrugged and shook her head as she peered out the window.

He returned his attention to the early evening traffic, exited at Mathilda Avenue, and drove down streets lined with tall, leafy oaks, townhome complexes, apartment buildings, and strip malls.

Ten minutes later, he turned onto the side street that led to his two-bedroom fixer-upper with demolition potential. Compared to the other remodeled and newly built homes in the area, his was a bit of an eyesore, but he bet no one else had the finely aged shag carpet. He pulled up next to his section of curb, cranked the parking break, and turned the engine off.

“This is it,” he said.





CHAPTER FOUR



Esme still couldn’t forgive herself for lying like that. Did she want to get struck by the heavens? Why had she done it?

She knew why. Because she was a janitor/maid, and he was so much better. She’d wanted to impress him, to show him she was worth his time. But now she had to pretend she worked in accounting, when she didn’t even know what it was, and continue to keep her baby a secret. She was a liar, and she was ashamed of herself.

If she were a good person, she’d confess right now, but this feeling of being his equal was too addicting. It didn’t even matter that it was fake. She liked it anyway. She was already pretending to be something she wasn’t—a worldly sexy woman (though not very successfully, judging by her failed attempt at flirting earlier in the car). Why not go all the way and add smart and sophisticated to the list while she was at it?

When she died, demons were going to torment her for eternity instead of letting her reincarnate. Or worse, they’d let her reincarnate, but she’d be a catfish who lived under a river outhouse. It was only fair. That was what she got for wishing food poisoning on people.

Kh?i got out of the car, and she followed suit. The crunch of her shoes on rocks was unnaturally loud to her ears, and her head spun as she looked down at her feet. When was the last time she’d eaten? She was too tired to remember.

Working her jaw to wake herself up, she forced herself to take in the surrounding area. The houses were so plain compared to the mansions she’d imagined. And short—one level only, for most of them. The air. She filled her lungs. What was this smell?

After a moment, she realized it was the lack of smell. She couldn’t smell garbage and rotting fruit. A haze of exhaust didn’t darken the sunset to tamarind-colored rust. She rubbed her jet-lagged eyes and admired a sky painted in bright hues of apricot and hyacinth.

What a difference an ocean made.

Homesickness hit her then, and she almost missed the pollution. Something familiar would have been nice as she stood there, on an unknown street, in an unknown city, in a world far away from everyone she loved. What time was it in Vi?t Nam? Was Ng?c Anh—no, it was Jade now—sleeping? Did she miss her momma? Her momma missed her.

If she were home, she’d lie down next to her, kiss her little hands, and press their foreheads together like she always did before she went to sleep.

She tripped and would have fallen if it weren’t for the mailbox, and Kh?i aimed a disapproving look at her shoes after he pulled her suitcase out of the trunk. “You’re better off walking barefoot than wearing those.”

“But they’re so useful. It’s like having a shoe and a knife.” She slipped both shoes off and made a stabbing motion with one of them.

He considered her for a serious moment, not laughing, not even smiling, and she pursed her lips and stared down at her bare toes. There she went, failing at flirting again. In her defense, it had been a long time since she’d dated a man, and she’d forgotten how.

As she gazed at her unattractive toes—she hated the unshapely hands and feet she’d inherited from her green-eyed dad; there was nothing elegant or appealing about them—she noticed the scary weeds choking Kh?i’s yard. “What if I step on all the thorns?” She sent him a smile that she hoped looked sexy. “Will you carry me?”

He brought her suitcase to the front door without looking at her. “Stay on the concrete, and you’ll be fine.”

Skipping after him, she said, “I can clean the yard for you. I’m good at it.”

He fished his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door. “I like it the way it is.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the yard again to make sure she hadn’t imagined everything, and, nope, it was still a jungle of thorns, tangled vines, and dried-up bushes.

He’d been wrong earlier when he said Esme was the stranger of the two of them. He won that contest without even trying. He was easily the strangest person she’d ever met. She didn’t know him well yet, but she’d picked up on his strangeness right away. He didn’t look her in the eyes when he spoke, he wore all black, he liked this wasteland of a yard, and he said the oddest things. It gave her hope.