until Kaleb heard Hunter call her “Aunt Molly” that the puzzle began clicking together. The woman beside him must somehow be related to Maxine, who was best friends with his sister, Kylie. But he was still missing the pieces that explained why she was suddenly so annoyed with him.
“But you know me, right, Kaleb?” Hunter’s voice cracked and it didn’t take a rearview mirror for Kaleb to know the kid’s eager freckled face was only inches behind his own. “Remember when we were at your sister’s wedding last year and you promised me an internship at your company when I turned eighteen?”
Kaleb squeezed his eyes shut briefly. How could he forget? Of course, he would’ve called it a surrender more than a promise since, at the time, Hunter was the only person who’d been able to smuggle in a tablet—despite Kylie’s ban of all electronic devices at the reception—and Kaleb’s Tokyo office was in the middle of negotiations to buy out a company that built virtual-reality headsets.
Yet, before anyone could comment on the circumstances surrounding the supposed internship, the kid’s aunt interrupted. “If you’re from Seattle, then what are you doing in Sugar Falls?”
As he turned onto Snowflake Boulevard, which could’ve just as easily been named Main Street, USA, he took in the grassy park in the center of downtown to assure himself that they were still in a free country. “The same thing you are. Visiting family.”
She mumbled an expletive under her breath and he was pretty sure that, at this rate, Hunter was going to have enough money in his swear jar to get him through the first two years of college.
“Speaking of family.” Kaleb emphasized the last word to remind her that children were present. “Does your sister still live above her shop?”
“Not anymore,” Hunter answered for his aunt, who was silently fuming in the front seat. “We moved out to a bigger house when she and Cooper got married. But Aunt Molly is staying there while she’s in town. She says it’s because she doesn’t want to be in our way, but Mom says it’s because she doesn’t want us knowing her business.”
Molly gasped before turning in her seat to look at her nephew. “Your mom told you that?”
Hunter had his palms up. “Not in a bad way or nothin’... She said all the Markhams are like that.”
“So where are we going?” Kaleb interrupted. If he wanted a front-row seat to watch family members bickering, he’d head back to his sister’s house and watch his own brothers argue over who got to man the backyard grill.
“To the apartment over the bakery.” Molly sighed. Even an outsider like Kaleb knew that when someone said bakery in this town, they actually meant the Sugar Falls Cookie Company. “It shouldn’t be that far of a walk for you to get back to your car at Duncan’s Market.”
Not that far? It was at least a mile through town and both his phone and his watch—he never should’ve synced the two—currently sounded like winning slot machines with unanswered texts from his dad and his sister, probably wanting to know where the heck he was with their ice and limes.
“Why’s your car at Duncan’s?” Hunter asked. So far they’d avoided having to explain why he was driving them home, but if the kid was as observant as Kaleb had been at that age, it didn’t take a computer genius to figure out Molly was hiding something.
“Because your aunt had a—”
“Wait.” Molly pointed a finger his way. “Which Chatterson brother are you?”
“I’m Kaleb,” he said slowly, second-guessing his earlier decision to go along with her pleas to not seek medical assistance.
“I caught the name.” Her eyes were narrowed into slits. “I meant are you one of the baseball Chattersons or are you the one who plays video games for a living?”
Despite being on the cover of Forbes last month for their feature article on “World’s Youngest Billionaires,” Kaleb’s siblings never let him forget that no matter how much money he made, he would always be the little brother. So when Molly said “video games” in that tone, she might as well have been asking if he was the one who set fire to small wildlife animals in his parents’ basement. At least his back brace and teenage acne were long gone. Along with his self-respect apparently.
“Video games?” Hunter snorted. “Kaleb’s, like, the most successful software developer in the world.”
Oblivious to the tension in the front seat, the boy launched into a monologue about the company’s top-selling games while Molly’s eyes shot icy glares at Kaleb and her forefinger made a dramatic swipe against her throat. It took him a moment to figure out that she was referring to him staying silent about what had happened at the store, not his job profession. Or maybe she didn’t want him to bring up either subject. All he knew was that he liked her soft pink lips a lot more when they weren’t pursed together in a violent shushing gesture. Actually, he kind of liked them both ways.
He mouthed the words, “What’s the big deal?”
But the minivan behind him honked to let him know the light had changed to green, and he didn’t get a chance to lip-read Molly’s response.
So she had diabetes. What was the big deal? Millions of people probably had the same diagnosis and didn’t go into undercover stealth mode to keep it a secret. He needed to know why.
“Dude, all of your electronic devices are, like, going crazy.” Hunter was apparently done with his rambling soliloquy about Perfect Game Industries, although it did give Kaleb’s ego a boost to know that at least one person in the town of Sugar Falls—besides his mother—didn’t think his company was a fallback career. “Are you gonna answer them?”
Kaleb glanced at the display. Speaking of his mother, his family was certainly busting out the big guns if Lacey Chatterson was trying to track him down. Everyone knew he never avoided his mom’s calls. If he didn’t respond soon, he’d get a firsthand look at how this little ski resort town up in the mountains ran a full-scale search party.
“I’ll call them back later,” he said, slipping his cell phone into his front pocket. “Let’s help your aunt take these groceries inside.”
Falling completely off the grid and being the irresponsible Chatterson might be fun for a change.
When Molly had initially been medically grounded, she’d still been living on base so the daily routine of military life made it easy to pretend that nothing would change. Just like the time she’d twisted her ankle after a postejection survival training exercise, she pulled office duty—pushing paperwork and keeping her personal life classified. There was no point in getting her family and squad mates all worried about something that would probably require a simple fix. She hadn’t even told her fiancé about her diagnosis. Although, in her defense, she’d been about to when she walked into Trevor’s condo with a bag of Chinese takeout from his favorite restaurant and found him eating pork dumplings from the ends of another woman’s chopsticks.
Canceling vendors, returning wedding gifts and watching her savings account free-fall with all the forfeited deposits was only slightly more pleasant than undergoing a battery of doctor appointments and lab tests. In a last-ditch attempt to get away from it all, Molly had cashed in on Trevor’s trip insurance
