No Quick Fix (Torus Intercession 1)

She lifted her hand, and I took it in mine, just to hold, not to shake, and her smile was warm and kind. “Mr. Calder, I—”

“Brann,” I corrected her.

“Brann,” she repeated, her voice low, seductive, her dark hazel eyes holding my gaze. “It’s a pleasure. Emery has needed help for so long, and it seems as though he finally has someone terribly capable that he trusts.”

“Thank you.”

She sighed almost sadly. “Trust is a rare commodity, don’t you agree?”

I nodded. “I certainly do.”

Giving my hand a final squeeze, she glided away, drawn off by another man, who I hadn’t met as Cahill took hold of Emery’s bicep to keep him at his side, all of them moving to the head of the table near Lydia, leaving me and the girls at the opposite end.

Dinner was an ancient grain salad, which was basically quinoa and pine nuts and bits of Romaine lettuce and strawberries, then seared salmon with what the waiter—because didn’t everyone have Saturday night dinner catered—said was sorrel sauce and fresh sage along with a roasted red beet risotto.

I squinted at it.

The girls stared at it.

“Huh,” I said after it was put in front of me.

April had one eyebrow lifted, waiting for me. Olivia was biting her bottom lip.

I leaned forward, and so did they, and when I spoke, I made sure it was low.

“I wish I’d had PB and J with you guys earlier,” I grumbled.

“Told you so,” April singsonged, very smug. “Daddy always has us eat something early when we have to come over here late.”

“He’s a very smart man.”

She nodded like yeah, he was, giving me a patronizing smirk.

“We can’t eat anything huge,” Olivia explained, wincing as she caught a glimpse of her plate. “Because we’re not supposed to be too full to try stuff, so we don’t hurt Lydia’s feelings.”

“That’s nice,” I said, because it was. It was thoughtful, which I already knew was the kind of man Emery was.

“There were snails one time,” April let me know, making the vomit face for my benefit.

I groaned.

“So what now?” Olivia asked brightly.

“Okay so just move it around, mush up the salmon, put the veggies on top of it, and then we’ll all go to the kitchen and drop off our plates.”

We all leaned back at the same time.

After I wiped all the sauce off the salmon, I ate that because I needed the protein, but there was no way in hell I was touching the salad. Once I saw that everyone was chatting at the other end, I glanced at April’s plate, then Olivia’s, and was disappointed to see that the moving around of the food didn’t appear all that convincing. Stealth was definitely not on our side.

“I think it’s too big to hide,” I said under my breath.

“Napkin?” April suggested hopefully.

They were the real thing and couldn’t be thrown away. “Negative,” I said, hiding the word under throat-clearing.

“We could run,” Olivia whimpered. “’Cause if you make me eat it, I’m gonna barf it up, and then I’ll be hungry again, and then you’ll have to get me something else to eat, and holy cow, this could take up your whole night.”

I was stunned and chuckling at the same time. “Holy shit, Livi.”

“What?”

“Your excuse is that you’re thinking of me?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice going way up. “Of course.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I agree,” April chimed in earnestly, pinning me with her gaze. “This is serious.”

It was so not. “You know people are starving in the world.”

“Everybody always says that, but I never see anyone sending gross dinners anywhere on the news. And my teacher, Mr. Leonard, he says that even though he’s not religious, that Jesus’s point was well made that we need to teach people how to fish, not just give them fish.”

“You see, Brann, those people need nets and poles, not gross salmon,” Olivia summed up for me what April had said in case I was too stupid to figure it out.

“Really?”

“Yeah. We need to stop having wars and start planting crops. You never hear about Cro-Magnons fighting each other. It was hunting or gathering.”

“That’s because they were afraid of getting eaten by a dinosaur.”

April rolled her eyes at me. “Oh dear God. You know that dinosaurs were dead for, like, millions of years by the time—”

“Yes, I know, shut up, I’m teasing you. It would’ve been saber-tooth tigers.”

“People, let’s focus on the disgusting salmon on our plates,” Olivia chimed in, wanting us back on task. “What’re we gonna do?”

“Follow my lead,” I muttered, coughing again, getting ready to stand up. “On three.”

I counted and we got up without anyone ever glancing at us, even Emery. We carried our plates to the kitchen and dropped them off with a woman who gave us all the evil eye.

“I gotta pee,” Olivia announced, which was good since it gave us a reason to get away from the woman judging us on our dislike of quinoa.