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Moonlight Masquerade (Edilean 8)

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Roan stared at her for a moment then let out a roar of laughter. “Oh Sophie! I’m going to enjoy working with you. And we have to figure out how to make that sandwich for my cousin! Come on, let’s go buy a panini press. No, let’s get three of them.” Smiling, they left the restaurant.

For several minutes, Reede stood where he was in the hospital corridor, unable to move. He hadn’t been asleep for a day and a half and he should go home to bed. But the thought of that dark apartment without Sophie was more than he could bear.

How to get her back? was the only thought in his head. Was there any apology that she’d listen to? He doubted it.

As he started to put his phone back into his pocket, he thought of his college roommate. Reede checked his contacts list and pushed the button.

“Hey old man,” his former roommate, Kirk, said. “Still trying to get someone to move to glorious Edi-lean and take over for you?”

“No,” Reede said. “I need something else. Didn’t your brother get a degree in engineering?”

“Yeah. He works for NASA now. You planning to go to the moon to get away from your hometown?”

Reede winced that he’d made someone think he hated Edilean so much. “Didn’t you tell me that when he was a kid he liked to make up codes?”

“Yeah, he did. You planning to become a spy and need some help in your code class?”

“Actually, I am. Sort of.”

“Count me in!” Kirk said. “Who do you need spied on?”

“Can’t tell you that,” Reede said. It was one thing to blab too much to his cousin, but he wasn’t about to give the Treeborne name to anyone outside the family. Instead, he lied. “My aunt found her grandmother’s old cookbook and she wants to use it, but it’s written in some sort of code. Think your brother could break it?”

“If he can’t he has the entire space industry to help him. But I can tell you that if it’s one of those codes based on the order of words in a book and you don’t have the book, there will be a problem.”

“It could be,” Reede said. “I have no idea, but maybe I could scan it and e-mail it to your brother. Think that would be okay?”

“I just prescribed for his athlete’s feet

so he owes me. I still have my old e-mail address so send it to me. I’ll get it to him.”

“I will. I’m in Williamsburg now but as soon as I get home I’ll send it to you. And thanks, Kirk. I’ll owe you.”

“Actually, I’ve been having hemorrhoid problems and—”

“Call a specialist,” Reede said and hung up on Kirk’s laughter.

He left the hospital and drove home. It was late and the office was dark and empty—and his apartment was even worse. Tired as he was, he took the time to scan his copy of the Treeborne cookbook into his computer, then sent the pages to Kirk. When that was done, he sent an e-mail to Al’s wife and told her he’d take the house Sophie had seen and he’d be moving in tomorrow. He couldn’t bear staying alone in the apartment that Sophie had made into a home.

“Tomorrow,” he kept saying as he showered. Tomorrow he’d work on making Sophie forgive him. And maybe helping her with what that jerk Treeborne had done to her would work in his favor. On the other hand, Sophie probably now considered Reede as bad as Treeborne.

When he got out of the shower, Reede pulled all the Treeborne food out of his freezer and threw it in the trash.

“Tomorrow,” he said aloud and went to bed.

Fourteen

Carter Treeborne felt his father’s anger before he heard it. The man was pounding down the hallway so hard and fast that the big vases on the tables trembled.

Carter lay on the bed in his room, the only light being the HD TV. He was drinking a beer—his fifth—and didn’t so much as glance up as his father stormed past the open door. A raging father was nothing new or even remarkable, as Lewis Carter Treeborne the Second’s anger was legendary. He’d inherited it from his father, the man who started Treeborne Foods right after World War II. One evening he’d said—in his usual tone of anger—“Damned women today don’t want to cook, so I’ll give them meals to spend their husband’s hard-earned money on.” It was the beginning of an empire.

Carter’s mother used to say the idea had been “planted in rage and fertilized by it.”

The first two Treebornes were alike, but the grandson was different. He was like his mother, a gentle, sweet woman who had been chosen for her connections to “society.” She used to say, “Your father chose me for my education, my ancestors, and my good taste. Of course he now hates me for those same reasons.” Gentle she might be, but she was also a realist.

She’d put all her energy into protecting her only child, her beloved son, from her husband. Even though it hurt her and took away the only thing she truly loved, she sent Carter to his first boarding school when he was just seven years old. But even at that age he understood. If he’d stayed home his father would have had him working in the family business by the time he was nine.

Because of his mother’s protection, Carter almost had a life of his own. He was liked at school and invited everywhere, and his mother encouraged him to go. Anything to keep him away from his domineering father.



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