Page 26 of Just A Kiss

“Not important.” I wave it off. “Has he done something?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s … it’s my mother. I pay for her to live in the nursing home. And I’m behind.” She pulls away from me again and roughly pulls her hair out of her bun. It falls down over her shoulders in waves from being pinned up. “Between my payments and my mother’s, things just started to pile up. And I thought I could catch up, but then Hadley was getting married, and I couldn’t miss being there for her. Aiden gave me a ticket to go. It was for a week’s stay, but I told him I couldn’t miss that much work and had him change it to only two days. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to make it.”

“I’m guessing she doesn’t know you’re in financial trouble?”

She shakes her head. “It’s not something I broadcast.”

I nod in understanding. “Did Candy promise you could make that up in a month or something?”

She sighs. “Candy gave me that twenty-dollar bill the other night when you were in the bar. Then she brought it up again tonight at the gallery. She didn’t say anything about the money, just asked if I wanted to move up in life. Tonight, she mentioned making you jealous. But I wasn’t going to take the job.”

“That’s not what it looked like to me when I walked in here and caught you staring at it.”

She runs a hand through her softly curled hair. “Well, what it looked like and what I’m going to do are two very different things.”

“You’re going to take the money from me.”

“I’m not,” she snaps.

This woman is so frustrating. “Then what are you going to do?”

“What I’ve been doing.” I open my mouth to argue, but she continues. “I can sell my car and my mother’s house. Or I have an extra room I can rent out. I was going to sell my house and move into Hadley’s house if she would allow me to rent it, but she already has someone living in it. I have options.” Then she walks out of the living room, and I follow her to the kitchen. She rips up the twenty-dollar bill and throws it in the trash. Without looking back at me, she walks down the hallway, saying, “Go home, Asher.”