LITMIR.BIZ

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two nights a week,” she interjected to clarify the part-time status of her bartending job at the local watering hole.

      “If you don’t slow down, you’re going to wear yourself out,” Renata continued, as if she hadn’t heard her.

      Alyssa didn’t bother to point out that her sister worked a full-time job and then cared for a husband and son when she got home, and nobody worried that Cristina was going to wear herself out. All she said was “I’m fine, Mama.”

      “You need a break,” Renata said. “And I think spending some time with Diego will fit the bill nicely.”

      “Diego’s a nice guy,” she began in an effort to appease her mother.

      “From a good family,” Renata pointed out. “And ready to settle down and start a family of his own.”

      Which was something Alyssa was definitely not ready to do. “Mama—”

      “Would it be such a hardship to spend some time with an interesting and attractive single man?”

      “Of course not,” she acknowledged. “But—” she needed to firmly and finally extinguish any hopes her mother had of striking a romantic match between Alyssa and Diego “—the truth is, I’ve been seeing somebody here.”

      Except that it wasn’t the truth—it was a blatant lie.

      But desperate times called for desperate measures.

      “You’ve been seeing someone?” her mother echoed, not bothering to hide her skepticism.

      “That’s right,” she confirmed.

       Lied.

       Again.

      “And why am I only hearing about this now?” Renata challenged.

      “I didn’t want to jinx the relationship by talking about it too soon.”

      But apparently she didn’t mind going to hell, which was certainly her destination after she added more falsehoods and untruths to the conversation.

      “Well, this puts me in an extremely awkward position, Alyssa,” Renata said. “If I’d known about this...relationship...I would not have encouraged Diego to look you up while he’s in town.”

      She didn’t bother to point out that Elko was a different town in a different county. “Maybe it’s not too late to get in touch with him and recommend he change his plans,” she suggested hopefully.

      “Unfortunately, it is,” her mother said. “He’s already in Nevada, so I’m just going to trust that, when you see him tonight, you’ll treat him as you would any friend visiting from out of town.”

      “Of course,” Alyssa murmured, her mind once again scrambling. “But now I really do have to go, so I’m not late for work.”

      “Okay,” Renata said. “But don’t forgot to call Nicolas next week to wish him a happy birthday.”

      “I won’t forget,” she promised, already looking forward to talking to her almost-five-year-old nephew—because although he always told her he missed her, he never tried to guilt her into moving back to California. “Goodbye, Mama. Te quiero.”

      After her mother had said goodbye, too, Alyssa disconnected the call and sighed wearily. “I’m going to hell.”

      “I’m not a priest, but I’m willing to listen to your confession, if it would help.”

      She jolted at the sound of Jason’s voice behind her, then pressed a hand to her racing heart as she turned to face him. Of course, seeing him now, freshly showered and shaven, her heart raced even faster.

      “Sorry to startle you,” he said.

      “It’s okay,” she said. “I didn’t expect—You don’t usually leave for work this early, do you?”

      “No,” he admitted. “And you don’t usually leave this late.”

      She glanced at the clock display on her phone and winced. “You’re right.”

      “I don’t want to hold you up any longer, but I’m curious to hear why you think you’re going to hell.”

      “Because I lied to my mother,” she confided.

      “A big fat lie or a little white lie?” he asked.

      “I told her that I had a boyfriend.”

      “You don’t?”

      She shook her head. “No. The last date I had—and I’m not sure it even counts as a date—was the staff Christmas party, December 22.”

      She’d attended the event with Troy Hartwell, the biology teacher. He’d had a little too much to drink and misinterpreted her level of interest, forcing Alyssa to demonstrate some of the moves she’d learned in the self-defense course her mother had implored her to take before she moved away from home.

      “Any particular reason for the dating hiatus?” Jason wondered.

      “Not really,” she said. “I just have other priorities right now—including a test for my senior calculus class this morning.”

      Jason took the hint. “Well, good luck with that,” he said, moving around to the driver’s side of his truck and climbing behind the wheel.

      She waved as he drove away, then decided that her mother’s ongoing matchmaking efforts meant it was time for her to implement plan B.

       Chapter Two

      “The warehouse. Eighteen hundred hours. Tonight.”

      Jay shifted his attention from the spreadsheet on his computer to Carter Ford, his best friend of nearly two decades and now his right-hand man at Jason Channing Enterprises. Carter stood in the doorway of Jay’s office, which also served as the staff lounge and lunch room of Adventure Village.

      He glanced at the papers spread out on his desk and, with sincere reluctance, shook his head. “It’s going to take me forever to sort this stuff out.”

      “What stuff?” Carter asked.

      “Invoices to pay, booking requests to log and emails to answer.”

      His friend crossed the concrete floor and dropped into one of the visitors’ chairs, then lifted his feet onto the seat of another. “Isn’t that Naomi’s job?”

      “It was supposed to be,” he admitted, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Until I realized that we were two months behind on our insurance payments and we missed out on the opportunity to host a corporate team-building exercise for fifty people because the email was ignored.”

      The missed opportunity was an annoyance; the potential loss of liability insurance could have shut down their business.

      “I thought you’d set up preauthorized payments for the insurance,” Carter said.

      He nodded. “For the first six months, the payments were coming out of my personal account, to give the business a chance to turn a profit. Then the automatic debits were supposed to be switched over to the Adventure Village account, but Naomi didn’t send the paperwork to the bank.”

      Carter swore. “Tell me again why we’re giving her a paycheck every two weeks.”

      “She got her last one today,” Jay told him.

      His friend’s brows winged upward. “You fired your cousin?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Your aunt’s gonna be so pissed.”

      “Yeah,” he said again, already braced for the fallout.

      But

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