Page 16 of Stolen By the Billionaire
“Oh, that don’t matter,” Tiffany said, setting out their cold glasses of tea with lemon slices on the rims.
Lemon slices. Sarah rated lemon slices. Nice.
Sarah slid a twenty-dollar bill under the saltshaker in the middle of the lace tablecloth. “I don’t feel right taking credit for the air fryer if I didn’t actually pay for it. She’s asked me over to try her wings recipe in it, you know. That won’t sit right if I don’t ante up.”
Tiffany laughed. “Okay, fine, but I wasn’t worried about it. You win the lottery or something?”
Sarah laughed and toyed with the lemon slice, squeezing it and stirring in the juice. “No, not the lottery.”
Tiffany tilted her head. “Everybody okay? Nobody passed and left you money or something, right?”
Sarah smiled to herself a little. “Nope, everyone’s fine as far as I know.”
“Who is he?”
Sarah stopped stirring her tea. “How did you know?”
Tiffany grinned and leaned back in her chair. “Well, now I know. Spill the tea, and I don’t mean the glass of sweet tea. Please do not spill the sweet tea. I have mopped up milk and juice four times today already.”
Caught. “So, I was scheduled to do a reading this morning on SnipSnap, you know, like I do?”
“Uh-huh. Was the guy your appointment? And you drew The Lovers card, and he asked if it was you. And then you went all googly-eyed and vulnerable, and now he’s flying out here to marry you?”
“Not exactly. Actually, not like that at all,” Sarah said, laughing. “So, I clicked on the Zoom link my client sent for the reading, but my Aunt Mary answered the call.”
“Wait, your long-lost aunt who contacted you after your dad passed?”
“Yeah, the one in New York City. So, it was weird that she answered when she could have just called or texted me, and she acted confused to see me, too. And that’s when the guy with the gun broke into my video studio—”
Tiffany’s mouth opened, and her dark eyes widened at the corners.
“And he held a knife to my throat while he threatened my aunt that he would kill me if she didn’t renegotiate something.”
Tiffany knocked over her sweet tea. “Dammit! I didn’t just—What the fuck, Sarah?”
“But then afterward, when he was sitting in my kitchen, we were talking—”
She grabbed a dishtowel and knelt to soak up the tea on the floor. “Nuh-uh. No way. Tell me you stabbed the bastard.”
“—he apologized and said that he couldn’t have really hurt me because the knife was dull and the gun wasn’t loaded, and then he gave me fifteen thousand dollars to make up for scaring me.”
Tiffany looked up from where she rested on her knees on the floor. “Did you call the police?”
Sarah bobbled her head. “I don’t even know his name. I barely saw his face because he was wearing camouflage grease paint. I didn’t see his truck, or car, or whatever he was driving. I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup if I tried, other than his amazing blue eyes and a military haircut that’s probably dark unless he rubbed something in it. And, you know, he’s ripped, like arm porn.”
“Sarah Nevaeh Bell, I do swear—”
“Besides, by the time the Kalona police actually come over and ask questions and do anything, he’ll be out of the state. It wouldn’t even be worth my time to talk to them.”
“But you have to report this!”
“But the police might take the fifteen thousand dollars he gave me as evidence or something, and I need that money, Tiff.”
Tiffany frowned and paused before she muttered, “They’d probably give it back eventually.”
Yeah.
Probably.
