Page 75 of Tempt
I laughed out loud as I typed.
Really?
My phone hummed. He was calling me.
Chewing the inside of my cheek, I considered not taking the call, but then decided I would. We could practice being friends.
“I thought you deleted my number,” I said instead of hello.
“I did. Turns out, you can undo that move.” He sounded all stuffed up.
“Uh oh. Are you sick?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s just a cold. Probably picked it up on the plane home—the guy next to me was coughing the entire flight. Hang on.” He sneezed three times in a row.Loud.
I laughed. “You sound demonic when you sneeze.”
“I know.” He blew his nose. “Jackson sent me home from work because he couldn’t stand the racket.”
“Awww. Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m just bored. I hate sitting still.”
“So you decided to try a little Antiques Roadshow?”
“I was channel surfing and came across it. I thought of you.”
“And?”
“And now I can’t turn it off. This lady found the creepiest fucking doll I’ve ever seen in some dilapidated barn on her family’s property. This doll literally looks like it’s about to murder you. Turns out it’s from 1880, and it’s worth like twelve grand.”
“Haha! Told you!”
“The guy before her had this helmet worn by his great uncle, a Naval officer during World War II who was in charge at Utah Beach on D-Day. He saw it on a table when he was a kid at his grandma’s house. She was using it as a flowerpot.”
“Stop it.”
“It had dirt in it!”
“What did it turn out to be worth?”
“Forty grand.”
I gasped. “Wow. Really?”
“Oh, yeah. D-Day stuff is always valuable.”
“Are you into military history?”
“A little. I like the World War II stuff. When I was a kid, my grandpa would tell me about when he was in the Navy at that time. He wasn’t at Normandy or anything, but he still had good stories.”
“Did you write them down?”
“No. But I should.”
“You definitely should! Before you forget them.”
“Because I’m so old?”
