He’d been wrong earlier when he said Esme was the stranger of the two of them. He won that contest without even trying. He was easily the strangest person she’d ever met. She didn’t know him well yet, but she’d picked up on his strangeness right away. He didn’t look her in the eyes when he spoke, he wore all black, he liked this wasteland of a yard, and he said the oddest things. It gave her hope.
Odd was good. Odd was an opportunity.
Besides, she was odd, too. Just not as odd as he was.
“You’re very … open-minded,” she hedged.
He looked at her like he thought she was crazy, and she mentally kicked herself.
“Why do you park on the street when you have that?” She pointed to his garage. Judging from the size of the door, he could fit two cars in there. It didn’t make sense that he parked his nice car on the street. Not unless he had three cars, which she doubted he could afford based on the state of his yard and house.
Instead of answering her question, he let them into the house. She wondered if he hadn’t heard or if he’d purposely ignored her, but she let it slide. The inside of his house was stranger than the outside, with thick carpet that looked more like grass than his lawn, exercise equipment all over the main room, and fixtures and blinds from a different era. After setting her shoes on the floor, she followed Khải down a narrow hall, and the soft carpet fibers hugged her bare feet with every step.
He set her suitcase in a small room that contained a desk, sofa, and closet. When she noticed the old wallpaper, tears stung her eyes. Teddy bears, beach balls, dolls, ballet slippers, and building blocks. This used to be a child’s room. She touched her fingertips to the ballet slippers. Jade would love this.
“This is your room,” he said. “You’ll have to make do with the couch.”
“It’s nice. Thank you, Anh Khải.” She’d never slept on anything as nice as a couch in her life. She’d never owned a couch. But she didn’t mention any of that. She was sophisticated Esme in Accounting now. Esme in Accounting probably had a nice apartment with two or three couches and had never slept on a straw mat over a packed-dirt floor.
The lonely country girl inside of her looked at the big empty couch and felt homesick all over again. She wanted the straw mat, the dirt floor, the single-room house, and the sleeping bodies of her little girl, grandma, and mom. She was exhausted, but she didn’t know how she was going to sleep by herself.
“The phone on the desk is for you.” He pointed at the desk before turning to leave.
“Wait a little, for me?” She hurried to the desk and lowered a hand toward the shiny silver phone but curled her fingers into a fist before she made contact. It would be a shame to smudge the fancy phone with her fingertips.
“My mom said you needed a new SIM card, but a new phone is easier. If you don’t like it, I can probably exchange it for the larger model.”
But that would cost even more. “It’s new,” she said.
He stuffed a hand in his pocket. “Yeah.” He said it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“Can you return it?”
He frowned as he tilted his head to the side. “I don’t think so. You really don’t like it?”
She wrung her hands together. “No, I like it, but—”
“Then it’s not a problem. Just use it.”
A wave of anxious heat washed over her face, but she made herself say, “I’ll pay you back as soon as I’m working.” She hoped she made enough to pay for it. Back home, she’d have to save for the better part of a year to pay for something this nice.
“You don’t have to.”
She lifted her chin. “I do.” It was important he knew she wasn’t marrying him for his money. This had never been about money to her. If anything, she liked that he didn’t have as much money as his neighbors. They were a better match that way. She didn’t need a rich man. She just needed someone who was hers. And Jade’s.
He merely shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m going to heat up dinner. Come out when you’re hungry.”
Her shoulders sagged. He didn’t understand she wanted to earn things herself. “I’m going to call home first, okay?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
As soon as he left the room, she carefully shut the door, unplugged the white charging cable from the phone, and sat on the couch, staring at her unbelievably fancy new phone. She hadn’t expected this at all. It was the best gift he could have gotten her, the absolute best. And he didn’t even like her.
He was strange and tactless and very possibly an assassin, but when she looked at his actions, all she saw was kindness. Cô Nga had been right. Khải was good stuff. Very, very good stuff.
She’d memorized how to dial internationally from the United States before she left and dialed her mom’s cell phone number. Her mom picked up on the first ring. “Hi, Má.”
“Already, already, tell me everything.”
“First, how is Ngọc Anh? Can I talk to her?”
“She’s fine, excited to have a dad soon. Talk to me a little. How are things? Do you like him?” her mom asked.
“Yes, I like him.”
A pleased hmmmmm sounded on the line. “That’s good. What about his house? Is it nice?”
“I like it,” Esme said. “The room I’m staying in has pretty paper on the wall. If Ngọc Anh saw it, she’d like it. There’s a couch for me.”
“You’re not sleeping with him?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, Má, I’m not sleeping with him. Do you remember? He doesn’t want a wife.”
“That doesn’t mean he wants to sleep alone.”
“I just got off the plane,” she reminded her mom. She needed time to work her seductive powers on him. If she even had such powers anymore. Working as much as she did, she didn’t have the time to date. Or the desire. Just the memory of her mom’s and grandma’s faces when they’d found out about her pregnancy was enough to make any man look uninteresting.
“Oh, that’s right, long flight,” her mom said. After a quiet moment, her mom continued. “Can you unscrew one of the legs off the couch and say it broke?”
“Why would I do that?”
“So you can sleep with him, daughter of mine.”
Esme pulled the phone away and stared at it. Who was this woman she was talking to? The voice sounded like her mom’s, but not the words. “I can’t do that. It’s wrong.”
“Fine, forget I said it,” her mom grumbled. “Here, talk to your girl.”
“Má.” The little voice made Esme’s heart melt even as it broke her. She should be there, not here on the other side of the world chasing a man.
“Hi, my girl. I miss you too much. What have you been doing since I’ve been gone?”
“I caught a big fish in the pond yesterday. Great-Grandma killed it by slamming it against a tree, and after that, we ate it for dinner. My fish was good.”
Esme covered her eyes with a hand. Killed it by slamming it against a tree … Esme in Accounting would be appalled by this conversation. Not only would she not have a five-year-old daughter out of wedlock, but her daughter wouldn’t be catching her own dinner. There certainly wouldn’t be any killing by slamming anything against a tree.