Chapter Twenty

Chance left late in the afternoon to change his clothes and to do whatever else it was that he needed to do in his apartment. Meg spent the time that he was gone having a long, hot shower, washing up the plates from breakfast and lunch, putting in a load of laundry, and messaging Kate to let her know what was happening. She also called her mother to try and explain the increase in her heart rate that the rest of the family were now monitoring on an hourly basis. Meg’s vague comments on work and stress were ignored, and explanations were demanded. In the end, purely to get off the phone, Meg found herself agreeing to take part in the local 5K Fun Run. Her mother was delighted. Meg was already wondering how she could simulate a broken ankle.

She dropped her Android on the couch, picked up her PS4 controller, loaded Crash Bandicoot, and wondered what her mother would think of Chance. Meg’s parents had been married forever and a day. They were best friends. The love between them was only heightened by the fact that they shared so many interests in common. They hiked, they ran, they took part in all kinds of extreme sporting events, and they did them all together. What things did Meg have in common with Chance?

Even though part of her knew it was way too early to be thinking along these lines, and not least because Chance still hadn’t told her what the hell was going on, Meg found herself considering what she and Chance had in common. She listed the things in her mind as she navigated Crash through the Temple Ruins. It was a very short list.

She was down to her last life as she thought about what she actually knew about Chance. His job. Yes. She hadn’t seen his actual office, though, or learned anything about his other cases, assuming he had any. Where he lived. No. He hadn’t told her that. His family. No. His friends. No. Hobbies. No.

Meg lost her final life in one of the fire pits. She threw the controller on the couch. This game drove her mad! So did Chance. Despite the fact that she had been as intimate with him as she had been with anyone in her life, she knew so little about him. That was going to change tonight.

That thought was firm in Meg’s mind as she opened the door to him a few hours later. He’d changed into khakis, a crisp white tee, and a pair of sneakers. He looked very young. Meg started. It occurred to her then that she didn’t even know how old he was.

“How old are you?” she demanded.

“Thirty-four.”

“I just imagined what I was going to do if you told me you were twenty-one,” Meg said.

“And?”

“I’d be a cougar, wouldn’t I?” Meg said. She eyed the bags in his hands. “I’m guessing you found out my age in your research so that’s all good. What is this?”

“Dinner.”

Meg cast the kitchen a look. Breakfast had not gone down very well. Who knew that cracking eggs could be so difficult? Chance had gone out and bought them lunch whilst Meg had napped in the messy bed. Still, she’d had some vague idea that she might cook them dinner. “I was going to make something.”

Chance laughed. “Which is why I brought it.”

She rolled her eyes at that and ushered him inside. He placed the bags on the kitchen counter and began unloading them. Meg gave a little clap once she saw them.

“Japanese?”

“The place is just around the corner from me,” Chance said. “I’ve been a customer for years. I even went to a couple of their sushi classes last summer. I make a mean California roll.”

“I love Japanese food,” Meg said as she placed bowls and cutlery on the table. “It’s my lifelong dream to go there.”

“You’ve never been?”

Meg pulled out a bottle of white wine, screwed off the lid, and gave them both a hefty glass full. She joined Chance at the table a moment later. He passed her chopsticks. Meg eyed her fork. “You say that like everyone should have.”

“They should,” Chance said as he broke his chopsticks apart. “There’s nothing quite like that country.”

“You’ve been?”

“I lived there for a year.”

Meg’s eyes widened at that. She’d traveled around Europe with her folks before starting college and had always considered herself well-traveled because of that. But Japan? She and Kate had talked about going for years, but they’d never managed it, and not least because it was horribly expensive.

“When?”

“In my mid-twenties,” Chance said. “It was a work thing.”

“As a PI?”

“No. I was doing something else then.”

“What?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “I was working as a server.”

“In a restaurant?”

“Yeah.”

He pulled open one of the dishes. It was rice. Not just any rice, though. It was molded into Luna, the Sailor Moon cat. Meg let out a little squeak. She’d only ever seen these things online.

“How did you get them to do that?”

“I’m a good customer,” Chance said.

Meg grabbed her Android, snapped several pics, and immediately messaged them to Kate. A message came through a few seconds later of multiple question marks. Chance looked down at the screen.

“You’re close with Kate, right?” he asked.

“She’s my very best friend.”

“You’ve known each other for a long time?”

“Since college,” Meg said. “We just connected, I guess. Kate lost her parents really early on and that brought us even closer together.”

“Kate owns KIT?”

“Yep.”

“You didn’t go in together as partners?”

“Kate wanted to,” Meg said. “But I didn’t want to own a business. I knew that I couldn’t give it the time and dedication it deserved. I was too busy with my research. Kate offered me a job instead, and that worked out fine.”

“Tell me about what it was like to do a PhD,” Chance said, and Meg jumped right in and did just that. It was only after a about twenty minutes that she realized she’d pretty much given Chance a summary of her years as a student, and that was not what she had planned to do tonight. She wanted to know about him.

“Did you go to college?” she asked.

Chance placed his chopsticks on the table and picked up his wineglass. He fiddled with the stem. Meg got the impression he was playing for time. She realized why a moment later, and her heart gave a squeeze. Working as a server in his twenties? A PI in his thirties? Neither of those jobs required a college degree or much in the way of qualifications at all. For all she knew, Chance might only have finished high school. Was he embarrassed about that? Meg wanted to tell him that there was no need to be. Qualifications were not the be all and end all of life. She’d met plenty of people over the years who were super smart but just didn’t take to the school system.

“I dropped out,” he eventually said.

Meg’s heart gave another squeeze. “When did you become a PI?”

“Not that long ago.”

“Why?”

“It seemed like something I might be good at.”

“And is it?”

“I like puzzles,” Chance said. “I like solving them. Sometimes I think I’ve spent most of my life doing that.”

“You’d be great at programming, then,” Meg said. “That’s all it really is, in the end—solving puzzles.” She paused. “I could teach you the basics, if you like. It might give you some insight into this case.”

Chance shot her a look. “The basics?”

“It’s not super hard once you know the rules,” Meg said. “I hold classes all the time on the basics of the main programming languages.”

“Are you a mathematician or a computer programmer, Blue?” he asked.

“There’s not a lot of difference,” Meg replied. “Not to my mind at least.”

“Both are difficult.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “but not that difficult. I could totally teach you. And then, maybe in return, you could teach me about how you approach a case, how you string the evidence together, how you identify your suspects, that sort of thing.”

Chance placed his glass back on the table. He reached out his hand and took hers. A shiver ran up Meg’s arm. Their eyes met. That intensity was back in Chance’s eyes. It made him look all kinds of dark and dangerous. Was it any wonder that she responded to it?

“It would take weeks,” he finally said.

The shiver continued through the rest of her body. “Weeks?”

“To teach you how to become a PI.”

Meg took a deep breath. She hadn’t intended to ask this question tonight. Not after only a week. But she didn’t see that there was any way around it, and not least because she hated uncertainty. It was one of the reasons that she was so keen on mathematics. There was little in the way of uncertainty there, not until you got into the really theoretical stuff.

“Do we have weeks?”

Chance squeezed her hand. A moment later and he came around the table and pulled her up and into his arms. He lowered his head and kissed her. The shiver became more intense. Meg wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with all the desire that was now thrumming through her body.

“I would like us to have weeks,” Chance said when they eventually pulled apart.

“So would I,” Meg said.

Chance lowered his head and placed little kisses against Meg’s neck, right from the point below her ear all the way to where her shoulder started. The sensations made her tingle.

“I don’t know if weeks would be enough time to do all the things I want to do with you, though,” Chance whispered.

“Things?”

“Stuff,” Chance said as his hands trailed down to her shorts.

Meg closed her eyes. She was sore from the night before, from the afternoon, too, but she knew just how Chance could make her feel better, and it absolutely did involve those lips. “We have the entire weekend to get started,” she said.

“There’s no time like the present.”