Page 10 of The Smoke Hour

Three Days Later (Tuesday)

“Damn it!” I groaned.

“I’m sorry, boo. I can’t get out of it. This staff meeting has been planned for a while, and I can’t escape.”

“It’s okay, Tam.”

“Did you try calling Chris?”

“Yeah. I tried her first. She wasn’t answering her phone, and then I remembered that she had that important marketing lunch meeting with her client.”

“You want to go back tonight?”

“No. I’m figuring I’ll encounter less harassment if I go during the day than at night. Besides, I doubt he’ll be there during the day.”

“Then why are you stressing about going alone?”

“Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” Tamara asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Uh-huh. You never told us what happened that night. I’m waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For you to tell me what happened while you were in his office for that extra ten minutes that Chris and I waited in the lobby.”

“Nothing. He just kept threatening to call the police on me and asking why did I do the shit I’d done. He wasn’t settling for that ‘blame it on the alcohol’ excuse.”

“And girl, I’m not buying that bullshit you’re spitting out now. What happened in that office?”

“Nothing, Tam. Listen, I gotta go.” I ended the call and changed out of my heels into a pair of flats.

I was taking an extended lunch break, and I was going to walk to The Smoke Hour to get the heels that I had left behind. My girls were supposed to get them for me, but they had forgotten when they were carried out of the lounge. There was no way that I would leave a pair of nine-hundred-dollar shoes behind.

Granted, I hadn’t purchased them myself. They were a gift from my fiancé. I was so mortified that night after being lifted off the stage and carried out of there and then overwhelmed by the kiss that I had shared with the man that I’d forgotten all about my damn shoes.

Even as I hobbled back to the car, I hadn’t thought twice about my shoes, and neither had my friends. They were too busy giggling about the shit that we had pulled off. Now, I wanted my shoes back.

I grabbed my purse off the back of the door to my office and headed out. I closed and locked my little candle-making shop, Kai’s Kandles, before I turned the sign hanging on the door to “out of office” for lunch.

I quickly headed down the sidewalk, waving a hurried hello to the other business owners I had come to know in the area.

“Hey, Kai. Where are you heading on this beautiful day?” Walter, the owner of the juice shop, asked.

“Just getting some exercise in, Walt,” I lied as I hurried past him.

He had asked me out to lunch on several occasions. Despite the number of times I declined, he kept asking, even when he had seen Terry coming around.

“Hey, Kai. You’re leaving for the day?” Daisy, the owner of the local floral shop, asked.

“Nope. Just taking an extended lunch,” I called back.

I often wondered if she thought because her parents had named her Daisy that she needed to open a floral shop. Or if, perhaps, her real name wasn’t Daisy, and she had adopted it because of the floral shop.

“Hey, Kai. Coming in for some brew?” Stephanie, a barista at the local coffee shop, asked as she updated the sandwich board.

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