Page 29 of Sunset Cove
She smiled and nodded. “Of course! I got all of that food for you. I eat most of my meals at the hotel these days.”
He stirred the pot. “How’s everything going there?”
Claire shrugged. “Pretty good. No more visits from the FBI, at least.”
He let out a laugh. “That’s good.”
“Have I told you about my friend Margie? She lives on San Juan Island. Her brother was in the FBI, so maybe he could help?”
“I appreciate the thought, but it won’t work.” Marty turned around to face her. “I have to get evidence before I can talk to them.”
“What if that’s not possible?”
He let out a sigh. “It’ll be a lot less possible to prove anything if I’m behind bars.”
Oof. Claire knew he was right, but it was still hard to think about. “Fair enough. Is the venture capital company going forward with buying SureFired?”
“As far as I know, yes.” He rubbed his forehead. “I never thought that working on something so cool could go so wrong. People could lose their lives.”
The timer dinged. Marty turned the oven off and brought the pot of rice to the table.
“How much rice would you like?” he asked, putting a heaping spoon onto her plate.
“That’s good, thanks,” Claire said.
He nodded, then served rice for himself before taking a seat. “It’s wild. I don’t think anyone else realizes how dangerous it’ll be if the model misrepresents how much time people have to escape.”
Claire looked up at him. “No pressure, huh?”
“Yeah, exactly.” Marty took his seat. “Thanks again for letting me crash here. It’s given me some time to think.”
“I’m glad I could help,” Claire said, smiling at him before taking her first bite of salmon. “Hey, this is pretty good, Marty!”
“Thanks! Yeah, it turned out okay.”
Claire smiled to herself. What a scene this was. Sitting and having dinner with Becca’s son. If only her mom and dad were still alive. They would’ve loved to meet him.
“Are you going back to the hotel tonight?” Marty asked.
“I wasn’t planning to. I have a, uh, thing at seven.”
Marty raised an eyebrow. “What kind of thing?”
Claire didn’t know why she’d said it like that. Maybe because she felt inexplicably excited to spend more time with Chip, even if he did intimidate her. “It’s a work thing, really. The general manager of the hotel, Chip, wants to meet and discuss one of the summer events. A festival.”
“Oh. Cool.” Marty seemed to be studying her for a second. “Why do you look so worried?”
Claire laughed. He had his mother’s keen intuition. “It’s just a little strange, getting to know people here.”
“Why?”
She set her fork down. She’d had this thought circulating in her mind, and it was too strong to keep ignoring. “Well, if Chip tells me about his life, then I have to share information about mine.”
“Ah.” Marty sat back and crossed his arms. “I mean, you probably shouldn’t tell him about me, but I guess that’s your choice.”
Claire sputtered out a laugh. “No, obviously I won’t talk about you. Not yet. It’s everything else, actually.”
“Like what?”
