Page 63 of No More Secrets
Joey shrugged. “Beckett, too. We grew up together.”
“And what about Jax?”
Joey’s eyes narrowed.
“Now before you go and shoot eye daggers at me, what’s a ladies’ night out if we aren’t talking about emotionally scarring relationships?”
“I should have played poker instead,” Joey grumbled.
“Very funny. Okay, let’s skip over He Who Shall Not Be Named. What about you? What do you do outside of horses?”
“There’s not much room for anything besides horses. Carter and I were just talking. It’s time to hire on some part-time help in the stables. Operation’s big enough now that it warrants the extra hands.”
“What you do, what you all do, here is pretty impressive,” Summer said.
“What about you? Do you spend all your time prancing around in heels in the office?”
Summer rolled her eyes. “I am deeply offended. I don’t prance. I saunter. And yes. I work and that’s about it. Not enough time to do anything else.”
“So what exactly does an associate editor forIndulgencedo?” Joey asked, reaching behind the bar and snagging two food menus. “I Googled you, by the way.”
It was Summer’s turn to shrug. “I write, I edit, I proofread, I work with photographers, models, advertisers.”
“Your blog,” Joey said. “It’s a lot different than the stuff you write for the magazine.”
“You did do your research.”
“The stuff you write in the magazine is like shiny and fluffy. Annoying. But I didn’t hate the blog.”
“Thanks?”
Joey shrugged. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. It sort of sounded like a compliment. Moving on. How about families? Is that a safe topic?”
“As long as you’re not asking me when I’m going to start one?”
“Do people still do that? Where I’m from, people think it’s an accident if you have kids before forty.”
“Different worlds.”
“So, families?”
“My parents live an hour from here. They wanted to stay close to my sister and her kids.”
“Are you close with them?”
She shrugged again. “I wouldn’t call them up if I needed a place to stay, but we do the holiday thing, the birthday thing.”
Summer waited.
“My dad doesn’t understand why I work for Carter,” Joey said, taking a deep drink of her draft.
“Because?”
“Because of Jackson.” Joey didn’t quite choke on his name, but it didn’t flow out either. “Dad isn’t his biggest fan. He’d rather I go run someone else’s operation.”
“But you stayed.”
