That Fraudster Love by Lucinda McFall

Author:Lucinda McFall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: suspense romance, contemporary romance, slow burn romance, second chance romance, enemies to lovers romance, teacher and student romance, dark academic romance
Publisher: Shrike Publications
Published: 2022-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

20.

A WEEK AND A HALF OF rain, but the morning of Alexa’s birthday, the sun shone. It was a good day.

Zach spent the morning at one of the community centers where he worked. He was taking a break shooting the shit with a few co-workers at the vending machines, when a woman walked up. She stood watching them.

Zach looked over at her, puzzled. She was staring hard at him. Heavy make-up. Short skirt. Big hoop earrings. “Zach Nelson,” she said in a scratchy voice. “You douchebag.”

The other two at the vending machine exchanged glances and stepped away.

Uh-oh, Zach thought.

“Don’t remember me, do you?”

“Sorry,” said Zach.

“You got my boyfriend sent to County. I trusted you.”

It dawned on Zach then. A case he’d worked on for Nick, one of the first months he’d been employed by Nick’s outfit. Zach had met this girl at a bar, gotten her drunk. Gone back to her place. Gotten her talking. Went back to see her a couple of times. Even played with her kid.

He felt a deep surge of shame.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I don’t do that shit any more.” He walked away, hoping she wouldn’t follow him, start screaming at him. When he looked around, he saw the back of her, as she barged through the front door of the center and out to the street, cursing under her breath.

It shook him, though. It was a reminder.

He was due at the bus stop, so he finished up quickly and got out of there. He thought he might be hyperventilating. The walk to the bus stop evened his breathing. Once he got to his afternoon gig at one of the other centers, the work steadied him. A lot of filing and moving supplies and physical stuff that kept his mind off what had just happened.

At the end of his work day, he was hurrying, sorting art supplies into bins, trying to get it all done before the end of work, because he was taking Alexa out for her birthday. It was a surprise. He was taking her back to La Ferme, the Belgian place. He’d worked out an in-kind deal with Georges, the maître d’, so he could afford it.

Zach was elated. Georges needed help with the design on a new menu, and the waiter Léon, who knew about Zach’s art, had recommended him. Talking it over with Léon, he learned that both Georges and Léon had wanted to hire him when he needed a job, even though they’d been vetoed. That heartened him. Especially when, learning that Alexa’s birthday was today, Georges told him to bring her for dinner even before he’d received the new designs.

“But there’s a man,” Zach said, beginning to worry about whether the terrible Dave might show up. He explained a little of it to Georges.

“That man?” Georges said, as Zach was leaving. “I’d recognize him again. That was a very shady incident. I remember it. I even started to ask you about it, that night. But you know.” He shrugged.

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