Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“He didn’t live with her? Wasn’t Lou born then?” Boomer couldn’t imagine being apart from his wife and kid. If he had a wife and kid.
“Looks like it. He didn’t come back to Texas. The whole family moved to Princeton where he got his PhD while he taught undergrad classes. When Lou was four he took a job with his father’s group. American Economic Association. It’s a well-funded think tank. He worked with his father on the math side of economics. That’s what the Nobel talk was about,” MaeBe explained.
“What did Daphne do all this time?”
“She taught for a couple of years and then when they moved to New Jersey, she seems to have been a full-time mom. They moved back to Texas when he graduated, and she still stayed home with Lou. Then he died. She held on to the house they lived in for a couple of years and then sold it and bought a condo in the West End. She worked at a big bakery for a while and then sold her own stuff online. Two years ago she opened Daphne’s Delights. She sold her place in the West End and moved here at the beginning of summer. My bet is that she moved to be closer to the school Lou attends. It’s a high school.” MaeBe turned his way. “Hanover Prep is a ridiculously expensive private school. There’s zero way Daphne’s paying for that on her own. I would bet the grandparents are paying. I haven’t looked at her financials. Do you want me to?”
“Absolutely not.” He wasn’t going to invade her privacy more than he already had, but he still had questions. “Isn’t Lou young for high school? The twins just started high school a couple of weeks ago and they’re fourteen. How can Lou be in the same grade as Kenz and Kala?”
MaeBe turned back to him. “I suspect our little Lou has a genius-level IQ. I talked to her, and that kid is hella smart. She likely skipped a couple of grades. She was doing AP Algebra homework, so I think we can safely say she inherited her parents’ smarts.”
“You think Daphne’s really smart?” He hated how vulnerable he felt asking that question.
MaeBe’s eyes softened in that way that let Boomer know what had happened with Kyle Hawthorne hadn’t completely broken her. “Probably, but that doesn’t mean she won’t like you, sweetie. She’d be a fool not to.”
He shrugged and sank down on the couch next to the dogs. “I think she’s cute, and you know I like to help a person out.”
She stood, setting Sheba down and moving toward the kitchen. “I know you’ve had trouble with women who didn’t take you seriously, and they were morons.”
But they weren’t. The crazy thing was he actually liked to learn stuff. He just wasn’t as sharp as a lot of people were, not as quick to pick things up. Now muscle memory—he had that in quantity. He could do almost anything physical. He’d taught himself to cook because his parents had told him he wasn’t smart enough to learn.
Was he setting himself up for heartache again? “I think them not being morons was kind of the problem. The smart ones look at me like I’m either a giant teddy bear or a sex toy, and when I was younger I didn’t mind. I kind of do now.”
“Because we’re surrounded by happy couples and our friends are all getting married, and how the hell did Hutch get married before we did?” MaeBe summed things up nicely. She walked back in with two beers in her hand. “I would have sworn I would marry and have at least three kids before Hutch even thought about a wedding. Here. You gave away your other one. Have one of mine.”
MaeBe liked a very specific beer. It was a lager with citrus and far more expensive than the ones he normally drank. It was a friendly offering from one sad soul to another. Because suddenly he was feeling a little down. If Daphne moved in a rich, intellectual world, she likely wouldn’t give him the time of day. She might sleep with him if she got lonely, but she wouldn’t date him.
“Thanks.” He didn’t need the beer, but it was a friendly gesture. MaeBe knew he had trouble with women thinking he didn’t have a brain in his head, and she felt bad. This was something she could do, something that made her feel better, so he took the beer. “Like I said, she’s pretty and needs some help. I’ll give it to her and then we’ll get back to our own lives. Maybe it’s time to let Charlotte set me up again.”
The last time the boss’s wife had set him up had ended with a concussion and the lady in question being arrested for smuggling in illegal cheese. The head injury had been from being hit with a massive wheel of illicit Gouda.