Page 25 of See You at the Sunset

“Henry,” he said, sharply. “It’s Henry. Only my granddad calls me Hank.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah, you seem way more like a Henry than a Hank,” she noted.

“Nice to meet you, Henry,” Mimi said. “This is my beautiful and talented and smart granddaughter—”

“Gladys. Yes, we’ve met,” he said.

Mimi’s brows raised. Dennis laughed. And Jia... she blushed. In her stress yesterday, she’d forgotten to point out Henry’s error. “About that. Um, I think there was a misunderstanding, and I didn’t get a chance to clarify. My name isn’t Gladys.”

“Well, this is all very confusing,” Mimi said. “Let’s start over,shall we? Let me introduce you two properly, especially since we’re all neighbors now.” She grabbed Jia by the shoulders and pushed her so she was face-to-face with Henry.

“Henry Shin, this is Jia Chung. Jia Chung, meet Henry Shin.”

The two of them stared at each other, recognition forming, yet not moving as they processed what they’d just heard. “My grandson here is a fancy lawyer at the Baking Group, some financial company in the Big Apple. We’re very proud of him,” Dennis said, looking at Henry, beaming.

“Bakerson’s Group,” Henry corrected him, not taking his eyes off Jia.

Jia’s heart began to race as the familiar words from her recent past invaded her head. The safe bubble she’d been hiding under to protect herself here at The Sunset had been cracked... with a sledgehammer.

“Henry Shin from the Bakerson’s Group,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was a confirmation.

“Yes, that’s it. That’s the one. Jia, do you know of it?” Dennis asked.

“The Bakerson’s Group? Jia? That sounds like the company that—” Mimi stopped herself, realizing she might be oversharing.

Jia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. All the pieces of a puzzle were fitting together she didn’t know she was working on.

Clinks of glasses filled with scotch. Heated kisses in an elevator. Frantic hands taking off clothing. Lips and tongues on the most private body parts. A formal, straight up-and-down signature on termination paperwork delivered by courier.

Jia’s jaw dropped when she’d connected all the dots.

Holy shit.

This was Henry J. Shin, Esq.

10

Growing up, Henry knew drama. His parents fought all the time. They also had makeup sex all the time, with their door open. They would leave him for two to three days alone with some frozen dinners in the fridge as they took off to who knew where. He wasn’t even ten years old. If the duration was longer, they’d drop him at his grandparents’ house without even a phone call warning, and Henry would stay there for weeks or more. They’d missed his elementary school, middle school, and high school graduations. He never invited them to his college ceremony. Henry learned quickly that he hated drama, and when he was finally on his own to live life the way he chose, he decided to avoid it at all cost. Being a loner made that a lot easier.

Staring at the face of the woman he’d had a one-night stand with, who was the same woman he’d fired from her job the next morning, and who was now the woman making it her personal mission to care for every single elderly resident at his grandfather’s new senior living community, Henry could notfathom how he found himself in this position, here, face-to-face with Jia Chung, knee-deep in drama.

He couldn’t look away.

Her face wobbled and her mouth trembled as she quietly said, “Will you excuse me?”

She walked away leaving Henry, Dennis, and Mimi standing in her wake.

“Excuse me,” Henry said as he went after her. He heard the voice in his head: the commandDon’t go, the pleaLeave it alone, and the warningDo not get involved. But Henry was involved, and he couldn’t leave it alone. He had to go and talk to her.

He needed to know why Jia Chung was here, apparently living comfortably at Sunset Hills, a neighborhood with an age limit that she most definitely did not meet and that his grandfather had just moved into. How had she landed here and why?

The facts were that Jia Chung had allegedly been bad at her job and, if he gave the anonymous complaint a grain of salt, difficult to work with. How was that person back in New York the same person now acting as social director for a bunch of elderly residents here in the California desert? And what—out of the goodness of her heart? What did she stand to gain?

She was either the salt of the earth or a grifter of some sort. And he needed to find out which for Dennis’s sake.

He found her outside in the backyard. She stood with her arms crossed, back to the door, eyes staring at what, he didn’t know. Her shoulders lifted in a deep sigh, and he could hear it when she let it out.

“Jia Chung?” His voice came out deeper than he’d heard from himself in days. It was the voice he used as a New York lawyer. Serious and stern. Henry only just realized how he’d somehow softened how he spoke while he’d been here.