Page 78 of Gold Rush

There’s a knock on the door while I’m starting dinner. I pause chopping and walk over, not sure who to expect since hardly anyone knows I’m living here.

I peek through the peephole, then swing the door open. “Fancy running into you here.”

“Right back at ya.” Wren strides past me without waiting for an invitation to enter. “Where’s Rory?”

“Work.” I shut the door. “She should be home soon.”

I check the clock, which I’ve done repeatedly for the twenty minutes I’ve been home. I left the office on time, taking some files home to review later, so I would beat Rory and have time to make a special dinner. I wasn’t expecting her sister to show up, and this is a rare time when I’m not thrilled to see Wren. Her being here equals me not being alone with Rory, and being alone with Rory is basically all I’ve thought about all day.

“You’re cooking?” Wren casts a surprised, impressed look over her shoulder as she wanders deeper into the apartment. “Smells good.”

“One of my many talents,” I tell her, walking back over to the cutting board. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Does Rory have any wine?”

“I don’t think so. You can have some of my scotch.” I nod toward the bar cart beside the bookcase, empty aside from one bottle.

“Wait, is that a litter box? Did Rory get a cat?”

Shit, I forgot to feed Finch. She never meows or begs the way a pet typically does.

Wren watches me spoon some wet food out of the can and into Finch’s bowl. Finch appears a few seconds later, hearing the spoon tap against the metal bowl, tail flicking as she sniffs at the contents.

“Oh my God,” Wren whispers, crouching down to peer at Finch. “Is it a boy? Girl? What’s its name?”

“She’s a girl. Her name is Finch.”

Wren beams. “Like the bird?”

“Like the—” I smell the smoke a second before the alarm starts going off. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Finch sprints down the hall toward the bedrooms with a high-pitched yowl. Probably to hide under my bed.

Wren straightens, covering her ears with her hands, shouting, “Shut it off!”

“I wasn’t exactly planning to keep listening,” I yell back, although my first priority is shutting off the burner beneath the burned rice that I was planning to serve with the halibut.

Once that’s taken care of, I turn the vent hood up to its highest setting. Then I drag one of the stools under the alarm and hold the button that shuts it off until blissful silence replaces the screeching.

“I think I have permanent hearing damage,” Wren says.

I huff a laugh as I climb back down. “More importantly, dinner is ruined.”

Wren sticks her tongue out at me. “I will take that drink.”

“Coming right up.” I grab the scotch and two glasses off the bar cart, carrying them over to the island counter.

Wren has taken a seat on one of the stools. “You keep a lot of stuff here,” she comments, eyes darting from the bottle to the Yankees cap by the door to the stack of folders beside her elbow with my firm’s name printed on the cover.

“I live here.”

Her wandering gaze flies back to me. “You live here?”

“Uh-huh.” I pour a glass and slide it toward her.

“Since when?”

I think. “Almost a month.”