Prologue | 1 

PART I
SPEAKING IN TONGUES

2

MISS DOROTHY ALBRIGHT was going to be a pain in Trey’s ass, he thought darkly as Marina dove into the next few problems with glee. He could barely keep himself from returning the girl’s glare. He wondered how subtle he could be in backing her off without Marina getting his point.

“Miss Albright,” Trey began respectfully, hating that he had to show such deference to a sixteen-year-old girl. “I appreciate your concern for Marina. It’s not often people have friends as trustworthy and protective as you.”

Dot looked at him suspiciously. She knew he was going to take this somewhere, and, Trey thought, she might even know where he was going to take it.

“I imagine it’s difficult to watch out for someone not as experienced as you.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Marina was half paying attention, but too happy whenever she got a problem right, with a little nudge from Trey here and there, to care.

“Or perhaps you’re not used to having to watch out for her?” he asked slyly.

Her lip curled.

Then he mouthed, Jealous?

That made her face flush and her nostrils flare, but she couldn’t very well throw a drink in his face or accuse him of using Marina without in turn being accused of begrudging Marina some male attention.

Trey didn’t think she was. He’d observed her flirt and she was as walled off in her dress as Marina was in her trousers. She simply handled men differently because while she liked the attention, she knew men and what they wanted. She’d known Trey for what he was the second she laid eyes on him and he wasn’t sure she didn’t know Boss Tom on sight if he and her father were acquainted.

He looked her up and down with a sneer because Trey was surrounded by pretty women, some of whom wanted his attention. Dot wasn’t special.

If he accused Dot of being jealous, that could never be taken back and he’d put her on notice that he had no problem doing it. So if Dot cared for Marina at all, she’d keep her mouth shut.

But, as Trey had hoped, Dot got the message loud and clear and casually took a sip of her drink, flipped open a book, and began to read as if that was what she intended to do all along.

Marina, on the other hand, was zipping through her problems. It was simple if one didn’t overthink it, but Trey had had to be taught this way too. He had been as hopelessly lost as Marina and getting all the terms and concepts out of the way had been a revelation to him. He understood exactly how Marina was feeling at the moment and it was the first inkling that, in addition to the fact that he didn’t want to stop staring at this girl, he might actually be able to stand talking to her for more than half an hour.

Then she looked up at him with a delighted smile, her brown eyes sparkling. “Thank you!” she breathed.

Trey just stared at her, shellshocked and speechless. No, she was never going to be pretty and at first glance, she was interesting, but now she was arresting. “Um … you’re welcome,” he muttered, feeling like the uncoolest cat in the world. Then he shook himself because if he didn’t pay attention, his speech would start slipping. “Don’t let your math teacher confuse you tomorrow. It’s just matching up your numbers and letters—you’ll always be one number shy—”

“Sometimes two,” Dot said airily.

“Yes, and there’s a way to figure that,” Trey said, tamping down his irritation, “but you probably won’t have to do that for a while. Then you just work the problem around until you have a letter on one side and a number on the other and that’s your answer.”

“Thank you so much!” she breathed again, her genuine gratitude so disconcerting Trey didn’t quite know what to do or say. His girls threw him a thanks, daddy-o for this, that, or some other thing just because he was the boss, but girls like his knew kindness always came with a price and nobody was grateful for a “gift” they’d have to pay for eventually.

Marina wouldn’t know that, of course, but Trey didn’t know what unconditional gratitude felt like. He didn’t like it at all.

“You’re welcome,” he repeated softly. So he taught her how to do a math problem. So what. What he did like was that she thought he’d given her something valuable.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked out of the blue.

“I sell insurance,” he said by rote.

“Oh,” she said, a bit bewildered. Maybe she didn’t know what that was, but high school girls wouldn’t need to, he supposed. “The only thing I know about insurance is that the offices are boring when you’re waiting on somebody to finish their business.”

He smiled. “Say something bad happened to your house,” he began. “If you had bought insurance, the insurance company would pay to rebuild your house and replace all the stuff you lost. You buy an insurance policy and then you make payments. Then when the bad thing happens, you get that back and a lot more.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Well, what if nothing ever happens to your house? Do you get that money back?”

“No. You’re making a bet. You’re betting that it will happen. The insurance company is betting that it won’t happen. Nobody who loses a bet gets their money back.”

“But neither of you want it to happen, not like horse racing, where you’re betting for the thing you want.”

Trey risked a peek at Dot, who seemed interested in the conversation in spite of herself.

“True. So what I do,” he continued, “is get people to bet me that something bad will happen to them. They throw their money in the pot. They never see that money again unless something bad does happen, in which case, I have to pay whatever the terms of the bet were.”

“And you still have money left over because there are so many other people betting, but nothing happens to them,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, sort of surprised she came to that so quickly. “Good.”

“How old are you?” Dot asked abruptly.

“Twenty-four.”

“You’ve got some nice duds.”

“I make a good living,” he replied patiently, still trying to hold his tongue. He looked back at Marina. “Enough to support a wife and family.”

Both girls stilled. “You already have a wife and a family?” Dot asked carefully, not in challenge, but to verify what she thought he said.

“No,” he replied with as unthreatening an expression as he could muster.

“Oh,” she said softly, relaxing. Her permanent scowl faded a little and she gave him a tight smile. She began fussing with her napkin and her drink, wiping off the table, the base of the glass. Marina, flushed, worried the pages of her math book.

No, he wasn’t going to marry her, but the only way to get in any preacher’s daughter’s trousers was to let her think he was seriously courting her.

Except right now it was time for a strategic retreat. He slid out of the booth. “Miss Scarritt,” he said soberly. “Miss Albright.”

Dot wouldn’t look at him, but Marina gave him a very shy glance and smile. “Thank you again,” she said softly. “I can’t stop saying it, I guess.”

The corner of Trey’s mouth turned up a little. “You’re welcome. May I … Will you be here tomorrow?”

“We come here every day after school,” she said shyly. “Until our homework’s done. We have to be home by six.”

“Mm hm. Well, ladies, I’ll see you around.”

2

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