King's Treasure (Oil Kings Book 3) Marie Johnston (books to read to get smarter .txt) 📖

I’d left, it wasn’t really all that abridged. Which made me pissier.

I stomped the shovel into the garden bed. It might be a little too early to work the beds, but the harder the labor, the more peace I felt. I’d hauled logs all weekend so Hector and his wife, Eris, could put in firepits.

I admired him, making so much progress in the handful of years since we’d last talked during one of my rare trips home. He’d gushed then about how he’d left the military and moved to the country he’d met his wife in while serving. Working as a contracted interpreter, he’d banked money until he could afford his own slice of paradise.

A grunt escaped as I stabbed the spade into another mound of hard dirt. The ground was only mostly thawed, but I didn’t care. I could work it again in a couple of weeks. I would still be here.

Thunk. Flip. Thunk. Flip.

I stopped only to shrug out of my flannel. It had gotten ripped on an old fence post I’d fixed by the river last week. A strip hung loose at the bottom, but if I ripped it off, I’d look like I was wearing some new torso-baring fashion in plaid flannel. I didn’t want to waste money on a new one. I wasn’t a millionaire yet. And since I hadn’t heard from Savvy since leaving, I didn’t know if I ever would be.

She’d be bold to give up that much money, but I could respect her decision. She wanted to live life on her parents’ terms and there was a certain admirable loyalty in that. But as long as I wasn’t served divorce papers—there was hope that something could be worked out.

How the hell was that going to happen?

I was across the world. It wasn’t like I was in some mainstream vacation spot either. Not many people, much less Americans, said, Hey, let’s vacay in Kosovo. I heard there’s a cute new trail place that some asshole ran to in order to hide from his new wife.

Thunk. Flip.

I wiped my brow.

“I brought you water,” came a voice behind me.

The one thing I hadn’t factored in when I’d run to Hector was that his wife might have siblings, and that one of them, a sister, might be living with them. I hadn’t considered that she might be single. Or that she might be undeterred by my marriage status.

She wanted the happiness that her sister had and here I was, new to town, and apparently a clear target to set her sights on. Hector or Eris must’ve told her that my marriage was on legs as shaky as a newborn calf’s.

I cursed myself for not grabbing my water bottle. After the aggression I was exerting on this soil, I’d worked up a sweat.

“Thanks.” I shoved the spade in the ground deep enough that it could stand on its own and accepted the bottle.

Rina kicked a hip out. Her black pants could just as well have been painted on and she’d tied her fuchsia shirt at her waist with a hint of skin peeking out. It didn’t look like a work outfit, though for all her unabashed flirting, the girl could work. I hoped it meant she wasn’t staying. Some days, I wanted nothing more than the oblivion manual labor would bring by the end of the day, but Rina talked my ear off.

At first, I’d hoped it was so she could practice her English, but then she got bolder, and as the weather got warmer, her clothing got more revealing. I often took meals to my room, risking coming off as rude, so it wouldn’t seem like double-dating when only the four of us were around the dinner table.

I gulped down what turned out to be lemonade. Rina leaned against one of the wood posts that Hector had put in last year to keep the critters out of his garden. Someday they’d like to serve meals to hikers that featured homegrown fare, but for now, the garden fed him and Eris and their baby due at the end of the summer.

“Hector is making coffee. You come?” Her accent was thick, but she was learning my language much faster than I was learning hers.

“Hector’s espresso is like drinking tar.”

“I add milk.” Her lips turned up and she lifted her thick black hair off her shoulder. Her expression was rueful and for once not flirtatious. It was a common point of bickering among Eris and her younger sibling. Eris drank Hector’s tar without a drop of milk or a granule of sugar. Occasionally, she made Turkish coffee, but Hector loved his espresso.

“I’ll keep working. Thanks, though.”

She said thank you back to me in Albanian and I repeated it, my American accent as thick around the words as Hector’s espresso.

She chuckled. “Good try,” she said in English. While I didn’t want to date her, she wasn’t a terrible companion.

She pushed away from the post and went to my camera bag. I’d set it by another post farther away to keep the dirt off. I stiffened, but there was nothing she could do to tank my camera. It wasn’t like I was using it to pursue a story no one was interested in anyway.

“How do you— Oh.”

The click of it turning on and the shutter snap made me glance back, my brows drawn down. She took another photo. I didn’t care about pictures of myself, but they were useless.

“Model, yeah?” She laughed and took another shot.

“All right. I don’t need to sacrifice storage on myself.”

She pouted but located what must be the button to review the pictures. A smile spread across her face and she turned the camera around to show me. From my spot twenty feet away, I could see my scowl. If that’s what I looked like just puttering around, no wonder Hector kept me away from paying guests.

As I worked up the soil, she looked at pictures.

“Where’s wife?”

I jerked the handle and dumped a pile of dirt on