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Back My Darling Husband Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Booklist
  4. Dedication
  5. About the Author
  6. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  7. J A D E
  8. J A D E
  9. C A M
  10. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  11. J A D E
  12. J A D E
  13. S E B A S T I A N
  14. C A M
  15. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  16. J A D E
  17. J A D E
  18. C A M
  19. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  20. J A D E
  21. S E B A S T I A N
  22. C A M
  23. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  24. J A D E
  25. J A D E
  26. C A M
  27. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  28. J A D E
  29. J A D E
  30. J A D E
  31. J A D E
  32. C A M
  33. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  34. J A D E
  35. J A D E
  36. S E B A S T I A N
  37. J A D E
  38. C A M
  39. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  40. J A D E
  41. J A D E
  42. J A D E
  43. C A M
  44. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  45. J A D E
  46. J A D E
  47. J A D E
  48. J A D E
  49. S E B A S T I A N
  50. T H E   I N T E R V I E W
  51. A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
  52. Stranger in the Lake

The light turns green, but traffic doesn’t move, and I lay on the horn. The woman in the SUV takes her sweet time, pausing to wag a bird over her shoulder before she shifts her foot to the gas. The car eases forward, and I ride the brake and her bumper. I glance over both shoulders, edging closer to the lanes on either side, but I’m closed in by wall-to-wall traffic, and it’s not going to loosen anytime soon. Atlanta’s notorious rush hour is just getting started.

Calm down.

Think things through.

Don’t come to me with a list of problems, I’m always preaching to my staff. Bring me the solutions. Identify the issues, evaluate your options, tackle the items one by one. This is what I am constantly telling them.

Now it’s my turn.

Problem number one: I don’t have $734,296 in cash. I don’t have that anywhere in a nearby universe. Cash flow may be the lifeblood of the restaurant business, but that doesn’t mean I have piles of it lying around. Whatever cash I have on paper, none of it is liquid.

And contrary to popular belief, the restaurant business doesn’t run on cash, not since an Atlanta bartender was killed in a late-night burglary a few years back. Overnight, every sit-down restaurant in town instituted a no-cash policy—Apple Pay or cards only. Even with the tip jars at the bars, even if I raided the valet stands, there’s no way I can come up with that kind of money, not before the 7 p.m. deadline.

Which brings me to problem number two: just under three hours for this mission impossible, and that includes driving time in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I’m still a good four minutes away from the office, and the banks close in—I glance at the clock on the dash—forty-eight minutes.

The vise around my chest twists tighter, sending a surge of adrenaline to my heart. It bangs against my ribs in an almost painful pulse, brisk and erratic. The last time I felt this way, an ER doc whipped out the heart paddles.

The lane to my left opens up, and I swerve into it and gun the gas, blowing past the SUV.

Problem number three: no police.