Free Burn by Crystal Hubbard Page B

both hands, and she stood in such a way as to use her basket to create a gap between Cinder and Gian.
    “Hi, Tracy.” Embarrassment flared in Gian’s cheeks. He cast an uncomfortable glance at Cinder and Zae, who whispered in Cinder’s ear. “I’m conducting a karate class at Clark this afternoon.”
    Tracy’s heavily lined and shadowed eyes widened in exaggerated surprise. “If I’d known you were teaching an Afternoon Enrichment class at the elementary school, I’d have signed my brood up.” She held up a finger and craned her long neck to peek down the dairy aisle. “Garrett! Chesney! Emory!” she shrieked. “Mommy is getting extremely impatient with you! Climb down and come here, right now!”
    “Where’s Granddad with his belt,” Zae muttered.
    Cinder laughed out loud at Zae’s reference to the way Granddad from The Boondocks would have handled unruly children in a grocery store.
    Gian snickered, certain he could have held a straight face if Cinder’s laugh hadn’t been so contagious.
    Three children with shoulder-length blond hair bar reled out of the dairy aisle and zoomed past the meat department. Tracy stepped in their direction to watch them race into the produce section. Cinder took that moment to lean toward Gian. “Are those girls or boys?”
    “Probably,” Gian answered.
    Tracy turned back to Gian, her sun-damaged face drawn in severe lines meant to resemble an expression of motherly pride. “Aren’t they adorable? So full of life and imagination. There are times I look at them and ask myself, what more could I possibly need?”
    “A tranquilizer gun,” Zae suggested.
    “Who are your friends, Gian?” Tracy’s tone chilly, she finally acknowledged Cinder and Zae with a glassy smile.
    “Zae Richardson, Cinder White, this is Tracy Leach- Roche,” Gian said.
    “I’m just Leach now,” Tracy corrected him. “I dropped my ex-husband’s surname.”
    “Zae and Cinder are two of my best students at Sheng Li,” Gian went on. “Zae got her second black belt last winter and Cinder is my prize pupil.”
    The beauty of Cinder’s innocent surprise caught Gian off guard. His heart surged, a breath caught in his chest, and in the short second it took him to regain control of h imself, he was certain the three women could read his burgeoning feelings for Cinder as if his heart and head were transparent.
    Tracy, a wrinkle like a hatchet mark appearing between her overly tweezed eyebrows, very precisely said, “Prize pupil?”
    Gian kept his eyes on Cinder. “You’d never know that she hadn’t had any prior training when she came to me. She’s amazing.”
    Cinder smiled, this one unfolding slowly, this one meant for Gian only. His appreciation for the gift was such that had they been anyplace else other than the meat counter of Freddie’s Market, he would have cupped her face and drawn her in for a kiss that would have shown her exactly how much he loved that smile.
    “I’ll just bet she is,” Tracy muttered tersely through an icy grin that shattered with the sound of a loud metallic crash from the produce section. “I’d better see what my darlings are up to. Good running into you, Gian.” She gave Cinder and Zae a dismissive glance, saying, “Cindy, May.”
    At the end of the produce section, Tracy ran into a group of women she knew. Another crash, followed by the voice of an angry Freddy’s employee, sounded while Tracy huddled with her friends, each of them doing a poor job of sneaking glances at Zae, Cinder, and Gian.
    “You might want to get out of here before the hyenas finish strategizing, Gian,” Zae warned. “They look like they haven’t had meat in a long time.”
    W hile Zae and Cinder collected their neat white bundles from the butcher, Gian vanished into the cereal aisle and raced for the two check-out stands.
    Zae leaned in close to Cinder. “You better go after him,” she directed. “Tracy Leach-Roche don’t play. She’s been trying to fix Gian up with