Free Crazy Sweet Love: Contemporary Romance Novella, Clean Interracial Romantic Comedy (Flower Shop Romance Book 3) by Marisa Logan Page A

prying too much into his personal business.
    “The divorce isn't final yet,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “It's...complicated. We split up two years ago, but the legal aspects have been a hassle.”
    “I'm sorry to hear that.” I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He looked genuinely concerned for his son's well-being. It was a shame when kids had to go through such trials.
    At lunch time I led the tour group to the cafeteria. I usually took my meals in the employee break room, but on days when I was running tours it was easier to stay with the group so we could pick up where we'd left off after lunch was finished. As soon as I sat down with my lunch, a ham and cheese hoagie and chips, TJ and his dad came over to sit with me.
    “Mind if we join you?” Tom asked. “TJ said he wanted to ask you something.”
    TJ kept his head down while he talked. I got the impression that he wasn't very comfortable expressing himself. “I got confused in that book you gave me when it said something about 'ghost trains.' Like, I thought it was talking about real ghosts, or at least, what people think is maybe real ghosts if they're dumb and believe in them.” He shrugged, still keeping his head down. “But then it started talking about trains that just run without people in them, and I didn't get it.”
    I laughed and shook my head. “Well, there's no real ghosts on those trains,” I said, thinking briefly of the “Phantom Train” from one of the old Final Fantasy games. “Not that I know of anyway. No, it's kind of a legal loophole thing.”
    “Legal loophole?” Tom asked. “Are there some kind of weird train laws I don't know about?”
    “Oh, you'd be surprised,” I said. “This is a British thing. The way I understand it, they've got something like fifty or more train lines that only run for the sake of appearances. Some of them only run a few times per week, they don't advertise them, and even the people who sell tickets at the train stations don't know these are lines that actually exist. No one rides them.”
    “Why?” TJ asked. He was looking up now, no doubt curious about the “ghost trains.” I know I was the first time I learned about them.
    “Apparently, they have to go through this whole big hassle when they want to shut down a line. There's appraisals of how it will affect passengers and the economy, a report has to be published to the press so the people know what's going on, then they need to wait months and months through consultations, hearings, and so on. It takes so much time and costs so much money to go through the red tape that they decided to just keep some of these trains running with no passengers. It's apparently cheaper to keep them running than to shut them down.”
    “Wow,” Tom said, snorting and shaking his head. “And I thought our government was bad. It's ridiculous the kinds of things that happen because of dumb laws.”
    I laughed. “Tell me about it. Though at least it makes for good stories. I read online that there's 'ghost train hunters' who go exploring sometimes, trying to find where these trains run so they can catch a ride. They don't advertise the schedules for them anymore, so it's apparently quite the challenge.”
    “Well,” Tom said, “I guess I never knew trains could be so interesting.”
    He smiled at me and caught my eye. I smiled back, looking into his eyes for a moment. They were a soft, deep blue. He wasn't what I would have called ruggedly handsome or anything, but he was cute, and his eyes certainly were nice.
    After lunch, we finished the tour, then the families broke off to explore the rest of the museum on their own. TJ and his dad lingered in the lobby, looking over the map of the building to see if there was anything left to check out. I watched them for a moment, chewing on my lip. I still felt like I needed to do something more to make the little boy's experience more magical. I'd had a lot of bad school field trips as a kid, I