Unnatural Calamities Read Online Free Page A

life were, Janey had done something right with Rachel. Of all of Cynthia’s friends—and the girl had dozens—Toph liked Rachel best. She had a brain.
    And he enjoyed his daughter when she hung around Rachel. When the two of them got together, Cynthia ate regular food. She could go a whole evening without slapping her minuscule rear end or non-existent belly and complaining about how fat she was.
    God help the child of a model.
    Janey Carmody strode through the café door, a hefty black cloth briefcase slung over her shoulder. Her face lit with a smile when she caught sight of him and she waved.
    She shook his hand, a surprisingly strong grip for a small woman, and sat down. After a few pleasantries, she pulled out several manila folders, fussed over them and drew out papers in a manner that declared she was now all business. The polished wood table was too small to contain their coffee and her folders, so she shoveled the papers together, leaned her elbows on them and launched into an obviously well-rehearsed report of what she’d do with the ten thousand dollars she needed.
    She finished with, “Obviously since I don’t want to start out with a mountain of debt, I’d get a used van. And I think I can temporarily rent a kitchen facility from my friends at The Pickled Chug after hours.”
    “You know the owners of The Chug?” He liked the strange restaurant in the center of the city. The local paper, at a loss to come up with a better description, called it “eclectic”. Bea dismissed it as too funky for any kind of business event and Bea was always correct about matters of style.
    Janey nodded. “I went to the CIA with Lindy, one of the owners.”
    “The Central Intelligence Agency?”
    “No. The Culinary Institute of America. I’m a dropout. I had to decide between work and school and went for the work. So anyway. Well. That’s the basic idea that I wanted to talk about with you.”
    She leaned back in her chair and her shoulders seemed to slide down from her ears where she’d hunched them, as if she’d steeled herself to present a plan to a board of directors of a major corporation.
    He watched her over his cup, and wished he could be certain his impulsive offer to meet her was based on his weird ability to suss out talent and not the fact that he admired the shape of her body and the grin on her freckle-sprinkled face.
    She picked up her coffee and drank it with both hands wrapped around the mug. She examined her carrot muffin and gingerly broke it apart with her fingers. Nothing elegant about those slightly reddened hands with the short nails, but they fascinated him.
    Toph envied skilled workers’ hands. Being able to produce a delicious meal seemed far more important than making too much money betting on other people’s talents.
    He watched her delicately poke at the muffin. “More food autopsies?”
    She laughed, and dropped the muffin as if it were on fire. “Rachel once informed me I shouldn’t be allowed to eat in public unless I sign a form stating I’d eat like a normal human being.”
    “What are you looking for?”
    She bent toward him conspiratorially and murmured, “I wanted to see if they used dehydrated carrots or bananas. I think it’s a yes.”
    “And you? What would you use?”
    She waggled her eyebrows and gave him a wide grin. “Fresh, of course. What did you think?”
    He thought that he was pretty desperate if a conversation about dehydrated food could bring him to the edge of lunging across the table and grabbing her for a kiss.
    He knew he had the stirring of sexual interest in Janey, but he also felt the illogical whiff of his peculiar intuition, the one that allowed him to spot winners. The whisper that told him she could be another.
    But he wasn’t going to cave in to a mere whisper. Even Toph wasn’t that rash. And speaking of careless, he reluctantly abandoned the idea of getting involved with her. He did not need any more needy people in his personal