Read Debra Burroughs - Paradise Valley 02.5 - The Edge of Lies for Free Online

store to pick up a few items. As she’d walked out, a bright yellow flyer on the community bulletin board had caught her eye. The flyer was promoting cooking classes.
    She had stopped to check it out, mulling over the idea, deciding that maybe that was what she needed to avoid another fiasco like the one she’d created the night before.
    She had pulled one of the little phone number tabs off the page, and the moment she got her groceries in the car, she’d called to enroll. The classes were to begin that evening and she remembered how excited she’d been for it. With Evan working late that night, she was happy that she too had found something to fill her time. In the end, though, she’d found so much more.
    Emily blew on her hot tea before taking a sip and thinking back to that fateful night.
    ~*~
    The sun was low in the cloudless summer sky, casting shadows around the buildings, when she drove up to the address on the flyer. A black awning hung over the entrance to the small brick warehouse with the words Bon Appetite! printed on it.
    Emily climbed out of her car and started across the street, when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see who it was, noticing a woman with long dark hair in a black trench coat walking into the shadow of a nearby building, appearing to be talking on the phone.
    As Emily stepped inside, she was met by a reception area with a table off to the left that she assumed was set up for planning menus and events with clients. Worktables for the class had been lined up around the commercial kitchen that had been built into the rear of the space. The scent of Italian spices filled the air.
    The woman in the trench coat walked in shortly after, glancing around, which made Emily a bit uneasy. When the woman shrugged her coat off and took a place at one of the worktables, Emily’s shoulders relaxed.
    Camille Hawthorne, the owner, introduced herself to her students, which consisted of four women. Her short spiky hair was fiery red and she had deep blue eyes, appearing to be in her late thirties. She was married to a workaholic, she claimed, and she had a teenager and a pre-teen who were driving her crazy.
    She confessed that she was just starting her catering and event-planning business and had offered the classes as a way to get her name out into the community, hoping to draw in business. When she finished telling about herself, she asked each student to do the same.
    Emily jumped in first, telling how she was a newlywed and had just moved there from the Washington, DC area. Although she had hoped to teach, she was working as a real estate agent for now. She admitted she was a terrible cook and was desperate to improve her culinary skills for the sake of her poor, sweet husband.
    Next was Maggie Sullivan, a vivacious blonde, blue-eyed beauty. She shared that she was a single mom from Texas with a fourteen-year-old son, pointing out she had him at a very young age. She told the women that after finding no luck in Hollywood years ago, she’d given up on hoping to become an actress, and she’d moved to Paradise Valley, leaving a good-for-nothing husband behind.
    She was working as a fitness instructor now, and she hoped to have her own studio one day. Her reason for attending the lesson was to improve her cooking skills to help her catch a better class of man. “Y’all know the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” she drawled.
    Then there was Abby Randall. Wearing hardly any makeup, she had that girl-next-door natural beauty, with her chestnut hair layered just above the shoulders and deep green eyes. She claimed to have the most perfect husband in the world, and no one would have guessed she was the stay-at-home mother of five. Her reason to take the class was to get out of the house and do something for herself for a change.
    The last in the group was Isabel Cortez, the mysterious woman from the shadows. With waves of long deep-brunette hair and dark chocolate eyes, Isabel