Chapter 411 - Busted

When the food was mostly gone, the leftovers were packed up, and the bill was paid Ryan finally made his move as Keeley was trying to usher her family out the door as quickly as possible.

"Keeley, is that you?"

She froze in her tracks. Busted.

Robert looked back and forth between them before a flicker of recognition appeared in his eyes. "I know you. You were Keeley's friend in college. Ryan, right?"

He nodded. "Hi Mr. Hall. What brings you here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Aaron said with narrowed eyes.

He hadn't gone into ice mode yet. Thankfully. That would not be the case if he had noticed Ryan staring at his wife earlier.

"I'm based in Detroit now but I had a conference and my wife wanted to see where I went to college," Ryan said with a shrug before turning toward his wife. "Leah, Keeley was my classmate at NYU. This is her husband Aaron, her father Robert, and their kids…whose names I don't know."

Why was he acting like he had never been a jerk? How much had this man forgotten in the past fifteen years? Chances are, he was keeping up appearances for his wife's sake. Keeley wasn't about to mess with that.

She was not in the mood for a confrontation and wanted this over as soon as possible. She put on a false smile and held her hand out to shake Leah's. She seemed nice enough; how had she ended up with this nut?

"Keeley Hale, nice to meet you," she said with a forced smile. Keeley pointed out each child as she named them. "This is Kaleb, my oldest, and his twin sister Violet. They're fourteen. Oliver is nine and Nathan is seven."

"Oh, how nice! We only have one daughter, Ivy. She's eight." A thoughtful expression crossed Leah's face. "Keeley Hale…by chance were you featured on the AWIS site awhile ago? I'm in pharmaceuticals as well so I've always loved their articles."

"I was," she said cautiously.

Leah clapped her hands together excitedly. "What a small world! I thought your work was interesting. Have you started human trials yet?"

"That's actually what we're here celebrating," Aaron cut in, unable to resist bragging about his wife. "She got the approval this morning and more people signed up than expected."

Ryan observed the entire scene with an odd expression on his face as if he couldn't believe wht he was seeing. Aaron bragging about his wife and all of their kids happily chatting among themselves or with their grandpa. He had been watching them the entire meal; was it that shocking that the Hales were actually a normal family?

"How wonderful! Congratulations. Well, it was so nice meeting you but we should probably let you go. Right Ryan?" Leah asked cheerfully.

"Yeah," he agreed immediately. "Nice seeing you guys again."

Sure it was.

"The feeling's mutual," Keeley lied. "Enjoy the rest of your visit."

She then made sure all of her kids were ahead of her before exiting the restaurant. What a strange encounter. Well, she certainly proved Ryan's long-held assumptions wrong. He had to have seen how happy she was and that she was definitely NOT a sugar baby.

===

"You ran into Ryan?" Jennica whispered in a gossipy voice a few days later as they assembled their kids to go trick or treating.

"Yeah it was super weird. He has a family of his own so I don't think he was staring at me because he liked me. It was more like he was shocked I was actually happy and normal with Aaron," Keeley replied.

Her friend snorted as she straightened Logan's cowboy hat. "Serves him right."

The topic immediately changed because it was time to take pictures. The Quinns, Clarks, and Griffiths had joined them to get the good candy in the most affluent building out of the entire group.

First they took pictures organized by individual family. Then ones of all the kids or of kids and their particular friends, such as Violet, Noah, and Kaleb. Finally, they took pictures of the a.d.u.l.ts all together.

Once that was done the older kids went to watch their movie and everybody else went downstairs to knock on doors with the exception of Aaron and Aiden, who stayed behind to chaperone.

Noah had the same general idea as his friends. He didn't want to dress up so he simply wore his karate uniform and black belt. By this point he was a black belt because he had been doing it for so long.

Violet let her hair out of its bun and took off her pointe shoes but didn't see the point of changing out of her leotard, skirt, or tights. She was used to wearing them for long periods of time. Kaleb only took off his helmet and cleats and Noah simply untied the black belt.

Feeling much more comfortable, Violet went off to pop some popcorn while the boys argued over which movie to watch. When she came back they were still at it so she chose the one involving less gore. It was about a serial killer and was supposed to be pretty good.

She munched on popcorn and eyed the screen blankly, though both her brother and her friend got at least a little jumpy. This was supposed to be good cinema? The only even slightly creepy thing was the music until ¾ of the way through when the serial killer actually began going after the protagonist.

Although, at that point there was a jump scare and Kaleb ended up throwing the popcorn bowl so it flew everywhere.

"Kal!" Violet protested. "I have popcorn in my hair!"

"That wasn't even that bad, dude," Noah said while shaking his head with a dumb grin on his face.

Kaleb was bright red. "I hate jump scares, okay? They always get to me in those creepy video games Oliver plays."

Their friend shrugged. "They don't affect me because Logan has jumped out at me too many times trying to scare me. I got used to it."

"And Violet is just a perfect goddess above us all who doesn't get scared by anything," Kaleb mumbled sourly.

She frowned. "I don't get scared by dumb things but that doesn't mean I don't get scared."

"Define a fear that isn't dumb then," he challenged. "I'm very curious!"

"Failure," Violet said simply, immediately causing her brother to shut up. He couldn't exactly make fun of her for that.

"Like you would fail at anything," Noah piped up. "You're good at everything you do."

Unlike if her brother had said it, Noah wasn't making fun of her. He actually meant it. Sometimes she really didn't know how to respond to her best friend since he idolized her so much. It was better to simply smile and not say anything.