Page 15 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

At the top of the stairwell, Olivia leads us down a short hallway and turns into what was once a bedroom.

Six four-person tables are squeezed in here, and all but two are occupied, and my shoulders relax as I realize none of the people in this room are Jake’s parents.

I was sure we’d run into them.

So far, though, we have not.

Olivia seats us at a table in front of a window overlooking the lake.

Simon sets the bottle and his flute on the white-clothed table so that he can pull out my chair for me.

Tank takes the other table in front of a closed door that’s hiding a bathroom.

I wonder if it’s still a bathroom or if it’s been converted to storage. My vote had been to leave it as a bathroom with the clawfoot tub on display behind glass.

So it’s probably storage.

Dammit .

Murmurs go up around us, and Tank glares collectively at the whole room.

“Aileen will be your server tonight,” Olivia tells us. “She’ll be around with the bread presentation soon.”

Simon moves forward as if he’s going to lift his hand and ask for something, but then slouches back in his seat.

And then Olivia’s gone, and once again, it’s the two of us.

Except we’re on display.

I recognize half of the other couples in the room.

None of the women are in sparkly red dresses.

Worse, Quincy and Wendell Thomas are here.

Or possibly better.

Quincy is the gossip in Athena’s Rest. If you want the entire town to know something, you tell him. If you want to keep a secret, you avoid him. If you want to start a rumor about someone though, he’s not your guy. He only deals in truth.

And he’s likely Daphne’s spy.

This should be a good thing.

But my stomach hurts.

“Can you eat butter?” I ask Simon as I pinch the flame on the candle between us. “I know how to avoid peanut allergies, but lactose intolerance wasn’t something any of my brothers’ teachers ever asked the parents to worry about.”

“In small quantities.” Mr. Smiley’s nose wrinkles. “Are you familiar with ghee?”

“My dad was a chef. I’m familiar with a lot of food.”

And the smile returns. “Was he?”

“He was.”

“Did he teach you to make your burgers?”

“He did.”

“With whatever magical secret ingredient you use?”

I smile. I could give credit to using produce from Ryker’s farm, but I know half the success of my burgers will be because of Dad’s secret ingredient, which will go to the grave with me.

“Yep.”

“And he introduced you to ghee?”

“It’s delicious.”

“It’s marvelous. All of the taste, none of the risk of discomfort. Tell me more about your father. Did you cook with him often?”

“I used to go to work with him on the weekends. Ryker did too, right until our parents died.” I glance around the dining room.

Yep.

They’re all staring.

Waiting for the show.

Reason enough to grab more bubbly.

But none of my story is a secret. Everyone in town knows it.

“What did your mother do?” Simon asks.

Tell him, Bea. Tell him why we’re here.

I ignore myself. “She was a professor in the math department at Austen & Lovelace.”

And twice a year, she acted with the local community theater for a hobby, which she adored, and which I am absolutely not telling Simon.

Both because since Mom died, Lucinda Camille took over running the theater, and also because I don’t want to draw the correlation between Mom’s hobby and his job.

Not when I’m afraid it would make me feel like her local success was less than his international fame since they’ll move an entire movie production’s schedule to accommodate him. Even when fame and fortune from acting was never what she ever wanted.

Weird, right?

“Were they awful?” Simon asks the question with that bright smile on his face, and I actually burst out laughing, then remember I’m on display, and I start coughing to cover the laughter.

Simon passes me his water glass, which is both incredibly endearing and also completely unnecessary since I have one in front of me as well. “Are you all right?”

I wonder how many times he’ll ask me that tonight. “That has to be the worst question anyone has ever asked me.”

He grins.

I crack up again.

I’m still half giggling when I finally answer him.

“No, they were not awful . They were the best. And that’s not a rose-colored rearview mirror.

Our house was the one all of our friends came over to hang out at.

Dad would cook for everyone. Mom never yelled.

They both laughed all the time, and they’d kiss and hug in front of us and gross us all out.

I got in trouble once for punching a boy who snapped my bra strap, and Mom showed up in the principal’s office and read them the riot act for trying to punish me for defending myself, then took me out for tea and told me how proud she was that I stood up for myself. Truly, truly the best.”

“Fascinating,” he murmurs.

“Were your parents awful?”

“Oh, goodness me, no. They were far worse than awful.”

He says it with that happy-go-lucky, no-worries-in-the-world expression on his face, but his voice—his voice doesn’t quite match it.

“Are they still alive?”

“Alas, if karma were real, I daresay your parents would still be here and mine would not.”

“Wow. They’re that bad?”

He lifts the bottle of Dom and tops himself off. “I’m afraid even four of these wouldn’t be enough to prompt that full story. Tell me about your brothers.”

“Their feet smell, they team up against me, and none of them ever make me dinner.”

“Just like my boys.”

“Well, you could’ve raised them better. Mine were already broken when I inherited them.”

He chuckles as a short young woman with a purple streak in her blond hair, wearing the black pants-and-white shirt uniform for JC Fig, appears at our table with a basket of bread.

“Oh my gosh, I love you,” she whispers to Simon as she sets the bread down.

“Okay. Okay. I’m going to be normal. Hi.

Aileen I’m. I mean, I’m Aileen. I’ll be your server tonight. ”

“Hello, Aileen,” Simon says. “Lovely to meet you.”

Her whole face flushes red as she shifts side to side on the balls of her feet.

“Take your time looking at the menu. Not that you have a lot of options. The chef did a fixed menu for opening, and I just need to know which soup, which salad dressing, and which flavor of ice cream for dessert. It’s homemade right here in our kitchens.

Oh, shi—shoot. Crap. Shoot. I’m supposed to tell you about the lobster mac.

Our main dish tonight is Chef’s famous award-winning version of everyone’s favorite comfort dish.

It features fresh-caught lane mobster— Maine lobster —and a creamy three-cheese fennel sauce over cavatappi noodles. ”

I pinch my lips together and cast a glance at Simon, who hasn’t stopped smiling. “Sounds brilliant.” He reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a pair of reading glasses, and slides them on as he glances down at the menu. “Tell us about the soups.”

“You have the option of cheddar broccoli or lobster bisque.”

I pinch my lips harder, and not because Simon in glasses is weirdly even hotter.

It’s because I didn’t know about the menu.

I mean, I knew the regular menu was cheese-heavy, but I didn’t know there would be a tasting menu without the meatloaf Simon mentioned wanting to try.

Or, you know, any single option at all that isn’t swimming in butter and cheese.

He keeps smiling. “Marvelous. Could you give us a few moments?”

“Oh, absolutely. Of course. Take your time. Would you like another bottle of wine? Or tea or something else? We can get you anything you’d like. Oh, and here’s the fondue.”

“Fondue?” My voice comes out strangled.

“Only the best here at JC Fig. Why stop at butter when you can dip your bread in cheese fondue? Be very careful—it’s hot.”

She steps aside while another server sets a pot of melted cheese on the table.

I reach out a hand before he can light the fuel beneath the pot. “Please don’t.”

He glances at me, and his face does the kind of gymnastics you’d expect from someone connecting Bea Best is here—parents died in a fire—don’t light the candle—boss’s ex- girlfriend—messy breakup—oh shit, that’s the boss’s favorite actor with her .

He visibly gulps as he holds eye contact with me.

“Please,” I repeat.

Is sweat breaking out on his forehead, or was it already there? “It’ll get cold and lumpy pretty fast, Bea. Jake would want you to have, erm, creamy fondue cheese.”

I twitch, wondering how good Simon’s memory is for names. If my face isn’t the color of a tomato, I’ll eat these stilettos. “I’ll handle the lumpy cheese problem,” I force out.

“Lumpy cheese is a risk we’re willing to live with,” Simon agrees.

The young man looks between us, then back at the cheese, then back at me. “Fuck, you’re epic,” he whispers.

“I dislike dining with anyone who is less than epic,” Simon says. “That will be all. Thank you.”

His voice holds an unexpected authority that has both of the servers scurrying away from the table as if they know they’ve been dismissed.

“Bea?” Simon says quietly to me as he peers at me over the top rim of his glasses.

I gulp champagne. “I didn’t know it would be a cheese- and cream-based fixed menu. I mean, I expected half the dishes on the menu would be cheesy, but not all of them.”

“Ms. Best.”

“Yes?”

He removes his glasses, then leans into the table with his nose right over the warm pot of cheese. “Are you afraid of fire?”

I need to tell him.

I need to tell him why we’re here.

Because any minute now, Jake’s going to walk into this room to see his favorite actor, and Simon has no idea, and?—

“Would you like me to request that everyone else put their candles out too?” Simon asks.

I am an asshole.

The biggest, assiest, holiest of assholes.

I’ve set this man up on a spite date and he’s offering to ask everyone in the room to put their candles out in deference to my discomfort around open flame. “Can we open this window? It’s hot in here. Are you hot? I’m hot.”