Page 16 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

I’m hot. My dress is too tight. My shoes are too tight. My handbag is too tight, and I don’t know how that even works, but it is.

“You’re stunning, in fact,” Simon says. “I believe I made sure of that.”

Mr. Smiley has left the room, and in its place is a man watching me with compassion and concern.

We could leave.

Bolt right now.

It’s not like he can eat anything on the menu. And then Quincy will tell everyone we fled the restaurant because there was nothing Simon could eat, and I don’t have to see Jake, and why can’t I be more like Daphne for just one evening?

Buying a burger bus to make it more successful than a restaurant out of sheer determination to one-up my absolute douchenoodle of an ex is one thing.

This date—this is something else.

“Can I ask you something?” I say to him as I fan myself and Quincy Thomas giggles across the room.

“You’re welcome to ask me anything.” He winks. “But I might not answer.”

“Do you ever get mad?”

His smile spreads broader across his lips, but it doesn’t hit his eyes.

My stomach grumbles.

And it’s not the champagne.

And it’s not that it’s been six hours since I ate anything.

It’s a gut feeling that Simon Luckwood is not , in fact, the happy-go-lucky man he presents to the world.

And he might not be happy right now.

Because he feels obligated to be here and put on a show?

Or is it something else?

“Certainly,” he says smoothly. “Everyone experiences anger at times.”

“Have you ever been so mad that you do something you regret?”

His blue eyes flicker over my face. “Is there something you regret, Bea?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. I?—”

There’s a muffled squeak at the side of our table, and we both look up to see my ex standing there.

Clearly having overheard.

I gulp and use my champagne flute as a shield against the death lasers flying at me from Jake’s eye sockets.

He looks at Simon, stutters something incoherent, looks at me again, glares harder, and then he finds his spine in the face of having to talk to the only man in the universe who could make him stutter.

“Mr. Luckwood. I didn’t know you were joining us, or I would’ve greeted you myself. Welcome to JC Fig. We’re delighted to have you.”

Jake’s voice is shaking and too high-pitched. Sweat beads on his forehead. He’s in black slacks and a white button-down, and you can already see—and smell—that his antiperspirant has failed.

My heart starts beating faster.

This was a mistake.

I shouldn’t have done this.

It’s cruel, and I don’t like to be cruel.

“Thank you,” Simon says. “I’m sorry, old chap, I missed your name. Are you the ma?tre d’?”

He shoots, he scores .

And he doesn’t even know it.

“I—I’m the owner,” Jake stutters.

“You look familiar. Have we met?”

“N-no.” Jake shoots me another death glare.

I reach for the Dom and top off my glass.

Simon snaps his fingers. “Last weekend. At the burger bus. You were the chap who—sorry. I didn’t recognize you without—” He pauses and gestures to his face.

I barely stifle a whimper as Jake’s face goes even redder than the ketchup I made him wear last weekend.

This isn’t good.

This is not good .

If Simon can recognize a man without ketchup on his face, Simon knows who he is.

He’s probably known all night.

I should not have done this.

Yes, you should’ve, I hear Daphne’s voice whisper. Jake fucking stole this from you. Did the man ever love you at all? Or did he just use you?

I know the answer to that.

The answer is that he used me.

He saw where Griff’s career was headed, saw the publicity coming toward our family, wanted to use it for his real estate business, and then saw a bigger opportunity when I told him about my dad’s dreams.

Jake deserves every bad thing he has coming to him.

Simon holds out a hand. “Good to meet you, old chap. Call me Simon.”

“S—Simon. Right.” Jake shakes too hard, which you can tell from the way Simon’s body jerks. “Simon, I am absolutely your biggest fan.”

Tank starts to move.

“He is,” I agree, as if Daph’s speaking for me. Or Hudson. Or Ryker. Or Griff, who hasn’t been as outwardly pissed as my other two brothers at the situation with Jake, but he’d probably go along with this too. “Jake would have Peter Jones’s babies.”

Simon’s eyelid twitches as he extricates his hand from Jake’s before Tank can take down my ex-boyfriend. “That’s a new level of dedication. I appreciate the support.”

Jake obviously can’t figure out what to do with his hands now that he’s not shaking Simon’s. He’s probably contemplating never washing them again.

“We have better tables,” Jake says. “More private tables. We thought—someone else was coming. Someone less important.”

Oh, barf.

Okay.

This is helping my regrets.

Simon looks between me and Jake. “I have no objection to this table. Bea? Any problems?”

I smile back as nerves make my belly gurgle.

He knows.

He has to know, but he doesn’t seem fazed by it at all.

“Great view,” I say. “Several witnesses. I’m good here.”

“Excellent. We’re good here.”

Jake’s gaze drifts to the champagne bottle, and his face goes even redder as he snaps his mouth shut.

I know that face.

That’s the face he wears whenever anyone offers him a bottle of wine that costs more than thirty dollars.

He was about to offer the best wine in the house, on the house, but he can’t top Dom Pérignon.

He can’t come close.

He always relies on everyone around him not knowing that he’s passing off fifteen-dollar bottles as hundred-dollar bottles. Every time we were invited to someone’s house for dinner, he’d grab something with a label that looked high-end enough to convince them that he’d paid the world for it.

In retrospect, that should’ve been a clue that he was all show.

But right now, I could kiss Simon.

Right here. In absolute gratitude for his pettiness.

At the same time, it’s putting me on guard.

Will the petty end here? Or is there some petty coming for me too?

As if I’m one to talk.

Karma is going to bite me on the ass for this.

But at the same time, I’m starting to have fun.

And I was having fun with Simon before Jake showed up.

One more surprising thing about tonight.

“If you need anything, anything at all, you just ask for Jake.” Jake slides another look at me. “Including finding yourself a better date.”

Okay, yes.

Regrets are over.

Jake can choke on a bag of dicks.

Simon barks out a laugh. “Ah, you’re a funny one, aren’t you?

A better date. When mine is this stunning, inside and out?

” He takes my hand and presses it to his lips, and an involuntary shiver glides up my arm, making me break out in goose bumps for at least the second time tonight.

“We’re perfectly fine, thank you. And I’m hopeful this is the first of many, many more opportunities to enjoy your—ah, this lovely woman’s company. ”

Butterflies flit through my stomach.

He’s acting , I tell myself.

This is a game, and he’s winning, because he’s known all night—he has to have—and I’ve been sitting here sweating over if I’m the asshole for not telling him.

But that’s a problem for later.

Right now, my rage is coming back.

Find you a better date .

Jake deserves this.

“Could I ask for a favor, though?” Simon says pleasantly.

“Of course. Certainly. Anything you’d like, Mr.—Simon.”

“Is there possibly something without cheese or cream or butter on the menu this evening?” He drops his voice. “Dairy and I don’t get along.”

Jake’s eyes bulge. “Oh, fuck, I forgot,” he whispers.

“I didn’t,” I tell Simon.

He beams at me. “Yes, I noticed. So observant and thoughtful.”

“If they have ground beef in the kitchen, I could make you a burger.”

“Like the one you made us the other day?”

“As long as the beef’s good.”

“That would be?—”

“I can make a burger,” Jake interrupts.

I squint at him. “But can you?”

“ I can make a goddamn burger, Bea .” He huffs, squeezes his eyes shut briefly, and then forces a smile at Simon as the murmured conversations around us stop completely. “Apologies. It would be my honor to make you a hamburger.”

Simon’s eyes are positively twinkling. “Thank you kindly, old chap.”

“My pleasure. I’ll—I’ll get right on that. Ask for Jake. Anything you want.”

“May I please have whipped honey butter and sourdough bread?” I ask.

Jake’s eyelid twitches.

Someone at the table closest to the door snickers, then coughs.

“We only have?—”

“Oh, I adore whipped honey butter,” Simon says. “In small quantities. Heavy on the honey. Light on the butter.”

Jake’s jaw clenches. “Right. Yes. Yes, of course.”

I give my ex-boyfriend the fakest of my smiles. “Thank you so much.”

He growls and turns to the door, trips over his own shoelace, straightens, and marches out of the room.

Every other couple stares at us.

“Are you sabotaging his grand opening, Bea?” Quincy whispers into the silence from across the room.

Simon laughs again. “Sabotage? Rather think we’re helping the old boy out with publicity.”

I make an mm of agreement over my champagne even as I become fully convinced that Simon has known about me and Jake and my real plans all night.

Maybe it’s not that bad.

Maybe he’s really this happy and nice and he has a petty streak or a protective streak or a something .

Quincy cackles.

A woman at the next table frowns at him, and Wendell shushes him.

“What?” Quincy says to his husband. “If you dumped me the way Jake dumped Bea—the version I heard, which I know isn’t the version that Jake’s sharing—I’d absolutely show up to your next installation opening with your favorite actor on my arm.”

“No, you wouldn’t, because Liv Daniels isn’t your type.”

Quincy gasps. “How dare you. You know I would be straight for revenge.”

“I bloody love this town,” Simon murmurs.

“Best place on earth,” I agree. “Usually.”

“All you need to do is replace the cheese shop with a kebab restaurant, and it would be perfect.”

I mock gasp. “The cheese shop is sacred . No one disses the cheese shop.”

“I will.”

“No wonder Lana never married you.”

He tips his head back and laughs, and once again, the conversations that had picked up around us go quiet.

And I get it.

I don’t like him, but I don’t dislike him either.

He’s charming in his own way. Magnetic, if you’re prone to falling for that.

Which I’m not.

I refuse to be.

I put my napkin on the table. “Will you excuse me for a minute? I need to run to the ladies’ room.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t wait for me if the bread gets here. I can hear your stomach growling.”

“I believe I can survive another five minutes.” He rises as I rise, and heat floods my face as Quincy murmurs, “Manners are so swoon .”

They really are.

And that’s why I need a little escape.

Just a tad bit of breathing room.

And then I’ll face the rest of the night.