“Bye,” Drea says, grabbing her sister by the arm and hustling them both to the kitchen.
“Take me with you,” I weakly call after them, but they vanish behind the swinging door. I turn to Wyatt. “Why does it look like she wants to murder someone?”
“That’s just her face when she senses you’re in a one-mile radius.”
I have several follow-up questions, but Wyatt’s already melted into the tiny gap between the tree and the wall, completely hiding himself from view.
“Fucking coward!” I whisper-hiss after him, turning in a circle like a panicky cat looking for a similar place to hide, but it’s too late. Reese and her companion are within eye and earshot, so I ever so slowly turn my body to face the nearest tree and start repositioning one of the ornaments, praying it looks like I’ve been put in charge of neatening up the decor.
“It’s all strange,” Reese is saying to the man. “I helped Howard draft the entertainment plans, and I know there was no open flame on it.” She shudders delicately, the very picture of aggrieved womanhood in her beige lace floor-length dress. “If there had been, I’d have vetoed it.”
The man glances longingly at the jugglers now tossing standard, nonflaming batons back and forth near the main entrance. “I enjoyed it, actually.”
Reese seamlessly pivots, all smiles now. “Well, that’s our Howard.” She lifts her glass of Rumpleshaker in a toast, sniffs it dubiously, takes a sip anyway, and shudders with her whole body. “He’s a risk taker,” she wheezes out.
Ah. This must be another potential investor, although not one important enough to be seated with the biggest of wigs.
Realizing my eavesdropping may have become obvious, I duck my head toward the decorated branches again and let the platinum strands of my wig fall across my face as Reese and her good-looking man of money linger in front of the tree.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
Instead, she does a double take, and my prayer to the void becomes Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me.
She sees me.
“CJ!” Malicious glee fills her eyes as she looks me up and down. “Is business so slow that you had to take up waitressing? I can’t say I’m surprised, honestly.”
How the hell did she recognize me? I’ve never looked more demented or less like myself, so I’m equal parts impressed and insulted. I’m also unable to come up with a comeback.
“I… Um, no, I…”
Reese just gives a tinkling laugh and tugs on her companion’s arm, pulling him away from my impression of an asthmatic fish on dry land. “Come meet my CEO. I’ll tell you all about that one on the way.” She points a finger in my direction with a conspiratorial laugh as they walk away.
“God, she’s heinous,” I grumble as Wyatt slowly emerges from hiding. “No offense, Mr. Profiles in Courage, but she just sucks all the feminism right out of my body. And I can’t believe she recognized me!”
When I glance up at him, all that playfulness from before is gone. “Oh, come on,” I say to his scowly face. “It was a little funn?—”
Without a word, he spins on his heel and stalks away from me. Wait, not away from me. Toward Reese.
“Oh, sure,” I say to no one in particular. “Chase her down like you always do.” I walk back to the kitchen with a lot less spring in my step, although the reminder that we’re in the middle of driving Howard mad with hot peppers perks me up a bit.
Becks and Drea are cleaning up the mess from the skewers, and I interrupt their argument about which of them will get to serve them to Howard with an important question.
“Girls, you’ve gotta tell me. Is he like this ’round the clock, or is it only when he’s near me?”
“What, Wyatt and that stick up his ass?” Drea asks. “He pretty much always has that.”
Becks gives a thoughtful hum and wiggles her left foot to jingle the tiny bells tied to her shoelace. “I disagree. He’s usually a lot nicer on the daily. I’ve only seen him this pissy a couple of other times.”
“All evidence to the contrary,” I say.
“Yeah, I suppose that’s right.” Drea tugs off her food service gloves and tosses them onto the workstation. “The worst was when he and Mom were in their organ era. Oh, and remember that one Christmas when we were kids?”
“Yes.” Becks shudders. “I was nine or ten, and he was a total dick for weeks. He moped around and ruined our whole Christmas break snapping at anybody who tried to ask him what was wrong. Then after a while, he brought Reese home, and we all kind of forgot about it.”
“I sure didn’t,” Drea says darkly while I try really, really hard not to do the math they just presented to me. But it’s really, really hard not to. I’m trying to figure out how to ask a follow-up question without blurting out anything incriminating, but Wyatt chooses that moment to reenter the kitchen with a couple I haven’t seen in a year.
“Oh my god, hi!” I ignore Wyatt and hug the two out-of-staters. “What brings you guys to town?”
