“We’ll take your thoughts into consideration,” Annie said brightly.
Tess laughed. “You just got professionally dismissed, Beck. I see my How to Write a Corporate Email class is sticking!”
“Yep!” the girls chirped and went back to scooping out canned shrimp, tomato juice, and Cool Whip.
I winced. “We really don’t need a Jell-O.”
My sisters gave me horrified looks. “But you can’t have a cookout without a Jell-O!”
“What’s wrong with Jell-O?” Tess asked.
I pointed to the stack of ingredients and the cookbook Enola had on the counter.
“Oh,” Tess said, wrinkling her nose. “Girls, you can’t cook from that book. It’s just a novelty item. Cookbooks from the 1970s were a lawless wasteland. I thought you were making a nice Jell-O dessert.”
“We are! It’s very fancy,” Annie said, pointing to a grainy photo in the yellowing cookbook. “It has mustard, shrimp, marshmallows, and apples.” She stuck the book in my face. “Isn’t it pretty?”
“If they’re going to live in Manhattan, we have to break them of the Jell-O habit,” I said to Tess.
“The Jell-O habit? That’s a thing?”
“Jell-O is my prison food,” I said with a grimace.
Tess snorted.
“In the religious sect my father forced us to belong to, alcohol, coffee, and any sort of drugs really weren’t allowed. Sugar was as crazy as you could get. Every special occasion had some sort of a Jell-O for dessert. Also, Jell-O was cheap. You could buy it at the wholesale store for ten cents a carton, and so the sister wives would stretch the meat and fruit or whatever with Jell-O and make these elaborate Jell-O molds. I have nightmares about the Jell-O.”
Tess made a face as Annie opened a can of tinned oysters.
“I’m thinkI’mgoing to have nightmares about it.”
I took off my jacket and tie and rolled up my sleeves. Then I searched around for an apron.
I turned. “Tess, do you know where—”
She was giving me an odd look, mouth hanging slightly open.
I gave her a quizzical look.
35
Tess
Damn! I had seen Beck shirtless, and I’d seen him in a wet swimsuit, but something about seeing my boss in his dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms, was doing something else to me.
It was also making me wish I had taken him up on his offer last night.
I bet it would have been good.
“You okay?” Beck asked, confused. He opened a kitchen drawer and closed it. “Why is this kitchen so big?”
Damn, I bet he’s big.
When he was touching me last night, I had really,reallywanted to give in. But Beck had walked in on me eating my late-night delivery, and that was not a good look. Plus, I hadn’t mowed the lawn, so to speak.
Maybe he thought you weren’t interested.
He certainly was behaving as if he had lost interest. There hadn’t been any flirting the day after, just aloof professionalism.
