“Tell me something I don’t already know, Miss Obvious,” I joked. I was trying to make light of the situation, but Celina was like a dog with a bone once her mind was set on something. She just wouldn’t let go.
“Is it a restaurant you’ve ordered from before?”
I yanked the receipt off the bag, recognizing the name at the top of it. “My second night here.”
“Was it the same delivery guy?”
I thought about it and realized that was why he’d looked familiar. “Now that you mention it...I think it was.”
“Same order, too?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
My little sister had one heck of an imagination, along with a tendency to worry. “Well, that’s good, I guess. At least you know the food wasn’t delivered by some stalker who tampered with it first.”
“I agree that it’s weird, but there’s no need to jump to the conclusion that I’ve got a stalker or anything like that. It was probably just a computer glitch, and the restaurant accidentally duplicated my order from last time.” The handwritten order slipthat had been underneath the receipt, and was still stapled to the bag, caught my attention. “Or maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looks like someone had to have called the order in.” Glancing at the receipt again, I noticed something I’d missed earlier. “Or walked in to place the order since it was paid for in cash.”
“So what you’re telling me is that someone you don’t know walked into the restaurant you ate at your second night in town and ordered you the same stuff?” She’d started off whispering but was yelling by the time she was done.
“Yup,” I agreed before I opened the package with the crab rangoons and took a big bite out of one of them.
“Forget super weird. That’s flat-out creepy.”
“Mmhmm,” I mumbled.
“Tell me you aren’t eating it!”
“Umm.”
“Arabella!”
I reached down for an egg roll. “What? You even said it; the delivery guy was the same one as before so the food couldn’t have been tampered with. It’s not like I’m going to let a delicious dinner go to waste while I’m starving.”
“Stop thinking with your stomach and use your brain,” she scolded.
“I’m a pastry chef, Celina. My stomach and brain are connected.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “But after you die from poisoning because you wouldn’t listen to me, don’t expect me to come all the way to California to claim your body.”
“Exaggerate much?”
“As long as you can tell me nothing else weird has happened since you’ve been there, I’ll let it drop.”
“Of course nothing—crap.”
“That’s what I thought. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.” I rolled my eyes as she repeated one of our mother’s favorite sayings. “Now that you’re actually paying attention; what else happened?”
“I’ve gotten a couple of gifts delivered to the set. They didn’t have notes attached, so I assumed they were from the network. But now that I think about it, there was other stuff from them. A welcome basket that first day. Nothing tailored specifically for me, though. And the other gifts definitely were selected with me in mind. Both were my favorites—a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers.”
“Champagne truffles from Pierre Marcolini and hydrangeas?”
“Yes.” I dropped the egg roll back into the package, my stomach twisting.
“You need to talk to the network. Ask them for additional security. Or just leave the show. After what you told me happened yesterday with the producer, there’s got to be a way out of your contract.”
