“I didn’t surrender.”
“No? Because it sounded like fear.”
“Sunny,” Joelle murmured.
I ignored her. “It’s fine. Not everyone can handle lemon zest and public accountability.”
Flint’s mouth did something small at one corner. Almost not there. Almost.
My pulse kicked anyway.
“That what you call this?” he asked. “Accountability?”
“I call it making me whole.”
“I don’t owe you for stopping a fire.”
“You owe me for turning my paid campaign into a splash pad.”
“You owe the mountain for lighting up the wrong patch of grass.”
“I owe the mountain nothing but better signage.”
Caprice’s phone was already at her ear. “Hi, Marla. Don’t panic. Nobody’s hurt, but the segment evolved.”
I snapped my head toward her. “Evolved?”
Caprice turned away and lowered her voice, which fooled nobody because Caprice’s whisper still had bullet points. “Think bigger. Think gorgeous food feud with actual fire-safety stakes and the hottest local man I’ve ever seen holding a hose.”
Flint’s eyebrows rose.
I pointed at him. “Don’t enjoy that.”
Joelle stepped around the puddle of cream and retrieved my wedges. She held them out with funeral-director solemnity.
“Casualty report,” she said. “The right shoe may survive. The left shoe has mascarpone in the buckle.”
I took them from her. “She died doing what she loved.”
“Being impractical?”
“Being iconic.”
Flint looked down at the shoes. “You can’t wear those near the fire zone again.”
I hugged them to my chest. “She’s not even cold.”
“She’s not fire-safe.”
“She has a name.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“She does now. This is Liza Minnelli.”
Joelle pressed her lips together.
Flint looked at me for a long second. “You named your shoe Liza Minnelli.”
