“I’ll let you know,” he said, still not looking up, and she finally beat a retreat, casting so many longing looks over her shoulders it was frankly a miracle she didn’t sprain her neck or bump into another waiter on the way to the kitchen.
I decided to take advantage of his inattention by eating all my conflicting feelings—especially since the feelings on offer were in the form of the finest cuisine money could buy. I devoured a papaya salad with a delightfully crunchy topping I couldn’t identify—maybe anise? Yet there was just the hint of bacon, and candied ginger, and the color reminded me of purple lettuce… I just happened to be licking the sauce off my finger when Grant looked back up.
For half a second, heat flashed in his eyes like a tiger spying its prey, and my panties liquefied.
Then like a flash, he was all detached amusement again, a bored god surveying the lowly human and her foibles, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing.
“I take it you like the food,” he said dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching just a fraction upward, as if the smile were not quite under his control.
I shrugged, trying not to let on how much my mind and pants were still on fire after that first look he’d given me. Holy smolder, Batman!“I figured if I’m going to get fired, might as well enjoy it.”
He looked offended.“Is that what you think you’re here for?”
“Come on,” I rolled my eyes.“After last night, it’s not like I didn’t see the writing on the wall. I didn’t expect you to do it in person though,” I added.“I was expecting Jacindato do the honors– she would have enjoyed it too.” “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I have no intention of letting you go.”
“No?” I blinked.
“No.”
I waited for him to reveal the real reason he invited me to lunch, but suddenly, a cry rang across the room like the shriek of a triumphant hawk swooping down on its prey: “Grant, daaaaahling!”
A woman breezed over to our table—and I do mean‘breezed,’ she was so thin I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that it really was the wind buffeting her across the room. She rested one silver satin-draped hip on the edge of Grant’s chair, and ran her long red nails down the fabric of his shirt.“You’re looking ravishing, how are you?
“Fine,” he said.“Lacey, meet Jenna Masters. Jenna, this is my colleague Lacey.”
I tried to smile and nod politely but she ignored me, which was just as well, because who wanted to meet international supermodel Jenna Masters while they were trying to cough up the piece of roast duck that had decided to roost in their esophagus?
Not me, and my blood was also definitely not boiling at the possessive way her hand was resting on Grant’s chest.
It wastotally out of line, though, the possessive way her hand was resting on Grant’s chest. Everybody who even glanced at the headlines on the supermarket tabloids at checkout knew that they’d had a bad break-up two months ago. Not‘crying and recriminations’ bad. More like‘throwing furniture at his head and hiring private detectives to stalk him’ bad.
Is it a little bit pathetic that that still sounds better than my current love life?
“Are you coming to the gala, Grant?” she asked.
Of course she wasn’t going to call it The Modern Ball or even clarify that she meant the gala at the Museum of Modern Art. To people like her and Grant, there was only one ‘the gala,’ and anybody who needed any clarification clearly didn’t belong and should probably be summarily rounded up and quarantined.
“They’re auctioning off some divine pieces, some very exciting dynamic new artists. So…warm-blood. Stimulating. You could even say…dangerous.” She lowered her voice, though she didn’t bother lowering it enough to keep me from hearing. After all, I didn’t exist to her.“You could help me choose one for my bedroom.”
I had just about evicted the roast duck from my throat, but that last sentence made me start to choke on it again.
“I was bored out of my skull last year,” Grant said bluntly. He took a bite of his own papaya salad without looking at her. He chewed slowly and thoughtfully, as if the taste and texture of his meal were a thousand times more interesting than anything any mere mortal could have to say to him.
Jenna paused for a moment, obviously thrown off her game by the existence of a universe in which she didn’t immediately get everything she asked for. She recovered quickly from this puzzling paradox, though, giving a little fake-laugh and backing off with the studied casual air of a cat who doesn’t want you to see that it didn’t land on its feet.“Oh, you kidder! No one can ever guess just what’s going to come out of that gorgeous mouth of yours, can they? Well, let me know if you do decide to join us!”
“I’ll think about it,” Grant said.“Perhaps if I can find company more…stimulating…than last year’s.”
Jenna’s face froze for a second, then with a visible effort she relaxed and gave Grant a smile so fake I was surprised that government inspectors didn’t sweep down on us and arrest her. Continuing to ignore my very existence, she swept away in the same blade-of-grass-being-lightly-tossed-by-the-breeze way she had come to us in the first place.
And I couldn’t help but notice that for all Grant’s declared lack of interest, his eyes followed her lightly swaying and bouncing figure all the way to the door.
So much for not finding her stimulating. Not that I blamed him.
I stabbed my fork at my noodles with the kind of avenging anger usually reserved for blood-feuding families in the Appalachians.
“What did those noodles ever do to you?” Grant said, that exasperating smile right back on his face like it had never left.“I haven’t seen such vicious stabbing since I watched a horror movie.”