“Why? Well, I suppose because I have done that sort of thing before and you haven’t.”
“Yes, but you told me how to do it and I have been sending you all my analysis. It just seemed like a lot of work for you to duplicate,” she said as a man and woman appeared, each carrying a tray laden with silver-domed dishes.
“Don’t worry, Robbie. We’re using your figures,” he said dismissively and smiled an oily little smile. “I hope you have an appetite, Jake.”
Could the guy be any more condescending? Jake was irritated for Robin, but whatever she thought, he couldn’t tell. She just dropped it altogether as the woman leaned over her shoulder and asked, “Haut-Médoc? Or Margaux?”
Robin looked at the two wine bottles she held. “What is the vintage of the Margaux?”
“La tou de Mons, 1991.”
“Thank you, I’ll have that,” Robin said. The waitress poured the wine then looked at Jake.
He might be a novice at this, but he was no fool. “The same.”
“Are you a wine connoisseur, Jake? I thought you were a beer drinker,” Slick remarked.
“I am a beer drinker,” Jake said flatly.
“I can’t drink beer,” Mia said, and Jake figured that she couldn’t do much of anything without whining about it.
The man paused on Jake’s left, leaned over with a tray, and with his middle finger, pointed to one of two dishes. “Grilled shrimp with celery roots and remoulade, or asparagus and crab veloute soup?” he asked.
“Shrimp,” Jake said gruffly, only to be dismayed that there were only four on the plate.
“And for your salad, sir, a brie and goat cheese empanada with champagne vinaigrette, or vine ripe tomatoes and mozzarella in basalmic vinaigrette?”
God, what he wouldn’t give for a hamburger! “Tomatoes and cheese.”
“And lastly, sir, for you entrée: baked Atlantic salmon and lump crab in a bernaise sauce, tenderloin of beef with polenta and a port wine reduction, or lobster tail with beurre blanc?”
He figured the beef was as close to a hamburger as he was going to get in this crowd. “The beef.”
“Really, Jake, you can get beef anywhere,” Slick chimed in. “Why not try the lobster?”
Jake pinned him with a cold stare. “I’ll take the beef, thank you.”
Slick shrugged, turned back to his soup. “Suit yourself.”
Yes, Jake thought, he would do just that, and spent the rest of the meal concentrating on using the right implement as the conversation turned to some little jaunt the four of them had taken to Vancouver one weekend. No doubt in the Lear jet, he thought miserably, wondering at the cost of that little excursion. He refused to let his imagination wander any further than that.
When dinner was served, Jake was too perturbed by the tiny little piece of beef to be interested in what they were saying, which had something to do with a mutual fund Slick thought was hot, and drifted in and out. He declined the port that was served with dessert, even though the Slickster insisted it was vintage, which he seemed to think should make a difference. Jake asked for another beer just to piss him off.
When the meal was (thankfully) over, and Robin excused herself and headed for the powder room, Jake got up and went outside for some air. It wasn’t long before Slick joined him, with his hands shoved deep in his fag pants, staring up at the moon. “Beautiful out here on the water, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Jake drawled. “So do you actually take this thing out, or do you just dine on it?”
Slick glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “I take it out.”
“Huh.”
“So . . . you’ve been seeing Robin, is that it?” Clownpants asked, like Jake was going to subject himself to any questions on that front. And then he chuckled snidely at Jake’s silence. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Jake. Robbie goes through men like water. I wouldn’t get too comfortable if I were you.”
Bastard. Asshole. “Do me a favor and keep your advice to yourself.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll do that. But I guess you know her old man has cancer.”
It was more of a statement than a question, and Jake responded nonchalantly, “So I’ve heard.”
The asshole turned so that he was facing Jake. “Of course you’ve heard. That’s why you’re hanging around, isn’t it?”
That implication caught Jake completely off guard. He slowly squared off in front of Slick, straightening to his full height, a good three inches taller than Weasel. “You’re Robin’s colleague, so I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend you aren’t implying what I think you are implying,” he said evenly.
Slick shrugged, looked out at the water for a minute. “I don’t know if I am implying anything. But I am making an observation that it seems awfully coincidental to me that some handyman managed to get in Robin’s pants about the time she found out her dad was dying. She’ll probably inherit a huge fortune, won’t she?”