“Lola…” Spencer repeated, and this time, his voice was a warning.
Scarlett immediately saw the cause of his concern. Someone was coming toward them. They had been led into a trap.
DINNER IS ALSO FOR SUCKERS
Coming at them through the melee of waiters and bright yellow chairs and blue tables and guacamole carts was Chip Sutcliffe, Lola’s ex-boyfriend.
“I didn’t do this,” Lola said quickly. “I swear.”
Scarlett believed her. Lola’s constant, unfailing composure completely fell away for a moment, and she backed up gracelessly into a dark corner by the host stand, bumping her head into a low-hanging pi?ata of a yellow cab.
“So this is a coincidence?” Spencer asked. “We just stumbled on Chip while he was on a mad, lonely hunt for tacos?”
Lola shook her head in confusion.
Chip paused in his progress and stood by a large cactus, prodding it gently with one outstretched finger. Marlene had his other hand and was tugging him along, trying to force him onward.
“I told you,” Scarlett said, pointing. “I told you.” She was glad to have her worst suspicions vindicated—Marlene had been up to something. There was nothing quite like the sweet, sweet nectar of being right.
“You have to be kidding me,” Spencer said. “You told me you were taking us out.”
“I was covering for Marlene,” Lola said, flustered. “She wanted it to be a surprise.”
“How the hell would Marlene be able to afford this?”
“You know how she gets stuff through Powerkids. I figured she had a gift certificate or something and was sharing it. She gets all kinds of things. I didn’t know!”
“So what do we do now?” Scarlett asked. “Want to have family dinner night with your ex?”
“Well, we can’t leave,” Lola said.
“Why?” Spencer asked.
“We’re here for Marlene,” Lola said.
“If Marlene wants to have dinner with Chip, let her have dinner with Chip.”
Something very strange had come over Scarlett’s older sister. There was a totally foreign blush to her paper-white cheeks, and she was rocking a bit on her low heels.
“Don’t leave me,” she said, clutching them both by an arm. “Please. Don’t leave me. Tomorrow, he’s gone. He goes to Boston for school. You won’t have to deal with him anymore.”
“I thought the day you broke up with him was the day I didn’t have to deal with him anymore,” Spencer said, looking at the tiny, pale hand that gripped his wrist.
“You weren’t that picky on the day he saved your show. You owe him.”
This, sadly, was true. Chip had played a large part in making Hamlet happen by distracting their parents on a day-long cruise on the Sutcliffe family boat, giving Spencer and Scarlett enough time to load in an entire cast and stage a show. He did this after Lola had broken up with him, no less.
“Look,” Lola said, when neither Spencer nor Scarlett responded to that statement. “Maybe…I don’t know. I want to stay. But I can’t stay here alone. And Marlene must have gone to a lot of effort, so, let’s just stay, okay? It’s a free dinner at our favorite restaurant. It could be worse. I’m just going to go to the ladies’ room, and then we’ll stay, okay? Okay?”
She accepted their stunned silence as a yes, nodded tersely, and tiptoed off to the ladies’ room behind her.
“This is so bad,” Spencer said, leaning up against the decorative old-fashioned gas pump behind him. “This is so, so bad…”
He trailed off, and his face stiffened into a neutral mask as Marlene dislodged Chip from the cactus and brought him over.
“Stay here,” she commanded them all. “I’ll get us a table.”
Chip had really outdone himself tonight, outfitwise. The pants were stripy, the shirt was a different color and seemed deliberately too small, the tie a different stripy still. Ridiculous as it was, there was no doubt in Scarlett’s mind that what Chip was wearing cost a fortune—that perhaps, if you touched him, an alarm would go off somewhere. Not that Scarlett had any plans on touching him.
He took a careful step in Spencer’s direction and extended a hand of greeting.
“What’s up?” he asked.