When in Doubt, Add Butter (16 page)

Vlad frowned. “I don’t think so.” He pushed some of the cards around, looking at them like he was trying to read a menu without his glasses on. “It’s just two of you.”

I know what you’re thinking. But, no, I’m not a sex tape kind of girl.

“I seriously don’t know what that could be,” I said.

He shrugged. “It will reveal later. Also, there is a woman. Lighter hair than you. Light eyes. She looks close, you see her often. Do you know who this could be?”

“Maybe my cousin.” This is just how it works. He asks a vague question, I feed him the answer, and he turns it around and gives it back to me in a way designed to make me think he came up with it himself. It was dazzling, really.

“She’s very thin?”

“Well…” Normally, but she was pregnant. “She’s been up and down.”

“She’s angry.” He continued to scrutinize the cards.

“Angry?”

He nodded. “Do you know this?”

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t answer, just gave a shrug like
that
no longer mattered, and he was on to something else. “There’s another man here.” He sounded surprised. “You were married before?”

“No.” This was bullshit.

Vlad nodded, his forehead creasing like origami. “You will. Soon.”

I gave a laugh. “Nooo, I don’t think that’s going to happen.” In fact, my last gypsy experience had warned me specifically against it. Granted, it was Mrs. Rooks, but it had made an impression.

And
soon
? How could I marry anyone
soon
when I didn’t know anyone I’d even sleep with?

Except, of course, for Mack—whose last name I didn’t even know.

“You will,” Vlad insisted. He was not going to let me disagree. “It’s the man you’re with now.”

“I’m not dating anyone right now.” There you go, I was going to marry no one and spend the rest of my life with him. Mr. Nobody.
That
I could believe.

He looked at the cards again, then at me. “Yes, you are, I see him right here.” He pointed at the King of Clubs, like that would prove it to me. “You’ve been with him for quite some time.”

“Seriously, I’m not seeing anyone.” Though I didn’t want to, I thought of Mack again. I almost shook my head at the thought. He was a one-night stand. Our
Affair to Remember
moment had come and gone at the grocery store.

“But you are right here.” He thumped his index finger on the Queen of Diamonds. “And he is here. Next to you.” He looked at me like he’d caught me in a lie.

“Honestly, I don’t know who that is. I don’t recognize him.” Obviously. I almost laughed at the idea of the little cartoon man being someone recognizable. “I mean, I can’t even imagine who it could be. Unless you’re getting my cousin and me mixed up, and that’s
her
husband.”

It’s easy to get wrapped up in this stuff and try to make it make sense.

“No, this is you.” He shook his head. “I see it clearly.”

“Well … all right.” This was getting boring. I just wanted it to end. “I guess … I don’t know.”

“If you don’t now, you will.”

He went on to say a few more things. Something about minor car trouble, look out for getting speeding tickets, the kind of warnings you could reasonably issue to anyone as they were leaving the house in anything other than a plastic bubble surrounded by armed guards.

When he finished, maybe twenty minutes after we’d sat down, he drew the cards back up into a single pile and plopped it down on the desk.

“That’s all I see right now.”

I stood up. “Well, thanks. I appreciate your taking the time to do this for me.”

“The woman is very angry. Be careful.”

I racked my brain again, even though I didn’t believe a word of this, and came up with Marie Lemurra. But she didn’t care about me. I’d seen her get angry time and again; it blew over as soon as she removed the source of her anger. In this case, firing me.

There was no way he was seeing any sort of real future. At best—at absolute
best
—he could get me so psyched out about certain things that I’d start to expect things like speeding tickets, and I’d drive faster subconsciously, get a ticket, and then think he was right.

But there was no point in trying to debunk the man to his face.

“I will watch out,” I said, and gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Thank you.”

I left, but cooking their meal had left a bad taste in my mouth this time.

Chapter 10

No one was there when I got to the Van Houghten house, but Angela had left a note with very specific instructions. Apparently, she suspected something I’d cooked the week before had hidden soy in it and she wanted me to be triple sure there was no soy or soy derivative in any of her food, since it would “wreak havoc” on her skin.

We couldn’t have that.

So I looked at the ingredients I’d just bought for a sushi-grade raw tuna Caesar salad—no croutons (gluten), cheese (dairy), or anchovy (garlic oil)—and scanned the labels for soy.

I was making the dressing—a difficult task, given my additional restrictions—when Peter came in.

“Hey, there.” He was dressed in his running gear: long-sleeved Under Armour shirt and running pants that, mercifully, were not too tight. “What’re you making? Smells good.”

“That’s probably the tuna you’re smelling.” I gestured with the whisk to where the tuna was sitting on the counter. At this point, Angela’s food sensitivities had reached such epic proportions that all I could use to season her meals was salt and pepper. Tonight I’d put multicolored peppercorns into my grinder with the hopes that what the food would now lack in taste complexity it might make up for a little bit visually. And that was going to have to carry the whole meal, I was afraid.

“Mmmmm.” He walked up behind me to take a look. He smelled like cold air. “You are the best, Gemma. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“You’re reaching the point where I’m not sure I make much of a difference,” I said. “Soon you’ll just be having raw celery for dinner, I’m afraid.”

He laughed. “But you’d be able to make that taste good.”

“I don’t know.”

I reached for the pepper grinder at the same moment he did, and our hands knocked. I drew back liked I’d touched a snake.

He handed it to me. “So she’s still allowing pepper.”

I laughed. “So far.” Pepper was pepper. She didn’t have an allergy or anything like that, but it was all too easy to imagine her getting a gander at the colorful flecks on the chicken tonight and imagining there was some hidden allergen in them.

“Well, it looks good to me.” He smiled and leaned back on the counter. “So, tell me, what is your favorite food to cook?”

“Oh, wow, I don’t know. I like cooking just about anything. Every time it’s a challenge, you know? But if I had to pick, I’d probably say comfort food. Full fat, full butter, sour cream, the whole nine yards. Almost no one eats like that anymore.” Mr. Tuesday was the only exception I knew of. And me, on Tuesdays, when I couldn’t help taste-testing an unnecessary amount.

He nodded. “I would just love a good old-fashioned pot roast one night.”

I laughed. “That will never happen in this house, right?”

“Oh, hell no.” He laughed, too. “But I bet you make a killer pot roast.”

“Maybe if Angela goes away sometime.” I used the heel of my palm to move a piece of hair from my eyes. “My pot roast is excellent. Well, all my food is.”

“Lucky for me.” He smiled faintly and looked off in the distance. “I think I’ll have a Bloody Mary,” he said suddenly, moving toward the fridge. “Do you want one?”

“Me?” This was weird. “No thanks. Not while I’m working. But I appreciate the offer.”

“I haven’t had one in ages, but I think it would really hit the spot tonight.” He poured the tomato juice into a glass, then asked, “Can I use some of that pepper?”

“Sure!” I handed him the grinder. “Have at it.” I transferred the tuna to a cutting board.

“Angela can be tough to work for, huh?”

“Oh, she’s not too bad,” I said, slicing the tuna. I was mindful of the fact that (1) I was talking to her husband, and (2) she could walk in at any moment and overhear whatever we were saying. “It would be boring if everyone wanted the same thing every single night.”

“Predictability certainly has its drawbacks.”

He went to the freezer and took out a bottle of Belvedere Vodka. I was amazed Angela allowed it in the house. He poured a splash into his glass, hesitated, then poured another splash.

I wondered if he did this a lot.

Maybe it was the only way to live with her.

I watched from the corner of my eye as he tasted it, added a little salt, then tasted again. I would have put Worcestershire in, of course, but Angela objected to anchovy, so there was none in the house.

“You’re sure you don’t want one?” he asked. “It’s not like you’re a cop on duty.”

I smiled. “I know, but I’m working with sharp objects.” I held up the knife.

“True. I concede.”

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but somehow he went left and I went right, and I guess I knocked into his hand, sending his almost-entirely-full glass of Bloody Mary spilling down my shirt.

“Oh, shit, Gemma. I’m so sorry.” He put the glass down and grabbed a dish towel to hand to me. “What a mess!”

“It’s okay.” I started to dab at my shirt, but there was too much there—this was never going to do.

“Come with me, I’ll give you a T-shirt to change into. You should rinse that right away before it stains.”

Normally, I would have demurred at the offer of a new shirt, but I was completely soaked. There was no way I could hit the streets looking like this. Honestly, I was just lucky it hadn’t gotten all over my pants as well. “Thanks,” I said. “Yeah, if I could just give this a quick rinse in the laundry sink, I’m sure it will be fine.”

“Come with me. I’ll show you where everything is.”

I followed him upstairs to the landing and waited while he dodged into what I assume was his and Angela’s bedroom. He came back out with a plain navy blue T-shirt and handed it to me.

“Less likely to show stains,” he joked. “You can change in Stephen’s room.”

I took the shirt and went into the small bedroom opposite theirs. It was adorably decorated in a zoo theme, with giraffe, lion, and tiger decals on the walls and a neatly organized row of stuffed animals lining one wall.

I removed my shirt carefully, turning it inside out so it wouldn’t drip tomato juice on the floor or drag it across my face and hair. I was about to put the T-shirt on when the door opened.

“What was that?” Peter asked.

Startled, I dropped the shirt.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He hurried over to pick it up and hand it back to me.

Why didn’t he just back out of the room and close the door?

I clutched the shirt to me and waited a moment for him to go, but he didn’t make a move.

“Excuse me,” I said, annoyance rising rapidly in me. I looked pointedly toward the door.

“I thought you called out for something.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t. Everything’s fine here, so if you could just go—”

“Gemma.” He came toward me.

My nerves sprang to alert. “Peter, I’m not dressed!”

“I know.”

I took a step back. “This isn’t happening.”

“What isn’t?” He closed the distance between us and put a hand on my shoulder.

I took another step back. “Whatever you have in mind.
Nothing
is happening.”

“Right.” He put his other hand on my other shoulder and moved closer, so he was just a couple of inches from me, looking down into my face. Even though this was quickly feeling like an emergency, I could not help remembering the stark difference between this situation and the one with Mack. This was
definitely
not wanted.

I put a hand to his chest to push him away, but he was stronger. He didn’t budge.
“Please.”

“I’ve wanted this for such a long time,” he said, as if I hadn’t said a word. “Haven’t you seen how I look at you?”

“You’re
married.
” I pushed again, but he was immovable. My hand just slid down his stomach.

“I won’t be married forever.”

“You’re also my
employer.
”

“People have met in stranger ways.” He dipped closer and grazed my cheek with his lips.

“
Stop
it.” I turned, but he captured my mouth with his.

I shoved him away.

Then he looked at me, shocked, as if he had no idea where he was or what he was doing here. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

“Go. Please.”

“Of course. I’m so—I’m sorry.” He nodded, gave a brief embarrassed smile, then moved out of the room.

As soon as he was gone, I scrambled to put the shirt on in case he came back in. But then I froze. What was I supposed to do now? Obviously, I had to handle this in some grown-up way, but I didn’t know what, exactly, that meant. Go back out there and pretend nothing had happened? Address it and scold him like a child? Turn in my resignation immediately, even though there was no way in the world I could afford to lose not only another night but also my substantial country club gig—which Angela was in charge of, by virtue of recommending me as the caterer for people who rented the club for weddings, bar or bat mitzvahs, anniversary parties, whatever. The profit on events was tremendous, and a wedding could easily equal or outprofit an entire week of cooking for my regulars.

I needed the club events, so I needed Angela.

Peter had never imposed himself on me before in any way. Maybe this was just a glitch. A moment of bad judgment. On the other hand, what if it wasn’t? It wasn’t like I could just start carrying Mace around with me. At least not the spray kind. Although, truth be told, I couldn’t carry the spice mace around here either, because it was exactly the kind of thing Angela would have a reaction to.

What was I going to do?

The longer I stood in Stephen’s bedroom, the more lost I felt. There was no obvious answer here. No clear solution to the problem. I didn’t want to lose any more work—I really couldn’t afford to—but I also didn’t want to feel apprehensive every time I came here.