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“Geez.” He paused. “Well, I won’t lie to you, Agnes?—”
“Sure you will,” Agnes said, and went back to her rapidly hardening lurid green icing.
“I was going to help her cheat you out of this house.” Taylor shook his head. “I figured you were going to do another book, you’d have plenty of money, what the hell.”
“Fuck you,” Agnes said, bent over the edge of the cake.
Angry language, Agnes.
Fuck you, too, Dr. Garvin.
You’re an idiot, Agnes. Anybody can say “Fuck you.” Do something smart for a change.
Agnes straightened and stared at her fondant. Did you just call me an idiot, Dr. Garvin? Dr. Garvin?
“But I’d never have helped her kill you,” Taylor was saying. “Jesus, Agnes, you’re worth twenty of her.”
“Twenty thousand.” Agnes looked at Taylor, perplexed, trying to figure out what it was about him that she was missing, that Dr. Garvin thought she should be paying attention to.
Tall, blond, gorgeous, desperate. Nope, he was the same complete waste of humanity she thought he was.
She went back to the cake. Maybe she could put the flamingos over the lumps. Maybe the lumps would make the flamingos look three-dimensional. Always a silver lining.
“You’re right,” Taylor was saying. “You’re twenty thousand times better than her. Agnes, if you’ll take me back, I think we can make it work.”
Agnes jerked her head up. “What?”
“You and me, honey. We can make it work.” He came closer, his face eager. “I was so damn dumb, I didn’t see that I already had it all with you. Two Rivers, the Two Rivers Cookbook, that cool blue bedroom upstairs ...” He cocked his head at her and smiled the smile that had curled her toes a week ago. “Come on, sugar, we were great together.”
“I’ve had better,” Agnes said, and went back to her fondant. “Since when?” Taylor said, outraged, and Rhett barked at him, a little snarl in there for garnish. Taylor took a step back.
“Since this week.” Agnes patted a fondant lump gently to smooth it out. No dice, it was going to have to be a flamingo.
“That Shane guy? Jesus, Agnes, did you even wait a minute after you stabbed me with that fork before you went to bed with him?”
Agnes stopped patting fondant to think about it. “Couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”
“Agnes!”
Agnes straightened. “Taylor, you are in no position to become indignant. You got engaged to me to swindle me out of my life savings, and now you’ve discovered you married a murdering whore, and you’re trying to dump her and latch on to me to save yourself. It’s not going to work. Even if I were stupid enough to take you back, you think
Shane’s going to come home, find you in his bed, and just say, ‘Oh, okay, no problem’? Do you know what the man does for a living?”
“No,” Taylor said. “But I think if you explained that we’d reconciled?—”
“Yeah, well, we haven’t.” Agnes picked up the cake round and turned to take it to the pantry and saw Brenda staring at them through the screened door. Oh, sweet Jesus, she thought, almost dropping the cake. “If you’ve come to borrow a cup of sugar, the answer is no,” she called to her. Although I’ll trade you a cup for those account numbers in the Caymans.
“I came to see what Taylor was doing in here,” Brenda said, coming into the kitchen and fixing him with a basilisk stare.
Rhett growled again, but this time he crawled under the table.
Smart dog, Agnes thought.
“Hello, Brenda,” Taylor said weakly.
“We were just talking about the catering,” Agnes said, taking the fondant-covered tier to the counter by the window. As she got closer to Brenda, she could hear her breathing. She was almost hyperventilating. Anger, she thought. Been there, done that.
“I thought Taylor had decided he couldn’t do the catering,” Brenda said through clenched teeth, staring at her husband.
