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Brooks and I locked eyes for a moment, and Morgan caught us. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Gracie, did you need some help ordering? I know these kinds of places can be intimidating.” If she’d said that any more condescendingly, she would have needed a higher horse to sit on.
“I’m fine, thank you for your concern.”
“I usually get the chicken souvlaki. It comes with marinated vegetables and feta tzatziki,” Julian piped up, I think trying to help me out. You know what would have really helped me out was for him to have kicked his sister to the curb earlier. What was it about Morgan that made men do her bidding? Was it the boobs? Hopefully that wasn’t the case with Julian or we would be dealing with way bigger issues than I was comfortable with. It was already awkward enough eating dinner with Brooks—my supposed future husband, according to my inner voice—and Julian, who I was considering opening the door for. That was, until he made me have dinner with his sister.
“That sounds great.” I closed my menu, not sure what the heck I was going to be eating.
“There are a lot of calories in that dish,” Morgan commented.
“Perfect. That’s my kind of food.”
I saw Brooks’s lip twitch.
Morgan, on the other hand, didn’t appreciate my comment. She sat up ridiculously straight. “Let’s hope you don’t become a thin-fat person.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, people who look skinny but are really unhealthy.”
Who did this woman think she was? “I just call them happy,” I replied with a snide smile.
Brooks barked out a laugh but hid it as a cough when Morgan whipped her head toward him.
Julian poured himself another glass of wine while trying to steer the conversation in another direction. “How’s work?” He gave his sister a pointed look.
His drinking was starting to worry me. He was on his second glass and we hadn’t even ordered yet.
Morgan’s face lit up like a pyromaniac. “I’ve recently been tasked with reviewing the adequacy of our risk management procedures and methodologies. I minored in risk management.” She directed her last comment toward me.
“How nice.”
“You didn’t go to school, right?” she purred, obviously trying to prove a point.
“Not the traditional kind, no.”
“To each their own,” she said as an insult.
“Morgan,” Brooks said as a warning.
I didn’t need him to defend me. “I find it funny how women like you look down on what my friends and I do for a living, yet you make up most of our clientele. You even brag about what a privilege it is to use our services. I never hear about people getting excited to go to the bank, but they are always happy to visit us. So, maybe I didn’t get a fancy degree, but what I do is important, and I’m proud of it.” I didn’t even try to hide the bite in my words.
Her mouth fell open.
That’s what I called a mic drop. If she wanted to go tit for tat, she’d better get ready for a long night.Chapter Twenty-OneOh, what a dreadfully long night it was. It was apparent, as the dinner wore on, that Morgan was hoping to highlight my deficiencies. It was almost like it gave her a sick thrill. I was beginning to think she was a narcissist. After she’d brought up my lack of a degree, she’d moved on to how I still lived at home and in the same town we all grew up in. She’d droned on and on about the dreariness of Pecan Orchard and how she had lived in places like LA and Manhattan. Of course, she did it all backhandedly so she didn’t come off as a total witch. The question was, Was it Julian or Brooks she was trying to convince of my undesirability?
I did find it interesting, though, to watch the way she and Brooks interacted. There was some definite tension between them. Brooks hardly said a word while he ate his salad, and anytime Morgan touched him, he flinched. Quite often I found him staring at me as if he were trying to figure me out. I was trying to work out some things too, like why he wanted to be with someone as manipulative as Morgan. Where was his brilliant lawyer mind when it came to her?
I also began to question why I was there with Julian. I had lost count of how many glasses he’d had. I knew he’d had a rough day, and he’d asked me to drive home, which was the responsible thing to do; however, I didn’t want to be with someone who used alcohol to deal with their problems. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Brooks’s eyes seemed to be searing into Julian, and the way his jaw was clenching was like he was forcing himself to keep his mouth shut.
