He grinned, and it was so devastatingly handsome, it left little doubt of why his star was on the rise. “Smart.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about himself or me. Before I could respond, I caught the unmistakable sound of Maddie’s hushed protests as Easton undoubtedly dragged her along with him, preventing her from indulging her nosiness by eavesdropping.
I used the disruption to refocus as I sat and pulled my portfolio from my bag. My fingers grazed along where my name wasembossed in the lower corner as I opened it, and I choked on a surge of emotion.
I wondered when my father’s betrayal to our family would stop sneaking up to stab me in the heart. I got the feeling it wouldn’t be anytime soon if using the gift he’d given me for my birthday a couple years prior was enough to eviscerate my mood.
Not the time.
I shoved the emotion down and gathered my composure while I pulled out my meager resume. By the time I tore my intense focus away from the task that didn’t require it, there was a plate sitting in front of me.
One with a slice of decadent cake.
My experience with interviews may be woefully limited, but I’ve definitely never heard of them including snacks.
They should, though.
CHAPTER FOUR
DOES A CERTAIN B-LISTER KNOW HE CAN’T HAVE HIS CAKE AND EAT IT, TOO? DOUBTFUL
GREER
Rather than taking the seatacross from me where he’d been when I arrived, Tripp collapsed into the one next to me at the head of the table. He slouched back and used his long legs to rock the chair from side to side as he gestured to the cake. “Since you had to leave before the mystery was solved.”
I was surprised he remembered the discussion from the night before. There’d been a lot missing from the bottle of liquor he’d hoarded on the roof. That didn’t even account for what he’d had before or after that point.
I didn’t touch the plate, but I did look at it. The dark cake was broken up by thick layers of brown frosting. The top had even more frosting, and as if that wasn’t enough, there was a glaze of melted chocolate that coated it and dripped down the edge. “I take it you’re a fan of chocolate?”
“I hate it.”
His answer took me off guard, and a laugh broke free. “Really?”
He forced solemness as he nodded.
“But…” I gestured to the chocolate overload. “Why?”
“Alex was in charge of ordering the cake.”
“Oh.”
Maddie had already made it clear that Alex deserved to be fired, but him getting the cake so very wrong was really the icing on the shitshow—pun intended.
Unlike Tripp, I didn’t hate chocolate, but I also never really ate sweets—except my weekly French toast at brunch. It was still a thoughtful gesture, though.
“That mystery would’ve kept me up at night,” I said. “So thank you.”
An unreadable expression crossed his face, there and then gone.
I wondered if it was rude to not eat any of it. It kind of seemed like it.
But before I could decide how to handle it, he cleared his throat and nudged the cake away from me. “Maddie already said you’re not a dessert person, so you don’t have to eat it.”
I braced for the inevitable jokes about me being an LA stereotype obsessed with clean living. Or the sexist comments about my eating habits being better than others’. Or the ones on the flipside of the winless argument that critiqued my lack of curves because men preferred meat on the bones.
But it was for nothing. Tripp gave zero commentary, good or bad.
Thrown off-kilter by how bizarre the interview was shaping up before it’d even begun, my words came out like a question. “Uh, thank you?”
