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Grace stopped chewing. She was beginning to understand where Anton was going. By Odin, she was in trouble.
“What? That’s crazy.” Lou laughed, giving the cracker Anton held in his hand a skeptical look. Okay, Lou was just as out of the loop as Grace was on this one. Where the hell was Anton going with this?
“Pseudoscience is crazy.” Anton tossed the cracker in his hand and caught it with a grin. “Bland food was supposed to stop sexual desire.” His eyes slid from the cracker to Grace’s stuffed cheeks, and he tilted his head to the side. “Sex clouds the mind. Makes you do rash things. The original version of the graham cracker was like sawdust, which was the perfect antidote to any lustful actions, or so they thought at the time.”
He raised the graham cracker to his mouth. It grazed his bottom lip and Grace had never wanted to be a carbohydrate more than in that moment. He opened his mouth to take a bite and she leaned forward, eyes glued to the cracker he was about to eat when he stopped and looked at her.
“What do you think?”
Lou shrugged. “Well-”
“Doctor Wright!” a voice called out, and the trio turned to see Anton’s assistant waving a hand at them. “We need you over here on the double!”
“I-what?” Lou spluttered as the woman wrapped an arm around her and spun her away, toward the group at the far side of the clearing. “What’s going on?” she asked, as she was practically dragged away.
“You’ll see. Very important science business. We need your expertise, if you would be so kind.”
“Well, alright.”
The women walked away, but not before Grace caught sight of Anton’s assistant giving him a high-five on her way past. Anton Kovalev was up to no good. She was sure of it. Grace swallowed her graham cracker and took a hasty sip of her champagne. She was going to need all the liquid courage she could handle if she wanted to make it out of this alive, or with any semblance of professionalism still intact.
“Now, where were we?” Anton asked, stepping close to her.
Grace eyed the man and took a step back. “What was that?” she asked.
“What was what?”
“I saw the high five,” she said, crossing her arms.
Anton smiled, his eyes on the bonfire in front of them. “Someone had to send mother away.”
“What’s your game, Kovalev?”
He snorted and gave her a sidelong look. “Kovalev. Never been called that by a woman. I think I like it.”
“Answer the question, please.”
“No game, Grace.”
Grace raised the graham cracker in front of her and gave it a shake. “Really? No game? Then what was all that talk about lust and sex?”
He waved a hand. “I was merely sharing the interesting and highly unexpected origin story of the graham cracker. An entirely relevant discussion, given our s’mores shindig.”
Opting to say nothing, Grace refilled her glass from one of the bottles on the table. She took her time, holding the bottle just so and angling her cup as she poured. All the while she felt Anton’s watchful gaze on her. When she finished, he held up his bottle to her in a toast.
“Cheers,” he said with a wink.
“Cheers,” Grace echoed, tapping her cup to his bottle. The pair drank, their eyes on each other.
“Where’d you learn that stuff about graham crackers?” Grace asked, breaking the heavy silence.
“I had a very strange and religious uncle I spent summers with when I was younger.”
She laughed. “And he taught you the history of graham crackers, why?”
His eyes slid to the side and he shrugged. “Well, I was a very curious and energetic teenager, you see.”
“Meaning?”
