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He glared back. She saw a muscle in the corner of his jaw twitching.
Gah! He was a jerk, plain and simple. A willfully ignorant jerk. She was sorry she’d let him kiss her. And even sorrier she’d kissed him back, no matter how good it felt at the time.
“Why don’t you settle this dispute with a contest?” Grandma Abigail suggested.
Summer looked around and saw that everyone was staring at Brock and her with varying expressions of amusement and speculation. “What kind of contest?” she asked warily.
“Yeah,” Brock added. “If it’s arm-wrestling, I’m in.”
And then he actually flexed his impressively thick arms.
Summer rolled her eyes. “Seriously?”
“I’d pay to see them mud-wrestle,” Spring said, unexpectedly. “Especially since I know how my little sister hates to get dirty.”
Grandma Abigail chuckled. “I propose that you do a trial dinner service as Summer suggested. Each of you puts your two or three best dishes on the new menu. At the end of the evening, we’ll see which dishes prove the most popular—Summer’s or Brock’s.”
“And what’s the prize if I win?” Summer asked.
“How about the winner gets to create the entire menu for the next month?” asked Grandma Abigail. “Then, if you still can’t agree, you can run another contest to see who creates the next monthly menu.”
“That sounds fair,” Mom said.
“And delicious,” said Dad.
Summer pursed her lips, looking for a catch. But the proposal made sense. It would keep her and Brock from bogging down in endless arguments, and making no progress at the diner.
“Okay,” Brock said to her relief. Then he added, “But I wanna up the stakes. The loser has to spend one whole day, twenty-four hours, doing whatever the winner says.” He turned his head and grinned cockily at her.
“No way,” Summer retorted. “You just want to reverse all the changes at the diner if you win.”
“Oh, so you think I’m gonna win?” Brock’s grin widened. “I mean, if you’re scared of scared of going head to head with me, Ms. Fancy Pants Chef, then we stick to plain old homestyle cooking.”
“Oh, heck no! I’m not backing down! You’re on, Mr. Grumpy Pants.” Summer shot back. “But I want two conditions. First, neither of us can change the winning menu until the month is up. And I want a—a safe word in case the ‘do whatever I say’ part is, um, too outrageous.”
“They’ve already given each other nicknames. Isn’t that sweet?” Mom stage-whispered to Dad.
Summer’s face promptly heated. Brock turned red, too.
Brock scowled. “A safe word, huh? Well, that’s no fun.”
“Take it or leave it. We both know I’m going to win, Brock.” Faking unconcern, Summer served herself another helping of the garlic-Parmesan fries.
“Huh, you really think that? What’s that saying? ‘Pride goes before a fall’?” Brock smirked at her.
“‘Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,’” Dad quoted with smile. “It’s in the Bible. Which you should know, Summer,” he added in gentle reprimand.
She smiled apologetically at him, all-too-aware that this past Sunday was the first time she’d been to church in a long while. Her busy work schedule in San Francisco made it impossible to take any time off on the weekends.
“I could create some social media accounts for the diner, and post about the contest,” Autumn volunteered unexpectedly. “It would be a great way to spread the word about The Yummy Cowboy Diner. I’d need to take some photos of your contest dishes. Then I could tease the contest for a few days in advance, then update the contest results hourly on the night of.”
“Oh, that would be great!” Summer exclaimed. “Thanks! The diner doesn’t have a social media presence yet, but it’s on my list.”
“Again, with the lists,” Brock muttered.
Summer couldn’t resist smirking at him. “I love my lists,” she agreed cheerfully.
In fact, she loved them even more now that she knew how much they irritated him.
