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“No, don’t. It looks amazing on you.” Finally remembering the cookies, Talulah handed them over. “I thought you might like these. They literally melt in your mouth.”
“Thanks.” After untying the ribbon and removing the lid, Ellen selected an espresso-flavored macaron from the stack of eight different flavors before offering one to Talulah.
Talulah shook her head. “I’ve had enough.”
When Ellen took her first bite, she moaned as she chewed. “Oh, wow. You’re so right. These are delicious.”
“Not just anyone can make a good French macaron,” Talulah said. “MaybeIshould try making them.”
“You should. I bet they’d go over big at the diner.”
Talulah frowned as she considered the idea. “I would if they didn’t get stale so fast. Until I reach the point where I’m selling almost everything I make before the end of the day, I think I’ll hold off. They’d be too much work to waste all the ones that were left.” She sat on the worn leather couch Ellen had purchased from a secondhand store and mixed with the furniture her grandparents had left behind. She had the same talent with decorating she had with clothes. She could make anything look cool—had even helped Talulah furnish her and Brant’s house after they got married, which had saved them a lot of money. “Anyway, how’d it go at the diner today?”
Perching on the round, contemporary chair across from her—which she’d bought at a garage sale for only fifty bucks and was another example of her ability to bring very different looks together in a great way—Ellen helped herself to a second cookie. “It was a little slow at first, but it got busier as the day wore on. I walked over to the bank after I bought this dress and deposited the day’s receipts in the night drop like you asked me to.”
“I appreciate it.” Talulah shifted so she could remove a throw pillow she’d sat on. “Anything interesting happen while you were there?”
“Not really. Why?”
Talulah peered at her more closely. “Brant and I ran into Rocko when we stopped for gas a little while ago.”
Ellen rolled her eyes. “What’d the Burger Meister have to say?”
“He asked me why I don’t have you help out more often,” she replied with a laugh.
“Dude makes me uncomfortable.”
“He’s definitely got a thing for you.”
“Don’t tell his ex,” Ellen joked. “I don’t want Debbie coming after me.”
Talulah sobered. “That wasn’t the only thing he said.”
“What do you mean?”
“He told me that Hendrix and Leo came in while you were there.”
“Can you believe it? They were with a woman I’d never met.”
What Talulah couldn’t believe was that Ellen hadn’t volunteered this information the second she opened the door, that she’d served her nemesis today and hadn’t found it remarkable enough to mention. “What was her name?”
“I have no idea.”
“How long were they there?”
“Forty, fifty minutes.”
“That’s a long time for you and Hendrix to be in the same room,” Talulah said. “Why weren’t you going to tell me?”
“What’s to tell?”
Ellenalwayscomplained about Hendrix. As jealous as she was—and hurt by her father’s neglect—she noticed everything about him. “Hendrix is the bane of your existence, remember?”
“True,” she said wryly. “But Leo was there, too.”
It was less clear how Ellen felt about Leo. He, too, had replaced her in her father’s affections, which had to hurt, but she seemed to hold only Hendrix responsible. Probably because Leo was too harmless to be blamed for anything. “Leo is the sweetest,” Talulah allowed. “But in the past, you’ve been careful to steer clear of him, too.”
“I don’t have any reason to get close to either one of them.”
