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“She’s not even that good a cook.”
“You should give her lessons: one hundred different meals made mostly of peanut butter.”
“Cooking’s for plebs.” Jude tosses his hair.
“Don’t talk like one of those idiots from your old school.”
“I am one of those idiots,” Jude says sullenly. “Or I was.”
“You could be a Harvard idiot—your SATs are high enough.”
“This again.”
“Yes, this. If you would just—“
But Jude is already out the back door, fleeing from my nagging.
The rest of the day passes slowly. I’m still working on the ballroom, refinishing the parquet floors. Luckily, I didn’t have to replace them entirely, just sand them down to within an inch of their life and re-stain.
I can hear Tom overhead, rewiring the opulent old chandeliers. He’s been surprisingly subdued since being throttled unconscious by Dane’s brother. But I think he’s getting his moxie back because the last two days he’s been pushing hard to take me to dinner.
I told him no the first three times, but now I’m staring at my blank phone screen, feeling real frustration. Dane still hasn’t responded to my last text.
So, when Tom comes into the ballroom ten minutes later, sweaty and dirty and grinning, to tell me he’s almost done, I say recklessly and a little spitefully, “That calls for celebration.”
“Hell yes, it does…you finally going to let me buy you a pizza?”
“I think I should buyyouone.”
“Won’t argue with that. I’ll go home and shower then come pick you up.”
“Great.” Already regretting it, I give him a queasy smile back.
I don’t owe Dane anything. We aren’t in a relationship, and it really fucking hurts my feelings that he hasn’t spoken to me since our incredible all-day date and beach hookup.
On the other hand, it’s shitty to let Tom take me out just to make myself feel better.
But now I’m stuck.Fuck.
The only thing cheering me up is the progress I’m making on the house. I’ve been working from the moment I wake up until I roll into bed, sometimes so exhausted I almost fall asleep in the shower.
Either I’m too tired to hear it or the ghostly piano player has been as absent as Dane. I’ve been sleeping peacefully all week.
* * *
I meetTom at The Slice Factory, which looks pleasingly industrial inside, with bare brick walls and gleaming copper pipes.
“It used to be a chocolate factory,” Tom tells me. “The Archer family were chocolatiers.”
“Archer as in Aldous and Amy Archer?”
“That’s right—they’re a founding family.”
“I thought the founding families were rich?”
“The Archers were—until someone poisoned a batch of their mint truffles. Eight people died, and the company was ruined. They never found out who did it. Some people thought it must have been a disgruntled employee, but Emma has a different theory.”
I bet she does.
