I got behind him and wrapped it around his eyes. “Never knew you were a foodie,” I said softly into his ear.
He tilted his head back, exposing a strong, tanned throat. “I’m not.”
“You’re going to lose, then. Fred’s practically an Iron Chef.”
He gave me a strange, slow smile. “We’ll see.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I went over to the chef’s table, where the guys were laying out a cornucopia of ingredients. I laughed suddenly, I didn’t know why, maybe at the sheer abundance, and Tami shot me a look. “That’s better.”
“What is?”
She lowered her voice. “You go away to that damned court, and you always come back the same way: exhausted, pale-faced, and traumatized.”
“We had a . . . problem . . . today,” I said, because I didn’t want to discuss it in front of the kids. Or at all. But she just frowned.
“There’s always a problem. This damned world’s full of them, and they don’t stop coming.”
“I noticed.” I’d spent all summer climbing one mountain after the other, only to find a vista of bigger peaks waiting on the other side. “It never ends.”
“Which is why you can’t let it get to you. That way lies the men in the white coats, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
A hand with a sparkly pink manicure—the girls had been at her again—suddenly grasped my arm. “Do you?”
I looked at her in surprise. The dark eyes were reflecting the flames from the nearby firepit, and her cheeks were flushed and rosy. But it was the concern on the familiar face that truly warmed it. “Yes. But I can’t stop shi—stuff—from happening.”
“No, you can’t. None of us can.” She put a glass of beer in my hand. “So here’s to the times in between.”
I clinked glasses with her, and stupidly felt myself tearing up. “To the times in between.”
“Are we going to start or what?” Fred said impatiently. “I’m starving!”
“I’m not sure how this works. Are we supposed to try to fool you?” Rhea asked, looking a little concerned to find herself in front of Rico.
“You’re supposed to feed us!”
“I’m beginning to suspect this was just a way to get us to do the hard work for them,” Tami told her.
Rhea frowned, and a glint of steely determination flashed in her eyes. “Then I say we fool them.”
I grinned. “Game on.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Pecans, bacon, and brie on a stroopwafel. Seriously, are you even trying?” Fred demanded.
“I didn’t think you’d know the brie,” Tami said, scowling.
“Not know brie?” The part of his face I could see looked confused. “How does a person not know brie?”
“It’s one of those weird French cheeses,” she said, reading the label on the little round box.
“It’s not weird, it’s brie.”
“Not all of us grew up in a la-di-da mansion, all right?” There was a hint of irritation in her voice.
“But brie isn’t—that’s not—no, no, no,” Fred said, waving his hands around in a way that successfully conveyed impatience, embarrassment, and something that I guess was passion, because if there was anything Fred loved, it was food. “Brie isn’t la-di-da. Brie is . . .” He searched for the right words. “It’s sunlight on a pretty girl’s face while she stomps grapes with legs purple up to the knees. It’s bells clinking around cows’ necks as milkmaids drive them home beside golden wheat fields. It’s an old man playing sad songs on a ragged accordion to a long-lost love. It’s—”