Not that I’m some relationship expert myself.
“Maybe we should go to O’Malley’s,” Josie suggests, reaching for her rapidly melting ice cream and taking a bite thoughtfully. She offers a spoonful to me. “Want some?”
“Sure.” I take a bite myself. “I could use the fuel. Skipped breakfast and over lunch I was so busy shooting out emails to prospective clients that I only ate half a muffin.”
Blue eyes widening, Josie lowers her spoon as her mouth becomes a guilty O… with the result that pink ice cream slops onto the table.
“Shit.” She mops it up with one of the napkins Wynona hasn’t yet blown her nose on. “God, sorry, I’ve been so wrapped up in…” She trails off, waving to Wynona, as if there was any doubt what she meant. “How are things going? The job hunt, I mean.”
I shrug. “Shittily. I might actually have to go back to the Pancake House.”
Josie drops her napkin. “No. Don’t say that.”
I sigh. “Why not? It’s the truth. I’m beginning to loathe ramen, and I’m not going to my mom.”
“But the Pancake House…” Josie’s horrified expression says it all.
“Maybe Raymond isn’t there anymore?” I try.
She scoffs. “Yeah, he only owned the whole place.”
I shrug, reaching for the ice cream and taking a yummy strawberry bite for myself. “Well, he’d take me back, at least.”
She yanks it back to herself with a glare, although we both know it’s not over the ice cream. “Yeah, so he could grope you and make all those creepy comments about what he’d like to do with those ‘pretty feet of yours’.”
At her rendition of him—low voice and creepy as hell—we all crack up, even Wynona.
“Guess I should’ve known what to expect when he had us wear sandals at a pancake house,” I say, trying to sound more chagrined than resigned.
When I walked out of its yellow and red striped doors, I swore I’d never set foot in the place again, and now I’m actually…
“Stop,” Josie declares. “Not another word. I forbid it.”
“You can’t forbid it,” I point out.
“I forbid it,” she repeats, more forcefully this time, stabbing her ice cream spoon at me before getting herself another spoonful. “You, Sierra Hill, are a journalist. And you will accept nothing less.”
“Even if it means me living on the street?”
Mouth full of ice cream, Josie grumbles, “For the billionth time, you can come live with me. Or Wyn. Right, Wyn?”
At the sullen silence that greets us, Josie elbows her twin. Wynona peers through a crack in her black bowl cut. “I guess. Just—if Horatio starts shitting under my ficus tree again…”
“That was one time,” I protest.
“And didn’t he keep running into my glass walls in the middle of the night?” Wynona recalls, starting to sit up.
“He was recovering from being spayed and was having a bad week,” I grumble, already knowing I’m fighting a losing battle.
Calling Horatio well-behaved is like calling a tomato blue: it just doesn’t work.
“Hold on.” Apparently, contrary to our expectations, Wynona’s not drunk enough at all, since she’s waxing poetic on poor Horatio’s failings. Of which there are, admittedly, a fair amount. “Didn’t he jump on my bed in the middle of the night and, for no discernible reason, leave a massive, stinking shit…”
“OK, OK!” I snap. “We’ve got some work to do on his behavior.”
“Work?” Wynona barks out a laugh. “Try Mission Impossible. How many doggy schools and trainers have given you two the boot by now?”
“You were more helpful when you were sobbing over your personal failings,” Josie says sweetly.
Wynona grabs the ice cream bowl and then, seeing the pink mush that remains, scowls. “And you were more helpful when you were offering me edible ice cream.”
Josie yanks the bowl back and takes a big mushy spoonful with another satisfied blonde eyelash flutter. “You snooze, you lose.”
Wynona totters upright. “No, you get sober, you lose. I’m getting a drink.”
Two shaky steps and I’m right there beside her. “I’ll get this one.”
“Well.” Wynona draws herself up to her full 5’0” height, still seeming to tower over me even though she’s a good head shorter. “Fine.”
On my way to the bar, my glance goes to the far table. The long-haired hot guy from before isn’t there, but—
Whoa.
Something slams into me.
“Watch where you’re going,” a deep voice grumbles. It seems so deep that it resonates in my chest, or it could be that I’m still steadying myself on the bar.
“Right back at you,” I snap, looking up into narrowed hazel eyes.
Hazel eyes that I’ve seen before.
Yeah, the long-haired guy is even hotter close up and pissed off. Although he is a jerk.
Ever heard of ‘sorry’?
He pauses there, looking me up and down like I’m some sort of art exhibit. His stance is still that annoying combination of ease and tension, of wanting and knowing that he’ll get what he wants. He even smells dark and musky.