Chapter 4
FOUR
PROTECTIVE
I was in a tizzy in the kitchen at SC.
Lucia, our head chef, had shown about half an hour ago to start prep on whatever works of art she was going to put on the menu that day (that said, she lugged in a bunch of stuff she’d already prepared at home—the woman was a machine!).
In the short time we’d worked together, we had a good sync going, because she wasn’t a talker.
Not even a little bit.
I had never seen anyone with so much pure concentration in my life.
Our kitchen was not The Bear. No one was shouting at each other or locking themselves in the freezer or telling raunchy stories.
In fact, Lucia didn’t even have a sous chef.
It was all her.
And she was so Zen, at first when I was working with her, it weirded me out.
Now I just fell into that space with her.
And it was a good space to be after sleeping next to Gabe last night (even not knowing I was at the time), and all that had already happened this morning.
But all of that had happened this morning, so I was way behind on getting the case filled.
And I should have known what was to come before it came.
Then it came.
The kitchen door crashed against the wall.
And tall, humongous, flannel-shirted, jeans-clad Tex was there.
Lucia barely looked up.
I jumped out of my skin.
“Tex! God! You nearly scared me to death,” I cried.
“Angels Confab the minute the girls are in,” he declared, then jabbed a beefy finger at me. “You women are gonna put the word out to your informants, they don’t corner you in dark parking lots.”
See?
He was grouchy, but a good guy.
And…ugh.
Would everyone stop saying I was cornered already?
“He didn’t corner me, Tex.”
“Shut it!” he boomed.
Then again, everything he’d said so far was a boom. The man boomed. That was what he did. It was just him telling me to shut it was boomed louder.
“It’s good you’re with Gabe now,” Tex announced, and such was that announcement, Lucia looked up again. “He’ll get your head straight.”
“My head isn’t crooked!” I exclaimed. Then added, “And I’m not with Gabe.”
“I’m starting the pool this time and calling twenty-four hours. He’s a Stark. They don’t fuck around,” Tex proclaimed.
That gave me a little hoo-ha quiver.
Lucia broke her silence. “I get thirty-six hours then.”
“I’ll take that action,” Tex replied.
“Lucia!” I gasped, shocked.
“The pool,” so you know, was a leftover from the Rock Chicks. I wasn’t sure they did it with Jessie or Harlow, but they did it with Raye and Cap.
And what they were betting on was when Gabe and I would sleep together.
Oh yeah, you read that right.
If I didn’t love my family of the heart with all of that organ, I’d run for the hills.
“You’re both going to lose because we’re not getting together,” I decreed. “I’ve sworn off men for all time.”
For a second, there was no sound or movement.
Then Tex threw his long-haired, crazy-ass-bearded head back and roared with laughter.
I planted my hands on my hips and glared at him.
Still laughing, Tex pulled out his cell (a flip phone, and not one of the cool new ones, I think his was made in 90s, bought in that decade, and he’d never upgraded).
He jabbed at it.
He put it to his ear.
He waited.
I waited.
Lucia waited.
Then he said, “Stark? Yeah. She says she’s sworn off men for all time.”
It was then I heard a bark of laughter from Tex’s ancient cell phone.
Without saying goodbye, Tex flipped the phone shut.
“Which Stark were you talking to?” I demanded.
“The one who’s married to the mother of his two girls who, back in the day, said she’d sworn off men for all time…and then came Luke,” Tex answered.
That didn’t give me a hoo-ha shiver.
It gave me a terrified shudder.
“If you don’t want a muffin thrown at you, you might want to leave,” I threatened.
“Throw what you want, woman. I don’t give a shit,” Tex replied.
I threw a crumble-topped blueberry at him.
He caught it, bit the entire muffin cap off in one mouthful (and I did not make small muffins) and strolled from the room.
I turned to Lucia. “How do you deal with this crazy?”
She shrugged, then spooned up some of her loaded baked potato soup that I’d seen her throw some herbs de Provence in (the fresh kind she made herself). She tasted it, scrunched her nose and tossed in a pinch of salt.
Guess Lucia was back in the Zen Zone.
A timer went off, and I dashed to the ovens to pull out my cranberry orange muffins just as Raye raced in to come to a jolting stop, her eyes on me.
“Are you okay? I heard Mr. Shithead cornered you,” she said.
“I did not get cornered!” I yelled.
“Oh my God.” She was pressing the air down in front of her. “Okay. Calm down.”
I yanked out the muffins and put them on the prep table.
“There’s something up with him,” I shared. “We need an Angels Confab. I didn’t get much out of him before Super Shaw showed up and saved a day that didn’t need saving, but what he did say didn’t sound that hot.”
“I’ll make the calls,” she replied then looked to all the baked goods lined up on the counter. “You haven’t filled the cases yet?”
I stood still a moment, contemplating why Carmy from The Bear didn’t take his time stuck in the freezer to rethink his life choices in a more positive way: that being getting out of that freezer and running for the hills.
Then I went to our freezer and banged my head against it.
Raye came to me and stroked my back.
“It’s okay,” she soothed. “Luna will be here soon. We’ll get the others in. We’ll figure it out.”
I stopped banging my head and turned to her. “That’d be good.”
“I’m scared to ask about how Gabe carried you into your apartment last night and didn’t come back out.”
I turned back to the freezer.
She grabbed my shoulders and moved me to face her.
“We’ll leave that alone for a while,” she offered.
“Good call,” I said.
She swept a hand over the baked goods. “I’ll take some of these to the cases. Cool?”
I nodded.
She grabbed a tray of chocolate chip pecan muffins.
I followed her with two trays of cookies.
* * *
Angels Confabs were rarely attended by all the Angels because we all worked, and a few of us—me, Joey, Gemma—had second jobs.
But boy howdy, did those bitches traipse in after they heard a) the erroneous information Mr. Shithead cornered me and b) Gabe spent the night.
We gathered behind the bar at The Surf Club, which wasn’t optimal, but it happened often because a) we all worked there and b) we all had bills to pay, so it wouldn’t do to be too far when someone wanted to order a cookie or a refill.
“So, you’re finally not treating Gabe like he’s patient zero with the next coronavirus,” Harlow started it.
No, it was Gabe who was avoiding me.
But…
Was I treating him like patient zero?
Crap.
I was.
Mostly because he was avoiding me.
Well, also because he was the snack to end all snacks. Nope, he was a seven-course meal.
And I was a starving woman who, even so, was on a diet.
However, Gabe should not be where this Confab started.
Luckily, Tex and Tito butted into our Confabs, and although Tito didn’t say much (he was a diminutive Santa Claus-looking guy, if Santa was on vacation in Hawaii, such was Tito’s daily uniform, and as if this didn’t give enough vacation vibe, his ever-present sunglasses did), Tex didn’t give much of a damn what anyone thought of what he had to say.
And Tex wasn’t about hashing out relationship stuff.
“This isn’t about Gabe,” he declared. “This about that honky ambushing Willow.”
Honky.
Oh yeah, Tex could sometimes be a hoot.
Still.
“Okay, let’s get this straight,” I stated. “I was not cornered or ambushed. I was surprised. Surprised. He was not a threat. He was here asking for help.”
“Oh my gawd,” Gemma breathed, her gaze aimed at Joey. “We’re finally in on a real, honest-to-goodness mission.”
“I know, right?” Joey replied, eyes gleaming with anticipation.
When Arthur had given indication we were supposed to recruit them (this being him sending their Andy Warhol-esque portraits to us at the storage units), we’d had one itty-bitty case we worked to break them in.
It wasn’t that big of a deal, just proving some friend of Clarice’s boyfriend was cheating on her (he was, and it didn’t take long for us to figure that out).
But yeah, this was their first real, honest-to-goodness mission.
Luna ignored both of them and asked me, “Help with what?”
For the bazillionth time, I said, “I don’t know.
He didn’t get a chance to say. But he was jittery as all get out.
Every car that passed, he thought they were coming to get him.
Shaw showed, and he took off, and I mean the man hoofed it.
He said ‘they’ were watching him. He said ‘they’ couldn’t know he was coming to us. ”
“Shit, did you notice if he was followed?” Jessie asked.
I shook my head. “No, but I asked him that, and he said he didn’t think so. I didn’t see anybody. Then again, once Mr. Shithead took off, I had to deal with the cavalry, so I didn’t get a good look.”
Jess nodded and Raye inquired, “Is that all he said?”
I shook my head again. “No. He said they have someone. A woman. He definitely said ‘her.’ He started to tell me more, and he was going to show me something on his phone, but that was when the cavalry arrived.”
“And that’s it?” Shanti asked.
“Mostly,” I told her. “Though he did say she was the only one who treated him decent, and it was abundantly clear he was worried about her, and as such, she meant something to him.”
We all sat with the knowledge this unknown woman was the only person to treat Mr. Shithead decently, until Harlow said, “I just knew we were being mean and he needs a friend.”
“He takes porn as payment for information,” Luna pointed out.
Gemma made a gagging noise.
Joey grinned.
Yup.
Those reactions were Gemma and Joey to a T.
“Still, everyone needs friends,” Harlow muttered.