Chapter Seven #3
I’d really like to start an undignified food fight by bouncing a roll off his head, but I settle for picking up my spoon and eating my soup in silence.
Everyone follows suit, and for a moment, silence reigns as we all realize that the stuff in our bowls is actually bloody divine.
It’s chicken consommé, I think, flavorful and delicious.
Fletch draws his notebook and pen out and lays it beside his bowl. On it he writes: “Chicken soup is good for invalids recuperating from fatal diseases” so only I can see.
In the food fight going on inside my brain I have just upended my soup bowl on his head.
“People from my TV production company are coming to scope the place out this afternoon,” Leo says, addressing the table. “Nikki, Vikki, and I will handle them, and I’d appreciate it if the rest of you could make yourselves scarce.”
I bristle with annoyance. “Well, I’m planning a full walk through the castle this afternoon with my team. Perhaps you could make sure you stay out of our way instead.”
Leo eyes me. “This doesn’t need to be a battle. We’re all on the same page here and everyone’s getting paid.”
I refrain from telling him that everything between us will always be a battle, because he’s the bastardy bullshit-peddling hippocrocotwunt who broke my heart and I don’t have to listen to his twatwaffle anymore, but I keep the crazy words in my head just by the skin of my teeth.
Maybe I do have a disease after all, one that makes me want to say exactly what I think.
Cook and Hells Bells move quickly around us to replace our empty soup bowls with individual little tiered stands laden with dainty sandwiches and a selection of cakes and delicate desserts. Is it too late to retract my statement that they don’t need to cater for us? This is bloody heavenly.
Leo picks up a salmon sandwich and waves it airily down the table. “Don’t you think it’s taking this shadowing thing too far for you to stay in the castle at night, Gunn?”
We all look at Fletch, who takes his time over a teeny rare-beef-filled Yorkshire pudding.
“I don’t mind protecting Malady from things that go bump in the night,” he says, studying his stand again and selecting a mini quiche.
I roll my eyes. “If anyone is going to need protecting, it’s you.”
Fletch’s eyes flash with interest. “Worried you won’t be able to keep your hands off me, Ghostbuster?”
“I think she meant that the ghosts might try to kill you in your sleep,” Artie says, then sticks a sandwich into his mouth whole.
“Or she might sleepwalk and do it herself,” Marina says with an evil glint in her eye. “Melody did it, in the bedroom, with a poker.”
“I’d pay good money to see that,” Fletch murmurs, effortlessly hovering his finger over my button again.
At the other end of the table, Leo slams his fork down onto the table with unnecessary force, making the twins jump like startled rabbits.
He doesn’t say anything, but I get the message.
He doesn’t appreciate watching Fletch flirt with me.
Well, well, well. An admittedly mean-spirited flush of “in your face, sucker, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” enjoyment warms my bones, and that’s the one and only explanation I can offer for what I said next.
“I sleep naked.”
Fletch almost chokes on his butterfly cake, Marina claps her hand over her laugh, and Artie hums and looks at the ceiling. The creepy twins are both staring at me and blinking really fast, as if they cannot compute the relevance, and I notice that Leo’s hands are clenched into fists on the table.
“No you fucking don’t,” he says. “You sleep in fluffy pajamas.”
I look at him, and it becomes apparent that I am still in stupid mode because I say, “My tastes have changed. I’ve grown up. These days I can’t sleep unless I’m completely naked. I’m like Marilyn Monroe.”
They all contemplate this unusual revelation.
“I bought a dress just like the white one she wore when she sang Happy Birthday to the president,” Marina says, valiantly keeping up with me. “On eBay, from China, for ten pence or something.”
“Let’s hope you don’t die the same terrible death as Marilyn with the telephone in your hand,” Leo spits at me.
“Leo did it, in the bedroom, with the telephone receiver,” one of the twins says with a rare display of wit.
“Not on my watch,” Fletch says, quiet and serious. My stomach does a slow backward somersault, and for a moment Leo and Fletch stare each other down across their cake stands.
“Is that the heady whiff of testosterone I smell?” Marina sniffs at the air, and at the other end of the table Nikki and Vikki each lay a hand over Leo’s clenched ones.
Artie catches my eye and holds it. “Have some cake, Melody. The pink one tastes like the fresh strawberries I picked with my dad one summer.”
I think I might actually love Artie Elliott.
He’s a lad of spare words, but he always chooses them carefully, right now being a case in point.
Not only was he distracting me with cake, he’s unwittingly reminded me to focus on what really matters.
I swallow, try to recover my tattered dignity, and do as he suggested and take a bite of the perfectly rectangular pink-iced slice.
He’s quite right, it’s an explosion of fruit in my mouth, and the sweetness of the cake, along with the sweetness of Artie Elliott, is enough to ease my mood. I’ve got this. For now at least anyway.
I risk a glance toward Fletch and hope like hell I’ll be able to hang on to my poise and dignity tonight when we’re alone in the castle.