Chapter 12
Chapter 12
I n the end it went about like Jones thought it would. There were a lot of dreadful silences from Ridge. Jones filled in the blanks for himself. He knew his former team leader well enough to read the unspoken recriminations. Idiot. Hothead. Emotional. Fool. Worse than the ominous silence was the final pronouncement.
“I’m sending someone.”
“Who?” Jones asked, gripping the phone in a death clutch, but too late. Ridge had hung up.
“You’re actually in a flop sweat,” Carol noted.
“I’d like to see you deal with Cameron Ridge,” he said, dabbing his sweaty forehead. “Actually, I would.”
“Why?” She stared at him with wide guileless eyes and he had to remind himself again it was her evilness that got them into this mess. Well, her evilness and his apparent incompetence.
“Because you’re you,” he said simply.
If possible, her eyes widened even more. They were pretty eyes, he noted. Soft and warm and brown and fringed by thick, albeit stubby, lashes.
“What?” she gasped. “Do you know what my nickname is?”
“No, but I’m going to guess it has the word ‘dragon’ in there somewhere.”
She snorted an indelicate laugh. “It’s Sweetie.”
“Ironically?” he guessed.
“No. It’s because they say I’m the sweetest person they know. Everyone calls me Sweetie, and they always have. My family, kids from school, people from culinary school. No matter where I go, the name follows.”
“But you’re horrible,” he exclaimed and felt chagrined when she laughed.
“Of course I’m not.”
“No, you are. Seriously. I like everyone, but I can’t stand you.”
Far from being offended, she was still smiling like, well, like a Sweetie.
“Has anyone else at the resort complained about me?”
He opened his mouth to say of course and froze, jaw agape. Not one person had said a thing about her, not even a whisper. Usually when they had a problem guest, rumors, warnings, and nicknames flew faster than a hungry mosquito. But no one had made a peep about Gum Lady, about Carol. About Sweetie.
“How is that possible?” he croaked. Was he living in a parallel universe?
“I’m quiet, unassuming, and an amazing tipper,” she said.
Jones blinked, shocked speechless. “No, that’s not right. You’re rotten.”
She tipped her head. “A minority opinion. And I think we’ve agreed your judgment can’t be trusted when it comes to me, David.”
No, he absolutely refused to believe it. When reinforcements arrived, he was certain they’d side with him. Perhaps she hadn’t revealed the depths of her loathsome personality to anyone else. Maybe he was simply more discerning than anyone else.
“You’re growling,” she noted.
“My stomach. It alerts me when it’s been fifteen minute past my last meal. I’m like a hobbit that way, in need of constant nourishment.” Was he having a stroke? He usually tried to keep his overactive appetite on lockdown until he got to know someone well, a leftover of being an insecure—albeit jolly—fat kid. And now he was word vomiting all over Gum Lady, the ogress.
But instead of using the information against him in some retaliatory way, she smiled. “We have that in common. Come on, let’s find food—a talent of mine.”
“We have that in common,” he noted. His friends used to make fun of his nose for food, but he couldn’t help it. Somehow he always knew where the treats were.
“You don’t know where the good food is,” she said, her tone full of the matter of fact certainty he found maddening.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Whose resort is it?”
“Migdal Properties.”
He opened his eyes, squinting. Of course she would know the name of the conglomerate that owned the hotel. “I meant which of us is more familiar with the resort? Me or you.”
“You,” she said, poking his pec.
“That’s right. So which of us knows where to find the good food?”
She turned her pointer finger away from him and toward herself.
He shook his head, annoyed. She was a constant buzzing in his ears that couldn’t be undone now. This was his turf, and he knew where to find the food. He’d spent the last few months of his employment mapping out the best snacks and the time they appeared on the buffet. Now, for instance, they’d be setting out the chocolate pudding. You couldn’t get chocolate pudding at any other buffet time than this one. That was the sort of priceless insider information she should be begging him for. Instead she looked smugly amused as she crooked her ubiquitous pointer finger at him and stated in a ghostly whisper. “Follow me to treats, David.”
And then she walked away, not even waiting to see if he’d tag after her. And of course he shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t. She wasn’t the boss of him. He’d show her they were playing by his rules now, not hers. She was definitely not in charge of him or their destination.
“Where to?” he asked as he slid into the driver’s seat of the Jeep and inserted his key in the ignition.
Carol’s too-busy pointer finger jutted to the right and Jones swallowed a retort. Wherever she was taking him, it had better be good enough to make up for this injustice.
“Gum Lady, you make me crazy. You really do.”
“What? I’m sorry, but it was hard to hear that mini rant over the quaking and gurgling coming from your belly,” she said, reaching over to poke him like they were secretly filming a Pillsbury commercial with him as the dough boy. He hated being poked in the tummy. Loathed it, a carryover from his chubby boyhood days. In retribution, he reached across the console and poked her in the same place. And she giggled, mashing both hands over her belly button as she bent forward and chuckled adorably. And it was so cute he almost gagged.
“Now you’re just messing with me,” he muttered.
“You’re hangry,” she accused.
In reply, he shot her a dark look. He wanted to rail at her more, but it was true: he was hangry. His cordiality lessoned the farther he was from a meal, and right now he was really far. Too far.
“Here.” She held something in her hand like an offering.
“What is it?” he asked, unable to take his eyes off the rutted road to make a full inspection.
“Rat poison. Who cares? It’s food. Eat it.” She broke off a little piece and shoved it between his lips.
“No, I don’t, I can’t…” What if he had food allergies? What if he was deathly allergic to nuts or gluten? She didn’t even ask before she began stuffing food into him like a reverse Pez dispenser, but maybe that was her goal. Maybe she actually wanted to kill him. The joke was on her, if so. He had zero allergies. But he was picky about certain things—green things, slimy things, germy things, seafood, etc. He had rules. It wasn’t okay to go around…
“What is that? It’s freaking amazing,” he murmured. Birdlike, he opened his mouth for another bite, refusing the urge to smack his lips as she fed him another tasty morsel.
“Some energy bars I take whenever I travel.”
“Where did you buy them?”
“I made them,” she said, wagging her brows at him when he darted her a look. How could someone so bad make something so good?
Jones faced forward, disturbed. In his experience only the best people were good cooks. He firmly believed food became imbued with every emotion put into it. Negative people made negative food. But Carol’s energy bars were sweet and sumptuous, and where was he to go with that?
Maybe my theory is wrong, he mused. But which one? The one that said bad people couldn’t make good food? Or the one that said Carol was bad?
Either way, he had the feeling she was going to cause him to rethink everything, and he was in no way ready for that.