Remy stroked his beard. “I don’t know. I think if she actually cared about you, she would have fixed the pothole.”
“I don’t want to hear about the pothole,” Archer complained as we went upstairs. “Is the caterer here yet? I need a drink.”
“I thought I told you not to order alcohol,” Hunter said in annoyance.
The caterer was in the large conference room, setting up. I recognized her bright-blue hair from the restaurant.
“Thanks for doing this on such short notice,” I said, loping over.
She turned. Her face wore a strained expression, but then it smoothed out.
“I’ll just get this all set up then be on my way.”
“I see you brought the alcohol,” I remarked.
Zoe sighed. “Yes, in fact. I have mimosas and Bloody Marys—though it is a Tuesday morning. I can’t say that I haven’t brought alcohol to a morning event before in Harrogate, but usually the Svenssons have better sense.”
“Small towns,” I said, grinning.
The caterer grunted and went back to setting up the food. I was taken aback. I was used to women falling all over me—literally in some cases, especially if they were drunk and wearing those impossibly high stilettoes that made their legs look a mile long.
But the curvy caterer wasn’t wearing heels, and she didn’t seem that impressed with me. Her multiple earrings glinted under the LED office lights. She was wearing Converse sneakers, black capris, and a white shirt with the Girl Meets Fig logo on it. The top button was undone, and I could just make out the barest hint of cleavage.
I mentally slapped myself. What was I doing? She was a service worker. “Do you need any help?” I asked, reaching for a container of miniature breakfast burritos.
“No,” she snapped and rapped the table next to my hand with a pair of tongs.
I jerked my hand back.
“Go harass someone else.”
“Seriously? Literally no woman has ever talked to me like that,” I complained. “Where is the fawning? The, ‘OMG, I can’t believe it’s you’?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Zoe said, turning to face me. She held the tongs as if she was going to shank me with them. I took a nervous step back. Her lip, dark with purple lipstick, curled up. “You hired me to bring food.” She pointed with the tongs. “And alcohol. Not suck your dick. Now go the fuck away.”
I turned and went.
“So is there alcohol?” Archer asked when I dazedly walked back to the rest of my brothers in the lobby. They were talking with various members of the Harrogate Foundation and the Harrogate Arts Committee, who were there to discuss the Art Zurich Biennial Expo. Archer’s girlfriend Hazel, who was on the Arts Committee, waved to me.
“Yes, there’s alcohol.”
“Woo hoo!” He did a backflip, to the titters of the committee members. Then we all went into the large conference room and found seats.
“We cannot keep having alcohol at official functions,” Deputy Mayor Meghan Loring said as she strode in.
I had to admit, if Hunter hadn’t been such a nutcase, I would totally have tried my shot with Meghan. But my brother only had eyes for her. He saw me watching her and gave me the look of a man who would put cat food in my car to rot if I so much as went near what he deemed his.
“Alcohol is tradition,” Hunter said to Meghan.
“You can’t count alcohol as a tradition,” she scoffed. “Everyone drinks alcohol. That doesn’t make you original.”
“This is a special Harrogate cocktail, Deputy Mayor,” Zoe interjected dryly. “It’s made with fruit from local farms and liquor I’ve been distilling myself.”
“Oh my God,” Meghan said as everyone grabbed a drink.
“Shit,” Archer said, coming back to his seat, juggling a purple drink and a plate piled high with food. “If I didn’t already have the love of my life, I’d totally hit that.”
Hazel laughed and took a sip of her drink. “To be honest… same!”
Archer’s comment made me a little jealous. Why I didn’t know. I didn’t even really know Zoe, and she clearly didn’t like me. That bothered me. Everyone liked me.
Zoe was packing up her catering bags as Blade brought up the PowerPoint on the screen. I jogged over to her while people grabbed the food.
“I’ll come pick these dishes back up later,” she told me when I stopped in front of her.
“Cool, cool.”
She stared at me, unimpressed. “So, I’ll be going now.”
“I was going to give you a tip,” I said as she tried to sidestep around me.
“I don’t need anything else with your face on it, thank you very much.”
I grinned. “So you noticed! I had them custom made.”
“I don’t care.”
“Have you ever met anyone else with his face printed on his own check?” I asked, taking out my checkbook and fanning it at her.
“No, and I hope I never have to again,” she said, starting to walk to the door.
I hastily scrawled the tip amount on a check, ripped it out of the book, and raced after her. Then I waved it in her face.
“I told you, I’m not here to suck your dick. Plus it’s practically the middle of the twenty-first century. Why do you have a checkbook?”
“Why are you so mean to me?”
“Are you fucking serious?” She blew a breath out from between her teeth.
I gave her my best kicked-puppy-dog look. It usually made women melt, but Zoe was unmoved. I didn’t know why, but I needed her to like me. It was a compulsion—a remnant of my time being abandoned in the cult, perhaps? I tried to channel all my past trauma into being as enticing and angsty as a Nicholas Sparks dream guy.
Zoe did seem a little softer as she took the check from me, but maybe it was my imagination.
“I’ll see you when you come pick up your dishes,” I told her.
“I may send an employee. Don’t get your hopes up.”
5
Zoe
Ten things I hate about Weston.
He’s a dick.
He’s too handsome.
He’s obnoxious and clearly full of himself.
What type of person puts their freaking face on a check?
Who even uses checks?
The way he just toys with people.
He has too much money.
His suit fits ridiculously well.
His face is weirdly symmetrical. Like, Barbie doll levels of symmetry.
Seriously, though, who uses checks?
Several of my grandmother’s regulars were waiting outside Girl Meets Fig when I arrived at the restaurant to open up for the weekday brunch crowd. Members of the Harrogate Girls Club, a collection of the in-the-know senior citizens of Harrogate, were slumped at the door, fanning themselves.
“Thank God you finally showed up. I’m gonna die of heat stroke,” Ida complained as I unlocked the door. “I need a drink, stat.”
It still wasn’t even ten thirty in the morning, I noted as I tied on my apron. My day as a small-town restaurant operator had begun.
One of the old male regulars tottered up, dragging a red wagon holding buckets of strawberries.