The Love Scam - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,54
he was in the presence of a mind quicker and less cluttered than his.
“It’s limbo, kind of. The in-between. No one’s in a rush to get to the next stage of—of whatever this is.”
He nodded.
“Which is curious.” She was fixing him with that dark gaze again. “Don’t you think? I mean, I know why I’m in no rush. And you know why you are. But what’s motivating Delaney?”
“You’re…” He tried to think of the word. Settled for a poor substitute. “Extraordinary.”
“No. Just smart.” But she smiled down at her dough, and edged a bit closer to him.
“Break time!”
“Thank God,” he groaned as Delaney and Elena came back to the kitchen.
“For the child, idiota.”
“Oh, please, not another one of those ‘Working children fourteen hours a day is cruel’ softies.” But he was already helping Lillith clean up, handing her a damp kitchen cloth to destickify her hands. When he moved to brush the flour off her shirt she jerked back so quickly, she nearly fell. “Whoa! Careful, hon.”
“Sorry. Ticklish.”
“Come along, my sticky tickly sweetheart.”
“Please don’t talk to me like I’m three.”
“You would prefer if I talked to you like you’re forty?” Elena asked.
As he and Delaney watched them leave, he grinned to hear Lillith’s “Come to think of it, yes.”
“How’s it going?” Delaney asked in the tone of someone who didn’t actually care how it was going.
“Well, I’ll tell you.” He shook his head so hard, flour flew and, fuck, it was in his hair now? How was that possible? What was the apron even doing? Because it wasn’t keeping flour out of his hair, that was for sure. “I’d pay someone a thousand bucks to get out of this.”
“Be glad I let you skip the hairnet.”
“Oh my God,” he replied, appalled. “I’m not vain, but that would be a crime against nature.” He clawed his fingers through his hair, then realized how the flour had gotten there. “When it’s clean, I’ve got great hair, and a hairnet—it’d be like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.”
“But you’re not vain,” she teased.
“Not even a little.”
“See? Count your blessings. However terrible things are, they can always get worse.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.” He took a break from kneading awful dough to glare at her. “I love it when you drop by.”
“We’re almost done here. But seriously. Rake. Things can get worse.” She sounded serious, like she was actively warning him, as opposed to rattling off a cliché.
“This isn’t really a church anymore, right?”
“Right.”
“Good. Because this fucking sucks. And I’m gonna blaspheme the shit out of the place, because making awful bread takes forever.”
“Again: forty-five minutes.”
“Fucking sucks.”
Delaney was, as usual, unmoved by his pain. Heartless, gorgeous wench! “If you worked while you bitched, you’d be half done already.”
“Why are you talking like that’s some kind of incentive? D’you even know what Easter is about?”
“Nope.” She leaned against the opposite counter, crossed her ankles, crossed her arms, and watched him. “CPS has a hard enough time taking care of kids’ physical well-being, never mind the spiritual.”
He admired the way she said it: like one of her flat facts (“Cantaloupe gelato is the best gelato, no others are worth discussing”), not something to elicit sympathy, or attention. He had the feeling that anyone who pulled the “There, there, poor darling, I’ll take care of you” crap with Delaney went home with a black eye.
“Okay, so, not much church. Got it.” He held his hands up, placating, and coughed when he stirred up more flour dust. “I’ll lay it out for you.”
“Goody.”
“Easter’s about shiny fake grass and crappy-ass chocolate and scary-ass Peeps and coloring eggs that no one eats and getting a bellyache from eating too much crappy-ass chocolate. That’s what it’s about. Not”—he gestured to the messy kitchen, his floured body, the piles of orange peel, the tubes of almond paste, the utter nightmare surrounding him—“this!”
“That was beautiful.” She smirked. “You should write greeting card verses in your spare time.”
“I know you’re being sarcastic, but thank you.”
“Y’know…” She gestured at the piles of garbage destined to go into the next batch of dough. “It’s pretty good.”
He could feel his temper unraveling. “It’s not! Not even a little.”
“You’ve been to Italy before, have you even tried a piece?”
“Yes! Once, when I was trying to bang a baker. She made it for me and I had to eat the whole thing and it sucked!”
“You know you’re screaming, right?”
“I’m aware!” Worse yet: screaming his sexual résumé. The baker had been way too fixated on using food during sex.