TALL DARK AND HUNGRY Page 0,66

sound of voices, he headed into the living room, fully expecting to find Terri and Chris indulging in pizza or Chinese food. Instead, he found all three of his guests moving about in a sea of tissue flowers and chrome trolleys.

"This one doesn't have an invoice." Vincent opened the lid of the silver chest he stood by, waited for the steam to clear, then glanced at the contents. "There's a napkin. It has S.C. on it."

"S.C.?" Terri asked, then began to sort through a stack of papers. "S.C., S.C., S.C.," she murmured, sounding stressed. "S--Here! Sylvia's Cuisine." She crossed the room to hand Vincent one of the sheafs of paper. Bastien's cousin took the page and pro¬ceeded to extract a piece of tape from a dispenser he held, then tape the paper to the top of the chrome warmer.

"This one has B.D. on the plate covers," Chris an¬nounced, peering into another of the trolleys.

"B.D?" Terri muttered, and began the sorting ex¬ercise again. "B.D. I saw a Bella Donna or Bella Dolci or something a minute ago. That's probably it."

"I sincerely hope it isn't belladonna," Bastien said with amusement, drawing their attention to his presence.

"Oh. You're back." Terri forced a smile to her mouth, but he knew it was purely for his sake. She didn't seem to be in much of a smiling mood.

"Hmmm." Bastien moved into the room, kicking flowers about with each step he took. "Either you overordered on the takeout, or the catering samples have arrived."

"The catering samples," she said with a sigh. Terri waved her hands at the chaos in the room and apolo¬gized, "I'm sorry about this mess. I should have been more prepared. More organized. But they came one right after the other; bang, bang, bang."

"Bang, bang, bang," Vincent agreed with a solemn nod.

"And it was so rushed. I'd barely sign for one when another was under my nose."

"Right under her nose." Chris nodded. "They were just shoving them at her left, right, and center."

"Yep." It was Terri's turn to nod. "Chris was man¬ning the panel to release the elevator, and Vincent was showing the deliverymen where to put their carts, and the men just kept handing me clipboards and pens, then ripping off invoices and giving them to me, and there were so many of them..." She waved the papers helplessly. "We don't know which invoices go with what."

Bastien bit his lip to keep back the smile that threat¬ened to stretch his lips. He didn't think she'd appreciate his amusement right now. She looked absolutely fraz¬zled. And adorable. But he didn't think she'd appreciate his telling her that, either, so kept it to himself as well.

"I don't know how we're going to eat all of this food, Bastien. There's too much." Terri peered around with distress, then glanced back to him, held up a pen, and wailed, "And I didn't mean to, but it was all so hectic that I stole a pen!"

"Two of them," Chris said, pointing at the one dangling from her shirt collar, where she had appar¬ently stuck it in the rush.

"Three," Vincent corrected, walking over to pluck another from where she had absently tucked it behind her ear.

Helpful as they were trying to be, their added com¬ments just made Terri seem that much more miser¬able. Moving forward, Bastien urged his cousin out of the way and tugged her into his arms to pat her reas¬suringly. "It's okay, baby. We'll sort this out. And we don't have to eat all the food, just taste each one. And we'll do that first--that way, the ones we don't like, we don't have to match up to their invoices."

"But you weren't here, and I signed for them all. I have to make sure the trolleys get back to their proper owners."

"We'll sort it out," Bastien repeated, then urged her around and between several carts to the couch. He paused to sweep several flowers aside, frowning as he did. "How did these flowers get everywhere?" he asked as he urged her to sit.

"One of the delivery guys knocked one of the boxes off the table," Vincent explained.

"And another picked up a box to move it out of the way, tripped, and sent them flying everywhere," Chris finished. "Fortunately, they were all rejects. Terri had the good sense to have us move the usable flowers after the first mishap."

Bastien nodded. "Maybe we should put the flowers away for now. We wouldn't want them ruined by food being spilled on them, or anything of that nature. Not