What's Life Without the Sprinkles - By Misty Simon Page 0,18
his friend, and he wouldn’t stop now.
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“What do you mean you pissed off our lawyer? How could you make Uncle Al mad? He’s one of the easiest-going guys around.” Claudia moved from the island in the middle of the kitchen and back to the counter. She slid the cubed chicken into the pan and used her wrist to move some hair off her cheek. She should have gone out to dinner with Nate. Even failing abysmally at flirting would have been better than this new headache.
“Not Uncle Al, he loves me. But for some stupid reason he made me talk with another guy in the same office, and I managed to piss him off.” Zoe snatched a carrot from the bowl and Claudia smacked her hand with a wooden spoon.
“If you’re not going to help with dinner, the least you could do is not eat it before I have a chance to cook it.” Standing at the sink, she washed her hands, paying special attention to her nails so she didn’t have to turn around just yet. Zoe could be impulsive and defensive. Maybe they should have gone in as a group.
“Why did you piss him off?” She turned around once she had herself under control. “It was a simple enough task. All you had to do was go in and get some information, then come back to let us know what we need to do.”
Zoe shrugged and looked down into the depth of the salad bowl as if it had the answers to the universe.
Hmmm.
“He just wasn’t very nice to me.” Zoe picked a cucumber out of the salad and popped it into her mouth.
Was she trying to avoid making eye contact? Definite hmmm. “What did he do?”
Now, normally Claudia would have her back up and be the first one to defend her sister. She’d already be in the car and on her way down to the law office to smack some sense into this new lawyer guy, Uncle Al or no Uncle Al. But she also knew that Zoe was avoiding meeting her eyes, and Uncle Al was a very good judge of character. Something else was going on.
“He didn’t really do anything. But he did rub me the wrong way.”
“He rubbed you?” Claudia just wanted to see her reaction.
Sure enough, Zoe’s head flew up and her face turned red. “Of course not. I mean, he shook my hand when I left the office. He was fine, okay? Forget I said anything.”
“No, I don’t think I will forget about it.” Honestly, it would give her a chance to think about something other than her failure as a flirt. She’d obsessed all afternoon after talking to Nate and getting turned on by his mere voice. That was not going so well.
So maybe Zoe was having a hard time today too. Then again... “Was he cute?” She leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. A smile played over her mouth. She was fully aware it was smug.
Zoe gasped like a carp out of water for a while, and Claudia just stood there. It would be nice to see Zoe flounder a little bit with a man who didn’t fawn all over her. At twenty-five, she’d had one serious relationship that Claudia knew of, and it had ended badly. Her sister hadn’t been interested since, and it would be nice to have someone to go through the angst of dating with.
“That’s not an answer, Zoe. Fish impressions don’t tell me anything, you know. Sputtering isn’t pretty, either.”
“It doesn’t matter if he was cute or not. He’s obnoxious.”
“Which only tells me that you want him and don’t want to want him for some reason.” She turned back to the stovetop and gave the chicken a brisk stir. The sound of Justin stomping down the hallway from the back bedrooms put her on instant defensive alert. They were having a relatively good day so far, even with turning Nate down for dinner. Her offer of the batting cages tomorrow night was going a long way toward smoothing things out. But if Justin started asking about her love life again now that Edward was no more, she didn’t know what she was going to say.
She wanted Nate but would definitely not tell her son that, since it would be his fondest dream come true.
There was so much between her and Nate, so many years of good friendship, and she didn’t want to mess anything up. In her wildest dreams,