Love in the Morning (22 page)

The ladies lounged along a couple of couches with a moderator at the center asking them questions. Lizzy suspected he was also there to keep them from attacking each other physically, considering the level of spite in some of the answers.

Right now two of the women were involved in an intense debate over which one had actually referred to a fellow cast member as
tubbo
. She watched the fight without really listening to what they were saying—one of the women was Constance, Teresa's enemy, who was a great candidate for the food poisoner. All Lizzy needed to do was identify Constance as someone who'd been in Teresa's kitchen that day.

Except that she couldn't. The women all looked so much alike—skeletally thin, mostly blonde, wearing clothes that looked simultaneously expensive and cheap. Constance looked vaguely familiar, but they all looked vaguely familiar.

Lizzy sighed. If she'd expected any of the women to say something incriminating, she was kidding herself. The whole episode was a cascade of petty complaints—who'd insulted who when and who needed to get a life.

Actually, all of them needed to get a life, as far as Lizzy was concerned. Maybe if they actually had to fend for themselves for a while, they might be a little less prone to taking shots at other people.

“Recognize anybody?” Ronnie whispered at her elbow.

Lizzy managed not to squawk in alarm, which probably would have called some unwanted attention her way. Ronnie could be as silent as a panther when she wanted to. “No,” she whispered back. “Just Teresa and Amber.”

Teresa was observing the
tubbo
conversation with a slightly superior smile. Clearly she didn't think it was going to cause her any problems. Amber sat beside her, her long red hair caught up in a deliberately messy topknot. They had their couch to themselves.

“I tried to find out who all was at the party at your cousin's house,” Ronnie muttered, “but I didn't have any luck. I couldn't really ask too many questions without calling attention to myself.”

“Right.” Lizzy frowned at the television screen. The volume of the argument was definitely going up. In fact, it sounded like all of the women were involved now, which made it harder to hear what any of them were saying.

Ronnie grimaced. “That's just stupid, the way they're all yakking. The producer will never use any of this. You can't even hear them.”

A voice cut through all the chatter suddenly, and Lizzy recognized Constance's whine. “They were going to fire you,” she screeched. “We all knew it. They were going to fire you because you're so
boring.
Holy crap are you ever boring!”

The other voices died away just as suddenly. The moderator's voice seemed to echo in the silence as he turned to the other couch with a professional smile. “Teresa, do you want to say anything to Constance about what she just told you?”

The camera swung to Teresa on her couch. Her expression was the same one she'd had when she and Lizzy had both been interested in the same boy in high school. Teresa had told her to back off, and Lizzy had done it. When Teresa looked at you like that, you didn't mess with her, not if you wanted to keep all your hair.

“She'd know all about boring, wouldn't she?” Teresa glowered in Constance's direction. “She doesn't know anything about being interesting. All she cares about is causing trouble. That's how she goes about
not
being
boring.
”

The camera cut to Constance, her mouth hanging open in outrage, then swung back to Teresa again. “I wouldn't dignify anything she says about me. I wouldn't stoop. I've got better things to think about in my life, you know? I don't have to get down in the mud with her. I don't have to get down to her level.”

Teresa's voice caught, and she stopped, lips trembling. Lizzy stared. Teresa didn't cry. Teresa never cried—Teresa screamed. And everybody did what she said because of the way she screamed. Yet right now she was almost whimpering. Had she undergone some kind of character reversal after a few years on
Lovely Ladies of LA?

Amber rubbed Teresa's shoulder, fixing Constance with a laser-eyed stare.

“It's just so
hard,
” Teresa said, her voice shaking. “So hard to have to listen to this…criticism all the time. From somebody like her. And she's not even woman enough to admit it. When she says things behind my back, she won't even admit it was her to my face.”

The camera moved back to Constance, who rolled her eyes.

“Constance?” the moderator said. “Do you have anything you'd like to tell Teresa?”

Lizzy ignored Constance's reply, watching Teresa's face on the oversize TV. She'd never seen her cousin look that upset before. Even when her guests had been vomiting on all sides. Teresa had been furious but not crushed. Now she had tears in her eyes and trembling lips. Constance must be one hell of an enemy.

“She's really good at that, isn't she?” Ronnie whispered.

Lizzy narrowed her eyes. “Good at what?”

“Getting emotional.” Ronnie shrugged. “They love it when you get all emotional. You get more close-ups that way. See?”

Lizzy glanced back at the monitor again. Teresa's face filled the screen, one picturesque tear sliding down her cheek.

“I could never do that,” Ronnie mused. “I look like crap when I cry, but she's got it down. She just does it a little—not enough to mess up her makeup. And getting all teary got her out of a bad situation just then, too.”

Lizzy gave up trying to watch the screen. The filming had temporarily stopped while someone got Teresa a tissue. “What bad situation?”

“That question about her being fired from the show. She didn't answer it, did she?”

“No, she didn't.” Lizzy looked back at the screen again. One of the makeup girls was fixing Teresa's mascara while the moderator talked to a person from the crew. For some reason, Lizzy had the feeling she'd just seen something significant. But she had no idea what—or why.

She grabbed Ronnie's arm, pulling her toward the door, as far away from Teresa and her cronies as she could get. Ronnie frowned but let herself be guided outside. “What's up?”

Lizzy glanced back at the closing door again, trying to nail down the vagrant thought that was dancing at the back of her mind. “Could you ask your friends on the show about that?”

“About what?”

“About whether Teresa was about to be fired? When that happened and why?”

Ronnie's frown slowly transformed to puzzlement. “Sure. I can find out for you. Why do you want to know?”

Lizzy shrugged. “I'm not sure yet. But I think it could be important.”

“Okay. I'll ask around. Should be easy enough to work that into the conversation since they were just fighting about it.”

“Right. Thanks.”

She watched Ronnie head back into the room where they were filming. She considered going back herself but decided against it. Right now she didn't want to push her luck—not when it had suddenly occurred to her that the solution to the whole poisoning question might be simpler than she'd ever thought.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The day before the Best of the Box Gala, Clark finally forced himself to ask Lizzy what they'd be serving. He'd sort of been expecting her to tell him, but she hadn't. And then he'd wondered if maybe she wasn't telling him for some particular reason but then he decided he was being an idiot.

Being around Lizzy made him behave like an idiot. Frequently. He'd never been so concerned about not hurting somebody's feelings while at the same time getting that same somebody into his bed regularly. It was making him crazy. Also stupid, apparently.

“So what are we serving tomorrow?” he asked her after breakfast. Even to his own ears his voice sounded full of phony cheer.

Lizzy gave him a dry smile. “We are serving bacon and egg cheddar tarts and pumpkin spice mini-muffins. Desi's putting the muffins together as we speak. I'll assemble the shells for the tarts today and fill and bake them tomorrow afternoon. The only equipment we'll need for serving everything at the Gala will be a warming tray to keep the tarts at the right temperature. And a cooler for storing them until we're ready to warm them up. The muffins will be okay on a tray.”

“Oh.” He thought about asking if that was safe. Eggs were supposed to be a problem, weren't they? Of course, that was raw eggs and these were cooked eggs. Maybe the rules didn't apply. And he probably shouldn't mention anything about food safety where Lizzy was concerned.

He was having another one of those stupid attacks.

She watched him with narrowed eyes. “Is that okay with you?”

“Sure. It's great. What are the egg things like?”

Her eyes stayed narrow. “They're mini filo shells with a filling of egg custard flavored with bacon and cheddar. It's all cooked in advance and we'll keep them refrigerated until we want to serve them. I figured since we were a breakfast place, we needed to do something with eggs, and we can make these ahead of time. Safely.”

Idiot, idiot, idiot.
“I didn't…”

Lizzy sighed, looking a lot more tired than she had a couple of moments before. “Sure you did. And that's okay. Eggs are tricky. But I'm on it, Clark, I promise. I've worked it out.”

Impulsively, he put his arms around her, pulling her tight against him. “Of course you have. I know that. I trust you. So help me.”

After another moment she stepped back, smiling up at him, her cheeks faintly pink.

Across the kitchen Desi was staring, eyes wide.

It occurred to Clark that he'd never embraced Lizzy in front of anybody at the hotel before. He wasn't sure if that was a problem, but he was sure he didn't give a damn. “The tarts will be great. You're a great chef. If anybody has a problem, they can take it up with me.”

Lizzy touched his cheek, gently, then went back to whatever it was she was doing—probably something related to keeping his hotel dining room at the top of the heap, at least as far as breakfast was concerned. She was worth her weight in platinum, and he intended to feed her a lot of champagne and chocolate when they were finished with this godforsaken Gala.

Of course, they were all taking a much bigger risk that had nothing to do with the bacon and egg tarts. If any of the ladies recognized Lizzy and called her out, they'd have no end of grief. He believed Nona when she'd said the residents of the town didn't care about Lizzy's background, but the residents of the town weren't the ones who came to his hotel for breakfast. Those would be the tourists, who might know nothing about Lizzy other than her infamous appearance at her cousin's party. They'd be a lot more likely to stay away if she showed up on the
Lovely Ladies of LA
again. And if the tourists stopped eating breakfast at the hotel, he'd have to figure out some way to work around it.

Because he was pretty sure he knew what Lizzy would decide in that case. She'd do what she'd done before—climb into her miserable excuse for a car and drive east, hoping to find a place where she could cook in peace without having to worry about her cousin, the Wicked Witch of Bel Air. Nona said she'd had the car tuned up at the garage, which might mean nothing at all, but could also mean she was getting ready to bolt.

One way or another, Clark had to make sure that didn't happen. If he had to remove the tires from her damn car, he'd do it. But he had a feeling he'd need something more substantial than that to get her to stick around. Unfortunately, he didn't have a clue what that something might be.

And even more unfortunately, neither did Nona. At the Blarney Stone that night, he asked her if her sources had heard anything useful about the ladies.

Nona shook her head in disgust. “It's not that they haven't heard anything. It's that they've heard too much, and most of it's just crap. Those women never stop talking, particularly if there's a camera around. They talk about each other mostly, but they talk about the town too and how much they wish they were back in some ‘civilized' place.” Her mouth twisted slightly, as if she'd tasted something sour. “They really are pieces of work. Every one of them. I figure one or more of them probably poisoned Lizzy's food, but we'll never be able to prove it. And they're sure as hell never going to talk about it now.”

Clark sighed. “So nobody said anything about Lizzy?”

“No, but I figure that's good. If they had any idea she was here in town, they'd be all over her and her cousin. If they're not saying anything, it's because they don't know she's around. I guess her cousin and her friend have kept their mouths shut.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that's good. But all of them will be at that damned Gala tomorrow night—with cameras.”

Nona shrugged. “Have Lizzy wear her chef's outfit. They likely won't recognize her if she isn't dressed the same way she was the last time they saw her. And maybe she can stay in the back of the booth or something. She doesn't have to be out there handing out food, does she?”

He started to shake his head, then stopped. “She can be wherever she wants to be,” he said slowly. “It's up to her.”

Nona gave him an appraising look, then broke into a grin. “Good for you. That's the spirit. If they can't handle it, screw 'em.” She headed back to the table where Dick was holding forth about the depredations wrought by technology on the entertainment industry, and Lizzy was drinking her beer.

Ted Saltzman brought over a bowl of spinach artichoke dip and pita chips, actually joining them at the table for once. He smiled in Lizzy's direction as he picked up a chip. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “More or less. We've got most of the prep work done. I'll have to do some cooking tomorrow afternoon, but we'll be ready to go by six or so. After that it's just keeping everything warm.”

Saltzman grimaced. “Be thankful you don't have to make the damn stuff on site. We're going to be pouring individual margaritas after we check ID's. The only thing I can make in advance is the mix.”

“Hey, y'all.” Ronnie swung into view, tottering on three-inch platforms, her oversized tote slung over her shoulder. Clark hoped she had a pair of sneakers in the bag.

Ted scooted his chair to the side to make room for her. Apparently, there wasn't enough going on in the bar yet to require her to wait tables.

Ronnie leaned across the table toward Lizzy. “So I found out what you wanted to know. I asked Faisal. He always knows everything.”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “Faisal's here? I'll have to look him up.”

Lizzy took another sip of her beer. “Who's Faisal?”

Ronnie waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, he does something technical with the production company.”

“He's the head cameraman,” Dick said, giving Ronnie a dry look.

Ronnie shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway, I asked him about your cousin, and he said yeah, it was true.”

“What was true?” Nona glanced toward Lizzy. “I mean, if you don't mind us knowing.”

Lizzy shook her head. “I don't mind. At the filming yesterday one of the women implied Teresa was about to get fired a while ago. I wondered if that had actually happened or if they were just making it up.”

“And it did,” Ronnie cut in. “Happen, I mean. The ratings were down a year or so ago, and they were thinking of getting rid of some of the ladies and finding new ones. Teresa was one of the ones they thought they should fire.”

“Why?”

Ronnie shrugged again. “According to Faisal, she wasn't one of the popular ones, but people didn't hate her either. She was just sort of blah.”

“So Constance was right—they were going to fire her for being boring.” Lizzy sighed. “Sort of ironic. Teresa was always the drama queen of the family.”

Dick gave Ronnie a slightly Machiavellian look. “So what happened? Why wasn't she fired?” Ronnie took a breath to answer, but Dick held up his hand. “Let me guess. She had a party where all the guests were upchucking around the parlor, and all of a sudden she wasn't boring anymore.”

Ronnie nodded. “That's it. That party was the talk among the ladies for three or four episodes. Teresa was at the middle of everything all of a sudden.”

There was a moment of silence at the table. Dick looked thoughtful. Ted looked worried. Nona looked confused. Ronnie looked hungry. She slid a pita chip into the artichoke dip.

Clark looked at Lizzy. She was staring at her hands, her fingers gathered into fists. “Why is this important?” he asked quietly.

Lizzy closed her eyes for a moment, then shrugged. “I thought that party was a disaster for Teresa. I thought that was why she was so angry—I'd ruined her big moment on the show. I mean, she said I ruined her life. And now it turns out the whole thing was actually a big break for her. It kept her from getting fired.”

It hadn't kept her from ruining Lizzy's life, at least in terms of making her a pariah in her own family. “You're thinking she had a reason to mess up your food herself?”

Lizzy sighed. “Maybe. I don't know.”

“Makes sense.” Dick grabbed a pita chip before Ronnie could demolish the entire plate. “Assuming she was smart enough to realize a major disaster like that would put her front and center on the show.” He peered at Lizzy. “Is she that smart?”

“She's not exactly stupid.” Lizzy took a swallow of her beer. “It would have been easier for her to do it than any of her guests. I mean she was in and out of the kitchen all the time while we were getting set up.”

Dick pursed his lips, thinking. “Did she get sick too?”

Lizzy shook her head. “She said she'd been too busy to eat, which actually made sense given the way she was running everything.”

“Then she threw all the food away afterward,” Nona cut in. “And washed the dishes. She destroyed all the evidence.”

Lizzy bit her lip. “But that's just Teresa. I mean, that's the way she thinks.”

“Maybe.” Nona shrugged. “It worked out for her, though, didn't it?”

Clark watched Lizzy's face—the way her lips trembled slightly—and damned Teresa Antonio from one end of town to the other. “We don't know for sure that she did it, Lizzy. There's no proof, just suspicion.”

Dick shrugged. “There's no obvious proof. That doesn't mean there isn't anything.”

Clark managed not to snarl. He had a feeling Lizzy wasn't in the mood for speculation about whether her cousin had actually ruined her life deliberately. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning I'm going to have a conversation with Faisal. Nobody on those damn shows does anything without a few cameras in tow. I'm betting they were around that day too. And if they were, the footage might still be available, if Fairstein Productions hasn't trashed it.” Dick pushed himself up from the table. “Evening, all.”

Nona raised an eyebrow in his direction. “You plan on being home tonight?”

“Eventually.” He gave her another Machiavellian grin. “Don't wait up.”

“I never do.” Nona sighed, reaching for the new basket of pita chips Ted had just placed on the table in front of her.

*****

A couple of hours later Lizzy lay spooned against Clark's body, feeling the warmth of his skin against her back. He was probably asleep by now. She should be too. She still had to get up tomorrow and fix breakfast for the guests before filling and baking five hundred mini filo shells.

But of course when she really needed to fall asleep, she couldn't. She kept seeing Teresa's face at the coffee shop, hearing that voice full of venom.
You ruined my life.
Only she hadn't. But Teresa had done a number on Lizzy's life. And if she'd poisoned her own guests with Lizzy's food, she'd done it on purpose with malice aforethought.

The idea made Lizzy faintly nauseous.

It wasn't like she and her cousin had ever been close, but they were family. Family wasn't supposed to destroy each other, unless you were living in someplace like Westeros.

She wrapped her arms around her middle and told herself not to cry. If Teresa hadn't done it, there was no reason to feel any worse than she already did. And if she had—well, then Teresa wasn't worth crying over.

A puff of air moved across the back of her neck as a large, warm hand closed on her breast. “Hey?”

She leaned back against him, pressing her head against his collarbone. “Yeah?”

“Don't worry, okay? Whatever happens, it's going to be all right.”

That was wishful thinking, and they both knew it. She let her eyes drift closed, pulling his arms more tightly around her waist. “It'll all be over by tomorrow night, anyway.”
One way or the other. I'll either be here or I'll be gone.

He ran his hand along the side of her body, letting his fingers slide across her hip bone, along her thigh, and around. His fingers slipped into her folds, thumb brushing along the hard bud of her clit. Her back arched, her head pressing harder against his chest as heat bloomed in her abdomen. “That feels so good.”