Page 37 of Best Served Cold

The woman’s eyes widen in horror, Hannah’s gleam with glee, and Jonah, gaping at me, demands, “What areyoudoing here?”

I give him one of those Queen of England waves that Hannah pulled off. It feels good. Giving him the finger would feel better, but there’s that kid to think about.

“I’ve decided to make friends too,” I say with a smirk that’ll hopefully piss him off further. “Looks like it’s going better for me, and for Otis, than for you, bud.”

He clearly would like nothing better than to storm toward me and list off threats, or possibly choke me, but the kid’s mother stands and points at him. Her mouth forms an “O” like one of the pod people inInvasion of the Body Snatchers.

“That man’s a pervert!” she shouts, shaking the crumpled flyer.

Honest-to-God laughter spouts out of me, because it’s so ridiculous, and also because I like this expression on my brother’s face.

“What?” Jonah asks in confusion as a large, burly man with a shaved head approaches us from the back of the tasting room.

“What seems to be the problem, ma’am?” he asks the woman, before catching sight of Jonah. “You,” he says in distaste. “You’re not supposed to come around here anymore.”

“Is this why?” the woman asks, waving the flyer. She covers her daughter’s ears. “He’s a p-e-r-v-e-r-t.” I’m not sure why she bothered covering the kid’s earsandspelling it out, especially since she’s already said it out loud, but hey, maybe she’s had some drinks herself. The other women in her party get to their feet, all of them looking aggrieved, like they’d enjoy taking their pound of flesh too.

“He’s a what?” the bald guy says, scratching his head.

“He’s a pervert,” she says more loudly. “He…”

She trails off, clearly confused, just as Hannah slides off of her stool and grabs Otis’s hand to get him up. She gestures furiously for Sophie and me to join them, but Sophie seems to have become a statue, staring fixedly at the man she almost married. A pang of fierce emotion unleashes inside of me.

I don’t like that he hurt her. I like it even less that she still has the ability to be hurt by him. I press my hand to the small of her back and urge her in Hannah’s direction as the bald guy gets closer, Jonah lifting his hands out, palms up.

“Hey,” Jonah says, “no big deal. It was all a misunderstanding.” He gives the woman a confused glance. His gaze narrows when he sees what’s on the flyer. “Hannah did this,” he barks heatedly, looking over at her as she leaves through the front, giving him a toodles wave. “She did it, she?—”

I push past him with Sophie. He makes a grab at her, and a sound like a growl rumbles out of me as I lift her up and set her down out of his reach. I don’t fully understand my reaction. All I know is that I won’t let him touch her. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if he laid a single finger on her.

The big guy grabs Jonah by the arm. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

Good for them. I hope it takes hours.

Sophie gives me a surprised look over her shoulder, and I wonder if I crossed a line, touching her like that. But then she reaches back for me, and I take her hand. It’s more of awe’re in this togethergesture than anything romantic, but I feel a surge of energy when she touches me. Enough to get us out of there quickly, even as I feel my brother staring daggers at my back. Swearing at me.

It’s only when we get outside, where Hannah is laughing, doubled over, and Otis still looks like a shell-shocked zoo animal, that I realize I’m probably in for it. Jonah hated me before all of this. Now I’ve punched him in the face and participated in his public humiliation. No way he’s going to let that go.

Still, at the moment, it’s hard to care. I laugh along with Hannah, who declares, very seriously, that she’s going to pee her pants.

“We should go,” Sophie says, casting a worried glance at the door. Is she worried for him? Or about what he might do?

She knows him well enough to understand he’s a man who likes paying his debts back with interest.

“Yeah, we should,” I say. Our eyes meet, and I feel a surge of…

Magic, Dottie would call it. The nightdoesfeel magical. Like the air is thick with possibility. It’s not often I have a night like this. A lot of the time, I get bogged down in sadness and regret, but right now I feel like a helium balloon whose string has been cut.

On impulse, I reach for Sophie’s hand and squeeze it on the way to the car. Her fingers wrap around mine, her hand soft but strong. “You were something else back there,” I say.

Amusement warms her gaze, her blue eyes sparkling. She’s beautiful like this. It’s okay to think it, because it’s true, and alsobecause I don’t intend to do anything about it. “I certainly wasn’t a Pollyanna.”

“The look on his face…” Hannah says between wheezes.

We get to the car and all pile in, me behind the wheel.

As I’m driving out of the lot, I see Jonah coming out the front door, a look of white-hot rage on his face.

“Soooo,” Otis says from the back seat. I glance in the rearview and see he’s looking at Hannah. “Did you just ask me out? Because I have to respectfully decline. I realize that Briar may never see me the way I see her, but my heart is spoken for, man.”

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