Page 10 of The Sebastian Guarantee
“This crazy hot-dog-obsessed girl nerd is about to test a theory,” she answered coolly.
Jeremy stared at the bottle. “What theory is that?”
“Let’s see howsexyyou are covered in spicy Dijon.” She glanced at her cell and found Oscar staring back at her. She caught her friend’s eye, winked, then zeroed in on her target.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jeremy pleaded like they were engaged in a showdown, which they kind of were.
A dead quiet set in. All eyes were trained on them. Even the duck-lips crew had stilled. Phoebe tightened her grip when, somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed like they were in an old Western gunslinger flick.
This shit was on.
She narrowed her gaze. “Oh, Jeremy, I have to do this.”
Harnessing the rage of every woman who’d been jerked around by a drooling douche nozzle, she let the Dijon rip. Like a mustard-bottle-wielding Annie Oakley, she nailed the lens on his horn-rimmed glasses.
Take that, wannabe tech-savvy hipster!
The man gasped, giving her the perfect second target. She lowered her aim and filled his stupid pie hole with the tangy delight.
Adrenaline flowed through her. “I am Phoebe, Princess of the Hot Dog Fairies, Bearer of Cookies, and Eater of Pizza,” she proclaimed like Athena, the Greek goddess of war, as she resurrected the title she’d given herself in first grade.
And then she ran out of mustard. The bottle was empty, but one fact remained indisputably true: she’d utilized those mustardy ounces like a boss.
Jeremy spat and sputtered like a seizing car engine as he removed his mustard-laden spectacles. He wiped his wrist across his mouth. “You’re nuts, Phoebe Gale! If it wasn’t for your last name, nobody would give you the time of day. No LETIS investor will finance your girl power bullshit idea,” he snarled. The man turned toward the duck-lip brigade. “Let’s go, Tina.”
“May the best nerd win LETIS funding,” she hurled back as Jeremy disappeared down the street with the boobalicious Tina teetering behind.
As if she were waking up from a dream—or in this case—a nightmare, Phoebe sank onto the chair. She picked up her cell and stared at the pulsing red light. It was still recording, but she didn’t see Oscar in the corner frame. His screen was black, but not black like they’d been disconnected. The fuzzy darkness moved like Oscar had pocketed his phone. She tapped the screen, ending the recording, then set the empty Dijon bottle next to the love-match Hank dog. Jeremy was a creep, for sure, and deserved his condiment bath, but could there be a sliver of truth to what he’d said?
She was twenty-four and hadn’t had a serious boyfriend.
Did men truly want the opposite of her? Was she undateable? Was undateable even a word? Her posture stiffened. Was she being watched? Dumb question. She’d unloaded a container of Dijon on a man in the middle of a crowded bistro. She looked around, and yep, all eyes were trained on her. She had to get out of there. She had to grab her Hank dog, slip it under her beret, then start running and keep going until she ended up somewhere north of her current location—possibly Canada or Greenland.
Slowly, she reached for the hot dog, just as a waiter placed a martini with three olives in front of her.
She froze. “What’s this?”
The man gestured to the drink. “It’s a dirty martini with three olives. A woman at the bar asked me to bring it to you. She also mentioned something about Eleanor Roosevelt, but it was pretty loud inside and I didn’t catch it.”
Phoebe glanced past the open doors and surveyed the line of stools dotting the bar. “Where is she?”
“She left shortly after the . . . incident,” the waiter answered, taking in the splatter of mustard on the patio. “She also asked us to leave the tab open and not disclose her name.”
Phoebe removed the olive-laden toothpick and pointed it at the waiter. “A mystery woman watched me douse a man with mustard, then decided to pay for me to get hammered?”
The man suppressed a grin. “That appears to be the case.”
She nodded when a flash of mustard caught her eye—not the condiment, this time, but the color. An attractive young woman with a marigold-colored scarf walked by the bistro. Her hair bounced in perfect blond highlighted waves as she sailed down the street in a cloud of put-together perfection. And she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. The male bistro patrons seemed to forget about the insane woman with the mustard. Every man on the patio drank in the blond goddess gliding down the sidewalk. The woman glanced at the salivating dudes, and a self-assured smile bloomed on her lips. She could have her pick of anyone in this place—and she knew it.
What did it feel like to wield that power over the opposite sex?
Phoebe sighed and scratched at the stain on her overalls. She wouldn’t be finding out tonight. She plucked the martini glass stem between her fingers and downed the liquid in a single gulp.
Not bad.
She eyed the waiter. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
