Page 9 of Falling for Ash
“Excuse me?” The hostess glanced back at her, but Gabby just forced a smile and shook her head.
“Nothing,” Gabby replied.
The line outside DeLux Cafe was ridiculous for a Wednesday. Gabby glanced out the floor to ceiling windows as they walked, shaking her head at the overdressed would be patrons. There were more designer gowns and jewels outside the restaurant than could be found on a red carpet during awards week.
That was almost nothing compared to the variety within the place. There were people dressed in torn jeans and leather, evening gowns that cost more than her rent back on the East Coast, and almost every state of dress in between. A wild, eclectic mix that made Gabby smile despite feeling like a butterfly on display, with her wings pinned to a corkboard. Everyone was staring. At what, she did not know.
Dear God, tell me they didn’t hear my stomach growl too?
This had to be the only town in the world where folks went to expensive restaurants and ordered ridiculously priced hard to pronounce food only to stare at it. Well, Gabby was not one of those people. She enjoyed a wide variety of culinary delights. To eat, not to just look at.
Welcome to LA, she thought, still following the slender young woman through the highly polished café. Leave it to Mim to find a place like this. White tiles gleamed spectacularly, red velvet drapes hung from impossibly high windows, falling in delicate waves all the way to the polished floors. The atmosphere was strange, and the scents, far too many, made Gabby shiver uncomfortably.
People sat in tables, two by two, with odd little black boxes on each one.
Some sort of weird new ordering system, maybe?
She really did not know. There were red and pink paper hearts, balloons, and cherubs floating about or stuck to the walls. Strange décor for an upscale eatery, a bit tacky to be truthful, and by Gabby’s calculations, at least a month too early for Valentine’s Day. Strange place, she thought amusedly.
Finally, Gabriella spotted Mim with two other gorgeous females sitting at a long table with a sign that read “Sign Up For Speed Dating Here!’.
Uh oh.
Her pulse sped up, and Gabby’s heart beat faster.
She didn’t.
She couldn’t.
Not again!
“Gabs!” Mim shouted before she could turn on her heel and run out of the place.
The two impossibly beautiful women beside her turned to stare at Gabriella and she felt very much like a piece of chocolate in front of two sweets-starved supermodels.
Gulp.
“Don’t you run away now, silly.” Mim laughed, and the sound was very much like tinkling bells.
Gabriella released a sigh and shook her head. She used to envy her stepmother’s beauty. Even though she was not bad looking, cute and chubby as opposed to statuesque and stunning, Gabriella loved the woman too much to let anything come between them.
Even if she was the worst sort of meddler.
“Gabs, let me introduce Eve and Aphrodite.” Her stepmother indicated the almost too beautiful to look at brunette and a blonde with a brilliant, perhaps even a little feral, smile on her perfect face. “They are hosting tonight’s little get together. Now, I know you said not to interfere, but I thought this would be a great way for you to meet some new people!”
“Uh, nice to meet you, ladies. Excuse us a sec,” she said, then turned to face her stepmother. “Mim, what are you doing? I did not sign up for this.”
“Honey, look, I went through your laptop, and I saw what you’ve been googling?—”
“What! How could you do that?”
Anger, embarrassment, and fear warred within Gabs as her stepmother admitted to snooping through her things.
Ugh.
She’d thought they’d been through this back in high school. There was a period where Mim looked through everything of Gabby’s without permission until finally she had to confront her.
But now, when she could possibly be ill, it felt like the worst kind of betrayal.
