Putting on her pleasant businesswoman face, Cassie smiled. “How may I help you, Miss Jones?”
Hermione flicked a glance at the chalkboard menu as she plopped her cranberry-colored Louis Vuitton handbag on the counter, took out her matching wallet, and with a haughty tilt of her chin, she said, “I’ll have a quad venti non-fat extra whip caramel macchiato—upside down—at precisely one hundred fifteen degrees, double sleeve, double cup, with a sprinkle of cinnamon in the bottom of the cup. Please.”
Cassie took it all in with a smile. “One quad non-fat extra whip caramel macchiato upside down, one hundred fifteen degrees, double sleeve, double cup with a sprinkle of cinnamon at the bottom of the cup. Tall.” She looked over her shoulder at Marissa, who nodded without comment, also having caught the entirety of the obnoxious drink order, and began preparing it.
Hermione pursed her lips and then rolled her eyes. Whipping out her black AmEx, she smirked as she clapped the card down on the counter, which reminded Cassie of Bill snapping the key down a bit earlier.
Maybe I should introduce them to each other. They’d be great together, I’m sure.
Once Cassie had taken care of payment, Marissa slid the special snowflake’s cup across the stainless steel surface. “Double sleeve and double cup, just as you requested, ma’am.”
Hermione picked up her drink and sniffed it before taking a small sip. As she did, Marissa made eye contact with Cassie and rolled her eyes, pursed her lips, and bobbed her head. Cassie just smiled placidly, wondering what the restaurateur’s game was in coming to the coffee shop. Now, having successfully met the drink challenge, Cassie felt she’d earned the right to ask a question.
“It’s not you he’s leaving. It’s the Hermione enterprise. Or, at least, that’s my supposition since he hasn’t said anything to me about leaving your employ.”
As if she felt a draft from somewhere, Hermione clutched the lapels of her undoubtedly designer coat to her throat. “If he leaves Hermione, he is leaving me. And he’s under contract. Do you truly want to cause him all that grief?”
Fed up with the subterfuge, Cassie said, “You need to discuss this with your executive chef, not me. I’d never make him leave somewhere he’s sincerely happy. He’s a big boy.”
Hermione scoffed. “Considering how much I can offer, he won’t ever leave. And, he’s most definitely a big boy.”
The sensation of swelling in her ears let Cassie know her blood pressure was on the rise. “If you’re all you think you are, plus a bag of chips, then you’ve got nothing to worry about. But rest assured I plan to share our conversation, in detail, with Ivan. I suggest you do the same.”
Hermione took a large gulp of her scalding coffee and sputtered, obviously regretting the move. “Don’t think I won’t!” She flicked her silver and platinum-highlighted hair over her shoulder and flounced on her high-heeled shiny black dress boots to the door. She cast one last glance around the shop, a moue of displeasure contorting her lips.
Keep doing that and you’ll give yourself lip wrinkles.
As the door shut behind Hermione, Marissa poked her head around from the kitchen. “Is the she-devil gone?”
Cassie chuckled. “Put a black stripe in her hair and call her Cruella De Vil.”
Marissa giggled, and then she groaned. “I spilled hot coffee on my hands twice making her stupid hoity-toity drink. Upside down? Really? And that nice Mr. Cutter works for her?”
“I guess the ‘upside’ is that if he’ll put up with her, she makes me look like an angel.”
As she watched the Mercedes reverse with a screech, she cringed. The car swerved on the ice in the parking lot before finding whatever traction it could on the cold, wet asphalt. Shaking her head, she decided to wait until she was with Ivan to mention that little meeting. He’d probably get an earful from Hermione if he was still at the restaurant when she got back, if that was where she was headed. The thought inspired her to pray for the other drivers on the road between Divine and Morehead.
When her phone started ringing in her apron pocket, and she saw who it was, she almost didn’t answer it. She was certainly earning a margarita with her name on it tonight at the Dancing Pony.
Chapter Twenty
“And Bill thought calling to tell you that story would somehow help what Grandma Kate said make better sense?” Samson asked as he two-stepped her around the Dancing Pony’s dance floor. Her warm body, wrapped in the luscious, low-cut black dress was becoming more distracting by the minute.
“Yes.”
Bill had said that, while he might’ve been an idiot for speaking of her in such crass terms at the restaurant, he’d been serious about still desiring her. Then he’d launched into the sad tale about his mother having a total hysterectomy in the seventies. She’d had a horrendous incision, which had become seriously infected and had taken forever to heal. Even healed, the scar that was left behind had disgusted Bill’s father, and with the subsequent hormonal changes, she’d told him flat-out she was done with sex. When his father had gotten wind of Cassie’s impending surgery, he’d run to his son to tell him what to expect—never mind that over forty years might make a difference in the severity of the surgery and the recovery. Bill had believed he was in for the same treatment.