Page 10 of Sweet Rivals

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

“Not yet. On nights like this, I don’t normally eat until everyone else has,” I said.

“The drawbacks of being a cook,” he said.

“Do you like it?”

“What?” he asked as he guided me gently toward the Taco Hut.

“Being a cook.”

He thought about it longer than he should have given his fame doing just that. It occurred to me that maybe he felt about cooking the exact same way I felt about The Lobster Tail. Did he somehow feel stuck? Before he could answer we were in front of the Taco Hut.

“What are you having?” he asked.

“I guess I’ll take a taco.”

“So edgy and unpredictable,” he said with a laugh, and my cheeks burned.

Sometimes I worried that I was the most boring person in the world. I spent so much time asking questions and listening, that I worried I didn’t have anything of my own to say.

He placed our order, and we stood off to the side.

“You didn’t answer,” I said.

He shrugged. “I like cooking.”

I nodded, noting that he hadn’t said he liked being a cook, but I didn’t want to push. He was a complete stranger, and I was just making small talk. If he wanted to maintain an air of mystery, he was welcome to. Most likely, he was just another vapid celebrity more concerned with his own self-importance than anything else, which wasn’t all that far off from most men I had dated. Well, all men I had dated. But this wasn’t a date, so it didn’t matter.

As much as my mother fell all over herself in Jared’s presence, I was less than impressed by all things Wallace Inc. I didn’t know why he deemed our little vacation town worthy of a visit, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t investing in The Lobster Tail. He wasn’t showcasing us on his family's reality show or countless press tours. At best, he was entertaining himself for a day or two, and then we would never see him again. At worst, he was scoping out our town for its potential as a new venue for his family’s chain. Therefore, I didn’t even owe him small talk.

“Do you like cooking?” he asked.

“Depends on what I’m cooking.”

“Good answer,” he nodded approvingly.

What the hell did that mean? And why did it make me feel so good that he approved? I looked at him sideways.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Most people fall all over me to give me the answer I want to hear. Yours sounds more genuine.”

“Maybe I am just better at reading you,” I said.

He turned to face me, the press of the crowd pushing us together until I worried my breasts would brush his chest if I breathed too hard. His eyes locked on mine, and despite the noise and the people, the intimacy of his stare reached inside of me and made my whole body run warm. I had been absolutely lying. I couldn’t read him at all. I was just answering honestly, but I didn’t want him to know that since he barely answered at all.

“Maybe,” he said. Then his name was called, and he turned to grab two baskets of tacos, ending the strange moment. “Alright, tour guide, lead me to where we can eat these.”

“That’s a tall order,” I said. “We might have to change zip codes to find an open bench.”

“Lead on!” he said, motioning forward with the two paper baskets of tacos that must have been burning his hands. I had no choice but to weave through the slow-moving people with Jared tight on my heals to a little spot off the beaten path. The wide alley between the Surf’s Up and The Sweet Shop had a bench. People used the alley to walk from one street to the next, but thankfully, no one occupied the bench.

“Ta-da,” I said.

“And she does magic too,” he said.

I shrugged. We sat and he passed me my taco. As soon as I smelled it, I realized that I was hungry. The taco place always delivered on fresh and authentic. We ate in silence, as I wondered what this man was thinking about.

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