Page 43 of Protecting Mr. Fine

“No way!”

“Yup. And little Asger himself admitted he’d adopted a stray cat and was keeping it hidden in the barn.”

Against my will, I laughed out loud. “So which was the real ‘secret scandal’?”

“Who knows? Eventually, all of them might have come to light since the truth has an annoying habit of doing that. But Asger’s father consulted the winds of fortune…” Bear rolled his eyes at this. “…and determined that the best way to deal with multiple potential scandals was to let them all blow free at once. The palace released five simultaneous statements, effectively overloading the Ventdestinian gossip networks. With so many salacious revelations to ponder, nobody got too excited about any one story… and soon,allthe scandals were old news.”

“Oh my god.” I clapped a hand to my mouth. “Perfect.”

“It was pretty smart, actually,” Bear admitted. “But while that was an effective strategy for dealing with tabloids, privately, the family realized just how much they’d been keeping from one another, so they came up with a way to share their private truths while keeping them in the family. Hence… Secret Sauce. It’s kind of like Truth or Dare. Or maybe more like… Truth or Horseradish.”

I shook my head. “This might be the wildest thing you’ve ever told me about Ventdestine… and that’s saying something, given the story about the weaver and the possessed carpet. How do we play?”

Bear quickly explained the game. Each bowl on the table held a different sauce Lou had ordered from a local place—some mild, some that might make your sinuses weep—all of which had their labels hidden under the bowl.

We’d take turns asking each other questions, and if we answered truthfully, we got to choose which sauce we’d eat, with the only caveat being that you couldn’t choose the same sauce twice in a row.

If we avoided the question or lied, as judged by the other player, we had to eat a sauce of the other person’s choosingandhad to answer a second question.

After explaining, Bear moved over to the fridge. “What drink do you want to go with it? I’m having water, but you can have beer or soda or?—”

“Beer,” I said quickly. I needed my shoulders to come down away from my ears, but I didn’t want to get drunk and say something stupid. Hopefully, beer would split the difference.

He brought our drinks to the table and sat down while I perused the sauces. A white sauce that looked like ranch dressing seemed safe. A violent red one looked like it might blow my head off, and I planned to avoid that one… at least until Bear tried it first so I could gauge his reaction.

“Okay,” Bear said. “Since you’re a newbie, you decide whether you’d rather ask or answer first.”

“Answer,” I said promptly. “Go ahead. Do your worst.”

He smiled softly. “Why do you have long hair? I noticed it was short in your old pictures.”

His question surprised me. I didn’t think anyone had ever asked me that. “My cousin Pearl had always cut my hair in high school, so it was military-short. But when I got to Yale, I didn’t have anyone to cut it, and I couldn’t fathom paying fifteen bucks for a quick-cut place, so it got shaggy. I couldn’t afford to go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas that first year, and by the time I got home the next summer, my hair was wild. But I liked it. Liked running my fingers through it when I studied. So I decided to keep it.”

“Good choice,” Bear said gruffly. He pointed at the platter of sauces. “Take your pick.”

I dunked a carrot stick in the white sauce and found that I’d beencorrect—the horseradish was mild and mixed with a lemon-and-dill flavor that was delicious.

I took a sip of beer to wash down the food while I tried to think of a question for Bear as he grabbed a pita triangle and waited.

“What’s the scariest situation you’ve ever been in?” I asked, choosing something related to his job.

He wrinkled his forehead. “Got stuck in an unexpected blizzard on a training run one time. I was alone overnight in dangerous temperatures. If I hadn’t read an article a few days before that mentioned winter survival gear, I wouldn’t have had a survival blanket in my pocket that day, and I might not have made it. I was so grateful I tracked down the guy who wrote the article and emailed him my thanks. Never done a run without one since.”

I’d never heard that story before, and I wanted to ask follow-up questions, but I figured that wasn’t part of the game. Instead, I nodded toward the sauces.

Bear dragged his pita through a thicker dip that was light green in color. His face remained impassive as he chewed, so I assumed the green one was safe also.

“My turn.” He gave me a teasing grin. “Who’s ‘Sugar Time Easy’ written about?”

That was easy. “Jude Marian.”

Bear’s eyebrows shot up. “No shit? Why don’t you ever tell people that? Everyone knows how much you love him.”

“We allowed to ask follow-up questions?” I teased. But I answered him anyway. “My relationship with music growing up was… it was like that winter survival blanket of yours. It saved my life. When I had Jude’s warm, easy voice in my ears…” I let out a breath. “I could relax for a little while. It made me happy. His voice is like butter.”

“And now you’ve opened for him and written a song with him, and you’re performing with him at the fundraiser in Berlin,” Bear said softly.

“I know. I still can’t fathom it. Can you imagine having theperson you think is the coolest, kindest, most talented human on the planet actually know your name and consider you kind of a… a friend? It’s crazy.”

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