Page 10 of Sexy as Sin
“I’m handling this, Mr. Hunter,” Wendy announced—yes, bossily. “I’ll report in.”Shedefinitely needed the shirt.
“Excuse us,” he told her pleasantly. She hovered a moment, then retreated three paces and pulled out her mobile, as if she were barely restraining herself from calling the Disaster Police and reporting Willow for Conduct Unbecoming a Caterer.
“You’re one of them,” Willow said. “You’re the client.”
“Yes. One of the ‘rich wankers spoiling the countryside,’ in fact. I looked up ‘wanker’ after I left you. That wasn’t very nice.” Before she could think of an answer to that, he looked around and said, “I don’t know much about catering, but I know something about unexpected wrinkles in the program. In fact, you could say they’re my specialty by now. Tell me what’s going on, and we’ll see what we can do.”
She sighed. “It’s so hard to hate you.”
He smiled. His calm, she’d discovered, was contagious. “I know. It’s my gift. What’s going on?”
“I’m finding out. Five minutes, and I’ll have a report and a plan.”
He nodded. “Five minutes.”
It took her longer than that. To start off, Amanda, her partner, who’d presumably engaged this particular underperforming vendor, or whose husband had done it, wasn’t answering, which closed that avenue. She finally ran Todd Ehrlich, manager of the party supply firm, to earth, and had the dubious pleasure of hearing him say, “I’ll ask Jim why he didn’t set up the tables. Must be a reason. As far as the rest of it—if it’s not there, we weren’t contracted for crockery and flatware. If it had been ordered, it’d be there.”
She did some channeling of Mr. Whatever-his-name-was Hunter and said, as evenly as she could manage, “Never mind that for now. Can you bring them?”
“Don’t have a truck,” he said. “They’re all out on calls. Sorry. Wedding season, you know.”
Of course she knew. “How about bunging a few boxes into the boot of your own car, then, and driving them up to me?”
“I’m on a job, love,” he said, already sounding bored. “Sorry.”
“Your wife,” she suggested. “Your teenaged child. Your kids’ nanny. Somebody who could meet me with a key, even.”
A pause. “I’m gay.”
She stopped talking, breathed, and said, “Is there some reason you’re not able to be more helpful? Something we’ve done that’s annoyed you? Tell me what it is, and I promise, I’ll help work it out.”
“Other than paying late every time, you mean? And having to ring Tom and remind him?”
Oh.“If I remind you that I’m Amanda’s new partner,” she said slowly, resisting the urge to wipe her palms on her trousers, “and tell you I’ll be taking care that it doesn’t happen again, does it help?”
“Sorry, love,” he said, and actually sounded a tiny bit that way. “I really can’t. Everybody with keys is scattered to the four winds at the moment.”
“Right,” she said, and forced herself to think. “So tell me. Pretend I’m your... your friend, just getting started in the business, and I’m up here near Coorabell with no lovely white plates or handy flatware, and heaps of shiny people with too much money will be turning up in a...” She consulted her watch. “An hour and a half. What’s your advice, as an expert?”
“If you have glasses,” he said, “start them on drinks. And then somebody drives like hell. Sorry. Got to go. The bride’s mum is looking frantic.”
He rang off, and Willow swore. And, yes, there was Mr. Too-Cool Hunter again. He asked, “What can I do?”
Never complain, never explain. Fake it till you make it.She’d heard it a hundred times. Thelastthing she should do was to tell the client that he’d be getting anything second-best. She abandoned all wisdom and confessed instead. “No plates. No silverware. And my last resort just threw me to the wolves.”
“Right,” he said. “Is there someplace close enough for our purposes that sells an approximation?”
“No,” she admitted. “Not the good stuff. It’s going to have to be Woolworth’s best disposables, but it’s at least twenty minutes each way. More, on Friday afternoon. I have one girl I could send and trust to make good decisions, but then I’m short here, and we need to be serving sparkling wine in less than an hour. And I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. I should be making it work, so you don’t realize it was meant to be any other way and try for a discount.”
“Hmm.” There was a light in his gray eyes, and he was very nearly smiling. Easy for him. It wasn’t his brand-new partnership, and even if it had been, he clearly wasn’t reaching for that moon anymore. He was already there. “Andyoucan’t go for them, or you won’tbeserving sparkling wine in an hour. Right, then. We’re expecting eighty people? A hundred?”
“A hundred was what I cooked for. I’ll double that on plates, because you don’t put sweets on your nibbles plate. It could even be mix-and-match at Woolie’s. If they’re eating off Winnie-the-Pooh plates, do me a favor and pretend you don’t notice.”
“I’ll notice,” he said, “because I’m going. It’s my event,” he went on when she would have said something, “and Idotrust my judgment. We’ll make it a picnic. In the States, we’d have red-checked tablecloths. Does that work?”
“Oh!” It was like he’d flipped the Idea Switch, and she wasn’t going to argue anyway. She needed help. “Australia Day next week. They’ll have some sort of paper tablecloths for it at Woolie’s. Get as many of those as you can grab. That’ll help. Blue and white plates, maybe, as sturdy as you can get them. And flowers, if you can find galvanized buckets for them, or anything at all rustic. We’ll put wine bottles around them, and ice inside, like it’s a theme. Country picnic. That’s what you’re selling, right? Everyone’s personal slice of previously pristine Aussie hinterland?”
“I’m ignoring the sarcasm,” he said, “and heading out to get it.”
