Page 73 of The Holy Grail
“I wasn’t saying your salad isn’t good …” Jules took a quick drink of her wine. “It’s just that—”
“Malcom’s are better?”
“Yes. But don’t take it personally. He wants to be a chef.”
David gave the other man an interested look. “Really?”
Malcom nodded. “Someday.”
Paige leaned forward. “You mean like a chef in your own restaurant?”
“Yes, that’s the plan. I’d like to go to culinary school, then open a restaurant in the future.”
David got up to get the bottle of wine and refill a few glasses. “So what do you currently do?” he asked Malcom.
Paige frowned at David. “I told you he was a lawyer.”
“Shit, that’s right.” He gave an apologetic smile, before adding, “I’m probably having trouble remembering that, because Jules said she would never,ever, date a lawyer, not even if he was the last man on earth.”
“And not even if her vibrator was broken,” Paige added.
Malcom’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously?”
David looked at Jules. “Isn’t that what you said? Repeatedly?”
Ignoring David, Jules reached over to take Malcom’s hand and squeeze. “That was before I met you.” Then, to David, she said, “People can change their minds, you know. And in my defense, he’s not a very good lawyer, so it’s almost like he isn’t one.”
David’s expression turned to one of shock at the put-down. “Jesus, Jules.”
“What? Those are his words, not mine, and I have no reason to believe he’s lying.”
Malcom nodded. “I’m really not a good lawyer. Mainly because I hate being one.”
“Then why be one?” David asked, genuinely curious. “Seems like a waste of valuable time, doing something you hate.”
“It is, but I have an exit strategy,” Malcom replied, then shared the abridged version of why he’d become a lawyer in the first place. When he was finished, he turned the tables on David. “Did you always know you wanted to be a photographer?”
David shook his head. “Not always. It sort of happened by accident, to be honest. In high school, I had a thing for this, uh, particular girl—” he broke offfor a moment as Paige rolled her eyes at him. “Anyway, this girl was on the yearbook staff, so I decided to join, and even though the thing with the girl didn’t last for more than a month, my love of photography was born. There was just something about capturing a specific moment in time that immediately hooked me. So, I got my business degree in college, then opened up my own studio … and the rest is history.”
“What was the girl’s name?” Paige wanted to know, her tone half-challenging, half-sultry.
David blinked at her several times before finally muttering, “God, I knew you were going to ask me that.” Then, with a chuckle, he said, “I don’t remember … probably because she didn’t have eyes the color of a Sabre-Toothed Squirrel.”
Paige reached over to grab David’s shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. “Good answer.”
Once they’d separated, Malcom asked. “What’s a Sabre-Toothed Squirrel?”
Smiling, Paige told him, “It’s kind of a long story.”
“I love long stories.”
With a nostalgic smile, Paige proceeded to tell the story of how she and David met in a bar, and how he’d compared her eyes to the color of the ale he was drinking.
“Smooth,” Malcom said. “Very smooth.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” David countered.
“Yes, it did,” Paige agreed, helping herself to another kiss.
