Page 1 of Best Served Hot
One
When Nicole Penrose first met Alex Torrence, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. How could it have been? The way Nicole met Alex, it was lucky it wasn’tmurderat first sight.
What happened was this:
Nicole was having a day of it. She was supposed to visit her younger brother, six hours drive away, and stay for the weekend. His wife had just popped out their first kid, and Nicole was dutifully going to inspect her nephew and pay him the requisite compliments. Until the car decided that wasn’t going to be the case at about the ninety-minute mark. It stopped without warning on a small B road. Phut, phut, phhh. Nicole could barely get it to the side of the road before the engine gave up the ghost.
Nicole got out and looked at her dead car. She’d bought it brand new—the first time she’d ever been in a position to do that. She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered now. It had been sold on the basis of bells and whistles, and nothing should happen without warning, including running out of petrol. And she was pretty sure that was the problem. It had been a bit on the low side, but she’d trusted the car to say, ‘Hey, fair warning, time to put some juice in this bitch and sharpish.’ But not a peep. Just car death.
She dreaded telling her husband Ethan about this. He’d said this car was no good, and she’d be silly to get it. But she’d wanted to treat herself, something she never did. Just once, a big silly purchase. Something for her.
But she should have listened to Ethan. However, he wasn’t reallythatguy. He was not handy or techy, nothing physical. He was more of a thinker, a delegator, a caller ofthatguy. But clearly, he knew something she didn’t about the subject of cars.
He was going to love this. He’d laugh at her for days, weeks, possibly years. It wasn’t mean. He was just being his usual sarcastic self, and Nicole would try to see the funny side, but she couldn’t always quite manage it.
She got her phone out of her pocket, thinking she should call her brother and let him know… For God’s sake, her phone had died too? And with the car out, she couldn’t charge it. Ethan was right. Creatives truly did have their heads in the clouds.
Though she didn’t think it was completely fair to call her some ditzy artist. She was a TV director and a pretty fair one, she felt. She was never unemployed for any real stretch, at least. And though she was in a creative role, there was an enormous practical component to the work.
Ethan, however, was a TV producer and, as he put it, the one who made it all possible. ‘Try shooting a TV show without someone keeping the money flowing in and see what happens,’ he often warned. He was an executive producer of Channel Seven’s biggest show,Foundations. It was a show about newly qualified doctors at a large hospital, grappling with life and love, in addition to the pressures of practising medicine.
Nicole privately thought it was a little broad. Lucky for her, she and Ethan had an agreement to keep their professional lives separate, so she’d never had to turn down an offer to work on it. But the show made a lot of money, so what the hell did she know about it? She was just a jobbing director, never permanent, always onto the next show. Ethan’s show was all his, and that’s why he made the big bucks and drove a Porsche that purred like a kitten. And here Nicole was, wasting her significantly smaller earnings on a stupid, shitty, bad car. She was livid at herself.
She couldn’t call the AA. She couldn’t call her brother. She couldn’t call her husband. She didn’t even know precisely where she was. She only vaguely recalled the way she’d come. It wasn’t a route she’d ever had cause to use before.
Had she driven past a petrol station recently? Wait, yes, she had, she remembered now. Because Nicole had thought (and she was nearly laughing recalling this) that even though she was low, she still wanted to get a bit more road behind her before she stopped.
When Nicole thought back later, that was the moment. Deciding not to fill up was her villain origin story. That was what set the whole thing off.
But anyway, before any ofthathappened, Nicole decided to trek back to the petrol station. It turned out to be about three miles, in the heat, in nice-ish shoes that were OK for driving but not made for walking. Nicole was a sweaty, tired, blistered mess by the time she arrived at the petrol station.
She entered the station to find a teenage boy with floppy black hair, a band t-shirt that Nicole didn’t know, and badly applied eyeliner, talking on his mobile behind the counter. His name tag readJayden.
‘So, I was like, if you think I’m gonna stop hanging out with Blue because you feelthreatened, you can think again. She’s my best mate. Andshesaid, “Well, I have it on good authority that you were snogging her at that gig last Friday.” And I was like, “Who the hell said that!” Because I made sure no one I knew was there, so I think she’s just throwing lies and hoping one of them sticks.’ He paused. ‘Yeah, well, that’s not the point. Ididsnog Blue when I was drunk, butshecouldn’t know that.’
Nicole went to the fridge and got out some water before she remembered she didn’t have her credit card or cash. She paid for everything on Apple Pay, which was on her dead phone. She put the drink back and went to the counter. ‘Excuse m—’
The kid shot Nicole a look. ‘I’m on the phone.’
Nicole didn’t much like him, and she would have loved to tell him that, only she needed a favour. She wasn’t really big on conflict, anyway.
‘She said that to you too?’ the kid asked his phone buddy. ‘Jesus, she’s trashing me to anyone that will listen. That’s so fucked up to lie about me like that.’ He listened for a minute. ‘Yeah, but she doesn’t know for sure, so it technicallyisa lie.’ Nicole was about ready to scream. Luckily, Jayden’s chat reached an abrupt end. ‘Oh yeah? Fuck you, then, man!’ he snapped and hung up. He turned, at long last, to Nicole. ‘Yeah?’
‘Hi. I just broke down, and I need your help,’ she said hopefully.
Jayden flicked his hair out of his eyes. ‘Right?’
‘My phone’s dead. I need to charge it.’
He gestured at the chargers on the display at the side of his till. ‘Right here. Ten quid.’
Nicole gave a nervous laugh. ‘OK, well, that’s great, but, umm, would it be possible to pay for the charger once my phone has charged a bit? In one of your plugs?’
Jayden sighed. ‘I don’t think my manager would like that.’
‘Is your managerhere?’ Nicole asked.
‘No.’
