Page 4 of Best Served Hot
‘My father’s been in a car crash.’
Alex clutched her throat in shock. ‘What?! I thought you said it was nothing. That’s not nothing!’
‘I just meant it’s not serious, probably.’ Ethan got to his feet and put his drink down with a crack on the coffee table. ‘But I better go and check on him. He lost his leg. No, not lost it. Sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying. Must be the shock. I mean, he just broke it.’
‘Shall I come with you?’ she asked.
‘No, no, no, no… No. Just… Go back to work. Sort out that editor shortage. We need a new one by the end of the week, ideally,’ he blathered.
‘Oh. Yeah. Sure.’
They walked out together. Alex went to her car on the street, and Ethan to his on the driveway. ‘Are you sure you’re OK to drive?’ she called to him.
He waved her off, climbing into his BMW. ‘Yeah, thanks, though. See you later!’ He pulled out, looking around wildly like he expected a car to pull out of nowhere and T-bone him, which made sense, given the news he’d just received.
Alex didn’t think he looked safe to drive. He looked downright panicked. Should she have put her foot down and insisted on driving him?
She was mulling that as she started up her banger of a ŠKODA, and her eyes happened to stray back to Ethan’s house. She noticed something in his front garden, underneath the window. She could just about see it. Alex didn’t understand what made her get out of the car. Why the hell did it matter? But she stepped lightly over his lawn to inspect the eye-catching item anyway.
It was a shoe. A small woman’s shoe. It gave her a very bad feeling. Who was Cinderella?
Three
Nicole had been in this terrible, tiny, crappy room for numerous hellish hours. During that time, she’d done the following: Watched ten hours ofSelling Sunset, googled divorce lawyers, ate a six-pack of Wotsits in one sitting, gone out in her slippers and bought a replacement pair of shoes that she hated, spent five hours reading posts on a subreddit about people who’d been cheated on, cried in the shower, cried in the bath, cried on the toilet, googled poisoners who hadn’t been caught, frantically erased her search history in the hopes she wouldn’t go to prison for idly considering murder and cried in the shower again.
Something else she’d done was ignore her phone—text after text and call after call from Ethan.
Are you OK?
Did you get home?
Is the car OK?
Where are you? You’re not at home.
Nicole, I’m worried. Please text me back. I’ve called you twenty times.
NICOLE!
NICOLE!!!!!
I just got a call from the garage. They have the car, and they want me to pick it up. Did you make it to Ben’s?
WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU, NICOLE!!!???
Oh yeah, he was sweating alright. The last message she’d sent him was that her car had broken down, and she was trying to get home. But he couldn’t know for sure if she’d actually made it back, so he was playing the concerned husband until he had real confirmation that he was definitely fucked in the marriage department. Which he was. But Nicole wanted to let that be known on her timeline. God only knew that it was the last bit of control she had left in her life.
At one in the morning of her second night in the room, she stopped being angry at him and decided to switch her rage to the mystery woman. Standing in Nicole’s own bloody living room, bold as you please, smiling, getting drooled over. Who the hell did she think she was?
Actually, who was she at all? How had Ethan met her? Was she a work person? Some actress from the show?
There was an easy way to find out. Nicole checked the actor IMDB listings forFoundations. Nothing. Maybe she worked the other side of the camera? That seemed unlikely. She looked actress-y. But she checked anyway.
It took about three minutes to find her. Straight, white teeth. Thick dark hair with nary a split end in sight. Ruby red lips. Cat-like amber eyes. Her name was Alex Torrence. An assistant producer.
Nicole stared at her picture for several minutes. She was so angry with her; it was almost calming. Nicole was confused about Ethan. But this woman? She was a stranger who had wronged her. It was beautifully simple. Nicole hated her.
She wanted to do something with that hate. She wasn’t sure what. However, it would start with finding out her location.
