Page 38 of The Holiday Hate-Off
Crochet Club seems like an awfully strange place to meet a man, but I nod distractedly. Right now, Tuesday feels as distant as Charlie’s spring wedding. My mind is locked on Enzo.
His smug smile.
His low, gravelly voice.
The way he looked at me as he said,I wish for your sake that were the case…
“Eileen, I think Enzo is out to get us,” I murmur. “He purposefully ruined our event.”
She studies me silently for a moment. “You believe he planted fake head lice in the beards and cut our power?”
“Well, it sounds insane when you say it out loud, but yes! All he’d need to do was pour some poppy seeds into the storage container for the beards, and as for the power…I’m guessing excessive use of power in their shop could possibly cause a blackout for the whole building. Or…I don’t know. What I do know is that man has designs on me.”
“Yes, hedoesseem quite taken with you,” she says with a sprinkle of excitement. “But we need to make sure his heart is in the right place. He isn’t known for being an open book.”
“Oh, no,” I say with horror. “I don’t find him appealing in the least.” The words have the sour mouthfeel of a lie. I don’t like Enzo, but I’m far from immune to his charms. “He’s good-looking, anyone could see that, but he’s probably a psychopath. I’m not sure he even has a heart.” I wave around at the dark interior of the café. “Look what he did to Santa Speed Dating.” I’m about to say something aboutpoor Curtis, but I remember Enzo’s story about the handbag and shut my mouth.
“Now, we don’t know that he had anything to do with that, Lucy. It’s a windy night, and the power might have fallen victim to it.” She releases a gusty sigh. “And Enzo definitely has a heart. I think that boy would do just about anything to protect his family.”
“Maybe so,” I concede, remembering what he said aboutblood being thicker than water. It had chafed then, and it chafes more now. Because if family only means blood, then I’ve never had one and never will. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not trouble.”
“There we can agree.” She pauses for a sip of her hot chocolate. “I’ll have a stern chat with him when he and I get dinner.”
“You’re seriously having dinner with him after all of this?” I ask incredulously. “We banned him from the shop!”
“Problems usually lose steam if you talk them through, don’t you think?”
She’s right,of courseshe’s right, but I can’t stand the thought of Eileen having dinner with Enzo and being nice to him. It would be like breaking bread with a war criminal. I know I’m being hysterical, but seriously, what man offers to sleep with a complete stranger simply because he knows she’s a virgin? It’s like something out of the Middle Ages! He can’t, and shouldn’t, get away with that scot-free. He needs to pay.
Having a pleasant dinner with sweet Eileen does not qualify as paying.
A wave of inspiration hits me, center mass.
“Tell Erica thatI’llhave dinner with him next week. Let him know. Tell him we’ll talk it all out over food.”
“You will?” she asks, giving me a surprised look.
“I will. And he’s never going to forget it.”
Her gaze lingers on me, her eyes filling with warm humor. “You’re not planning on murdering him, are you? I’m too old to handle a shovel, and his grandmother is already upset with me. She’d ban me forever, and I do enjoy their eggplant parmesan.”
“It’s delicious,” I say with a sad sigh, because I will surely never taste it again. “And no, I’m not planning on killing him, but there’s no denying that man does things to me.”
She nods slowly, meaningfully.
“Not like that,” I insist. “I hate him.”
“Yes, hatredisan interesting emotion, isn’t it?”
I stopat Charlie’s house on the way home and unload about the horrors of Santa Speed Dating while Lars makes us mulled wine, good-naturedly participating in the conversation even though he spent all day tracking piping plovers in the cold. I tell her almost everything, leaving out only the part about the pink note Enzo found, and make it sound like he made me a more typical “enemies with benefits” offer.
“Wait,” she says when I finally get to the end of my story. “You’re seriously going to have dinner with Enzo?”
“No,” I scoff. “I’m going to stand him up. See how he likes sitting alone at a restaurant, watching out the window for someone who’s never going to come. That’sdefinitelygoing to hurt his precious ego.”
“Uh, I don’t know about that,” Charlie says. “One of his brothers has to pull taffy in front of an audience, the other is posing for an ice sculpture, and all Enzo has to do is have dinner by himself at a nice restaurant? I mean, boo-hoo, poor guy.”
“What if I ask Erica to choose a bad restaurant?”
