Page 51 of Talulah's Back in Town

Jane looked as stunned as Talulah was to see Brant shove Charlie before stalking out of the bar. “Of course it was about you.”

She frowned. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Brant’s a pretty chill guy.” Jane spoke in a low voice. “I wonder what Charlie said to set him off.” She rubbed her bare arms. The air-conditioning was making the bar too cold, but Talulah got the impression she was reacting to Charlie more than the temperature. “Look how he’s glaring at us.”

Talulah met Charlie’s eyes. The hate that filled them almost brought her to tears. She’d honestly never meant to hurt him. She’d been a stupid, innocent girl who hadn’t been assertive enough to cut off the engagement when she should have. She’d made great strides in being more up-front about her feelings, but only after living a bit longer and finally coming to believe she didn’t have to please everyone.

“Uh-oh,” Jane murmured. “He’s going to come over here.”

Talulah caught her breath. She didn’t want her ex to cause a scene, wasn’t prepared for any ugliness.

Fortunately, he seemed to reconsider whatever he’d had in mind. Instead, he threw a stool to the ground in a fit of temper and started to leave, but Bill Whitehead, the bartender, stopped him before he could reach the door.

Talulah sat on pins and needles while Charlie gave Bill his credit card to cover his bar tab. She wished Bill would hurry at the register so Charlie could leave. She was afraid he’d change his mind and approach her. “Come on,” she muttered when Bill got waylaid by another patron.

“Maybe I should go talk to Charlie,” Jane said, looking pained.

Talulah grabbed her arm before she could stand up. “No, don’t. Please. Let’s not provoke him.”

“But he’s acting like an idiot,” Jane argued. “And I think he and I have known each other long enough that I might be able to get through to him.”

“It’s better if you don’t jump into this,” Talulah insisted. “If you try to defend me, or he interprets it that way, he’ll go home and complain about you to Averil.”

“Someoneshould say something.” Jane slid her chair away from the table. But then Bill returned with the charge slip for Charlie to sign, handed him his credit card and Charlie turned on his heel and walked out.

Jane relaxed in her seat and slid forward again. “Are you okay?” she asked after he was gone.

Talulah nodded, but felt shaky inside.

“Do you want to go?” Jane asked once they’d waited long enough for Charlie to have left the parking lot.

Talulahdidwant to leave. But at the same time, she wasn’t ready to go home alone. What if Charlie showed up at the house? So far, she’d been contrite where he was concerned. She’d still feel that way if he wasn’t acting like such a big baby. After what she’d seen of him this trip, she had nothing more to say to him and refused to keep apologizing. “No, I’d rather stay and forget everything—the food for the funeral, the funeral itself, Averil and Charlie.”

“Are you saying we should have a few more drinks?”

Talulah hesitated. It was tempting, but... “How would we get home?”

“My sister will pick us up.”

“Great.” Relieved to have a driver, she lifted her hand to catch Becky’s attention, and when the waitress came over, Jane ordered a couple of shots for each of them.

Brant stripped off his clothes as soon as he got home and fell into bed. He preferred not to think about what had happened at Hank’s. He didn’t want to wonder if he’d done the right thing, and he didn’t want to think about Talulah.

But, of course, everything he didn’t want to think about was all hecouldthink about. Had Charliereallysent Paul a message on Instagram? Had Paul read it? If so, when would Talulah find out that he knew about them? She had her aunt’s funeral on Thursday and the arrival of her sister’s baby soon after. It wasn’t even as if she could rush back to Seattle to placate him.

Using the remote, he turned on the TV and propped himself up in bed. He hoped to distract himself with a baseball game—he grew up playing baseball—but only a replay of the last Cubs versus White Sox was on, and he wasn’t interested in either of those teams. He let the game play in the background as he reached into his nightstand and retrieved his laptop. He wanted to take another look at Paul Pacheco.

After logging on and finding Talulah’s profile on Instagram, he scrolled through her pictures, even though he’d seen them before, stopping whenever he encountered one of her business partner.

The dude wasn’t only fit, he was handsome, with long brown hair he wore in a ponytail and thick eyebrows that were just a shade darker. His nose was slightly too big for his face, but he had a strong chin, too, so the nose didn’t hurt him. He did seem to be older, though, closer to forty than thirty.

Pictures of his hiking and traveling adventures featured heavily in his personal feed, along with a lot of posts about cakes and pastries and cooking, of course. The dishes he’d featured looked pretty damn good.

Brant still didn’t like him. As a matter of fact, he liked him even less now than he had a few days ago.

With a sigh, he navigated to the feed for the dessert diner, which reminded him of carhops on skates and the drive-ins of the fifties he’d seen in pictures growing up. With a black-and-white-checkered floor, pink walls and a jukebox opposite the register, it was clean, upbeat and appealing. And the pies and cakes were extra-fancy, the portions large.

He navigated to the diner’s website and clicked on “specialty cakes,” which called up pictures of cakes for almost every occasion, from weddings to anniversaries to graduations to baby showers.

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