week of working together, she had finally confessed to Dee that she didn’t have much experience as a cocktail waitress. Dee had wrapped an arm around Grace and revealed that everyone in the bar already knew that. Grace had begged for a few more tips about the job.
When Dee questioned her further, Grace had confessed that she rarely went out to bars and didn’t really drink. That’s when Dee had gleefully suggested they have a cocktail quiz.
“You might like this one better,” Dee said, and handed her another tiny glass filled with a bright pink liquid. “Vodka, cranberry juice, lime juice and triple sec.”
“Oh, I know this one,” Grace said as she downed the entire drink. “That’s yummy, but I can’t remember what it is.”
“Cosmopolitan.”
“Oh, yeah.” Grace nodded slowly. “I get lots of orders for those. I can see why.”
“They’re smooth, but dangerous.” Dee mixed another small cosmo and handed it to Grace, then put the caps back on all the bottles. “I think we’re done.”
“Oh.” Grace frowned in thought as she stared at the notepad, trying to discern her scribbling.
“So you don’t ever go out to bars, Gracie?”
“Not really,” she said, and pushed her notepad aside.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No.” Grace grimaced. “I thought I did, but I was wrong.”
Dee nodded sagely. “He was a jerk?”
“Oh, yes. Big-time.”
“Goody,” Dee said, rubbing her hands together. “Tell me all about him.”
Grace laughed as she took a sip of her cosmo. “His name is Walter.”
“Oh, sorry. But I have a creepy uncle Walter and that name is not a good sign,” Dee said darkly. “He already sounds like a jerk, for sure. So how did you meet him?”
“You really want to know?”
“God, yes. Spill everything.”
“Okay.” She stretched her arms up for a few seconds, then pushed her hair back off her forehead, wondering where to begin. “Well, you know I work in a lab, and I’ve been so busy this past year that my boss decided to hire a new associate to help me. As soon as Walter started, we hit it off. It was nice, because we were spending long hours together. My experimentation phase was reaching a critical point.” It was odd, but her tongue felt numb.
“Sounds very exciting,” Dee said, sipping her mini-margarita.
“It was.” Grace took a moment to remember how it was in the beginning. “Walter was wonderful. We talked about so many things. He seemed to really like me and he was always telling me how much he admired my intelligence.”
“That’s so sweet.”
“It was,” Grace said. “I don’t get that a lot.”
“Well, you should,” Dee declared. She tried to rest her chin in her hand but her chin slipped twice before she was able to get comfy. “So keep going. I want to hear every last ghastly detail.”
“Oh, it’s ghastly all right,” Grace admitted. “So, anyway, I suppose it was silly to be so flattered by Walter’s attention, but he’s very nice-looking and I’ve never had much of a love life before, so what did I know?”
“He took advantage of that.”
“Yes. After two months of working together, he finally asked me out and I was over the moon. He took me out for a romantic candlelight dinner at a restaurant overlooking the lake. Then later when he took me home, he wanted to come inside. I was a little hesitant to let him in.”
“It was your first date, right?”
“Right.”
“He should’ve kissed you good-night and left.”
“That’s sort of what I thought. But he said we’d known each other long enough and he wanted to spend the night with me. Except he used a much cruder expression than that.” She frowned, remembering that night. But at the moment, Walter’s face in her memory was as fuzzy as her mind felt. She realized she liked him better that way. “Anyway, I told him I wasn’t ready to take that step and he got angry. He said he knew I wanted it, so what kind of game was I playing? He said he’d spent almost two hundred dollars on me and wanted to get his money’s worth. I ended up smacking him hard and while he was recovering, I ran inside my house and locked the door on him. He took it badly. Work became a nightmare with him around.”
“Worse than a jerk,” Dee said. “I hate him.”
“Thank you. Me, too. But at the time, I felt like an idiot.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Dee said, jumping up and grabbing two bottles of water off the dresser. “He was a toad.”
“I know.” Grace popped open one bottle and took a long sip. “But I felt like such a cliche.”
“Oh, been there, done that.”
“Anyway, he finally quit, thank goodness, but he stayed in Minnesota. He’s at a rival university and he’s trying to claim my studies as his own.”
Dee gasped. “What a total jackass.”
“Yes, that describes him nicely.” Grace couldn’t sit still thinking about Walter, so she stood and walked over to Dee’s window. She stumbled, but caught herself, then frowned at the rug, looking for whatever had tripped her. She didn’t see anything. “I found out after he left that he’d stolen a small batch of my spores and some of my papers, and now he’s applied for new funding to allow him to work on the exact same line of research as mine.”
“Can we kill him?”
Grace blurted out a laugh. “Oh, Dee, you are the best.”
“Hey, it’s an option.”
“I wish,” she said, only half kidding. “No, all I can do is collect lots of new spores and continue my research when I get back. Thank goodness I never told him exactly where these rare spores could be found.”
“A good thing for Walter,” Dee said with a decided edge to her voice. “Because if he showed up here, he’d be very sorry.”
“I really appreciate that,” Grace said with a smile, then added, “even though you scare me a little.”
She laughed. “I’ll scare Walter a lot worse and that’s a promise. I got your back, girlfriend.”
Grace felt sudden tears prickling her eyes. Nobody had ever had her back before. Oh, she knew Phillippa would support her, if it came down to that. But somehow the way Dee had said it so simply and unconditionally, made Grace feel all warm and snuggly inside.
And even though she trusted Dee, she couldn’t bear to confess the worst part to her. Yes, her university had promised to defend her against Walter’s lies, but Grace knew that if she couldn’t get the spores and raise the level of her research and experimentation to new heights, her reputation would suffer.
She also had to prove to the foundation that her work was her own and that she was the one deserving of the funds, not Walter. Otherwise, within a month she could lose her funding, her job and, most important, her reputation.
“Forget about stupid Walter,” Dee said, interrupting her worries. “What about Mr. Hunkadelic?”
“What? Who?” Grace wondered if she’d had a few too many sips of Dee’s cocktails because the lightning-quick change of subject made her head spin.
“You know who.” Dee stared meaningfully at Grace. “The hunky man who is our boss? Mr. Big?”
“Oh, Logan.” Grace stared intently at the label on her water bottle. The letters looked wobbly. Very odd. “What about him?”
“Something happening between you two?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why aren’t you looking at me?” Dee said, chuckling. “Do you have something to hide?”
Grace whipped around. “No! I mean…okay, he kissed me, but-”
“He kissed you?”
She sighed and flopped down on the bed. “Yes, and I warned him not to do it again.”
“You…wait.” Dee moved her chair so she could rest her feet on the bed. “Okay, I’ve got to hear your explanation for this one.”
