“Always.” That was one of their golden ingredients. They partnered well together because neither had a problem with hard, ugly truths. They’d debate their positions and butt heads until someone’s perspective triumphed. They weren’t sore losers. More or less. Mostly, they were ruthlessly competitive, thorough, and opinionated, and each respected the other for their Teflon hides.
She peeled the plastic wrap back and marveled at how Spiker had used chopped mint to complement the blasé color of canned fruit. The dark green flecks knocked it up a level that she couldn’t believe he could appreciate. “You picked mint from my garden?”
He laughed—it obviously hadn’t come from inside her kitchen.
“And you made a vinaigrette?” That must’ve been the source of the citrus scent. She had frozen cubes of lemon juice in a deep freezer. “With lemon juice?”
“Yup.”
“And poppy seeds?” Cece would’ve approved based on presentation alone. Vanka eyed him and then the dish.
“Who knew you moonlighted as a culinary talk show host? Try a damn bite, princess.”
“Don’t act like this isn’t crazy!”
“What?” He shrugged. “I didn’t know you lived in a cutesy little house in a suburb, and you didn’t know that I am hell on wheels in a kitchen pantry.”
She would’ve bet her entire collection of mustards and sniper rifles that Spiker didn’t know anything about poppies beyond their connection to opium and morphine. “You’re an encyclopedia of escape-and-evade.”
“Yeah.”
“And a living, breathing how-to-fly-drive-and-not-die manual.”
“I’m taking this to Andy’s.” He reached for the dish. “You fend for yourself.”
Vanka smacked his knuckles with the fork.
“Take a damn bite, Vanka.”
She did, and he’d been right. World-class, toe-curlingly delicious. He’d never let her forget it either.
Spiker held out his fist, thumb jutted out, neutral, waiting for her verdict.
She had to admit that he’d knocked it out of the park. Vanka grasped his fist and turned his thumb up. “That’s good.”
Spiker lifted his hand overhead as if lofting the FIFA world cup in the air. “Yes!”
“Ridiculous. What are you doing?” She couldn’t hide her laughter. He tacked on a touchdown dance and played to the invisible crowd in his imaginary stadium. “Acting like a ballhandler that hit a trick shot.”
He laughed as if she might be the crazy one in the kitchen. “Working basketball and billiards into the same sentence takes a lot of work.”
“Whatever. Have fun with your”—she made air quotes—“football dance.”
“Wasn’t dancing.” He crossed his arms like an overconfident Mr. Clean with a full head of dark hair. “I was celebrating.”
“Good for you.”
“You want to know why?” he asked.
“I’m not sure that I do.” She covered the fruit salad with the plastic wrap to keep it in tip-top shape before they headed to Andy’s. “But I doubt that matters.”
“You’re surprised,” he asked.
“The fruit salad? Yes.” She looked at the ceiling. “Yes, surprised. You managed to whip up a nectar-for-the-gods concoction from canned fruit and, undoubtedly, an obscene amount of lemon juice and sugar.”
“Then we’re one to one. I’ve put a score on the board.”
She mouthed the last few words. Clearly, they were still using sports jargon, but she hadn’t connected it to the fruit salad. “Sorry?”
Spiker gestured at the kitchen and semi-attached dining room. “You live in a white picket fence house in suburbia.” Disbelief shook his laughter. “Talk about surprise.”
“I don’t have a white picket fence.” But she hadn’t missed his point and could admit when he’d scored one on her. “One to one.”
CHAPTER NINE
With the casserole dish in hand, Vanka stepped onto her front porch and waited until Spiker closed the front door. “Why’d you ask if I was married?”
“I wanted to know.” Spiker didn’t miss a beat.
They followed the sidewalk and faced the sun as it slowly dipped into the western sky. “Have you ever been?”
Spiker snorted. “Married? No.”
“Of course not.” They turned up a driveway and followed a stone pathway and the smell of the food on the grill. Muffled laughter carried on the warm early-evening air. She hadn’t asked who was on Andy’s guest list for the evening. He always had a good crew of neighbors and friends from his days in the military, and she usually got on well with everyone.
The neighbors didn’t require introductory small talk. They knew her as the petite blonde with a slight—depending on who you asked—accent, who often traveled for work with a niche accounting firm that unearthed financial wrongdoing the same way a detective investigated a crime scene. She’d regale them with fictitious stories about her forensic accounting adventures.
Sometimes she’d throw in a moral to her story—don’t cheat on your spouse while stashing cash in the Caymans—but mostly, Vanka liked to share a feel-good anecdote where good always triumphed over evil. The theme resonated with everyone, and that was, more or less, how she viewed her life as well.
In her job too, though, that line seemed fuzzier some days than others. An expert marksman, she could eliminate a target from a thousand meters away without messing up her hair and nails. A petty litmus test. She knew that but didn’t care. She’d long ago come to grips with who she was and what she liked. Vanka liked sharp outfits and on-trend nail color. She wasn’t vain; it had taken years to realize that she’d grown up understanding the intrinsic difference between appreciating beauty and rising to society’s standards of beauty.
Vanka had her parents to thank for that. Art and science were enmeshed in their world, and she hadn’t known the difference. What kid didn’t know the connection between fashion and furniture in the time of King Louis XIV? Vanka remembered the blank stares she received from her so-called peers when her Nan had tried to enroll her in a secondary school. Her class was asked to write a persuasive essay. Vanka hadn’t planned to exert too much effort—after all, she was an angry and brooding teenager.
Her topic had been a no-brainer. Chairs in the early- to mid-1600s were low to the ground; squatty in her opinion. But they had to be. Fashion of the time was foolish and impractical. The necklines alone, with their ruffles and starch, jewels and pearls, made movement impossibly impractical, translating to wealth and status. The harder it was to move, the better off a person must be. After all, why move when status and money allowed others to move on their behalf?
Her argument hadn’t been persuasive. It landed her in the headmaster’s office, where Nan was called in for the meeting. Her teacher handed her essay to the headmaster, who then read a section where Vanka connected squatty furniture to elongated dining utensils. “Slender, lengthened forks became a status symbol. It could be argued that nobility did not want to pick up food with their fingers, but like the lowered chairs, the extended lengths allowed the clothing-restricted to be able to feed themselves.”