Spooky Times (Alice Whitehouse Book 1)
Page 16
That slap got more attention than Dad’s inauguration speech. It was dubbed the slap that was seen and heard around the world. In hindsight, it was probably a precursor to my dad’s short-lived presidential career. Four months later he bombed that hog farm and that was the beginning of the end.
I checked around for more orders, and a tall man in a charcoal blazer and designer jeans raised his hand. He had sandy hair, slightly tousled, piercing blue eyes, an enigmatic smile, and… he looked just like Justin Timberlake. Chris Jefferson was seated at a table near the window, accompanied by a short, balding man with ginger whiskers and lime green glasses.
Chris had seen me, for he was smiling engagingly and giving me a wave.
I instantly turned away. This was the last thing I needed. On the busiest hour of the busiest day of the week, for Chris Jefferson to see me in my waitress’s uniform. Ex-First Daughter works the room at the Vienna Coffee Shoppe. He was probably snapping a shot of me to post on his Instagram.
A former president’s daughter usually devotes her life to worthy causes like saving the whales, or writing a book about her father’s career, or opening a museum wing in his honor. My life hadn’t exactly turned out that way.
After Hoggate had erupted, Dad had opted for life in exile, relegating my mom and me to a farmer’s life in Montana. I’d been homeschooled, to avoid being confronted with the turmoil kicked up after the scandal hit.
I walked over to my boss. “I can’t serve that guy,” I said, gesturing to Chris.
Cressida frowned. She was a matronly woman who took no nonsense from anyone, least of all from me. “Why not? That’s Chris Jefferson. You should be honored to serve him.” Then her frown deepened. “Wait, wasn’t there something about you and Jefferson a few years ago?” Her voice trailed off as memory returned to that fateful day in January. A smile slid up her flabby face. “Oh, that’s right. Slap Girl. That was you, right?” She planted her hands on her sizable hips. “He still sore about that? Is that why you’re refusing to serve him?”
“He’s still sore,” I said, though you wouldn’t be able to tell from the radiant smile he was directing at me.
“He doesn’t look sore. He looks like he wants to make it up to you.” She leaned in. “What was it that made you slap him like that? You can tell me.”
I pressed my own lips together. Everyone and their grandmother had been trying to pry this information from me ever since the slap aired and promptly became the most-watched video ever on YouTube. Even Gangnam Style didn’t come close. My lips were sealed. It wasn’t anybody’s business. Lucky for me, Chris had never told anyone either. Maybe he didn’t even know. Men are like that. Completely oblivious.
“Look, I just don’t want to serve him, all right? Can you do it?”
Cressida folded her arms across her ample chest. “No can do, honey. I’m the manager, you’re the waitress. No way am I going back to waitressing.”
“Crap,” I muttered. This was so humiliating. When I’d envisioned meeting Chris again I’d figured it would be backstage after my sold-out performance in Madison Square Garden instead of at a coffee shop. No ex-First Daughter should have to serve coffee and cake to an ex-First Son.
I raised my chin and stalked over. And just when I’d almost reached his table, the old guy I’d served before was making funny noises, his wife crying out in panic. She clutched my sleeve. “Miss! Do something! He’s choking!”
I took one look at the guy and saw she was right. He was choking. Probably a piece of cheesecake gone down the wrong pipe. I didn’t waste any time. I took a firm hold of him, Heimlich maneuver style, and gave him a good squeeze beneath the ribcage. All around me, conversations stopped and people stared. One customer brought out her smartphone to film the scene.
When you see me, I’m not much to look at. A petite blonde with cornflower blue eyes, a little button of a nose and arms thin as sticks. But after spending my teenage years on a farm, I know how to wrestle hogs sized a lot bigger than this heavyset pensioner. So wrestling this piece of cheesecake from his throat was a piece of cake for me. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem confident in my capability to save his life. He fought me hard, like a drowning victim fighting Baywatch Guy. The man’s legs thrashed about, his arms flailed, as he tried desperately to get away from me. As a consequence, chairs and tables toppled, dishes clattered to the floor, and pieces of pie and cups of coffee were flying in every direction. It was sheer pandemonium.
I didn’t mind. When you wrestle pigs, expect to get dirty. Even though a piece of cream scone was stuck to my forehead, I didn’t care. I’d seen worse. Vienna Coffee Shoppe hadn’t, and neither had its upscale clientele. Soon the room looked like a battlefield, and Cressida, watching with eyes wide as saucers and lips forming a perfect O, started resembling the choking victim.
I gave the old man one final vigorous squeeze. The piece of cheesecake, after having had so much fun down there, decided to give up the good fight and was ejected from the man’s throat. It described a perfectly nice arc through the air and landed splat in the middle of Cressida’s face.
The pensioner, who didn’t seem to realize I’d just saved his life, bellowed, “You attacked me! Just like your father! Why did you attack me?!”
The customers, covered in cake, coffee and cream, now all started yelling simultaneously, equally upset with my intervention. Even the woman who’d promised me she would vote for my father in a heartbeat, seemed to have forgotten she was the one who’d asked for my help, for she screamed, “You tried to kill my husband! You did it on purpose! You’re a murderer!”
The man was glaring at me. His wife was screaming at me. Cressida came stomping up to me, wiping the cheesecake from her eyes. Everyone in the place was expressing their beef with me at the top of their lungs. In the midst of all of this, Chris had a wide grin on his face. He was enjoying himself!
And then Cressida shoved two customers out of the way and got into my face. She snatched my badge from my shirt and growled, “You’re fired!”
Chapter Two
I left the coffee shop with mixed feelings. On the one hand it’s never much fun to be fired. On the other, I really hated that job, and I would have quit a long time ago if I could have afforded it. Thing is, people think presidents have a pretty sweet deal. They do their four years in office—or eight if they get lucky—and then they coast along for the rest of their lives.
Waterskiing with a billionaire buddy in the Caribbean. Spending two weeks in another billionaire buddy’s exclusive villa in Tuscany. Yachting with Oprah and Tom Hanks. And then there’s the speech circuit. Half a million for a speech to a gaggle of investment bankers. A million bucks for a speech to Goldman Sachs. And let’s not forget about the sixty-million-dollar memoirs or million-dollar endorsements. Nice work if you can get it. Unfortunately all these post-presidential perks fall to the wayside when you’re impeached.
No two hundred thousand a year pension. No speeches or book deals. No billionaire buddies. And let me tell you, hog farming isn’t a high-paying job. Especially when you’re raising a teen, and when you have legal bills to pay.
Dad could have resigned, of course. He would have had his pension, and his Secret Service protection. But he figured if he did, it would be like admitting he’d made a mistake. And he felt he’d done nothing wrong. Credible intel had indicated a terror cell was planning an attack and an executive decision had to be made so he made it. At least no people were harmed in the process. Only hogs. Which Dad still felt terrible about.
I walked out of the coffee shop, my head held high, and I’d just rounded the corner when someone called out my name.
“Miss Washington! Miss Washington! Wait up!”
When I turned, I was surprised to see Chris’s short buddy chasing me. He looked winded, his round face beet-red. Obviously not in great shape.
“What do you want?” I asked, none too friendly. The friends of my enemies are my enemies, and Chris Jefferson definitely wasn’t my friend. If he were,
he would have helped contain the damage back at the coffee shop instead of twiddling his thumbs and grinning like the dumb ape that he was.
“Miss Washington?” the guy asked, reaching me. “Anna Washington?”
“Yes?”
“I have a proposal for you,” he said between two gasps. He took out a large white handkerchief and used it to mop his brow. He had a bulbous head with frizzy hair, a thick unibrow and surprisingly mellow brown eyes.
“My name is Arne Token,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Chris Jefferson’s manager.”
I shook his hand reluctantly. “So?”
“It’s come to my attention that you may be in need of employment.”
I grimaced. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“As it happens, my client is in urgent need of an assistant.” He quickly continued as I started shaking my head. “As you know, Chris Jefferson is a very successful writer of conspiracy thrillers. His last three books landed at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. They’re calling him the next Dan Brown. So when he saw you at Vienna Coffee Shoppe just now, saving that man’s life?” He shook his head and grinned. “Man, that was impressive. If everyone had your sense of civic duty, this world would be a better place.”
“Thanks but no thanks.”
“But I haven’t even told you about the job.”
I shook my head. “I don’t care. I’m not doing it. No way.”
This funny-looking man wasn’t sweet-talking me into becoming Chris’s assistant. Hell, no. Nah-uh. So I turned around and continued walking.
“Miss Washington!” the little guy yelled. “One moment, please!”
I turned around and gave him my best eye roll. “What?”
He jogged up to me. “Look, we’ll pay you a handsome salary. It’s a great job, really. You get to fly around the world with Chris, on his research trips, and you get to meet all kinds of interesting people. For his last thriller he was in Monaco, Dubai, Morocco and Paris. And he got to meet the Dalai Lama.”
“Look. I don’t get it. Of all people, why does he want me?”
“There’s no denying you and Chris share a, um… Let’s just say you share an interesting history, and it’s my understanding you’d make a great team.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Because I once slapped him in front of a live audience of millions of people around the globe I’d be the perfect assistant? I don’t get it. What’s the catch? Why does he want me?”
Arne looked sheepish all of a sudden. “Actually this was my idea.”
“Chris doesn’t know?”
“Look, can I be honest with you? Chris is a lousy client. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great guy, and the commissions are nice. And I mean, real nice. It’s just that Chris isn’t exactly a self-starter. He has a hard time meeting his deadlines, which drives his publisher crazy. Chris needs someone to keep him plugging away at that book, and you just might be what the doctor ordered.”
“Me? But why?”
“Because he likes you.”
Now there was a surprise. “He likes me? Then why was he sticking his tongue down Priscilla Sachs’s throat at my dad’s inauguration? Tell me that.”
He made a throwaway gesture. “That was years ago.”
“Last time I checked he was serial-dating his way through all of New York’s socialites. At the rate he’s going they’re not being born fast enough.”
“You’re right. Which is where you come in. You’re the one that got away.”
“I’m the what that what?”
“You’re the girl who didn’t want to have anything to do with him.”
“I think you got the story backward, buddy. It’s Chris that didn’t want to have anything to do with me, remember? Which explains the slap.”
“He sees it differently. He thinks you stood up to him. In his mind you’re the only woman who didn’t take his shit. So he’s fascinated with you.”
“You lost me again,” I said with a shake of the head.
Arne shrugged. “As I said, he likes you. And as long as we can keep it that way, he’ll focus on his writing and not on bedding the next hot model.”
I gave an incredulous laugh. “You want me to become Chris’s keeper?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to become.”
“Look,” I said. “You need to wake up and face reality. I’m never going to work for Chris. I can’t stand the guy. And I’m pretty sure he can’t stand me.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
“Well, I am. Goodbye.”
With these words I turned around and strode off.
Who did Chris Jefferson think he was? Sending his manager after me with some crazy story? He probably felt he hadn’t humiliated me enough and wanted to finish the job by hiring me as his personal flunky.
I definitely dodged a bullet, I thought as I put my foot on the first step of the subway and descended into the darkness.
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About Nic
Nic Saint is the pen name for writing couple Nick and Nicole Saint. They’ve penned 60+ novels in the romance, cat sleuth, middle grade, suspense, comedy and cozy mystery genres. Nicole has a background in accounting and Nick in political science and before being struck by the writing bug the Saints worked odd jobs around the world (including massage therapist in Mexico, gardener in Italy, restaurant manager in India, and Berlitz teacher in Belgium).
When they’re not writing they enjoy Christmas-themed Hallmark movies (whether it’s Christmas or not), all manner of pastry, comic books, a daily dose of yoga (to limber up those limbs), and spoiling their big red tomcat Tommy.
www.nicsaint.com
Also by Nic Saint
Alice Whitehouse
Spooky Times
The Mysteries of Max
Purrfect Murder
Purrfectly Deadly
Purrfect Revenge
Box Set 1 (Books 1-3)
Washington & Jefferson
First Shot
Ghosts of London
Between a Ghost and a Spooky Place
Public Ghost Number One
Ghost Save the Queen
Box Set 1 (Books 1-3)
A Tale of Two Harrys
Ghosts vs. Spies
The Ghost Who Came in from the Cold
Tate-à-Tate
Enemy of the Tates
Witchy Fingers
Witchy Trouble
Witchy Hexations
Witchy Possessions
Box Set 1 (Books 1-3)
Witchy Riches
The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse
One Spoonful of Trouble
Two Scoops of Murder
Three Shots of Disaster
Box Set 1 (Books 1-3)
A Twist of Wraith
A Touch of Ghost
A Clash of Spooks
Box Set 2 (Books 4-6)
The Stuffing of Nightmares
A Breath of Dead Air
An Act of Hodd
Box Set 3 (Books 7-9)
Standalone Novels
When in Bruges
Once Upon a Spy
The Whiskered Spy
Copyright © 2017 by Nic Saint. All rights reserved.
Published by Puss in Print Publications.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permis
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Editor: Chereese Graves.