Page 12 of The B!tch is Bad

I wanted her to see more—where gardeners were mulching native grasses they’d planted, hosing down cobwebs from barrel cacti, blowing nonexistent leaves across stepping stones with their leaf blowers. I still wanted her. To be my sommelier.

Patience didn’t sound very certain about tapering off meds. “Well, you saw what happened when I tried. I nearly flipped.”

“Yes. Why were you without meds?”

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She studied the handle on the outdoor smoker. “My, ah, doctor forgot to refill the order. And I guess I forgot I had no backup stash. Oh, diabetes runs in my family. No beer for me! So what can I eat? Ground-up glass?”

I pointed at her with glee. “I’ll cook for you!” The words left my mouth without forethought. “I miss cooking for others. I can tailor anything to your diet. Prediabetic? No refined carbs, or anything sweet for you.”

She nodded. Her blonde roots made a glaring stripe down the center of her skull. So the blonde hair in the painting is natural. “Unfortunately, yeah. Makes for a very dull time.”

Excitement welled in me. I drew a picture with my hands. “Then make way for roasted garden eggplant salad.” I gestured at the raised beds just bulging with vegetables ready for picking. “Duck paté with turnips and medjool dates. Charcoal grilled Japanese wagyu. You eat meat?”

“Oh hell yeah!”

“Asparagus with morel mushrooms and Seeker Valley mustard greens.” I could’ve gone on and on, but she got the picture.

Patience exuded the virginal daintiness of Ophelia. Yet I knew in the next minute she could morph into the bold sexuality of naughty Salome. “Oh mannn, all of those things sound absolutely fantastic.”

“Is there anything you don’t care for?”

“Nothing. Just the diabetic stuff. Hey,” she said in a new tone. Her eyes focused somewhere over my left shoulder. “What the . . . “

When she moved like a creeping lemur, I got a sinking feeling. The sun slipped behind a red plateau, flooding my bedroom with its warmth.

And the rays drenched the painting of her like a holy mantle.

“Hey!” I said, chipper. “Why don’t we go back inside and try something other than Tiny Dancer? I’d like to see more of your skillset. I’ve got a blend of Cab and franc that’s aged 24 months in new French oak barrels.”

She would not be deterred. She crept on her silent padded shoes to the other side of the patio until she stood five feet from the glass wall. There was no mistaking it. I had won the bidding war for the coveted painting.

And it was kind of ghoulish, especially in my bedroom.

She said, “You’ve got . . . “

I tried to be confident. “The painting of you.”

She finally looked at me. “The painting of whoever.” She gazed back at herself as though she were in a zoo. I was sure she’d felt on the other side of that wall a thousand times. “She looks very detached. Inscrutable. How did you wind up with the painting?”

I told a version of the truth. “Santiago Slayer said I was meant to buy it, because of the dream you and I shared. He gave me a good deal since it was meant to be.” That was true. Santiago had kept repeating how it was “meant to be.”

She looked at me over her shoulder, posed just as in the painting. Her heavy-lidded eyes and alabaster skin didn’t match her brunette hair color. “But you have to agree to hide it somewhere better. People will come to this patio when I’m head sommelier, right? I don’t want them seeing that.”

When I’m head sommelier. I couldn’t believe my luck. Had Patience Bedford just agreed to work with me? I opened my arms wide, but she only lay her chin on her shoulder and batted her eyelashes at me. “Did I hear right? You’re coming to work for me? You can be the guinea pig for my cooking. I promise to do right by you.”

“I know.” She was the gleaming girl model from Gotham. “I know you will. I dreamed it, remember?”

I held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s see what we can grab from this garden to go with the Cab franc.”