The Salon & Spa Scandal by Cate Martin

Author:Cate Martin [Martin, Cate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781958606391
Publisher: Ratatoskr Press

Chapter

Sixteen

When I got back to the Square, I went straight to the Loose Leaves Teashop to talk to Audrey. It was a little too late in the morning to expect to meet Barnardo picking up his daily supply of medicinal tea.

Still, when I went inside, Audrey wasn't alone. Liam was with her.

And it kind of looked like I had stepped into an argument in progress. There was a tension to the air, and his cheeks were heated. Granted, it was warm even with the Pacific Northwest breezes blowing through the open windows. And he had the kind of peaches-and-cream complexion that flushed really easily.

But his body language was tense with frustration as well.

And, for her part, Audrey looked more than a little freaked out. Even as she met my eyes, she kept tucking her hair behind her ears over and over again, like she was caught in a loop she couldn't break.

"What's going on?" I asked, stopping three steps inside the shop and half-turning back to the door. If they needed a private moment, I would make myself scarce in a heartbeat.

"You've been here before, right?" Liam said to me, a little too loudly in clear exasperation.

"Almost every day since I came to town," I said, but slowly. I wasn't sure what he was driving at. I should probably be extra careful with my answers.

"So you know there's only ever been one of these teapots," he said, gesturing towards the tray sitting on the counter between the two of them.

It was, indeed, one-of-a-kind. It had been Agatha's favorite, and we had always used it with the matching single pair of cups and saucers for our breakfast together. And now Audrey and I used the same set. They were amusing, from a distance looking like antique China, but up close the blue drawings on white porcelain depicted scenes of death and destruction. I thought they were illustrations from an old edition of the book The War of the Worlds with alien spaceships destroying an English village, but I had never asked where Agatha had gotten them.

"Yeah?" I said, even more slowly than before. My danger sense was off the charts, but I still wasn't sure what had him so upset.

Audrey was shaking her head at me over and over again. I was clearly stepping in it.

"Why do you ask?" I said to Liam as Audrey buried her face in her hands.

"I mean, you broke this the other day," he said. He gestured at the tea set again, with the air of someone who was afraid to touch what they're talking about. "On the Fourth of July, you smashed this whole tea set."

Oh, right. Audrey had said that was how he had remembered me smashing every single breakable thing inside the shop. Seeing everything in the shop put to rights hadn't tripped him up.

But that single tea set that he clearly recalled seeing broken, that was tripping him up hard.

"Of course I had to replace it," I lied smoothly. "It was my mistake.

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