She frowned down at her own sandwich but made no move to open it yet. “These tables are ridiculously small,” she said. “Maybe Cold World needs a bigger eating area.”
Asa had his mouth full by that point but tilted his head in what he hoped was the universal expression of Yeah, probably, but where would we find the room?
They ate in silence for a few minutes, until eventually Lauren took a big gulp of her water, screwing the cap back on with such deliberate determination that Asa knew she was gearing up to say something else. He found himself tensing, waiting for whatever it might be.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, still looking at her bottled water instead of at him. “I shouldn’t have said all of that stuff about you needing to mind your own business and . . . everything else. The truth is that I was frustrated. You said you had an idea for your proposal, and Daniel had just finished telling me his idea, which was—” She shook her head, but he couldn’t tell if the gesture meant that Daniel’s idea was bad, or just that she wasn’t going to reveal it. He hoped the former.
“Honestly I have zero idea what I’m going to propose to Dolores,” Lauren said, lifting her gaze to his. “Not a clue. I thought something might occur to me while I was running the report for Daniel, but I’m still drawing a complete blank. Then I thought maybe I’d get inspiration from talking to Dolores tonight, but . . .”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence. Obviously, that ship had sailed.
“If anything, I’m more stumped than I was before,” she said. “I was looking back through past years’ financials, before I even started at Cold World, hoping I could spot some trends that would tell me the right direction to go in. But the only trend I saw was that our profits are down. Like, way down.”
This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Just from looking around, Asa could see evidence that things weren’t quite as they used to be. Minor signs of wear and tear that weren’t rushed to be fixed, understaffing during their off season, employee perks that had been gradually phased out. Nothing huge. And the business was old—Dolores had been running it a long time, and things had stagnated. It was presumably the reason she’d come up with her request for proposals to give the place a makeover.
But the way Lauren said those words—way down—made it sound more serious. He couldn’t tell if that was due to her propensity to worry, or if the situation really looked that dire.
He was working up the nerve to ask when his phone rang. “Hey, Kiki,” he said into the phone.
“Where are you? You were supposed to be home an hour ago.”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m still here. I’m actually—”
When he glanced over at Lauren, she was shaking her head emphatically, her eyes wide and stricken. It wasn’t hard to read her body language, and he pivoted quickly to avoid telling Kiki she was there. “It’s going to take longer than I thought,” he said. “Don’t bother waiting for me. And don’t tell John, but I saw a spoiler online so I already know the elimination and it’s—”
“La la la,” Kiki sang childishly into the phone. “I’m not listening.”
He grinned. “I was going to say it’s totally unexpected. You won’t see it coming.”
“Well, now I will! Because you told me not to expect it! That’s basically the same thing as a full-out spoiler.”
“Oh, then you won’t mind if I—”
She hung up on him. That didn’t bother him—he knew he’d deserved it. He typed a quick message into the group chat just to confirm that no one should wait up for him because he didn’t know how late he’d be. When he glanced back up, Lauren was watching him.
“Don’t want anyone to know you’re here with me, huh?” he asked.
She tugged the sleeve of her cardigan down over her hand, fiddling with a loose piece of yarn around the frayed edge. “Kiki helped me get ready for tonight. I just didn’t want her knowing it didn’t work out.”
Of course. Now Asa remembered the reference Kiki had made to Lauren borrowing and returning her dress, and she must’ve loaned it out again to Lauren for this date with Daniel. The idea of Lauren at his house, doing her makeup and fixing her hair, giddy with excitement about spending time with Daniel, assessing herself in the mirror and wondering what he would think . . .
Under the table, Asa curled his hands into fists, then released them. “What is it about Daniel, anyway?”