Erin Kern - Along Came Trouble

Elisa felt for Kelly. It could not have been easy making a decision to put a parent in a retirement home. A lot of children must feel like they were letting their parents down by entertaining the idea of community living. Elisa’s heart went out to the woman.

“There’s just one thing,” Elisa started before Kelly let herself out the door. “There will be afternoons when I might have to go on a photo shoot or just out taking pictures. I just want to make sure it’s okay with you to bring him along. I wouldn’t feel right leaving him here alone.”

Kelly slid her aviator sunglasses over her green eyes. “As long as you don’t mind him tagging along. In fact, it might interest him.” Then, as if on second thought, she reached her arms out and wrapped Elisa in a tight hug. “I really appreciate this,” she whispered in Elisa’s ear. “I don’t know what I would have done.” She stepped back, retrieved a tissue from her pants pocket, and dabbed it beneath her sunglasses. “Sorry. I’ve never been apart from Tyler this long before, and it’s making me crazy.” She waved the wadded-up tissue in the air. “I mean, I know he’s in good hands and everything. I just can’t stand the idea of being three states away from him. Plus I’m so worried about my mom.” She made a mad dash to wipe away some tears that rolled below her sunglasses

“Don’t apologize,” Elisa replied, feeling heartsick for the woman. “I don’t have kids but I can imagine how you feel. Tyler’s dad and I will keep everything under control.” She closed the door after Kelly left. With no work to do, now was the perfect time to place a call to Marcello. He probably wouldn’t answer, but just hearing his voice on the answering machine was enough for her. Just as she was about to pick up the phone, it rang. Again.

With a groan of annoyance, she snatched it off the base and muttered a cheerful hello.

“Did I drag you out of your darkroom?”

The familiar voice on the other end sent a zing of excitement through her. “Professor Harper?”

“What have I told you, young lady?” he scolded in that typical way of his.

She grinned and sank to the couch. “Sorry, Samuel. It’s an old habit.”

“Hey, don’t mention it. Listen, I don’t have a lot of time to talk, so I’ll get to the reason I called. I’ve been offered a job by Time Magazine in Mongolia. They’re doing a piece on the nomadic shepherds who herd through the Mongolian steppes. It’s a huge job that I won’t be able to do on my own. Would you be up for that?”

Would she be up for that? This was only what she’d been waiting for since college. To shoot photographs in countries like Mongolia for Time Magazine was every photographer’s dream. How could she pass up an opportunity like this?

“Of course I’m up for it,” she replied. “When are you supposed to go?”

“Not until the end of summer. I wanted to give you enough time to update your passport, if you need to, and get all the necessary vaccinations. I also wanted to give you time to clear your schedule. The whole piece will take several months to complete. Will you be able to be gone for that long?”

Several months in Mongolia? Even if she had some pressing issue, she’d clear her schedule for this. She’d already passed up an opportunity with Samuel once. No way would she walk away from this.

“I’ll make it happen,” she promised.

THE SOUR, I-JUST-SUCKED-ON-A-LEMON look on Reginald Buchanan’s face didn’t lift Brody’s spirits. The man had ambled into the restaurant on legs so thick they resembled an elephant’s. The light blue polo tucked into black slacks was barely able to contain his round, sagging belly. His appearance alone told Brody that he’d been a food critic likely since leaving the womb. Martin, Brody’s father and the restaurant owner, had gotten a referral who said he had a habit of being one of the milder, more forgiving critics. Brody wasn’t sure he wanted a critic who was “forgiving.” After all, what good would that do them?

The situation had shown promise when Reginald nodded his bloated head and tilted one corner of his mouth in what Brody thought was a smile. That was after slurping his loaded baked potato soup so loudly, Brody’s stepmother, Carol, would have slapped the man upside the head. After that, the meal had taken a turn for the worse. His eyebrows, which looked like overgrown caterpillars, lowered in distaste after he saw the fried chicken. The man shoveled two impressively large bites into his mouth before shoving the plate away from him. The poor harried waitress endured grumbling and groaning from Reginald as she carted away his food.

Brody held out little hope for dessert.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Charlene muttered next to him. She’d been uncharacteristically nervous during their critic’s stay. In the past she would breeze past Brody, pat him on the shoulder, and say, “Don’t worry about it. It’s only one person’s opinion.” Okay, now they were working on their third, and things were not looking up.

“Maybe we should offer him a discount,” she suggested.

Brody’s gaze never left the critic’s table. “That would only look desperate.” Plus critics tended to frown on that sort of thing. They didn’t want to feel like they were being bribed into giving a good review.

The waitress hurried back to Reginald’s table and set down a berry cobbler à la mode. Reginald’s beefy fingers wrapped around a fork and attacked the dessert with gusto. The thing disappeared faster than gold in the Yukon.

Charlene glanced at Brody. “He seemed to like that.”

Brody snorted. “I think he likes all desserts.”

When the whole painful experience was over, the critic paid his bill and somehow managed to lever himself, after several attempts, out of his booth. Charlene offered him a professional, friendly smile and asked him to come back soon.

His response was a discouraging “Don’t count on it” muttered through lips bracketed by deep lines.

“He’s supposed to be forgiving?” Charlene asked, but Brody ignored it as he approached the waitress who’d served Reginald.

The young woman, Theresa, gathered the dessert plate and silverware in her hands.

“What did he say to you after eating the chicken?” Brody asked her.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” she answered.

He forced his voice to come out calm and not show the frustration and borderline hysteria bubbling inside him. “Yes, I really do.”

The girl turned her brown eyes to his. “He said it was too salty. In fact, his exact words were ‘I wouldn’t feed that to my dog.’ ” She held up a wad of cash. “But he gave me a decent tip.”

Brody managed to grace the waitress with a tight-lipped smile. “You did a good job handling him.” He left her to clean up and headed to the kitchen. There were some words that needed to be exchanged between him and Travis.

The chef was tossing pasta in a skillet, the noodles lifting up into the air without sliding over the edges and falling to the fire beneath them. “Is his highness finished with his meal?” Travis asked without taking his attention off his task.

“Yeah, he’s gone. The appetizer and dessert went well. The main course, however, is a different story.”

The muscles in Travis’s jaw hardened. “Theresa mentioned he didn’t like it.”

Chefs were temperamental creatures who tended to take criticism of their food personally. Travis was no different. If Michael had received feedback like that, he’d have chucked a meat cleaver across the kitchen.

Heat from the stove only exacerbated Brody’s rising body temperature. “Tell me you tasted the dish before you sent it out there.”