Reindeer Games
Page 7

I grabbed my egg skillet and tilted it over his cup. My mushy eggs slid right in with a delicious plop. “There! Now neither of us has coffee. You satisfied?”
Owen got up and gave me a disgusted look with those amber eyes. “Man, you really are a lunatic.”
I gave him the finger.
He left the kitchen, and I was left with no coffee, no eggs, and a mess to clean up.
 
 
Chapter Four
 
 
It’s a shame that Luna’s totally my type: blonde hair, blue eyes, short, curvy little body…at least, until she opens her mouth. – Owen MacIntosh, Lodge Home Movies footage
 
~~ * * * ~~
 
I hid in my room for most of the day, flipping through magazines, napping, and jotting down ideas for future scripts. The lodge no longer felt like a safe haven. I’d tried relaxing in the living room, only to find that it made me tense to think that Owen might turn a corner at any minute and see me doing yoga¸ or writing down script bits. I wrote horror movie scripts for a living, and it was a fun job, but one that was easily misunderstood, considering I wrote myself notes like ‘the termite axes her head off, lots of gore’. The last thing I wanted was to give Owen more ammo to mock me with, so I simply avoided him and hid my notepad.
Had I thought the lodge was boring and miserable before? It was nothing compared to having to stay in your room for fear of seeing the person you loathed the most.
The next day, I crept down the long hall on careful, silent feet. All of the bedrooms were on the second floor of the lodge, and the floors creaked, so I wanted to make sure Owen didn’t hear me sneaking out. As soon as I made it past the rooms, I headed down the wooden stairs into the main part of the lodge. It was a huge building with a great layout. While the bedrooms were on the second floor loft, the rest of the lodge was completely open. A massive fireplace dominated the back wall, surrounded by floor to ceiling windows. On the far end of the enormous open room, the kitchen area rolled into the section designated as dining. It was clearly a party lodge, meant for a large group of people. The entire place was terrific.
Unless you were trying to avoid someone, and all that open-ness became a bit of a curse.
Still, it was a great lodge, and I was mentally placing my next horror movie here. There were so many great scenes I could do with the lodge alone, and that wasn’t even considering in the whole ‘snowbound’ or ‘Alaska’ factor. It was the perfect research.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I stopped in surprise at the massive spread of food on the countertops and the dining tables. That hadn’t been there yesterday.
Owen was standing over a table – dammit – and surveying the food as well. He wasn’t touching anything, just regarding it with a curiously scrutinizing look on his face.
Since I couldn’t avoid him, I stood a little straighter and approached anyhow. “What’s all this?”
He looked over at me, and then turned his attention back toward the spread. “Food.”
Jackass. “I noticed. Someone catered all this in here?”
“Guess so.” He scratched at his broad chest, and I was pleased to see he was fully clothed this time, at least. He wore jogging pants and a red t-shirt with a cupcake on it. Kinda sissy for a dude, but whatever. I’d store that particular tidbit for ammo later.
I leaned over the table and peered at the food. Cold cut sandwiches had been sliced into triangles with small toothpicks sticking out. There were deviled eggs, dips, chips, chicken wings, cheeses, fruit and veggie trays, and every kind of finger food imaginable. On the table that Owen stood over, there were desserts. I had a massive sweet tooth, so I gravitated toward that table, expecting Owen to slide away once I did.
He didn’t, though. He just stood there, ignoring me, studiously regarding the table.
I wondered what was so fascinating. There was a big creamy looking pie, several puffy little confections with a ton of frosting on them, some cookies, chocolate dipped strawberries, and some other delicious but unidentifiable desserts. “Wow. Looks good.”
Owen looked over at me and his mouth turned down. “Are you kidding me? This looks like shit.”
“Your version of shit must look really different than mine,” I said, reaching for a goopy-looking frosted cupcake with a candy cane sticking out of it. It looked sugary as hell and I was on board for that.
He smacked my hand as I reached for it. “Don’t touch that.”
I stopped, shocked. He did not just slap my hand, did he? “Excuse me?”
“Didn’t you read the sign, Boston? Or are you that uneducated that you need me to read it to you?” He pointed at a piece of paper tacked up on a nearby wall and read it aloud. “DO NOT EAT THE CATERED FOOD. IT IS FOR THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER’S VISIT TONIGHT.”
I rolled my eyes and reached for the cupcake again. “I’ll rearrange the plate and they’ll never notice it’s gone.” I lifted it to my mouth and took a big, messy bite right in front of his incredulous eyes. “Mmmm, soooo good.” Actually, it was dry. The icing wasn’t fresh and tasted gritty, and the cake tasted stale. But I’d be damned if I’d let Owen know that. “This is the best cupcake ever,” I muttered around the mouthful, lying.
“You are a total ass, Lunatic,” he said in a revolted voice. “Seriously.”
I fucking hated that nickname almost as much as I hated him. And since my cupcake sucked, I decided to use it for something else. I took the rest of it and shoved it right onto the center of his t-shirt, where the other cupcake was drawn on. “Here, I’ll share.”
Owen sucked in a breath and stepped backward, brushing at his shirt. The half-eaten cupcake dropped to the floor between us in a sickly, frosting-covered plop. He stared at me, then down at the cupcake. Then back at me.
I could practically see the wheels turning in his head, and I wasn’t surprised when he reached for one of the nearby fluffy pies. He grabbed one off the table and turned toward me.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said in a warning voice. “Remember, they told us not to touch the food,” I mimicked. “And you’re such a good little follower that you should put that down–”
The pie smacked me square in the face, and the world went black for a cold, cream-filled second. Then, it dribbled into my mouth and I tasted lemon and a stale meringue.
That jerkface did not just pie me in the face, did he?
Seething, I wiped at my eyes. Over a fucking cupcake? Oh, this bastard was going down. I squeezed my eyes open to see Owen retreating, clearly about to head back up the stairs.
I grabbed the nearest pie and ran after him.
Mine smacked him in the back of the head, dribbling cherry filling and whipped cream down his neck. He halted in place, and I watched the pie pan flop to the ground, and then the rest of the pie slid down his shoulders. Then, he turned and looked at me with eyes so wild with anger I could see nothing but the whites.
The world was still for one brief second.
Then, we both ran for the dessert table.
It was an ugly food fight. Both Owen and I grabbed whatever we could, flinging it at each other. I got creamed over and over again, but I had good aim, and for every smack that Owen got on me, I returned. His dark skin was spattered with icing and whipped cream, and my shirt was sticking to me from the death of a hundred different desserts. Meanwhile, we tore through the dessert table, smashing dessert after dessert into each other. When that ran out, we moved to the appetizer table and threw handfuls of dip at each other, slinging it with abandon and cussing epithets at each other.