Free Basil Instinct by Shelley Costa

length. He gave me that look of boundless Choo Choo Bacigalupo faith (which usually entails the sacrifice of others) and cheesy love for Vera Tyndall.
    “It’ll settle down,” he said magnanimously.
    “You owe me,” I hissed at him, my brown eyes locked on his own. For a brief moment I wished it had been Little Serena’s brother who had taken off to live the dream at Disney World, leaving Little Serena here for me to enlist in the Kayla Wars.
    My cousin opened his hands wide and said, totally reasonably, “Whatever I can do.”
    I told him I’d let him know.
    *   *   *
    When Georgia Payne arrived mid-afternoon with Corabeth Potts, I swept them into the office first to present them to Nonna, whose hair by that time was horizontal. She was so awash in paperwork, purchase orders, and diagrams of seating arrangements for the Psi Chi Kappa (the Psycho-Chefs Club) that the new help didn’t register.
    The petite Georgia Payne looked quite nice in a yellow blouse with long ruffled sleeves, a white linen skirt, and a cool silver necklace that held a tourmaline in what looked like a fine silver birdcage. Georgia said appropriate things, and Corabeth, still in her Michelin tube top and plaid short-shorts, flapped an arm in greeting and said nothing, which was a good choice.
    In the kitchen, Landon, who was wrist deep in homemade pasta dough, hid his surprise at the new help pretty well. I figured the skeleton hairdecorations were more a jolt than I had thought they would be. He said something funny and nice to Corabeth while he managed to check out the ensemble by pretending to look for his rolling pin, but to Georgia he seemed a bit tongue-tied, muttered a “hi” and turned back to what would become dough for tonight’s mushroom-and-truffle ravioli.
    Did the lovely and unsuspecting Jonathan suddenly have some competition?
    And was it female?
    When Vera and Paulette barreled into the kitchen to get the Target bag and my instructions for the nuclear makeover of Corabeth, I glanced at my pale Landon, who was kneading the dough the way he normally would, only his green eyes were staring straight ahead. Maybe when he came face-to-face with the new sous chef, he didn’t like the idea after all, even though it meant a second set of capable hands. Off the makeover team went, with Corabeth trundling along behind them, but it wasn’t until ten minutes later that Landon even realized they were gone.
    I was cleaning and slicing mushrooms with the southpaw Georgia, who was slicing at the speed the Roadrunner beep-beeps his way out of the frame, despite the bandage on her hand, when Landon seemed to come out of his reverie. He looked around with a sudden jerk, and asked where thegirl with the draggin’ tattoo had gone. At which the reserved Georgia threw back her head and laughed, and I saw Landon warm up.
    He complimented Georgia on her necklace, she told him she inherited it from her mother, and Landon asked whether she knew that men’s underarm sweat produces the same sex pheromone found in truffles. She pretended she didn’t, and Landon was pretending he didn’t know she was pretending, but this little charade seemed to suit them both as they settled into new roles, so I figured they’d be all right.
    Because slicing and dicing mushrooms is just about as much hilarity as I can stand for any twenty minutes you care to name, I started grilling the new sous chef on matters of interest. To me. “So, where are you from, Georgia?”
    She smiled. “Here and there.” She waggled her head like she was trying to remember. “Outside Philly.”
    “And your folks?”
    She raised two carefully arched eyebrows at me.
    I shrugged. “What do they do?”
    “I was adopted.”
    I said “I see” when I didn’t see anything except diced truffles.
    Hunched over his floured bread board, Landon heaved a sigh.
    Like a girlfriend, I said teasingly, “Any—significant others?” What a stupid term.
    She glanced at the ceiling. Finally: