Free Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) by Livia Day

I thought he was older, though. She said a couple of things that made me think … I know he had money, she was all giggly about that.’ For a moment his mouth twisted in typical brotherly fashion, sneering about her giggliness, but then I saw the realisation cross his face all over again that she was dead. In that instant, he closed off from me, from the beach, everything. From reality.
    ‘She was fucken stupid,’ he said finally. ‘But she was my sister. You know?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. We both hovered in silence for a few minutes, staring out at the water. ‘What’s your favourite ice cream?’ I asked finally.
    Shay looked at me like I was nuts. ‘Butterscotch.’
    Ooh, butterscotch. I could practically hear the recipe assembling itself in my brain. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go back to my place, and I’ll see what I can do about that.’
    I was tempted to start out by making fresh butterscotch brickle, then smashing it to bits and stirring it into the ice cream, but that felt like cheating. Instead, I made a basic sauce with butter and brown sugar, to stir through par-frozen vanilla custard. Vanilla was good for that, at least. It could provide contrast for the real flavours that deserved to be there. Like the silence between chords.
    There was supposed to be vanilla essence in the sauce, but I left it out. Why do so many recipes tell you to add vanilla when they don’t want it to taste of vanilla? Anyone would think they were trying to wipe out the world’s supply.
    Now, there’s an idea.
    Shay sat on a stool and watched me with a look of bemusement on his face, as if he’d never seen anyone cook before, let alone invent an ice cream recipe right in front of him.
    ‘Tell me about the vineyard,’ I suggested as I stirred the slowly thickening butterscotch sauce. Possibly I had overdone the butter. Possibly the sauce needed real scotch to save it. Mmm, scotchy butter. Christmas was coming, and that would be a good time for scotch-related experiments. Rum sauce gelato, brandy butter sorbet… ‘Jason’s family own it, is that right? You work there, and Annabeth used to as well?’
    ‘Everyone in town works there sooner or later,’ said Shay. ‘Jase’s dad is rolling in it. He’s a good bloke, Jase’s dad. Anna used to work in the restaurant, but it’s closed this year for renovations. That’s why she took on shifts at the Scallop when she came back to Flynn in the holidays.’
    Jase’s dad. That would be Greg Avery (48), local businessman and councillor who had made curt statements about his son’s innocence to the papers.
    ‘I don’t work there,’ Shay added. ‘Not really. I help out sometimes. They’ve got proper contractors in to do the remodelling. Greg’s got big plans,’ he added, with an odd degree of pride in his voice, for talking about someone else’s dad. ‘He’s taking the town places. Not just Avery Grove, either. Last summer he bought up a whole stretch of shops in town, remodelled them to get decent tenants in. They’ve been a bit slow to fill, but Greg says by next summer, we’ll be a café latté town like Cygnet. Better than them ’cause of not filling every fucken shop with an art gallery.’
    ‘Café latté town’ didn’t sound like a phrase that a seventeen-year-old kid would come up with on his own.
    ‘Flynn seemed like a nice place,’ I said, remembering the friendly ice cream parlour. I wasn’t sure I was convinced about the café latté part, though. As far as I could see, everyone in town ate at the pub or the takeaway. They’d need a lot more work before they achieved trendsetter status, and there was a lot of competition for the tourists these days.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Shay. ‘Greg says it’s great that young blokes like me and Jase want to stick around town, help keep the place alive instead of jumping ship to the mainland like everyone else.’
    Shay could seriously benefit from jumping ship to the mainland for a few years. Was he really