Guess who?

Almost an hour had passed and Laila and Noah were still enjoying Olivia's show. Though she was performing involuntarily and was hating every minute, this part of the evening was making all her annoying and insulting remarks worth it. Despite the fear that they would have to eat the mess that Olivia was preparing. With each slip up, each nick of the knife, each cut, her perfect manicure was getting more and more damaged. Making both her and her watchful audience certain that the manicure would not survive tonight's dinner. The only difference being that one side was enjoying that thought while the other dreaded it.

As the cutting shifted to actual cooking, all three of them looked at what was going on with wide eyes. Even winking was reduced to a minimum to not miss any more than what was necessary. But while Noah was impressed that someone could be so bad in the kitchen as an adult human being, Laila was actually impressed with what Olivia was managing to do as this was clearly her first time in a kitchen.

She wondered how she was managing to do things in the right order despite being so clumsy and having never cooked a day in her life. She probably didn't even know how to make herself a bowl of cereal much less a real dish. So, how was she pulling it off as well as she currently was? Sure, it was a straight up disaster but it was far better than she had expected and far better than what anyone would expect from someone like her.

In order to find out how Olivia was managing to do this, Laila closely looked at her. After a little while of observing her Laila began to notice that Olivia would announce it each time she finished one step in the process. She hadn't noticed until now but now it was hard to ignore and it was most definitely strange. That is when Laila began to think again about what had happened since she agreed to cook their dinner. But no matter how hard she thought about it, nothing particular came to mind. It wasn't until Olivia knocked down a knife from the kitchen counter that she saw something that made her suspicions grow.

When Olivia bent down to grab the knife that had fallen, something else fell. Olivia quickly picked it up and she was too soon for Laila to properly see what it was but when she reached for her ear, Laila could pretty much guess what was going on. Laila laughed softly before she leaned over to Noah and whispered what she had discovered.

With Olivia too stressed and focused on the meal she was preparing, she didn't notice their whispers or that she had been discovered. So, she continued to slave away, trying to prepare a single dish that wasn't going too well so far. She had burned the onions she had worked so hard to cut, while the rest of her vegetables were still rock hard despite having cooked them for so long.

While she was stressing, her chef was telling her that she was doing fine and that it didn't matter as long as it looked even a little similar to the dish she had served to Noah the day before. Because as a back-up plan, the chef had prepared the dish himself as well and he had put it in the oven before Noah's arrival. So, all she needed to do was make a dish that looked close enough to the real deal and warm up the one that had been prepared by the chef as she pretended to bake hers. Once the fifteen minutes needed to warm the dish up had passed, she would only have to take out the top oven dish instead of the bottom one and pass it off as her own.

With both parties on their top game, it was coinflip who would be the true winner after today's dinner. So far they hadn't been caught with placing their cameras and though Laila had some clues, she had no actual proof that Olivia was cheating her way through dinner.

After another forty minutes dinner was finally ready to be served. When Olivia took out the oven dish and placed it on the counter in front of Noah and Laila they both raised their brows. To say the least, they were surprised to see what the end result had been of that disastrous cooking that Olivia had shown them. Though they were both convinced that this was not prepared by Olivia, they decided that they would take it slow instead of exposing her right away. After all, slow, small cuts hurt more than a lethal blow.

As Steve and Maria were taking their last bite, Noah and Laila would be taking their first. Finally they were sitting at the table and by now Noah's lie had become the truth for both of them, they were feeling famished. As Noah took his first bite, he decided to also throw the first dagger. "Wauw. This is some impressive cooking Olivia. I do wonder though, your onions clearly burned. How did you get them to look so golden now?"

"Yeah, I am curious too. I also wonder, when you put these potatoes in the oven, you could barely prick them with your fork. But now they fall apart at the slightest touch. How do you get them to become so soft in such a short amount of time?"

Of course Olivia didn't have the answer to any of these questions as she hadn't even cooked the food they were currently eating. So, in a desperate attempt to stop the questions about her cooking, she threw a subject in that she knew would steal the show. "Never mind those small things. All that matters is that we are having a wonderful meal together, as current friends, future friends, and lovers. Speaking of lovers, I was suddenly reminded of something that I have been meaning to tell you. Guess who contacted me recently? Jake!"