by Dee, Cara
* * *
Some nights, the dinner guests set the mood. It was one of the perks of running a smaller establishment. On a Saturday evening, it could be calm and romantic with couples speaking in hushed voices—or it could be festive with a large party getting together for a family reunion. And on a random Tuesday, it could be a big group of coworkers who were trying to cheer one another up after they’d just learned headquarters was moving to Tacoma and they were all getting laid off. Like tonight.
Once they’d gotten through apps and a couple cocktails and were waiting for dinner, Alessia brought out a few bottles of wine for them to share on the house. A sweet gesture that accidentally happened to be so well received that the guests set their credit cards on fire, ordering more drinks and snacks. They asked for music too. Loud music.
They essentially had the place to themselves, not counting a few guys at the bar, so I had no issues cranking it up.
It made work seem like less work for us behind the bar too. Alessia was hopped up on ibuprofen and two glasses of champagne, completely out of fucks to give, and she had the sexiest smile playing on her lips as she made a batch of frozen margaritas for three ladies. And if Alessia was in a good mood, so was I.
She put on an act when she was off, like on her period and cramps were bothering her. That was when she dressed up. Fake it till you make it, she called it. The dress pants were standard for her as the hostess, but the fitted button-down and vest sure as shit weren’t, nor was the red lipstick and high heels. She looked like a goddamn sin.
She bumped her hip against mine as she passed me with a tray of drinks. “Can I get you anything too, tesoro? And you, Tracy?”
Fucking loved when she called me that. It meant treasure, and it was about as common as calling someone “hon” in the US, but I took whatever I could get.
“I won’t say no to a beer.” I squeezed her hand briefly before I accepted two servings of sweet potato fries from Tracy. They went with the two orders of Coho Original, my signature burger.
The trick was to dip the buns in a spicy rub, slather butter on them, then throw them on the grill for about fifteen seconds while I deep-fried onion strings that went on top of the meat and cheese.
Alessia came back with two beers for Tracy and me.
The energy from the guests buzzed through us all, and I got started on the next three orders as a guitar riff from Def Leppard pierced the air. With a playlist packed with ZZ Top, Quiet Riot, and other rock gods of the eighties, we were bound to have a fantastic night.
As always, we lost ourselves in the job, and Tracy and I worked together like a well-oiled machine. He was proving himself with every shift; he loved what he did, and it showed. We bobbed our heads to the music and handed over meals to the servers that were ready to go out.
“Oh!” This song. I looked around to see where Alessia was, and I spotted her delivering drinks to a table. When she was on her way back, I locked eyes with her, and she cocked her head and smiled in question. “Consider this song your reminder,” I told her, then took a swig of my beer. It was “Talk Dirty to Me” by Poison. “I haven’t received any texts.”
She laughed a devious little laugh and passed me on her way to the register. “Maybe you should check your phone.”
Shit, for real? No, she was being a goof. I wiped my hands on the towel over my shoulder and then dug out my phone. She’d probably texted something silly.
I was kinda right, but I grinned nonetheless.
So…hi. Do you come here a lot?
“That’s gotta be a good text,” Tracy noted with a smirk. “You got a girl sexting you while you’re at work?”
I snorted. “Go make yourself useful and get me the zucchini fries for these patty melts, punk.”
“I thought we were bonding and shit!” he exclaimed. “Griffin’s a nicer boss.”
No, he definitely wasn’t.
“You only say that because you eye-fuck his ass,” I retorted. Then I frowned at him. “You never eye-fuck me. What’s wrong with you?”
He guffawed and walked out to the kitchen.
“I’m offended!” I hollered after him.
“Oh noes, how did he hurt you, Adam?” Alessia took over Tracy’s workstation for a minute to help me put together the next orders.
“He thinks Griffin’s hotter than me,” I said and shook my head. “Can you believe that shit?”
“Griffin is smoking hot.” Whoa, lady. What the hell? She only smirked at the evident outrage on my face. “But no.” She patted my arm and grabbed a full plate. “I can’t believe that.”
Well, okay. Now we were talking. That was better.
And I should respond to her text. This was fun, dammit. A man could pretend it was real.
After I’d prepared mozzarella sticks for the fryer, I retrieved my phone again and stepped a little closer to the proverbial line of what was appropriate and not.
I’ve been here once or twice. I come to check out this Italian chick. Know her?
I hoped that wasn’t too much.
* * *
We closed at eleven and spent the next hour cleaning and preparing for the next day. I made us some food at my workstation, the only one equipped to prepare everything in one place, and Tracy and Jon were the last to leave with their to-go boxes ten minutes past midnight.
I was exhausted but in high spirits, and I grabbed myself another beer from the fridge while Alessia cashed out from the register.
“We did well tonight.” She closed up and left the envelope for me to take to the bank tomorrow on the counter. “I think we’ll be able to afford our expansion this fall.”
That would be terrific. It irritated us to have this big space right above us and not use it. It helped that we owned the building, effectively minimizing the expenses, but we wouldn’t be able to reach the next level until we could seat more guests.
“This summer will help,” I said. In a couple months, we’d order furniture for our outdoor seating area.
The terrace was a small step. The big one would be finally adding that second floor to the restaurant. We already had the space right above us, but decorating it would cost us an arm and a leg. It would, however, also increase our profits by approximately thirty percent if we stayed this popular. Lastly, there was the two-story space walled off from the additional restaurant seating on the second floor and our home on the third. We’d left that area completely open. We hadn’t installed plumbing or any fixtures yet. Hopefully by next year, we’d host cooking classes there.. Which was what Tracy had in his sights.
“We should start thinking about staff for the summer.” Alessia accepted a takeout container and snatched up her notebook, and we sat down in the dining area. “We’ll need at least two more servers, and Jon needs help in the kitchen.”
I nodded and bit into my burger. “I talked to Will and Kelly the other day. Their boys are looking for something.”
“Brady and Matt?”
“Yeah.” Will, Kelly, my brothers, and I had all gone to high school together, and we were still close. We tried to meet up for guys’ night once a month.
Alessia took on a teasing expression. “So, you don’t want to hire the girl who came in last week looking for work?”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered around a mouthful of food. “She was one vocal fry short of being a Kardashian. I think I’m good.”
Alessia laughed.
Fuck, she was gorgeous. It hit me hard sometimes. I had to take a slow breath and ease through the tightness in my chest.
When she opened her notebook, it was time for more shop talk. This was a routine we went through a few times a week, one I didn’t wanna be without.
“I think I’ve narrowed down the decorations for Valentine’s week,” she announced.
“No balloons,” I stated.
“Of course not. Are we running a freaking Burger King?”
I grinned.
“No,” she said and jotted something down, “I was thinking we make another trip to Seattle
next week. I wanna get flowers from George and Magda. These—” she pointed to the little glass bowl on the table with two tealights in it “—will have rose petals in them. Peach and white.”
“Not red?”
She shook her head. “Too clichéd, and everyone jacks up the prices on red roses throughout February.”
Made sense. Smart thinking on Alessia’s part to go with something else. It would only be for one week, anyway.
“I’m also ordering new burger skewers,” she told me. “The ones we have now aren’t very lovey-dovey.”
There was nothing wrong with our skewers. “They’re black and have our logo. What, you wanna stick hearts on them?”
Her eyes flashed with wry amusement. “No. I was actually thinking they could have little messages. I’ve seen ones that are more like flags. So, for the breakfast dish, we do ‘Good morning, love.’ And for the lunch app, we’ll stick in one that says ‘Time for lunch, sweetie,’ or…”
“What you call me,” I said, immediately on board. I dug it. “‘Time for lunch, tesoro.’”
She smiled. “Okay. Then dinner…”
“‘Have dinner with me, darling.’”
Have dinner with me, Alessia.
“Oh, I like that.” She wrote it down. “For the dessert, we should go with baby. It’s sexier. Any suggestions?”
Sure. They were all related to Alessia, though. “Hmm.” I stuck some fries into my mouth and thought about it. “It’s the last dish before they hopefully go home together.”
She nodded slowly, on the same page as me. “‘Before we leave, baby.’”
“Perfect.” I smirked faintly. “Now you know what you can text me, because I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t respond to my last one. But the answer is yes, I will go home with you. In fact,” I added, ignoring the amusement in her eyes, “I’ll be your valentine that whole week.”
I wanted to say the week leading up to it too. I wanted to tell her to take that fucking guy’s name off the calendar on our fridge upstairs. Garrett. She was having lunch with him this Friday. Something she hadn’t talked about. The name had just appeared on the fridge this week, and it fucking sucked.
“That’s very generous of you, tesoro.” She put emphasis on the term of endearment and had a glint in her eye.
“I’m a generous guy.” I shrugged and wiped my mouth on a napkin. “Will there be any other lovey-dovey decorations that’ll make our restaurant look like a bubble-gum factory?”
My mirth had faded, maybe because now I was thinking about that motherfucker Garrett.
Alessia went back to business. “Not much. There will be some roses on the bar, and I’ll do a Valentine’s greeting on the chalkboard.” She nodded at the board on the brick wall between the door to the kitchen and the door leading to the stairs. “I think we’re set otherwise. Tomorrow I will submit an ad to the Courier, and you will work on the Valentine’s dinner.” She paused. “I guess we’re sort of running out of time. Everything has to be finalized on Thursday so we can upload the reservation schedule to the website. People are already making their plans for the holiday.”
Thursday would be fun. It wasn’t often we did a taste testing in our condo.
Huh. When was the last time I was away from the restaurant two days in a row? Wait. Why was I not working on Friday? My name wasn’t on the schedule; Griffin’s was, but I didn’t know why.
“Did you give me Friday off?” I asked.
She weighed her answer as both yes and no. “I figured you’d work upstairs since we’re bringing the food for Grady Night on Saturday.”
Oh, right. I’d almost forgotten about Saturday. I needed to check in with Jack to see if they were coming or not. They had to.
Seven
Alessia Rossi
“Who’s the cutest girl in the world? You are. Yes, you are.” I picked up the little one as she became fussy, and I cradled her head to my shoulder. “Don’t worry, bella bambina. You’ll get breakfast very soon.”
Isla was on the couch in their living room, feeding the baby girl’s brother. They’d all come home from the hospital this morning, and I’d been the first to offer to bring over bagels and beverages.
“If you could just whisper your name to me, that would be great,” I whispered against the girl’s soft skin. And God, her smell. Babies smelled like my ovaries were about to burst.
Isla chuckled softly. Tiredly. Poor girl, she was so exhausted already. “You’ll know their names on Saturday.”
Yes, yes, but that wasn’t soon enough.
Jack came down the stairs, looking quite tired too. “Hey, hon.” He mustered a smile and pressed a kiss to his daughter’s head on his way to Isla. “I changed the sheets. You ready to get some sleep, sweetheart? Alessia and I will watch the babies.”
“Beyond ready,” Isla murmured, “but I have one more to feed first.”
“Okay. I can burp him.” Jack gently picked up their boy, and I walked over to place the girl in Isla’s arms. Then I grabbed a towel off the table and handed it to Jack. No need to beg to be thrown up on, right?
He grinned slightly and spread the towel over his shoulder. “Thank you.”
Mommy and Daddy focused on their little ones for a while, so I took some pictures of them. They were all so beautiful together. Comfy clothes, exhaustion written all over, and yet, so much love and intimacy in their eyes. When Jack and Isla glanced at each other, no one could doubt their devotion. It tightened my stomach with sadness—for selfish reasons.
There was no more wistfulness or longing. I was giving up. I’d bailed on Garrett twice already, so I was going to meet up with him early on Friday, explain myself because he deserved that, and then I was throwing in the towel.
I hoped I would change my mind; I was only thirty-one, after all, but right now, I couldn’t see it. Adam meant too much to me. He was the only one my heart gravitated toward. It was him or no one.
The way he treated me when my cramps took over… I’d never really asked him to do that. He’d noticed early on that I suffered. My period only lasted two or three days, but the cramps came straight from hell. And he just knew. Three days every month, he was more attentive than any boyfriend had been throughout our entire relationship.
For God’s sake, Adam had canceled on dates when I felt like ripping out my uterus.
Fuck. The babies were supposed to cheer me up this morning. Because yesterday had been too much. Pretending to flirt with Adam…? Torture. He was too great at it.
“Can I hold a baby, please?” I asked hopefully.
Jack smiled uncertainly. “I mean, you can, but he hasn’t burped yet.”
“Oh, that’s fine. Gimme. Come to Zia Alessia, topolino.”
“And then maybe the love of my life can leave the room?” Isla batted her lashes at Jack. “I’m this close to convincing Alessia to wear something revealing to work tonight.”
I cleared my throat and looked away from Jack. Isla had already convinced me to buy those ridiculously short PJ bottoms, so I wouldn’t put anything past her at this point. Maybe she was more stubborn than I was.
Or maybe I was just desperate.
* * *
Oh God.
Definitely desperate.
Bordering on I-wouldn’t-let-my-staff-wear-this.
I blew out a nervous breath and adjusted my boobs in front of my bathroom mirror. Isla was a demon. She’d made it sound so reasonable. “Rip off the top two buttons so you can’t change your mind. That’s what we do when we’re standing on a precipice. We take a few steps back and get too scared, and then we live with regrets.”
I couldn’t button up, dammit. I’d removed the top two buttons.
The black vest was an additional problem because it was low-cut and only pushed my breasts together. I had a solid three-inch cleavage.
“You almost done, love?” Adam called. “Tracy and the others are waiting downstairs.”
“I’ll be right there!” I hollered, on the verge of panic.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh God. Okay, I wasn’t doing the lipstick tonight. It would be over the top. I went with a pale lip balm instead.
I tried to pinch shut my snug button-down, to no avail.
I couldn’t have my hair down either, because I was working the floor tonight.
After tightening my ponytail and fixing my side bangs, I had no choice but to face my doom.
Holy shit, I’d never shown this much cleavage before. It wasn’t inappropriate per se, even for work, but it was a lot for me.
Here goes everything.
At the very least, I wanted him to see me as a woman, not the awkward girl his family had sort of adopted.
It was best to be all business about it, so I merely walked out of my bathroom, snatched up my watch on the dresser in my room, and joined Adam in the living room.
I avoided his gaze entirely as I attached my watch.
“Okay, let’s go.” I went straight for the door and tried to calm down my pounding heart.
“Uh…yeah. Sure.” He followed me out, and I locked up.
I didn’t want to stand still in an elevator for even a second, so I took the stairs. Not all that uncommon anyway. It wasn’t the fastest elevator.
“Are we gonna talk about this?” he asked behind me.
“Talk about what?” I took the next set of stairs, my heels clicking too loudly.
“Oh, I don’t know. The fact that you look like you just walked out of the Playboy magazine I hid under my bed when I was a kid?”
I stopped short and whirled around in complete shock, and he almost walked into me.
“What?” I choked out. Had I misheard him? “Are you serious?”
He took the last step so we both stood on the landing between the two flights of stairs. “No. I think it was a Hustler.”
I swallowed audibly, and my ears began ringing. There was amusement in his handsome eyes, and it was mingling with something darker. I didn’t know if he was fucking with me. Regardless, I was undoubtedly overanalyzing.
Adam was a blunt guy, and if he found me attractive in the slightest, I was going to take it as a win. It didn’t mean anything beyond that.
