Actually, that was a tempting idea.
Mack rounded the table and stood next to Liv. He slung an arm around her shoulders and—
The tray wobbled in her hands. She tried to correct, tried to steady it with her other hand, but her reflexes were too late.
Time slowed to the blurry speed of a horror movie as the cupcake slid to the edge of the tray. It balanced there for a moment, teetered like a car in a movie that stops just in time before plunging over the edge of a cliff.
It was just long enough for her entire career to flash before her eyes. Long enough for her to imagine all the ways she was going to kill Braden Mack for this. Long enough for a single word to drag along the length of her tongue. “Fuuucck . . .”
Then gravity did its thing.
And the cupcake landed in Gretchen’s lap.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” Liv dropped to her knees next to Gretchen’s chair.
“It’s okay,” Gretchen told Liv. She held her hands aloft, fingers coated with frosting.
“This is my fault,” Mack said. “I knocked the tray out of her hands.”
“Olivia, go to the kitchen,” Royce barked. “We will have another one made for you.”
“That’s not necessary,” Gretchen said, lifting the cupcake from her chocolate-stained lap to her plate.
“Can I help clean it up?” Liv asked. “Please. Let me—”
Royce cut her off. “Obviously your entire meal is on us tonight.”
Liv groaned.
“And please allow me to cover the cost of cleaning your dress.”
“Truly, that’s not necessary,” Gretchen said. “This was an accident.”
“This is my fault,” Mack said again.
“My staff is trained to handle anything,” Royce said. “Clearly that failed tonight. We will make this right.”
“There’s nothing to make right,” Gretchen said smoothly. “Accidents happen.”
“We will send someone over to help clean up the mess immediately.”
“I’m so sorry,” Liv said once again to Gretchen.
“That will be all, Olivia.”
Liv turned another homicidal glare in Mack’s direction before retrieving her tray. Then she spun on her heel and quickstepped toward the kitchen without so much as a backward glance. Liv figured she had roughly a ninety-second head start on Royce. Maybe it would be enough time for him to calm down.
Liv headed straight for the employee locker room and tore off her hat. She sank onto a bench of front of her locker as Riya rushed in.
“What happened?” Riya asked, unbuttoning the chef’s coat Liv had given her.
“You’re not going to want to be around me.”
“Oh shit, why?”
“I dropped it!”
Riya winced. “Oh, Liv.”
The slamming of the swinging doors outside made them both jump. “OLIVIA.”
Liv braced herself. She stood tall as Royce stormed into the locker room. He shook from head to toe, and his face was as red as a lobster in a pot.
“You,” he said, pointing at Riya. “Out.”
Riya squeezed Liv’s arm in sympathy before leaving.
Royce wagged a finger in Liv’s face. “My office. Twenty minutes.”
Then he turned and stormed back out, shouting as he did, “Find me Jessica!”
Shitshitshit.
Mack had nearly followed Liv to apologize again, but then he remembered Gretchen. He turned around and found her wiping her hands on her napkin.
“Are you okay?” he asked, crouching down next to her chair.
“I had a cupcake dropped on me, Braden. I wasn’t shot.”
“No, but this isn’t how I wanted tonight to turn out.”
“I’m a little more worried about how this night is going to turn out for your friend Liv.”
“She’s not my friend.”
Gretchen responded to that with furrowed eyebrows. Mack rushed to clarify. “I mean, I barely know her. But yes, of course I hope she doesn’t get in trouble for this.”
Gretchen braced her hands on the arms of her chair and started to stand. “I’m going to run to the restroom to get cleaned up.”
“Right. Of course.” Mack stood and held out his hand to her to help her rise.
The extent of the damage to her dress became clear when she stepped away from the table. A dark-brown splotch marred the delicate green silk. He knew enough about fine fabrics to know the dress was a lost cause.
He shrugged out of his sport coat. “Do you want this to cover it up?”
She smiled but shook her head. “I think that would just make it a little more obvious.”
Mack watched her walk away and then sat back down. Great. Just fucking great. Things had been going perfectly until that moment.
Two busboys dressed all in black arrived with plastic tubs and wet rags. With quiet apologies for the mess, they began picking up the remnants of the cupcake from the floor and Gretchen’s chair.
Mack stepped out of their way and softly cleared his throat. “Do you, uh, do you know if the woman who made the cupcake—is she getting in trouble for this?”
The two young men shared a nervous glance and had an unspoken conversation. One of them shrugged then and shook his head. “We don’t know anything about that.”
When they left, Mack dropped a couple of twenties on the table. Just because they were getting their dinner for free didn’t mean the staff should be shafted their tips.
Gretchen returned to the table a few minutes later. A wet spot had replaced the chocolate frosting.
“Are you ready to go?” Mack asked. “I was thinking I could drive you home to change and—”
“Mack,” she said, calmly cutting him off. “How much did that cupcake cost?”
Ah shit. That was a loaded question if he’d ever heard one. “Why do you ask?”
“Because a woman in the bathroom told me the Sultan costs a thousand dollars. Is that true?”
Mack felt like he was about to enter a minefield. He tested the ground with the tip of his toe. “I wanted you to have the full Savoy experience.”
Gretchen started fanning her face as if she was going to pass out. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “You were going to spend a thousand dollars on a cupcake?”
“Everyone I’ve talked to said it’s worth it.”
“No cupcake is worth a thousand dollars!”
He cracked a smile and tried to ignore the glances of other diners. “I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t have to pay for it, then, right?”
Oops. He’d found a mine. Gretchen gathered her purse, and there was a finality to her movements that made him sweat.
He stood with her. “I’m sorry if it was too much. I just wanted everything to be perfect tonight.”
She shook her head. “I need to go.”
He trailed after her as she walked away from the table in the opposite direction. This time she was most definitely leaving.
“Gretchen, wait.” He caught up with her on the stairs. “Do you want to go home and change?”
She smiled but shook her head. “I think I’ll call an Uber.”
Mack marched ahead to open the door for her. Then he followed her outside. “Let me drive you home. I don’t want tonight to end like this.”
She turned around and placed a hand on his arm. “I’m going to be honest with you.”
Yikes. That didn’t sound good. It sounded like the sort of thing someone said before they dumped you. He wouldn’t know, though, because he’d never been dumped.
“I’ve had a lot of fun.”
“So have I.”
“But I feel like I don’t really know you very well,” she finished.
That threw him for a loop. He opened and closed his mouth twice before responding. “Me? No way. I’m Mack. I’m an open book.”
“You’re not, actually.”
“What do you want to know?”
Gretchen shrugged. “I mean, I know about your businesses, your cars, but I don’t know anything about you. We spend so much time talking about me, but when I ask anything about your life other than the surface stuff, you clam up.”
“No, I don’t. I just want to learn more about you.”
“You had more meaningful interaction with Liv in the five minutes she stood there with that cupcake than you and I have had in three months.”
He was busy processing that statement when she glanced down at her phone. “My driver is almost here.”
“I read romance novels,” he blurted.
Gretchen’s looked up. She blinked twice. “You . . . you read romance novels.”
“I do. I’m part of a book club with other men who all secretly read romance novels.”
“Um, okay.”
“You said you wanted to know something about me. That’s something.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “It certainly is. And it also explains a few things.”
“What do you mean?”
“The fancy dinners, the expensive wines, the nonstop flower deliveries.” She tucked her purse under her arm.
“What about them?”
“They’re perfect.”
“And perfect is bad?” Jesus, why was everyone so opposed to perfect all of a sudden?
“It is if it doesn’t mean anything.” She looked at the street in search of her car.
“Gretchen, wait. What makes you think they don’t mean anything?”
She turned. “Look, it all makes sense now. The sex was amazing, and I’ll be honest, it’s one of the reasons I stuck around. Because, wow, every time. I felt like you must have read a textbook on female pleasure.”
He did. Everything he knew about sex, about how to please a woman, he’d learned from reading. No one had ever complained before. He prided himself on making sure no woman ever left his arms unsatisfied. “How the hell is that bad?”