The valet brings the car to a stop in front of us and hands Tony the keys.
“Oh honey,” he says as he tips the valet and we get inside. “We can draw up budgets and business plans all day long once they’re ready to talk logistics. For now we just needed to give them something to whet their appetites, something to believe in—and you are somebody to believe in.”
I nod, completely unconvinced, as he starts driving.
“Well you are somebody who can make people believe anything—what was all that about me giving Cole a ‘few ideas’?”
“Just a little creative embellishment. These investors expect a bit of that.”
I nod and grip the door handle as Tony speeds up and starts passing other cars.
“Oh. That makes sense. At first I thought you’d heard a rumor or something,” I say.
Tony looks at me, deadpan, and I experience the extreme fear that is becoming familiar as his passenger.
“What do you mean?” he says, all curious now at the prospect of gossip. “You really did give him ideas? You’ve been there what, two weeks? Damn, girl. Workin’ it.”
More for the sake of getting Tony’s eyes back on the road, I say, “He maybe, sorta-kinda, might have put one of my dishes on his menu. Just as a trial run.”
“No shit! That’s incredible.”
“I dunno. It just kinda happened after we got talking.”
Tony shakes his head.
“The things a man will do to get a pretty young thing on his side…”
“It’s not like that. I mean…we keep having our run-ins, I guess, but…I don’t know. I don’t want to get into anything with him. He’s still my boss.”
“Not for long,” Tony says, gleefully. “Not if we get what we want.”
Tony drops me off outside Knife, still buzzing with excitement as he tells me not to ‘get too comfortable’ there. Already a couple minutes late, I rush through the delivery entrance as I pull my whites from my duffel bag, heading straight for the women’s bathroom to get changed and hoping nobody sees me scurrying in.
“Hey. Willow.”
Fat chance at sneaking in undetected. The unmistakably commanding voice comes from the back office, and I rewind a few steps to peek inside. There he is, shirtsleeves pulled up to reveal those muscular forearms, shifting a crate of salt so that his muscles are pumped and squeezing, hair mussed perfectly like only a man who works with his hands can get it.
“Hey,” I say meekly, putting mountains of effort into sounding as effortless as possible. “I know I’m a little late, but I’ll make it up out of my break.”
“Come on in. Let’s have a word,” Cole says, dumping the crate and sweeping another to the side with his foot.
I look back at the end of the hallway anxiously, as if I even have the option of saying no, then step inside the office.
Guilt isn’t a feeling I enjoy—I guess that’s why I always try to do the right thing. It’s like a bad meal, sitting in your stomach heavily like an illness, impossible to digest, difficult to purge. Its aftertaste lasts a hell of a long time.
During the next few seconds, as Cole leans back on the table, scanning my outfit from the meeting earlier—cigarette pants with a crisp white blouse and tailored blazer—my mind works overtime coming up with excuses. For my lateness, for the fact that I’m hoping to start my own place, for the undeniable truth that the girl who slammed him up against the wall of a nightclub and wrapped her tongue around his cock last night was actually me, and that despite all my reservations there’s nothing in the world I’d like more than to do it again.
“You look amazing,” he says, once he’s done taking in my outfit. “Special occasion this morning?”
“Uh…no,” I mumble, effecting a feeling of coyness at the compliment. “I just did a little shopping. This is L.A., you know?”
Cole smiles at me.
“City finally getting its claws into you, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“I like it,” he says, leaving a silence afterward that feels like he’s holding back.
“Look,” I say, unable to bear the silence, the way he looks at me. “About last night…uh, I haven’t had that much to drink in a while, and it’s been so long since I went out. I guess I got kind of carried away…”
“I thought you said you weren’t drinking last night?” he asks, his brow furrowed.
Shit. Caught in a lie by my hot-as-fuck boss, minutes before starting a shift I’m already late for because I was at an investor meeting for a restaurant I’m trying to open behind his back. Batting a thousand, Willow. “Right. Well. Anyway, I’m really sorry about everything. Do you mind if we just…like, forget about it? I didn’t really think it all through, and I’d like things to remain professional between us. It’d be the best thing, I think.”
Cole seems to consider it for a moment, though he keeps that enigmatic smile on his face, so I have no idea what he’s actually thinking. Does he buy that I’m not interested?
“If that’s what you’d prefer. Though I’d rather not forget about it,” he says.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I wanna take you out. For real. You. Me. A date.”
I laugh nervously, push hair behind my ear three times in a second.
“What about the last time we went out?”
“That wasn’t a date. That was formal. Business,” Cole says, waving it away.
“Well if that’s how all your formal meetings end, I can only wonder how a date would.” Now that I’ve said it, the array of images flashing through my mind are more than enough to send my pulse racing.
“Yeah,” Cole says, stepping toward me, his voice lowering, “I wonder too.”
I look up at him, half of me debating whether I should run out the door, while the other half of me fights the urge to tear off his shirt and pull him onto the crates on top of me. Instead, I settle for looking awkward and uncertain.
“I know it’s a bit much to take in,” he says, “me being your boss, you being new to L.A. You probably still think I’m like the guy on TV.”
“And the magazines.”
Cole squints a little. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you have a reputation. When it comes to women.”
He laughs. “Even more reason to let me prove you wrong.”
Suddenly Leo’s voice comes through the door, shouting to Cole before he pops his bald head in the doorway.
“Boss! Boss! She’s late again! This is getting—shit! There you are. The hell are you doing still undressed? We’re fifteen minutes into a shift and you haven’t prepped anything. We’ve already got an order of Basque and no garlic sauce!”
“Control yourself, Leo,” Cole says, switching into boss mode easily. “You think anyone takes you seriously when you shout like that? Willow and I are in the middle of a meeting right now, so get back to work and leave my employees to me.”
Leo glances from me to Cole, seeming to consider the bad idea of saying something else, before wisely shaking his head and disappearing.
“I’d better go,” I say, pulling my duffel up on my shoulder and turning for the door. I look back before leaving though. “Um. I have Monday off—are you free then? We could do something, if you want.”
Cole smiles, licking his lips like he just tasted something great.
“You like the beach?”
I grin. “It’s one of the main reasons I came to L.A. But I haven’t really had a chance to go yet.”
“Perfect,” he says. “It’s a date.”
11
Cole
Time seems to slow until Monday. Every business meeting twice as long, every minute spent in cars and planes twice as boring. My problem used to be thinking about work when I should be having fun, now my problem is thinking about Willow when I should be working.
Her smell, her taste, her smile. The passionate way she talks about her ideas, her stubborn refusal to kiss my ass, the impression she gives of being an unlit firework of talent about to explode over L.A.