“Meatball parm.” She pulled a sub out of the bag and set it on the desk in front of me.
The delicious scent would’ve knocked me off my feet if I hadn’t already been sitting. “How—”Dumb question.
“Max ordered lunch for us,” she said, and quickly added, almost as though she’d been instructed to say it, “Since we’re doing your orientation, he wanted to provide lunch.”
He wanted to make it look more official so I wouldn’t see it for what it was: Max taking care of me. But I let it slide because I had a feeling I knew how I was going to pay him back.
“Well, it smells delicious.” My stomach rumbled in agreement as I took the sandwich and started to peel off the paper.
“Usually we do something from the deli a few doors down, but Max insisted we order from this Italian restaurant like an hour north of here.”
“Ferrulli’s?”
Erica nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. Have you had it before?”
“It’s a favorite of mine.”Another one.
Back when Todd worked with Max, they did a lot of boots-on-the-ground marketing for the start-up and a lot of working dinners with investors. Todd always invited me, but if I had to stay back to study, he’d send one of these sandwiches to my apartment. But that was a long time ago. He hadn’t done that since he’d left MaineStems. He hadn’t done a lot of things like he used to before leaving MaineStems.
“Wow, that is…obscenely excellent.” Erica’s dramatized groan of enjoyment broke my derailing thoughts.
“An excellent exception?” I lifted a brow. Max could justify buying lunch, but could he justify ordering it all the way from Ferrulli’s?
“Whatever it is, if you’re the reason for it, then I’m going to need you to never give Max that apartment back.”
I froze. “Back?”
Erica made a bunch of unintelligible sounds before waving her hand like she didn’t mean it the way I took it. “Back to the empty space that didn’t bring these meatball sandwiches.”
I believed her even though I had the feeling I knew better.
Chapter 9
Daisy
Max
Can I come up?
I stood from the couch and scanned the apartment, forgetting for a moment that it was his apartment, along with almost everything in it.
Of course.
I winced as my response went through.Of coursemade it sound like he was welcome to just enter at whim. Like it didn’t matter if I was in the shower or walking around without clothes on.
For a second, I lingered in the thought, wondering just what Max would do if he walked in on me naked. Would he be the gentleman?Would he…not be?
“Hello?” he called from the stairwell.
“Yeah. Hi.” I set my phone on the coffee table and began to tidy all the MaineStems catalogs I’d brought up with me at the end of the day. I wanted to familiarize myself with their currentarrangements and pick out which flowers I would need from each to create a complementary perfume.
“I wasn’t thinking…expecting to see you again today,” I said when I heard him enter the apartment, my hands moving to close the binders I’d stacked open one on top of another.
“I just wanted to check in after your first day,” he grunted.
“Do you do that for all your employees?” I asked, grateful that I wasn’t looking at him because I might not have had the courage otherwise.
His steps approached me slowly, inversely to the increasing beat of my heart. “Workday is over, Daze. I’m checking on a friend.”
