ME:SOS. Can we speak before you go to work?
Kate calls back just as Leo emerges into the lounge downstairs looking sleepy and delicious in nothing but a pair of gray boxers.
“Hi, give me a minute while I go upstairs,” I whisper to Kate.
As I pass Leo, he reaches out a hand to pull me in, but I dance around it, smiling at him.
“I just have to take this,” I say.
Leo frowns. “Don’t freak out,” he pleads.
I stop, turn, and kiss him, hard. “I won’t,” I say.
I rush upstairs, closing the door behind me, and make sure the door to the bathroom is secure before I fall onto my bed, lying on my stomach with my head in one hand.
“Don’t freak out?” Kate says, having heard the exchange.
“We did it,” I say breathlessly.
“What are you,sixteen? Youdid it?” Kate says, shutting the door to her office. I am suddenly wishing I called Ginny, but I know I need the hard talk right now. And the hard talk only comes from Kate.
“I gave in to temptation.”
“I’m not a priest, honey,” Kate says, laughing. “Sounds like the ship of good intentions has sailed.”
“It sailed multiple wonderful times.”
“Well,that’simpressive,” she says. “Sounds like quite the sailor.”
“He certainly knows his way around the stern,” I say, the hairs on my arms standing up as I hazily recall him kissing his way up the backs of my thighs.
“You’ve lost me. What end is the stern?” Kate says, laughing.
“Kate. I love his ideas for the restaurant,” I say, my voice serious.
“I see,” she replies.
“And I just had the best shag of my life,” I say, holding a hand to my heart. “And I like him, Kate. I’m not just attracted to him.I likehim. I like Leo. He’s sexy and funny and kind and playful. He works really fucking hard. He’s loyal as hell. He loves his family.”
“Oh shit,” she says.
“I’m freaking out, Kate. Freaking out,” I say. “I have started imagining the two of us working together and it feels exciting, like spring-out-of-bed-at-five-a.m. exciting...”
“The bed you’d likely share with him,” Kate reminds me.
“Exactly. Itterrifiesme.”
“Okay, that’s alittledramatic,” Kate says. “If you did end up together and try to work on a business together, you wouldn’t be the first couple in the world to do that.”
“Leo said that,” I point out.
“Tight contracts, clear objectives. You can legal paperwork the hell out of it in case it all turns to shit.”
“I keep thinking... am I gonna end up like my mum?” “What do you mean?”
“She started out all in love and excited about working with this man, herhusband,” I say. “And then she ended up miserable. And forgotten. And sidelined. Would that be my future?”
“You can’t tar Leo with your dad’s pastry brush,” says Kate. “Besides, you’d own the restaurant, Olive. If anything, Leo is the one in danger of being sidelined.”
