She quickly boxed those up and set them on the top of the case. “Anything else?”
“Recommendations for someone who’s had a rough week?”
She cocked her head, studying me. “Allergies?”
My eyes widened. “I don’t know.” I shook my head when it hit me. I did know her. Everything about her. What made her tick. Made her squirm. Her favorite tea. What made her scream. And on Millie’s days she always went for the ham and Swiss croissant with the pear-turn over. It had been weird when she started handling the orders a few weeks ago, the order had changed. No one liked pear, or so I’d thought, but when I handed it to her, I’d told her to order whatever she’d liked, and that had been the adjustment.
“Ham and cheese croissant, warmed, pear turnover the same, and a green tea, hot.”
“I’ll have that out in a minute, Mr. Reid.” She flashed me a smile. I forgot the different attention I got when I wasn’t in a suit. While I still looked nice, the dark blue dress shirt worn untucked from my dark blue jeans pulled together with my brown leather boots, seemed to put people at ease that the custom suits did not.
I wiped my sweaty palm on my jeans, wondering when I started getting nervous around this simple boring girl. But I knew first hand how not simple and not borrowing she was.
Millie returned a moment later with two bags. “This one is for Ollie. Tell him I said hi.” She winked. “This is the rest of the order. Don’t put them together.”
I chuckled. Wouldn’t want to heat up the one or cool down the other. “Got it.”
I pulled my billfold out and handed her a hundred-dollar bill before taking the bags.
“Let me get your change.”
Shaking my head, I said, “Keep it.”
She lit up, thanked me, and went on to help the next customer. I wasn’t the complete hard-ass people thought I was. I just didn’t like people.
When I reached the car, I placed Oliver’s bag on the front seat and handed him a post it note with an address on it.
He nodded, and I slipped into the back seat. Ten minutes later, we pulled up to Mira’s apartment building.
“Can I text you when I’m done here? It might be five minutes or I’m not sure.”
He raised his brow, but didn’t question. He’d seen some things in his years that he’d been working with us, especially with Victor.
“Will do, Sir.”
I grabbed the bag and headed to do something I wasn’t sure I’d ever done before—ask a girl out—again.
When she answered the door everything in me screamed to pull her to my arms, pick her up, and take her to the safety of my house. I didn't know what was wrong but something wasn't right.
She rubbed her eyes. "You're going to have to get your own coffee this morning." She huffed and started to push the door closed.
I put my foot in the doorway so that she couldn't close the door, and she growled.
"What the hell do you want?" She bit out as she stepped back, obviously too tired to fight me.
"Mira, what's wrong?" I glanced around the apartment and knew this wasn't how she kept things. Since I’d been keeping tabs on her, I’d noticed that nothing on her desk was ever out ofplace—ever. But here, her laptop sat in the middle of the coffee table, empty coffee cups and take out containers on the floor because papers littered the rest of the table.
It was a disaster here. The dark circles under her eyes told me that she hadn’t slept. So she had lied to me when we ended our phone call last night when she said she was headed to bed. From the state of her living room it looked like she had worked well into the morning hours.
"What have you been working on?" I asked her.
"Whatever everybody else has been working on, the same as you."
"We all do that enough at work. Why are you bringing it home?" It was one thing for my workers to stay late but I didn’t want them to take it home. They needed a balance, whether I had one or not.
“Like you and Mr. Cross and Mr. Hale don't take your work home with you.”
“Don't make me spend the morning explaining to you why that is different.”
