“Exactly! And then he gets all whiny, ‘Zee, this is basic kitchen literacy.’ Yeah, my bad, it’s not likeI’mthe one who went to culinary school!”
It was taking everything in Emily to suppress her laugh.
“I told him if he wants me to identify herbs, he can label them like museum exhibits. ‘This is cilantro. Native to the fridge. Often mistaken for parsley by overstimulated wives.’”
She nearly choked on her tea. “You’re ridiculous.”
Zariah huffed through the line. “No,he’sridiculous. If he wasn’t so hot, I’d have his head on a stake.”
Before she could respond, Emily’s phone died mid-conversation. She went in search of her charger but it was nowhere to be found. Maybe she’d left it in Talia’s car again.
She roamed the house for one.
That was how she ended up in Nicolas’s study.She’d opened mahogany doors to see walls that were walnut in color. At the center of the room was a massive desk. Behind it was a high-backed chair that looked like a throne.
Art pieces hung above, and a Greek figure sat in the corner. An extension outlet was also by a bookshelf. Aha! She bent, unplugging the charger that matched her phone’s port. While getting back up, her hand hit a stack of vinyls nearby.
She frantically picked them up.
Her fingers froze over the last cover,Chet Baker Sings. Was this the kind of music Nicolas liked?
Curiosity got the better of her despite the reminder that Zariah was probably texting like crazy because their talk ended abruptly.
She placed the record on the player anyway and music filled the room. It had a melody that sounded…sad, heartbreaking even.
The door suddenly creaked open.
Emily jumped.
Nicolas stood there. His gaze flashed from her to the player. Somehow, she felt like she’d infringed on his privacy.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to touch your?—”
“You picked a good one.”
He shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack to the side.
Her brows lifted.
“Chet Baker,” he explained. He rolled up his sleeves with one hand and leaned against the wall, his eyes fixed on the spinning record.
The tension in her shoulders left. “Didn’t peg you for a jazz guy.”
He looked up at her. “I should do a better job of making that known. Put a tagline on my business card under CEO stating,‘Jazz enthusiast.’Would that work?”
She blinked.
Was Nicolas...joking with her?
It was a horrible joke too, by the way.
“Why is he a good one?” She stuck with asking something safer. “I don’t know much about Jazz. I’m more of an alternative girl. Florence + The Machine, Arctic Monkeys, Mitski, maybe a little Radiohead.”
“I like a little Radiohead too,” he breathed, making her heart stutter.Holy shit. He never sounded like that before. “But Baker’s songs and jazz in general have a certain transparency. What you hear is what you get.”
His eyes imprisoned hers. “I appreciate when things are exactly what they promise to be, no pretense.”
It was rare for him to speak like this. With such…feeling. The most emotion she’d heard from him was eight years ago. She wasn’t sure if it was the music or his long day at work that made him delirious. Either way, she also felt affected by the change in the atmosphere.
