Deals like that are once in a lifetime.
Her lawyer brain ran with every angle of the offer, helping me look at all the ways it could go. The obvious conclusion wasnothingin the Heights could compete with numbers like those, even if a literal angel swooped in to save the restaurant. The compensation package I got offered was more than the projected total earnings from the café for the year.
Rory and I went through every option, and within days I’d sent my email to management that my last day as chef would be the day before the grand opening.
The calendar on the wall of our shared office upstairs with the big circle on the date reminds me the grand opening is just two days away now.
And aside from a near-immediate, lackluster email response saying congratulations, she hasn’t so much as acknowledged my choice. Certainly hasn’t asked me about it.
I’d almost think Lexi was avoiding me entirely, if she didn’t still come over to give herself over to the distraction of our bodies most nights. Like all that’s between us is physical.
It’s starting to piss me off.
I forget how to ease on the brakes and stop abruptly in front of my destination, parking the bike. My head tilts to one shoulder, then the other, cracking my neck in an effort to let some of this tension out of my system.
It doesn’t work.
Lexi didn’t come into the restaurant today either. She either doesn’t give a shit that I resigned, now that she’s losing the diner, or she feels it too deep to know what to do with all that emotion.
My bet’s on the latter, but by the end of the night she’ll tell me one way or the other.
Walking up to her door, I take in the full blooms of her garden, their aroma hanging heavy in the humid summer night air. Somewhere not far, a neighbor must be burning a bonfire, the scent warming my nose.
When I get to the top step of her stoop, my fist hammers on her wooden door, disrupting the peaceful song of the cicadas.
Lights flick on inside, and I hear her slow footsteps over the floorboards, then the flip of a deadbolt and the knob turning.
The door opens partway, revealing a sliver of her upper body to me, hidden by a loose tee, and way too much wood.
“Gonna let me in?” I practically growl into the opening.
Her bottom lip pops open with a soft noise I wanna hear close up. “I thought I was coming over later?”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t in the mood to wait.”
Eyes going round, she pulls the door back, covering herself with it but letting me in. When it closes behind me, I see why. She’s in nothing but that white tee I’m ninety percent sure is mine—the little klepto—and a pair of underwear. No woman has ever looked so good in so little.
Knowing she took that shirt from my place gets my dick to attention faster than if she were naked.
The deadbolt flips again behind me, and when I turn to face her, her eyes don’t meet mine. It’s like her floor is the one calling to her, not the current that still hums between us, even in her morose state.
But I’m not going to be ignored. Not tonight.
One thumb and finger find the bottom of her chin to tilt her gaze until she gives in to the pull and looks up.
“Hey,” I whisper.
“Hi,” she says, voice softer than I’m used to hearing it.
“That’s all I get?”
“Were you expecting a red carpet?”
“Wouldn’t say no to that red lipstick you wore that first night. Or you on your knees for me.”
That gets a small twitch of her lips, a little spark in her eye at the memory.
Taking my hand in her smaller, softer one, she turns and leads me toward the hallway where I used her bathroom that one time. My eyes soak in the details of her place as we go, in case this is the last time I see it.
