“Coming!” I shout back to him before refocusing on my manager. “Keep this,” I say, pressing the container into Lexi’s hand.
“No, you need it. I’ll get my own.” She tries to push it back toward me.
“Have mine,” I insist. “I’ve got more.”
Lying wasn’t considered a sin in my family.
I’ve got worse deeds to atone for when the time comes anyway.
Lexi is still stunned, standing and watching me with her fingers to her lips as I head back to the kitchen. Even as I pull my phone out of my pocket and place a quick order for three more tubes of lotion so I can make sure she doesn’t run out again.
TEN
LEXI
By the time doors are ready to close on our first day, no part of me isn’t hurting.
My feet feel like an elephant borrowed them for the day.
My back could use a two-hour bath followed by an all-night massage.
My hands…well they were burning a lot worse a few hours ago, but they still sting a touch. Subconsciously, my fingers run over the back of one hand, where I still feel the lotion that took away so much of the pain.
But my head? The only time it’s hurt all day is when I came face-to-face with my head chef and all I could feel was his hand down my pants last week.
The speed he can move on from mind-bending foreplay and act like everything is normal leaves me dizzy.
And that man is still on my shit list.
It doesn’t matter that today was a raging success by all metrics and then some, probably thanks to him.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, in the Heights can hold a grudge like Alexis Weiss.
Shit, I still hold half a grudge against my own sister for what she did, and look at all she’s done for me and how far we’ve come these past three years.
So when Wilder made himself my public enemy number one within seconds of meeting him (and wanting to jump his bones, the voice in my head reminds me unhelpfully), he declared war.
Two weeks of working in my kitchen and one good day of being open doesn’t change that. I just might need a little help remembering that fact, since I seem to think with what’s between my thighs instead of my ears when I’m alone with him.
I’m going to blame temporary insanity, the fact I haven’t been laid in three years, hormones, or even early onset menopause—does dementia run in the family?—for my weakness in giving in to him.
Twice.
Walking out to my car that first night with the uncomfortable mess between my thighs and my jeans practically squeaking on the way out washumiliating.
I can only thank whoever is looking out for me above that I didn’t run into the town’s most notorious gossips—Ernie, Old Mrs. Dixon, or honestly any of the other residents—on the way.
If it was my mom looking out for me, I’d like to think there was some sort of censor, and she didn’t actually see how low her firstborn has fallen.
The sharp pinch in my chest at the thought of her—not any duller, even after two and a half years of being without her—flares at the image of her face if she knew about my walk of shame.
She’d laugh, a chuckle that’s not quite under her breath, shake her head, and tell me what a mess I was, but that a good dicking might sort me out.
I would tell her that’s disgusting, and to never say the worddickaround me again.
If Rory were there, she would’ve dogpiled on, pausing in making fun of my moment of weakness to tag team with me and tell our mom how nasty it is to think of her using any form of the word penis.
Mom’s brown eyes would sparkle, because that’s what they did before the cancer set in so far it sapped all theherfrom her body.
