“No, no, thankyou. Finn and I are still raving about the cake that Josie brought home the other day,” he said, looking hopefully around the kitchen. “I don’t suppose you brought any more with you today?”
Josie gave his arm a good poke as she walked to her seat. “He’s not your personal pastry mule. Besides, any baking he does over the next week is either for his first official job or for website pictures. Ideally both.”
His first official job. What a marvelous thought.
“So we need a photographer,” Josie said as she reached for the carton of garlic chicken. “Finnigan, who’s that guy you used for the product brochure you put together last year?”
“He moved back to New York, I think.” Finn paused with an egg roll halfway to her mouth. “You could always call—”
“Absolutely not,” Josie snapped, and for the first time since Erik had met her, she didn’t have a follow-up comment. No jokes, no smart retorts, no random remarks. Only a harsh expression that didn’t sit easily on her usually sunny features.
Finn raised her hands in surrender before picking up her fork again. “It was just a suggestion. You don’t have to do it.”
That brought the fight back into Josie’s face. “As if anybody makes me do anything I don’t want to do. Poor Erik’s just now learning that.”
She jerked her head in his direction, and his answering grimace prompted laughter around the table. He turned his attention back to the plate, uncharacteristically pleased to be part of a group.
Ten
Josie staggered down the sidewalk and tried to count her blessings.
One: early May in Chicago was only a little humid, which meant her hair was only a little frizzy.
Two: Byron was feeling better every day and wanted to participate in wedding prep by hand-embossing the wedding programs that had been sitting in his apartment for a month.
Three: the box she was hauling to the post office could be filled with lead weights instead of the aforementioned wedding programs and embosser, which were onlyslightlyless heavy than actual lead weights would be.
Four: she was in her third-most comfortable high heels for this mad trot to the post office.
Five: her mom still hadn’t called her back.
Wait. That last one wasn’t a blessing. Or was it? She pondered the question as she entered the post office and took her place at the back of the line of the damned, resting the cumbersome box on her hip and trying to stay balanced as she inched forward.
A blessing. Mostly. And that led her to the final item on her list.
Six: she’d get to see Erik in four days.
It had been close to a week and a half since he’d stayed for dinner and charmed Finn and Tom with his “aww shucks, who, me?” quiet broody guy act. Since then he’d gotten to work on baking and brainstorming items for the website, taking a break to text her work-in-progress photos and wedding-planner suggestions. She… liked it. Liked him. Which was surprising since she usually hung with witty young urbanites who knew all the hot new bars in town and regularly turned a three-minute anecdote into a thirty-minute epic tale.
But the thought of seeing the shy, salty-sweet Erik at Saturday’s grand-opening bash for the new Fielder Shoe store got her blood pumping. Not only could she get some shots of his goodies for the website, but she’d get to seehisgoodies. If she could convince him to let her slap photos of his strong brow, sharp eyes, and broad shoulders prominently on the website, he’d generate amazing buzz. Just her luck she got stuck with a client who was equal parts hot and humble.
Got stuck with. Ha. Like she hadn’t bullied him every step of the way. Good thing he loved it though. Okay, not love, exactly, but she was starting to think that part of him craved it. He needed somebody to force him to take this opportunity, and she needed someone to build into a towering success. Win, win. Now if she could talk him into taking his hair down for the website photos…
Nope.Hair-down Erik was certainly not appropriate standing-in-line daydream material, particularly not when the air-conditioning in this ancient government building already wasn’t up to the task of cooling down the mass of humanity surrounding her. Her loins would generate a mini-heatwave from which no one in the vicinity would recover if she thought too long about that tousled hair skating along his cheeks to kiss the tops of his shoulders.
The buzzing of her phone startled her out of the dirty fantasy that was starting to formulate in her mind, and she blushed to see a text from the man himself. Thank God he wasn’t a mind reader. Before she could juggle the box to text a “Call you in a sec” reply, the next available clerk summoned her forward, and she dropped her burden on the counter with a huge exhale.
“Wow, what do we have here?” the clerk chirped, her purple acrylic nails sliding across the box surface.
“The intestines of my enemies.”
The younger woman snatched her hands away, and Josie rushed to erase the horrified look on her face. “Ha! Um, no, just some wedding stuff. For my friend who’s getting married.” She added the last bit because the clerk looked ready to offer congratulations. She’d already had to correct Lily at the flower shop; was she really expected to wander the whole of Chicago, announcing her single status to every person she met?
Her joke was rewarded with a suspicious round of “Anything liquid, fragile, or perishable?” before she was able to swipe her credit card and escape government-office purgatory. Her phone buzzed again when she hit the sidewalk, and she answered without looking.
“You’re calling me for a change, Man Bun? I’m touched.”
“Josephine.”
