I grab my lunch from the fridge and join Luke Carlton and Austin Davenport at a table. Luke’s a general surgeon and Austin does plastics, and they’re two of my closest friends at the hospital.
I sit down and unzip my lunch bag, curious to see what Alexandra sent today. There’s a salad with chickpeas, avocado, corn and feta cheese. She’s also packed an apple, some roasted almonds, and a square of dark chocolate.
It looks a hell of a lot better than the cafeteria sandwich Austin’s eating. Luke’s got a homemade lunch too, spaghetti and meatballs in a thermos, and it looks pretty decent.
But my lunch looks better, and Luke and Austin are both staring at it with interest.
“Either you hired a personal chef, or you found a girlfriend,” Austin says.
“Nope,” I say with a smirk. I take a bite of the salad, which is seasoned with lime dressing. It’s delicious.
“So who made that?” Luke asks.
“My new assistant.”
“You got rid of Celine?” Austin asks.
“Of course not. Heather Larkin thought I needed a second assistant, so she hired me one.”
“To make you lunch?” Luke asks incredulously.
“No, to spy on me and pester me to come to meetings,” I reply. “But I agreed to let her stay in exchange for lunch preparation.”
“The salad looks decent,” Austin says with a chuckle. “Do you think she’d make lunch for me, too?”
“No,” I say firmly.
“I’d pay her, obviously,” Austin persists.
“No. Find your own assistant.” And maybe it comes out a little too quickly, because Austin and Luke look a lot more curious now.
“Is she cute?” Austin asks.
“She’s okay. Tall and skinny, with glasses.” It’s not exactly a lie, but it deliberately understates her appeal. Skinny’s thewrong word for Alexandra. She’s lithe and toned, and although her breasts aren’t big, they’re perfectly shaped.
Yes, I’ve noticed.
Oh, and those cat-eye glasses are sexy as hell. But obviously I’m not going to admit that to Austin and Luke.
“So does this assistant do anything besides lunch?” Luke asks.
“I put her in charge of my email.”
“Huh,” Austin says thoughtfully. “So if I want to hire her to cook for me, I can reach her through your email?”
“You can try,” I retort. “But I told her to delete any messages that no reasonable person would care about.”
Luke laughs, and Austin turns to him. “Do you think Melissa would make lunch for me?” he asks innocently. “Because your spaghetti looks pretty good, and?—”
“No,” Luke interrupts, scowling at Austin. “She absolutely would not.”
That was a predictable reaction. Austin dated Melissa a couple of times back in the fall, before she and Luke got together. This was before anyone knew that Melissa had been Luke’s high school girlfriend, and he still had a major thing for her. Luke was jealous as hell, and apparently he even crashed one of Austin and Melissa’s dates.
Austin still likes to tease him about it.
“How is Melissa?” I ask.
“She’s great,” Luke says. “I moved in with her a few weeks ago.”
