"My brothers are animals. They won’t care."
"Are you an animal?" she whispered. "I see how you're looking at me as I use the tongs, watching me like a starving man, parched in the desert." Penny took out another mound of pasta. She swirled it then reached for another serving. "Like you could just ravish anything that crossed your path."
My pants are not getting tight. I am in control of my own person.
"I'm not thinking about you in that way. You work for me," I snarled at her.
The tongs dropped with a clang, and Penny jumped slightly. "I just meant that you seem like a man who’s tired of eating crappy bachelor food and wanted some good home cooking, not… the other thing," she said, groping for a towel.
"I amverysorry." I set the pot down with a clank. "I would never think of you in that way, ever."
"I was just joking!" she said then looked down at her feet. She looked back up, defiant. "But glad to know you wouldn’t even think of me that way. Sure does make a girl feel special."
She turned to pull the bread out of the oven, and I rubbed my jaw in frustration then carried the pans out to the dining room.
Archer showed up as we sat down to eat.
"Typical," I said.
"Why are you so angry? I cook on my nights!" he exclaimed.
"No, you don’t—Hazel cooks," I scoffed.
"I just made sandwiches," Hazel said. Archer's fiancé was covered in flour.
Though I didn’t act it, I was glad they had showed up. There was tension between Penny and me, and I was reeling from our exchange. It had forced me to confront feelings I was trying to bury that needed tostay buried. Penny was my employee for fuck’s sake.
21
Penny
"Imade cake," I announced cheerfully after dinner. Internally, I was still kicking myself for half flirting with Garrett. I should have just doubled down. Instead, I had acted like some scared, hurt teenager when the hunky football player said she was too weird like in that movie, what was it called? Oh wait, yeah, it wasn’t a movie. It was my life in high school.
"It's caramel-apple cheesecake." I looked at all of Garrett's brothers then back down at the cake that was missing a few slices already. "I don’t know if there’s enough to go around…"
"They don’t need all that sugar anyway," Garrett said. The faint traces of humor were gone from his face. He didn’t seem fully present.
Was he angry with me? I’d thought we had developed some sort of a rapport. I probably shouldn't have teased him in front of his brothers. Now I would lose my temp job and any hope of getting paid for the article. Maybe when the twins sold Mimi’s house, I could secretly live in the attic and sneak down to bake or steal food in the middle of the night from the new owners.
I wanted nothing more than to cut a huge slice of the cheesecake and huddle under a nest of blankets on my bed.
Hazel handed me a cake cutter. "I've been trying to cajole Platinum Provisions into making a cake server that doesn’t suck and crush the cake or leave half of it behind. This is what they sent me."
I tried it. "They may need to do a little more work," I said diplomatically. Hazel snickered. Between the two of us, we parceled the cheesecake into two dozen slices. I tentatively handed a dessert plate to Garrett.
"No thank you," he said, his attention not wavering from making sure his brothers weren't eating with their hands.
"I’ll take his," Archer said, plucking it out of my hand and taking a huge bite. "That’s amazing!"
"I don’t see how you can taste it," Mace said. "You just shoved the whole piece into your mouth."
"I guess I’ll be going. I still have to prep for Sebastian—he’s coming on Monday," I said super casually, trying not to make puppy-dog eyes at Garrett.Have some self-respect, Penny.I straightened my shoulders.
"Do you need to take any food to Ticia and Lilly?" Hazel asked.
"I think they have some rats they’re going to suck the blood out of," I said dryly. "Also, I think they might curse you for a thousand years if you call them by those nicknames."
Hazel laughed. "They’re so funny!"
