I jog to catch up, her quick steps leading her away faster than I would expect. Her short legs eat up the ground, and I reach her as she opens the door and enters the fridge. “So... does this mean you’ll help?” Without answering, she pulls bins from the shelves on either side of us and piles them in my arms. When she’s loaded me up to my neck, she grabs her own stack of bins and guides me from the fridge.
“I will help. It’ll cost you, though.” She places her load on a stainless steel table and gestures for me to do the same. “There will be a surcharge for the rush job. I don’t like sending out a catering order on such short notice.” She pulls a stack of giant pots out from the lower shelf of the table and brings them to the sink. She turns on the tap and lets the water run into the first pot before facing me again. “Will you need help for the rest of the week? Because if you are, I can make up a menu and go to the wholesale store tomorrow morning for ingredients. If you want, I can break my personal rules and give you more than just pizza, wings, and pastas. Just don’t tell the rest of the town. The less they know about my talents, the better. I run a pizza shop, not a full-blown restaurant. I’m not looking for Michelin stars here.”
“How mad would you be if I said yes?” Coming here today was a last-minute stroke of genius, but I wasn’t planning to impose on Tina for more than one night. Once I had tonight’s dinner squared away, I was going to call around to other restaurants in the area and see what they could do for me. But,if Tina is offering... “I will love you forever if you can help me for the rest of the week.”
A pink flush creeps onto her cheeks, and her gaze dips away as she switches the pots in the sink. Interesting. I’ll add that to my list of things to investigate another day.
“I’ll need dinner for the next five nights after tonight. Can you do them? Or some of them? I will take whatever you can give me. Honestly, I’m so grateful that you’ve agreed to help me tonight that expecting anything more from you seems wrong somehow.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that.” She laughs. “Your bill will more than make up for any inconvenience.”
My head bobs rapidly. “Yes, yes. Absolutely. Whatever amount you think is fair. You’re saving my ass by doing this.” And I mean it. I should implement some sort of system to help me remember this kind of stuff, like writing it down or something. Which, if I’d listened to Rhett, I would have done when we first thought up the retreat. Don’t tell him that, though. He’s enough of a pain in the ass without telling him he was right all along. “What do you think? A thousand for each meal? Two?”
Tina chokes out a surprised, “Two thousand? Oh yeah, I think I can make something happen for that kind of money.”
“Thank you so much, Tina.” I breathe a relieved sigh. “You have no idea what this means to me. I’ll pay you whatever you ask, but I still owe you one.”
She waves me off, tightening the waist straps on her apron, calling attention to the delicious curves above and below her little waist. Curves that my hands are itching to squeeze.I need to get out of here before my dick suffers irreversible damage.I don’t wear jeans often, and I may never do so again after today. I think the zipper imprint on my dick is permanent.
“Never mind that. Paying me is more than enough. Give me a couple of hours to get everything ready, then you can come pick it up. Sound good?”
“That’s perfect. Thank you, thank you. You’re my hero.”
She fights to hide a grin, but her eyes betray her laughter. “Yeah, yeah. How about you get out of my kitchen and let me work?”
“Of course. I’ll get out of your hair. See you in a couple of hours.”
She nods, her attention already on the pots in the sink. As I turn to leave, she lifts a full pot to the stove, without so much as a grunt at the weight. The muscles in her arms even pop a little, a testament to how heavy the big stock pot actually is. She wasn’t kidding about the strength in her arms.
I’m still not sure if she was serious with all that talk of butchering hogs and cleaning up blood, though. But damn, do I ever want to find out.
It Really Is All In The Hips
Tina
“Wings and Pizza. Thisis Tina. What can I get for you?”
“Tina? Hey. It’s Nick. D’Onofrio. From earlier?”
He thinks I forgot who is already? That’s so adorable I have to scrub the grin from my face with a hand before I can answer. “Hi, Nick. Good timing. I’m bagging up the last of your order now. Everything is ready for you to pick up.”
I hope these trainers Nick’s feeding are ready for some carb loading. With Nick coming to me at the last minute, all I had available in my kitchen were the ingredients I normally have on hand. I pulled off lasagna and salad with garlic bread for tonight, but after I go to the wholesale store tomorrow, I’ll be able to provide more variety. I don’t know exactlywhat training at Nick’s gym would entail, but no matter what it is, I’m sure it’s harder with a belly full of noodles and cheese.
“About that. My manager had to take the sixteen-year-old kid who’s staying with me to the hospital. Seems his girlfriend broke up with him over text because he’s here in training camp for a few more months and he tried to drown his sorrow in the bottom of a bottle of tequila.”
My stomach drops at the thought of some sixteen-year-old boy, alone, away from home, drinking himself into a stupor. Poor kid. And Hawkthorne County General is in Spitz Hollow, so not even in the same town as his home away from home. That has to be scary. “Oh, shit. Is he okay?”
“I sure as shit hope so, or his caseworker will have my nuts in a vise. Luckily he was still talking when we found him, instead of passed out and unresponsive. If he drank as much as we think he did, though, he’s in for a rough rest of the day. If we’re really lucky, they’ll monitor him and he won’t need to have his stomach pumped. It’s hard to say, though. It was a pretty big bottle. It didn’t look like he’d gotten sick yet, either, but better safe than sorry. Especially with a kid who isn’t mine.”
My stomach roils in sympathy. I’ve never had my stomach pumped, but I’ve heard some horror stories of alcohol poisoning. It’s not something I would wish on a kid. “What can I do?”
Nick’s relieved breath blows a low note through the phone.“I know I said I would come and pick up dinner, but is there any way you could deliver it? Or find someone to bring it to me. I wouldn’t ask, but Rhett is the only other trainer who can run the class I’m hosting right now. I can’t leave the, uh... gym goers, alone in the gym with trainers who don’t have the correct first aid certification.”
He’s still speaking when I reach behind my back and pull the string to undo the bow in my apron. I wrestle it over my head and drop it on the counter. “No problem, Nick. I can bring it now.” I tuck the phone between my ear and shoulder and fill a small container with plain noodles. I add a side of sauce and some butter before adding the containers to a bag. With a sudden burst of insight, I make up a small container of regular lasagna, and add it to the bag.
“Are you sure? You must be in the middle of a dinner rush, or something. Can you afford to leave the restaurant?”
On a normal day I wouldn’t dream of leaving Wings and Pizza before at least midnight, but with what Nick’s paying me for tonight, never mind what I’ll charge him for the rest of the week—which won’t be two thousand dollars per meal, that’s way too much—I’m comfortable stepping away for a little while. Truthfully, catering for Nick will keep my head above water for quite some time. He thinks he owes me, when in reality I’m the one who owes him.
