I dipped my head once, keeping my lips shut. He knew what I wanted.
Raj was about to say something when I noticed the woman who’d come to my truck that first day making her way down the aisle to my stand. As soon as Jude spotted her his face changed, his gaze turning stony as she smiled and came up to him.
“Hi, Jude, are you enjoying some of the new ethnic offerings at the market?”
Jude didn’t smile back and just pointed to the bag in Raj’s hand.
She glared at it like it was full of shit, then looked up at me. “I didn’t realize we’d have more Spanish food available at the market this season. “You’d think one taco stand was enough.”
I again tried to control my face because this fucking woman clearly came all the way here to disrespect me, and I was not giving her the pleasure of seeing me lose my cool.
“My food is Caribbean, not Spanish, but yes, we’ll be here all season.”
I grabbed a flyer from a stack on the counter. “Here you go, in case you lost the one I gave you the other day.”
She glanced at my hand and nodded without taking it. “Right, well we have the critically acclaimed gourmet grilled cheese stand on the other end of the aisle.”
Jude’s eye roll when she said, “critically acclaimed” was epic. I almost laughed in her face but decided to ignore her. After a second she turned back to Jude.
“I’ll see you tomorrow in the office. We have to talk about the proposal again. I’m just not sure how we’ll manage that first year of funding. So many startup costs, I wouldn’t get my hopes up too much.”
Great, so this must be the monster grant writer Jude had mentioned. This lady was a nuisance. I’d bet anything she had something to do with that bullshit about my application yesterday. I had to give it to Jude though, he was cold as ice. The nod he gave her was barely an acknowledgement.
“Sure Misty, we can talk then.” He turned around and gave me a shy smile, then waved at Ari and Yin who were just staring quietly as the scene unfolded. Raj gave us a little wave as well and walked away with Jude. I stood there seething, because I hadn’t even had a chance to properly say goodbye to him.
Why was this woman hell-bent on messing with me?
Misty looked after them, her face murderous, then turned to me. “Don’t get too comfortable. I’ve seen half a dozen of these ethnic places come and go. People in this town don’t have the palate for your type of food.”
She said the wordfoodlike she meant to saytrash.
I leaned over and turned my head toward the grilled cheese stand, which was as empty now as it’d been all day. “I’ve had lines thirty people deep all weekend, and I’ve been checking out the competition in the market. I didn’t even know there was a grilled cheese stand, you know,” I said, as she glared at me. “Since I’m only paying attention to the places which actually have customers.” I knew taunting this lady wasn’t a good idea, but fuck her and her bullshit.
She sneered, then turned around and walked off without saying a word.
If she thought she was going to intimidate me, she had another thing coming. She wasn’t the first bigot to try to make me feel two feet tall or to tell me to go back to where I belonged, and she wouldn’t be the last. I had every right to be here and had the skills to stay where I was.
If anything, now I had something to prove.
chapter eight
jude
It was eight p.m. and so far I’d avoided dealing with the drink invitation from Nesto by sitting on Carmen’s couch, obsessively going over my proposal for the board. I knew Misty said what she said at the market because she was pissed I’d been at Nesto’s stand, and not buying her son’s disgusting food. But I also knew she was petty enough to actually mess with my project out of spite.
Critically acclaimed.
She was delusional; those sandwiches were barely edible. The only reason she could even keep the stand at the market was because she went around intimidating people using her husband’s name. She’d also totally ruined the moment with Nesto.
Of course she had, because her superpower was killing fun.
Nesto looked so good, too, sweaty and delicious in his red tank top. I honestly didn’t know what happened to my body when I was around him. I felt completely out of control. I wanted to kiss him, run around, just everything. And god, that night at Ophelia’s.
I hadn’t had anyone turn me on like that, ever. Those hands, so big and rough. When I pressed against him and felt that hard cock, my brain almost short circuited. Even through my clotheshis heat was overwhelming. I wanted to melt into the sidewalk, or worse, beg him to fuck me right then and there.
Thiswas the reason I’d avoided running into him after that night. Because I knew that as soon as I saw him again, it would be hard to resist him. Nesto made me want too many things I didn’t trust myself with. I knew if I was alone with him again I was going to want more, and the possibility was giving me pause, which meant a drink with him would probably end in disaster.
Dating was always such a mindfuck for me. Things had ended disastrously in my last relationship. Since then, any time I got close to anyone I felt like a pawn in some game. Like it was just a matter of time before I’d get dropped for something or someone who mattered more. Nesto had already gotten so deeply under my skin, I knew pursuing something with him would only lead to heartache.
