Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
I went to him, took the mug, but when he moved to head toward the garage, I caught his hand.
He looked down at me.
“Sorry I passed out again last night,” I said softly.
His eyes warmed (dang, that was pretty), and he replied in the same tone, “Point of yesterday was for you to feel free to do just that.”
“Can I ask why you don’t kiss me?” I blurted.
His heavy brows drew down. “I kiss you.”
“Not on the lips.”
Comprehension dawned and his entire face warmed.
“Gotta ask again if you were even conscious for our first kiss,” he said, a teasing lilt to his deep voice I instantly fell in love with.
“Of course I was, but—”
“I got control, babe, but I didn’t have a lick of it that day with you,” he declared.
I stared.
My heart thumped.
He kept going.
“That’s not me. I knew better than to do that when I was assigned to you. I couldn’t help myself. Powerless to stop it.”
Oh…
My.
He wasn’t done.
“Now you need to get to work, and I’m gonna go to the gym, again, not the right time. It hasn’t been the right time any time before that, either. So, until it is, baby, you don’t get my mouth, and I’m not taking yours.”
Why did that make me want his mouth (and what might come after it) more than my next breath?
“Cool?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” I answered honesty. “But I hear you so I’m with you.”
Because I want this to be special too, because this is special, I’m seeing that clearly now, and I’m not about to fuck it up.
“Thanks, babe,” he muttered, bent to kiss my nose, and since his hand was in mine, he used it to pull me to the door to his garage and beyond, so we could face our days.
I was filling the coffee cubby case.
Tex was outside with his bottle of white shoe polish, ignoring the line that was forming and drawing his coffee special on the front window. It was backwards from where I stood, and it looked mildly terrifying, which meant, as it always did, it appeared mildly threatening straight on.
You’d think Tex’s complete lack of ability to draw and his handwriting that veered toward hostile would keep people away.
But as I mentioned, the line was forming.
I’d closed the case and was heading back to the kitchen with the trays when I heard Tex call, “Hold up, Willow.”
Just inside The Surf Club proper, I turned to him.
He was clipping the cap back on the white shoe polish and heading my way.
He stopped and said, “Had a chat with Tito. Something’s gotta give, and it’s gonna.”
Confused, I asked, “Sorry?”
“You’re burning the candle at both ends. You can’t do that shit,”—he twisted to point at the coffee cubby and came back to me—“serve and run a business. It’s too much and it’s not working.”
It felt like my whole chest caved in.
Was he…?
Were they…?
Firing me?
Did I…?
Was I…?
Doing something wrong?
“Talked to Lucia. She said you two have a groove,” Tex carried on.
“I-I-I…yes, I think we do.”
“Right, and we got a contract with someone to deliver the shit we sell in the front case on the weekends, and that shit doesn’t move,” Tex informed me. “Your stuff is sold out by, latest, eleven. That shit, half of it we throw away. It’s waste. Money and resources.”
I said nothing.
Tex was feeling chatty.
“We think you should put a Willow’s Good Stuff sign in the other window, the one I don’t draw on, and you run it out of SC. We’ll become The Surf Club and Willow’s Good Stuff. You use the kitchen to do your shit, nix the delivery thing since they can come here and get it, and augment what you offer for SC. Like, éclairs and danishes, and I don’t know, cream puffs and shit.”
My heart was hammering in my chest so hard, I was sure I was experiencing a heart attack, to say nothing of the fact I was blinking rapidly.
Tex didn’t seem to notice.
“Maybe throw on some desserts for the dining room menu. Leave some dough or whatever so the weekend staff can just shove it in the oven and we’re not spending money to toss crap in the garbage. We know it’d be a hit on your tips, so we’ll bump you up to an average pastry chef’s salary and we’ll negotiate a percentage of Willow’s Good Stuff to cover the cost of you runnin’ it out of the kitchen.”
He rammed a hand in his jeans pocket, came out with a crinkled piece of paper, and shoved it my way.
I took it, uncrinkled it, and saw, in Tex’s antagonistic handwriting, a figure that I assumed would be my base pay, and it was fifteen thousand dollars more than I made now at SC.
Tex confirmed my assumption.
“Salary, same benefits.”
Holy…
Fuck.
My mind flashed through this offer.
The money was freaking awesome.