Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“What are you doing out here? Vacationing?”
“Working, actually. Private chef gig.”
His brows rose in shock. “I have no doubt it’s a lucrative setup, but leaving a place like Fig & Olive?” He shook his head like I was crazy.
Even without getting into all the lurid details, it was easy enough to explain my exit from the popular restaurant. “It’s a hard world to be in…”
He held up his hands to reassure me. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me. Why do you think I’m a sommelier here rather than at a place in the city? I prefer the hours. Though I kind of straddle both worlds—I consult on the side for a few restaurants around here. Have you tried Pierre’s?”
“No. Worth it?”
“It’s fantastic. I helped curate their wine offerings. My friends and I are actually headed there this Thursday. We’re a foodie crowd—I’m sure you’d fit right in. Want to join? Here, let me grab your number really quick. I see Mrs. Kilpatrick heading over, and once she gets ahold of me, it’ll be thirty minutes before I can surface for air.”
So that’s how I made my first friend here. Oh, second if you count Ned. Ha.
My fifth day on the job, I have my AirPods in and I’m jamming out when I walk into the laundry room to fold clothes, only to find that Luke’s beat me to it.
“Hey! You don’t have to do that.”
He shrugs as he continues, “It’s fine. You probably don’t need to be folding my boxer briefs anyway.”
“It’s no big deal. They just look like black shorts.”
I almost sound convincing.
Truthfully, it has been slightly awkward doing Luke’s laundry. His workout shirts and shorts are soaked in sweat and drenched in his deodorant and natural musk by the time they make it into the hamper. While I’ve yet to press the fabric to my face and inhale deeply like a no-holds-barred stalker, I have given the air a hard sniff a time or two.
“Guess it’s only appropriate. I’ve touched your underwear too.”
“WHAT?!” The question sputters out of me.
I swear he almost, almost looks pleased by my reaction to his casual statement.
“You left a pair in my bathroom the first night you arrived.”
“Did I? Where are they now?” I sound panicked by the prospect that they might still be in his possession.
“I put them in your laundry hamper.”
I shake my head as I walk into the laundry room and start to get to work beside him. “Jeez, good thing you don’t have an HR department. They’d have a field day with me.”
“True. Pink thong aside, I think you pulling a knife on Ned would have gotten you axed day one.”
So it was my pink thong.
My itty bitty silky pink thong.
“LUKE!”
It’s the first time I’ve said his name, and it charges the air with tension.
My heart’s racing like I’m on a first date. A seriously good one.
If I ever want to be able to look at my boss the same way, we cannot keep discussing my delicates, so I reroute us.
“Why were you in here doing the laundry anyway?”
He shrugs. “Habit. Pass me that shirt, will you? When I was on the road a lot, it was just me.”
I respond with disbelieving side-eye. “You’re telling me the MLB doesn’t spring for maids and laundry service?”
“It’s not as easy as it sounds. I don’t generally like people in my space. I’ve had things stolen, information fed to tabloids…that kind of thing. I can keep things tidy enough on my own.”
“God, I can’t imagine that way of life. I dated a guy who was marginally famous, at least in the restaurant world, and that was hard enough.”
“Not with him anymore?”
“No,” I say vehemently.
I catch him raising his eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything else on the subject.
There’s a beat of silence as we match up different pairs of socks. I swap him a purple one and he hands me a gray one. We are so ridiculously careful to not make any skin-to-skin contact as we do it. We have the concentration of a bomb squad picking between red and blue wires.
“Just wondering…I am allowed to go out, right? After I’ve finished my duties for the day, I mean. I’m not, like, confined to this house and the supermarket, am I?”
“Of course you can go out,” he says, sounding insulted by the idea that he’d ever say otherwise.
I laugh. “Right. Okay, good.”
“Big plans?”
Oliver texted me this morning about having dinner at Pierre’s. He and two other friends are heading there around 8:30 PM and can add on one more to their reservation if I’m interested. I haven’t texted him back yet because I’ve been too chicken to ask Luke if it’s okay if I go.
“I might go to this dinner.”
“With a guy from the city?”
“A new friend from here, actually.”
I almost clarify that it’s not just the two of us going, but it seems odd to point it out. What does Luke care whether it’s one guy or ten guys? He’s just trying to make polite conversation; he’s not prying into my dating life.