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“Because I love it.”
“Good thing I love you too. Guess I’m flying solo for Hanukkah?”
“Hey, I just did Thanksgiving solo.” She tilted her glass toward Colby. “You can handle Hanukkah.” Took another sip. “I’m aiming to have this deal buttoned up in time to make Christmas.” Theirs was a multifaith family, their father Methodist, their mother Jewish. Usually, the holidays fell close enough that she and Colby could make one quick trip out from New Orleans together. This year, however, Hanukkah fell early in December.
Colby plucked the glass right out of CC’s hand and polished off the rest of the cocktail. “That’s for being a pain in my ass.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“I know, babe.” Colby kissed her temple before hopping off her stool and rebuttoning her chef’s coat. “You want dinner? Greg’s doing goulash tonight. It’s perfect for this weather.”
“Tempting, but I didn’t eat lunch until three.” Colby opened her mouth to chide her, and CC cut off her well-intentioned lecture. “Whatever you’ve got for the Sweet Spot will be perfect.”
Colby squinted a hazel eye, deciding whether to lecture still, but a shout from the kitchen saved CC’s day. Colby let out a frustrated huff, sending a long red wave that had escaped her own topknot fluttering. “Give me ten.”
CC was grateful she didn’t push. If she had, CC would’ve had to confess it wasn’t exhaustion, but nerves killing her appetite. While she and Al had spoken and exchanged emails countless times the past three days, all those points of contact had been in a purely professional context.
“Will you think me terribly forward if I come right out and ask to take you to bed?”
Purely unprofessional.
CC rotated on her stool, bringing her face to face with the cause of the belly gremlins. “You? No.”
“Would you be terribly disappointed if it was just to sleep?” Al smiled, not her usual sexy one, but a tired one that was a mirror of how CC felt right then too.
“Definitely not.”
Al set her phone facedown on the bar and clambered onto the stool Colby had vacated, just as easily in today’s three-piece twill suit as she had in the maxi skirt and sweater from Sunday. “Opposing counsel put me through the wringer this week.”
“And we’re just getting started.”
“Mama Al!” A muscled arm in chef’s whites snaked between them, then around Al’s front, engulfing her in a hug. “Where you been?” Greg, the head chef and Tony’s husband, gave her cheek a smacking kiss.
Al laughed and leaned into Greg’s hold like old friends, like... family? CC didn’t think she was related to Tony, despite their New York connection, and Greg was born and raised in New Orleans. “Working, Sonoma, working.”
“Oh!” Greg—who, in CC’s experience, was already an excitable fellow—grew impossibly more excited. “Did you—”
“I did!” From her purse, Al withdrew a jar that she handed to Greg.
He held it to his chest, and for a second, CC was sure he would pet it and call it his precious. “This shit is crack,” he said, far more Greg-like.
“What is it?” CC asked.
Al splayed her hands, fingers wide. “The base of that gravy my grandkids covered the walls with.”
Greg glanced back and forth between them, as if suddenly catching on to the fact two people he knew were sitting side by side companionably. “I think I interrupted.”
CC did the same, glancing between chef and attorney. “And I feel like I walked into a convo in progress, even though I was here first.”
Everyone laughed, momentary awkwardness broken. “We’re family,” Tony said as he returned to their end of the bar. “Or as near as.”
“My son, Tyler, runs Rosin Hospitality,” Al explained. “Which is Greg’s business partner in this venture.”
“And Ty,” Greg said, “is married to my best friend’s ex-wife.”
Facts that did not make CC any less confused. “I think I need a flowchart.”
Al was still wiping away the tears from her laugh when Tony placed a Manhattan on the bar for her and a fresh Vieux Carré for CC. “I saw Colby steal most of yours.”
