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“Can’t you lot clear out? I think it’s quite rude for you all to gather here like this. Don’t you have something better to do? There’s a nice café just a block over. They’ve got these cream pastries and nice foamy lattes. If I were you, I’d—”
Logan had to get in front of me then and cut me off from their view. Their cameras continued to snap away, but I didn’t care one bit.
“All right, c’mon,” he said, backing me up toward the car. “They’re not going to leave.”
“They might if you ask them to!”
Then I peered around his broad chest to see if they were scattering like cockroaches—as I expected they would be—but Logan was right. My words hadn’t affected them in the least! If anything, they only snapped photos with more zeal, shouting Logan’s name and asking for mine.
I groaned with anger as Logan loaded me into the back seat of the vehicle.
Pat was on my side, of course, cursing the paps right along with me as we pulled away from the curb, but Logan was only smiling and shaking his head, unperturbed by the insanity.
“Next time maybe I’ll give them a real piece of my mind,” I threatened.
“Oh yeah?” he teased. “I thought that’s what you just did.”
“What? That was mild! Next time I might just tell them all to sod off.”
“They’d love that. It’d give them more to report in the magazines.”
“Magazines!” I cracked up then. “You’ve lost it if you think I’m going to be in any magazines.”
There’s no way I’m important enough to be featured in any magazine anywhere, but Logan’s words are still haunting me. The whole day I’ve wondered if maybe I’ll become important by association, just by hanging around him. What would they even call me in the captions beneath the photos? Logan’s lady friend? Logan’s loony acquaintance? Some wild woman on the street? There’s no way they’d think we’re together. It’s mad even to me, and I’m the one who had him on top of me last night!
I’m actually relieved to have my shift at District in the evening because it keeps me ultra-busy, running round and grabbing drink orders. Wednesdays are nowhere near as packed as weekend nights, but we’ve still got a big enough crowd that I’m on my feet constantly.
Roger loads up another tray with drinks for me and I’m off, unloading them onto my assigned tables and carrying away empties I gather deftly.
One of my tables is really chatty, a load of blokes who look like they’ve only just started their twenties. They’ve still got some baby fat on their cheeks and haven’t quite figured out that less is more when it comes to hair product.
“Hey, my friend is wondering if you’re single,” one of them says to me, nodding his head to another guy at the table who’s gone totally red in the face. When I smile nicely at him, he looks down, probably wishing he could disappear altogether.
“Well you can tell your friend that I think he’s quite nice-looking, but I’m not in the market for anything at the moment.”
They all laugh and carry on while I walk away with their empty beer bottles.
Roger’s heard it all go down and he smiles when I post up against the bar, taking a load off for a moment.
“Aren’t you going to take him up on his offer?”
I scrunch my nose. “I don’t go for younger men, unfortunately. He looks like he’s barely gone through puberty.”
“Right. So then it doesn’t have anything to do with Logan Matthews?”
Good going, Roger. I’d nearly gone three whole seconds without thinking of him and now you’ve ruined it.
I feign total innocence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
But of course, Roger was here the night Logan came in with his friends and left me his number along with that ridiculous “tip”. He knows something is going on with Logan and me.
“So you aren’t dating him?”
“We’re just friends,” I reply like some well-trained diplomat.
“Friends? Not likely.” He nods his head behind him, to the absolutely ridiculous bouquet of flowers sitting on the back counter of the bar.
“What in the hell are those?”
“Roses, if I’m not mistaken.”
The bouquet is bigger than my head! Bigger than the coffee table in my flat! I’ll have to just set the vase on the floor and have Kat and Yasmine walk around it. There’re enough roses to fill an English garden, all of them blood red and dripping with intent. There’s no note nestled in the blooms, which seems even more romantic. It’s like Logan knows I know who they’re from and that’s all that matters.
Of course, I wonder how the hell I’ll manage to tote them home at the end of my shift. It’ll make my subway commute quite a calamity, but then I shouldn’t have worried. Pat is waiting out in front of District when I leave, looking down at his mobile until he sees me walking (or rather stumbling) out on the sidewalk, struggling with the bouquet, and he hops out of the black SUV to help me.
