She scowls back at me, then lifts one eyebrow in challenge.
So I play the card I’ve been holding back. “As your boss, I must insist.”
Lips pressed together, she fights back a smile. “At least let me help you,” she offers, scooting to the edge of her stool.
“Evangeline.”
The low command causes her freeze in place, half off the stool.
“Please let me do this for you,” I implore.
She holds my gaze for one second, then two, then three.
“Okay,” she finally relents, putting me out of my misery. “But only because I’ve got a whole bunch of orders to update,” she’s quick to add. “That damn prize wheel is more trouble than it’s worth.”
She hops back onto the barstool, pulling her laptop toward her. “I’ll sit here and work on that while you’re cooking, if that’s okay.”
“More than okay,” I assure her. “Put your headphones on if you want. You can pretend I’m not even here.”
She meets my gaze, her pretty blue eyes flickering with amusement.
The unspoken part of all this is that I shouldn’t be here. There’s no reason for me to be inside an employee’s hotel room, let alone the room of a woman who’s probably twenty years my junior.
“How old are you, by the way?”
The question tumbles out before I can think better of asking.
Shit. As her employer, am I allowed to ask her that?
“I’m twenty-six,” she tells me, pulling her headphones out of their case.
Interesting.
Luca is twenty-three, and he won’t turn twenty-four for a few months yet. Although I guess three years isn’t much of an age gap.
I can’t help but do the math in my head, noting that at forty-four, I’m only eighteen years older than Evangeline.
Only?
My god.
I bite back a scoff. Who am I right now?
There’s no rational reason I should be calculating the age difference between myself and my son’s ex-girlfriend.
Get it together, Ric.
“Give me thirty minutes,” I repeat, cutting off my opportunity to ask more inappropriate questions.
We work in companionable silence. I typically listen to a podcast or catch up on sports highlights while I cook, but Evangeline didn’t put on her headphones after all. She seems to be content to sit quietly, tapping away on her laptop, and I refuse to disturb her peace.
Every now and then, she’ll run a hand through her short blond hair, tousling it and shifting the way her part falls and the strands frame her face.
Try as I might to ignore her, I’m hyperaware of every move she makes, greedy for each little sigh that presses out of her.
Despite working with my back to her, I’ve found myself stealing at least a dozen glances over the last twenty minutes.
She’s caught me a few times, which should be more embarrassing than it is.
