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“Aww, I love Missy; she’s awesome.” Chelsea turned to Mary Ellen. “We should go visit Summer Lake sometime. It’s a great little town and everyone there is so nice, you’d love it.”
Piper grinned. “It’s true, and it’s full of hot men!”
Chelsea laughed. “Do I need to cover my ears? You’re engaged to my big brother, remember?”
Piper laughed with her. “No, you’ve got no worries. Cameron’s my own hot man who I met in Summer Lake if you remember. I meant for Mary Ellen, maybe she could find herself one there, too.”
Mary Ellen shook her head. “No, thanks. I like my life here. I wouldn’t want to move to some little town in the hills, and besides, your fiancé would not be too happy if I left him to fend for himself.”
“That’s true,” said Piper. “I was surprised when you called me tonight. He’s so busy prepping for this big meeting, I assumed you would be, too.”
“Nope. I’ve done all the legwork, got him to the point where he’s on his own with it. It’s all down to him now. My work is done, and I deserve a Molly-made dinner as my reward.” She smiled as Molly came to their table.
“Good evening, ladies. What’s the special occasion? I don’t usually see any of you on a Monday night, let alone all of you together.”
“Hey, Moll.” Chelsea smiled at her friend. “It’s been quite a day, and I needed the girls to let me bend their ears about it.”
“Oh. Is everything okay? Do you need your Auntie Molly to sit in and lend a shoulder, too?”
Chelsea laughed. “No, it’s not that bad, just work stuff, but I won’t say no if you want to join us. We haven’t caught up in way too long.”
“You’re right; it’s been ages. I can’t really sit down to eat, but I’ll come over as much as I can, okay?” She handed them menus and smiled. “What can I get you to drink?”
Once she’d gone, Mary Ellen looked at Chelsea. “Are you going to tell Piper about the weekend? I want to talk about what happened today, but you,” she looked at Piper, “need to hear a few things first.”
Piper raised an eyebrow at her and Chelsea nodded. “Okay. I didn’t tell you on Sunday because I thought it was a one-and-done type thing, but now you need to know.”
“Know what?”
“That when Mary Ellen and I went out on Saturday night, I went home with a guy.”
Piper chuckled and shook her head. “Hey, I’m not going to judge. I think we’ve all done it in our time, haven’t we?” She looked at Mary Ellen who pursed her lips but didn’t answer.
“No, it’s not that I think you’re going to judge me. I’m not confessing or anything. It’s just that, yesterday morning, I said goodbye to the guy, thinking that was it and I’d never see him again, and then this morning I saw him again.”
Piper gave her a puzzled look.
“He’s the consultant!” blurted out Mary Ellen. “I couldn’t believe it. Cameron had someone in his office this morning, and I went to get them coffee. When I opened the office door, Grant was sitting there!” She laughed. “I dropped the coffee, I was so shocked!”
Chelsea laughed. “That makes me feel better. I just froze like a rabbit in the headlights. It was awful. There he was, standing there with my dad—and get this, my dad said he was going to put me under Grant! I almost laughed. Can you imagine Dad’s face if I’d told him I’d already been under Grant—and loved it.”
The other two turned to look at her. “You loved it?” asked Mary Ellen.
She nodded. Why had she told them that? “Yeah. It was good, but that’s not the point anymore, is it?”
Piper shook her head. “I guess not, but won’t it make it harder? You both made that connection the other night, but now you’re going to be on opposite sides of the fence at work.”
Chelsea laughed. “What, you think it’d be easier to deal with him if he’d been lousy in bed?”
Mary Ellen laughed. “I think that’d make it a lot easier.”
Piper wasn’t laughing. “Isn’t it going to make life difficult if you’re battling him at work and wishing you were in bed with him out of work?”
“No. I’m not going to allow myself to wish. It was good, but it’s not going to happen again. It can’t. Dad and I had a productive meeting this morning. So, now, instead of having free reign to change things, Grant’s only going to be observing and documenting changes that could be made. We’re going to reassess in a couple of months. He’ll show us what we could change; I’ll see if I can live with his recommendations.”
“And if you can’t?” asked Mary Ellen.
“Then we have two options. Either Dad will have to bring in someone else who will run Zosca the way he wants it run.”
