AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My science didn’t account for Cassidy. I was just going to have to put in some extra effort.
Never had a woman ever looked up at me and politely rejected my advances with a smile and no game plan.
Her smile stuck in my mind and for a reason even I don’t know, I want to see that smile again. I want to stand under a street light on a quiet night and look down into her big eyes, see the blood flush her cheeks as she blushes and watch her slowly and softly bite her bottom lip.
I’m standing lost in my thoughts while Ed waits for a rebuttal. The pause is too long to seem natural, but I can’t help it. Cassidy had knocked me out of sorts while I was the one trying to sweep her off her feet.
“Maybe your formula only works on supermodels, not waitresses,” Edward chuckles.
I shake my head. “This just makes it more interesting. Have you ever known me to lose a bet?”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Ed laughs as the car pulls back into the street and drives away leaving me alone with my thoughts again.
Cassidy has already delivered the first blow and as intriguing as she is, I’m not going to let her deliver a second.
There’s no way I’m going to subject myself to Edward’s childish gloating. By the end of this month, Cassidy will be mine.
3
Cassidy
Isettle into my new routine easily: wake up and open my bedroom window to look down onto the busy street before getting ready for work. Two shifts every day, the slower morning shift that lets me ease into things, and the evening shift which is where I got my best tips.
I sit outside and scroll through my phone, enjoying my first break of the day. It has been a quiet morning as usual and I use the opportunity to have a warm coffee and a quick catch-up with Beth.
She answers the phone in a low, bored voice. “Tell me your day is going better than mine?”
“Well, today’s been quiet, but yesterday I was asked out on a date for the first time in what feels like forever,” I laugh.
It’s a nervous sound that I barely recognize. I don’t even know where it’s coming from.
“A date? Wow, the staff sure move fast at Suave, don’t they?” Beth laughed. “This is starting to sound juicy, let me go get my coffee and you can fill me in on everything.”
Her intense curiosity makes the news that much more salacious. “Not a colleague,” I whisper. “It was one of the club’s members.”
“No!” Beth squeals excitedly. “You haven’t even gotten your first pay check yet, and you’re already rubbing elbows with the richest of the rich?”
It was nice to be noticed and even though he didn’t give the best first impression, I can’t deny how handsome Ethan is. It’s almost unreal how close to perfect he looks. His chiseled jaw, dusted with the slightest hint of a beard fashionably left unshaved. He’s tall, commanding even when he is completely wrong. But instead of turning me off, his brazen arrogance intrigues me.
As if reading my mind, Beth takes a break from her excitement and becomes serious, “Cas, you have to be careful with those people. They aren’t like us. They see us normal people as sources of entertainment. Things to be used and disposed of.”
She isn’t the first person to say something like that. Even before I started the job, my manager warned me that even though some of the patrons would be friendly, I shouldn’t get too involved with them. It rarely ends well.
“I know, I know. Had he come across me a few months ago I might have given him a different answer,” I confess.
“So you did say no, right? I just want to be sure,” Beth asks anxiously.
“Of course,” I laugh. “I know just how wrong that could go. Besides, I’m focusing on me right now and a man like that just doesn’t fit in my plans,” I say.
Beth couldn’t agree more. “Yeah. I’m so proud of you and how far you’ve come in such a short time. You definitely don’t need stinking rich, hunky distractions,” she laughs.
The rich, hunky distraction is now a regular feature of my work life. The one time it rained and I didn’t have an umbrella, he and his driver appeared as if out of thin air offering to drive me home. I declined and he gave me an umbrella out of his car instead.
I walked into work just the other day and found my locker filled with sunflowers. Not only had he thought of me, but he remembered how I had stared at the sunflower fields on the magazine cover, my earrings. It was the little things he paid attention to that made my knees weak.
In my dreams, my resistance disintegrates under his touch. I shudder nightly imagining the warm sensual caress of his fingers on my body. The dreams come so vividly that I blush when I see him, trying hard to avoid him in the small VIP lounge. An almost impossible task with a handful of patrons and even fewer waitresses.
Seeing Ethan walk in, I dash to another table leaving another waitress to happily serve him. He gives great tips and isn’t as much of a pain as his made-from-money peers.
