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“Actually? For us to finish this call because I’m standing outside his restaurant right now.”
“Then stop talking to me and go talk to him. Good luck. Let me know how it goes. Both with the article and your feelings towards him. I bet this is going to get really interesting before it’s all done,” Taylor said with a laugh.
“Thanks for your confidence,” I said and ended the call.
It was late in the morning and I figured JD would be around but that it wouldn’t be lunch time yet so hopefully he would have time to talk to me. I still wasn’t sure if he would even agree to see me, much less talk to me, but I was never going to find out if I didn’t at least ask.
The door to the restaurant was opened and I walked right in. There were a few people lingering around, but I didn’t see JD. I worried that maybe he wasn’t around and had me thinking he was as I had originally thought and only going to put in the bare minimum of work and he was already making his employees do everything while he took all the glory.
“He’s in the office. He’s in a bit of a mood, but he might welcome the chance to yell at someone new,” Rosie said as she stood next to me.
“Thanks for the confidence, or do you just think I am masochistic?”
“A little bit of both. Personally, I think the article is a good idea. He just needs a little nudge so go give it to him. Just don’t be offended if he yells at you,” Rosie said.
“I won’t. I don’t scare away that easily.”
“That’s what I thought,” she replied and walked away from me, her head in her tablet.
I moved past her and into the back of the restaurant. Before I even got to his door, I could hear JD yelling. Something about fish but I couldn’t tell as some of it was in Italian. I couldn’t tell if he was cursing or if he was just moving back and forth between the languages without even realizing it.
When I heard him say, “Thanks for nothing,” I knew the call was done and gave a brisk knock before opening up the door.
His eyes locked on mine as soon as I walked in and I was taken back at just how sexy he was. It was like a punch in my gut and I wondered if the flash of anger I saw in his eyes added to it.
Deep brown eyes full of fire and anger looked back at me, yet there wasn’t a hair out of place and his shirt looked like it had been just pressed. If I hadn't seen the look in his eyes, I wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong. It only made the look and the man behind it even more deadly.
“Bad day at the ranch?” I asked.
Keeping my eyes on his, I closed the door and sat down in the chair in front of his desk. It took all my willpower to hold his gaze and I hoped that I wasn’t blushing as I looked at him. I thought two days away from him would take the heat, the desire, the want, I felt for him but it only seemed to make it more pronounced. I knew that whatever happened I would have to tread carefully or I would be in a world of trouble.
“I might just leave this place and start a ranch. It has to be easier than this,” he said and leaned back in his chair.
“Want to talk about it?”
He hadn’t immediately kicked me out and he looked like he needed to talk. If I could get him to do it with me, wonderful. As I waited for him to answer, I half expected him to tell me to leave. I took the lack of a comment as an invitation, hoping it would make it that much harder for him to kick me out.
“What do you want? I have a very long day and I’m late to a meeting,” he said.
“Was it you that went to Italy to protect Bailey or did she go to look after you?”
There had been a lot of speculation when JD quit NYU six months before he was set to graduate with his doctorate and moved to Florence with his sister. The biggest rumor being that there had been a sex scandal with him and an underage freshman and the family had paid her off and the school but he had left town to avoid prosecution.
I hadn’t been able to find anything but one article about it in the school newspaper that had been retracted months later. It took a lot of digging to even find that and it didn’t hold up to any fact checking. I couldn’t understand why if he hadn’t done anything wrong that he and his family hadn’t fought it or why if he had to get out of town, he would take his younger sister who had just finished her undergrad with him.
Was the scandal really with her? Was she the one who had needed to leave town and he had been the scapegoat? Or was the story about him true and the family had been able to cover it up? It was just some of the many questions I had about him.
“Both,” he said.
“Care to elaborate?” I asked.
“Yes, but not right now. I have to go to a meeting. Are you still interested in doing that article about me?”
I was taken back by his frankness and his agreement to talk to me but not enough that I didn’t answer him.
“I’m going to be doing an article about you. How much cooperation I get from you is up to you,” I said.
“Can you meet me here tonight around nine o’clock?”
