AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER EIGHT
DOMINIC
I hadn’t suffered a major injury since I was a kid. It was rotten timing for me to break that streak when I had a restaurant to open, but I only had myself to blame. My lack of sleep coupled with a stubborn insistence on doing everything my way had finally caught up to me.
Seventeen stitches in the hand made any kind of manual labor a little tricky, so Gio sent some help over in the form of Tim, an Espo 1 employee. Tim had been working for us in the kitchen for over a year—great instincts when it came to food, but in some ways he wasn’t the brightest star in the galaxy.
“Hey, Dominic,” called Tim from the kitchen, “where do you want me to put these dough racks?”
I looked up from the complex bureaucratic form I’d been immersed in as I sat at the lunch counter. “I thought I set them out of the way against the wall.”
“You did. But I figured you might want to put them somewhere.”
I had put them somewhere. I had put them out of the way against the wall.
“Ah thanks, Tim. But I think they’re fine where they are.”
“Oh.”
Fifteen minutes later ...
“Hey, Dominic!”
“Yeah, Tim?”
“The upright freezer isn’t working.”
My head was starting to pound. I pinched the skin between my brows. “Why do you say that, Tim?”
“It’s not cold.”
“It’s not plugged in, Tim.”
A long pause.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I unplugged it myself.”
“Oh.”
There was no reason to keep the freezer going if there wasn’t any food to freeze. There wasn’t any food to freeze because the opening was still a few weeks away, and I didn’t want to keep the freezer stocked right now just for shits and giggles. I could have sworn Tim and I had suffered through a similar exchange yesterday when he became alarmed that the under counter freezer was warm to the touch. It was probably a mistake to send Tim to the kitchen for organizational duties, but I needed him out of my hair while I looked over the liquor license application. I should have taken care of this already, but with one thing or another, it had somehow gotten sidelined.
“You ready to go over the check run?” asked Melanie as she suddenly materialized, looking as fresh as a blooming rose. Her black hair hung in soft waves halfway down her back, and her cheeks were charmingly flushed. The sight of her shouldn’t rattle me the way it did. From the way my heart jumped, you’d think I’d never laid eyes on a good-looking woman before. But there was no easy way to shove powerful physical attraction under the carpet and keep it there.
We’d been working together every day for the past week. Sometimes we clashed, and sometimes we got along great. And then sometimes the sexual tension between us was so fucking electric I had trouble remembering why I couldn’t put my hands all over her, but I was determined to stay focused. Sure, I was tempted to make a move on Melanie. I’d never felt more tempted by anyone. But in the end the restaurant was what mattered.
Melanie was good for the restaurant. Gio was right about that. She was unfailingly attentive in every task she tackled. I’d never had a more conscientious employee, and the fact that she seemed to care about every aspect of Esposito’s about as much as Gio and I did stirred my admiration.
Yet for some reason I had trouble telling Melanie just how much I appreciated her. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that as she stood next to me, I only pretended to look at numbers and invoices when I was really checking out the shape of her hips in a tight black skirt and the cute frown she wore when she was concentrating.
When she asked a question and suddenly glanced up at me, I could swear she’d heard my thoughts as plainly as if I’d shouted them. A blush colored her cheeks, and she licked her lips, but then all she did was crisply ask if I needed to borrow a pen to sign the checks. It wasn’t the first time we’d had a moment where we were clearly balancing on a tense edge, where the smallest breeze or gesture might send us colliding into each other.
At least today Tim’s presence helped serve as a buffer.
“Nothing but productivity all around,” I said mildly. “Right, Tim?”
There was a brief crash in the kitchen. “What did you say, Dom? I couldn’t hear you over the can opener.”
