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“Why are you using—oh hell, never mind,” I grumbled, trying to peel my eyes away as Melanie stretched her arms toward the ceiling and yawned. She’d been wearing more clothes when she got here this morning, but she must have lost something along the way. I would have remembered that black tank top. It would have been on my mind all morning.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked. I’d been keeping the air at seventy degrees.
Melanie looked down and blushed. She crossed her arms suddenly, like she was embarrassed. “Sorry. I shed my cardigan back in the office. It’s about fifteen degrees warmer in that room.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.” She was amused. “You’d know that if you ever sat at your desk.”
I looked down at the papers that were spread all over the counter and shifted my weight on the counter stool. “Somehow I can concentrate better out here.”
The comment seemed to bother her. She probably took it personally, thinking I was avoiding the office because I didn’t want to be around her. She was right. But she might not guess the real reason.
“Oh hey, Melanie,” Tim said cheerfully as he emerged from the kitchen. He held up a pair of pizza peels and pointed them at me. “What should I do with these?”
“I thought I hung them on the new hooks between the two big ovens.”
Tim nodded. “You did.”
“Okay. Well, how about returning them there, Tim?”
“You bet, Dom,” he said and whistled as he returned to the kitchen. He reappeared less than three seconds later. “You mind if I take lunch now?”
It was ten thirty. “Sure, Tim. That sounds fine.”
Tim waved and skipped out the front door.
I raised an eyebrow at Melanie. “Hard to believe,” I said.
She cocked her head. “What is?”
“When Tim isn’t misplacing things in my kitchen, he studies astrophysics.”
Melanie laughed. “You lie.”
I held up my bandaged hand in a mock oath. “I swear. He’s a junior at Arizona State.”
She laughed again, and then our eyes met. She stopped laughing, cleared her throat, and fussed with a strand of hair.
“I’ve looked over about eighty-five resumes so far today,” she said. “I have two interviews set up for tomorrow, and I’m just waiting for some return calls to make more appointments.”
I clicked my pen, feeling a little surprised. “Gio’s not handling any of the new hires?” Gio had always been the one to hire the staff.
“He’s dealing with the kitchen staff, interviewing them over at Espo 1. I’ve been given complete freedom to hire the rest of the servers. We discussed this yesterday when he came by for the meeting. Don’t you remember?”
I didn’t. “Oh yeah.”
Melanie stared at me and then pointed to my hand. “When do you get the stitches out?”
I flexed my fingers and looked down at the bandage covering the wound. “Tomorrow. Actually I was thinking about cutting them off myself.”
She wrinkled her nose. “No. Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
She thought about it. “I don’t know. But you could get an infection or something.”
“Whatever you say, Nurse Melanie.” I turned back to my paperwork, aware that she was hovering.
