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CHAPTER NINE
MELANIE
Braxton Porter was the recreation director at Desert Princess Resort and Spa. He’d been in London at an international resort conference when I was fired. I hadn’t seen him since. Braxton and I had always had a pleasantly professional relationship. Thirty years old, he was also charming, good-looking, and about a year ago, his fiancée left him for a guy who hosted a home-improvement reality television show.
Since the great wedding debacle, he’d texted me a few times, just benign How are you doing? messages, but I was doing my best to avoid any reminders of my humiliating dismissal. When I finally texted him back, he asked if I wanted to have dinner. I hesitated for few minutes, staring at the message, before taking the plunge and accepting. I’d been working a lot, and once the new restaurant opened, I might not get too many evenings off for a while.
But then as I fussed with my hair, waiting for the doorbell to ring, I was starting to regret agreeing to this date. Braxton and I had worked well together, but there’d never been a shred of romantic tension between us. Unlike the unseen currents of electric attraction that filled the air whenever my current boss and I were in the same room together.
Speaking of Dominic, he’d been in one of his moods today. There were times when I saw the tension coiling in his broad, muscled shoulders, and all I wanted to do was massage it away, but he always kept his burdens to himself. As hard as I worked, he always worked ten times harder. The inner force that drove him was both admirable and intimidating. Sometimes it seemed that Esposito’s Pizzeria was actually his lover and life partner. How could anyone compete with that?
Checking my watch, I wandered into my bedroom with both cats right on my heels and sat on the edge of the bed. I opened the plastic bag containing five Esposito’s T-shirts that Gio had given me when he stopped by today. After refolding the shirts and setting them in a neat pile, I reached into the large brown shopping bag I’d dropped on the floor earlier. On my way home I’d stopped at the mall and purchased four pairs of comfortable jeans, because my denim inventory was rather lackluster. I slowly ran my hand over the fabric. I hadn’t regularly worn jeans to work since my college job at an arts and crafts store, but hell, I wasn’t a corporate big shot any longer. It seemed like I ought to at least consider making a more practical transition to fit my new reality.
I stashed the clothes in a dresser drawer and returned to the living room.
Braxton arrived fifteen minutes late. I already had my purse on my shoulder and stepped out the door quickly.
“You look fantastic, Melanie,” he said as he gave me a friendly hug.
“Thanks,” I told him. “So do you.”
I wasn’t being insincere. Braxton wore dark-gray pants and a light-blue shirt with sleeves rolled above the elbows. I remembered that most days he would arrive at work ninety minutes early to use the state-of-the-art resort gym. It showed. Blond guys had never really been my thing, but I could still appreciate that Braxton was pretty easy on the eyes.
He led me to his black Acura and held the door as I climbed in. I wondered how long I should wait before mentioning Melanie’s Spectacular Screw Up aka The Semicelebrity Wedding from Hell. Ever since I got fired, I’d desperately avoided the social media gossip, the Internet memes, the YouTube video comments. That was a black hole I couldn’t afford to get sucked into when I was trying to move on and find a new job. Things like this always passed when the next tabloid nugget was served up.
But now, seated beside my former coworker as he drove out of my apartment complex, I suddenly, passionately wanted to know what the people I used to work with thought of me.
“I bet you want to know what the staff has been saying about you,” Braxton said as we paused at a red light.
“What? No.” I shook my head, blushing. “I wasn’t thinking that.”
Braxton gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay, Mel. That’s what I’d be wondering if I were you. No one blames you, you know.”
“Hence the abrupt termination of my employment,” I said, a little bitterly.
Braxton turned onto the freeway. “Management needed a scapegoat, that’s all. But the word among the staff is that you never should have been put in that position in the first place. The basic consensus is that you were overtasked and got a shit deal. By the way, I agree with the consensus.”
I exhaled deeply, releasing a worry I hadn’t realized had been weighing on me so much. It was nice to know that my former colleagues didn’t see me as a bubble-brained failure.
Braxton took me to a new Italian restaurant in Scottsdale. He was surprised to hear that I was working for a small family-owned pizzeria and offered to make some calls if I was interested in moving on. Since I felt committed to my role at Esposito’s, I politely refused the offer.
He was decent company—smiled often, occasionally said something funny, and appeared to listen carefully whenever I spoke. Still, something was missing. Call it attraction or excitement or whatever. I had to stifle a few yawns by the time the main course was served.
When Braxton paid for our meal like a gentleman, I felt like kind of a bitch for being vaguely bored with him already. What the hell was I expecting? Maybe I’d just read one too many romance novels during my long drought. In real life not every man possessed smoldering eyes, a square jaw, and a body that induced projectile drooling.
But some of them did.
No, I wouldn’t think about Dominic tonight. I did enough of that during the daylight hours, and I deserved some time off.
As we lingered over our drinks, Braxton asked if I wanted to stop in at a new club on Shea Boulevard.
“Sounds good,” I said a little absently, because in spite of my best efforts, I still had Dominic on the brain. I looked down at the table. I picked up my water glass. Then as I raised it to my lips, I happened to check out the other side of the restaurant.
And immediately wished I hadn’t.
“Melanie?” Braxton ventured.
“Hmm?”
