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“Yep. Why do you think Giorgio loved me? We had to split tips with the management and mine were always three times everyone else’s.”
I blinked, finding it strange that he’d brought that up. It was odd, I supposed, that I knew a lot about the Max Greene standing before me today, but nothing about the Max Greene of before—the foundations of his life were a mystery to me, to everyone I supposed unless they were into reading biographies of the mega rich.
“They took half the tips?”
He nodded as he sipped at his wine. “They pay above minimum wage here so it was only fair. Plus, you got to eat and drink on the house.” He grimaced. “I swear, some days, the pizzas and salad were what got me through training.”
“Training?”
Another nod as he cut into the ginormous pizza before us. I seriously hoped he intended on packing three-quarters of this bad boy away. I had an appetite, boy, did I, but not enough to take down this monster.
“Yeah. You really didn’t google me, did you?” he asked, sounding amused and disappointed in equal measures.
I snorted. “No. I don’t google bosses or first dates.”
That had him smirking. “What about second dates?”
I held up my hands in surrender. “You’ve got me.”
He chuckled then winced as, after taking a bite, he immediately chugged down some water. “Sheesh, that was hot!”
“It’s fresh from the oven!” I retorted, quite content to sip at my water and Rioja as the deep pan pizza cooled. I knew from experience that could take a while, and considering the size of this one, it might take all damn night!
“I’m hungry,” he complained.
His whine made me giggle and I shove some breadsticks Helena had brought with our drinks his way.
His sigh was exaggerated but I watched him dunk the stick into the gooey cheese as I asked him, “You were saying about training?”
“I moved to Chicago for college; got here on a football scholarship.”
“But you still needed to work?”
He grimaced. “Yeah. My scholarship covered close to eighty per cent of my fees, but there were things I needed… I had to work, which was a pain in the ass until I found this place.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had to study, keep my grades for the scholarship, all while training far too many hours a day. Then, I had to work, and I was also working on the software that started Avalon up. There weren’t enough hours in the day.”
“I can imagine,” I told him, winded by how busy he’d been. “You ate here a lot, huh?”
“Enough to know the menu back to back and to know that it won’t have changed in all those years,” he replied with a grin. “I tried everything at least once. It kept my weight up for the games and the chefs used to help me out by making things with less cheese when I needed to control my numbers midseason.”
I laughed at his grimace. “You weren’t joking about needing to live at the gym if you ate here every day.”
“Nope, it’s the honest truth,” he told me wryly, then he sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “I nearly ate these guys out of house and home. Crap, I’m glad those days are over,” he said suddenly, the words a sigh. “There was a lot of uncertainty back then, a lot of hope and some of it wistful and unsure.”
The sudden insight into this man came as a surprise. A welcome one but it stunned me nonetheless that he’d opened up so easily to me.
What stunned me more was that I liked it.
I wanted more.
Was that greedy of me?
Maybe.
Okay, definitely.
