“So you can go out with me…”
He shrugged. “Or we could stay in…”
“Stay in where?” She quickly lifted her hand. “Don’t answer that.”
“Tell you what,” he said, sliding a business card out of his front pocket. “Do you have a pen?” She looked around the counter then slid one out of her apron pocket. “I’m going to give you my private cell phone number, my home phone number, and, of course, the card has the two numbers to the restaurant on it along with the fax.” He handed her the card. “Call me when you’ve made a decision.”
“Even if it’s no?”
“Especially if it’s no.”
She made a face that made her look all the more attractive.
“You know, so I have a chance to change your mind.”
She pursed her lips slightly as she stared down at the front of the card, then turned it over to look at the back.
The man who had been typing away on a laptop in the corner neared him. “Excuse me,” he mumbled under his breath.
Ben’s attention fully on Reilly, he moved to let the guy pass, but apparently picked the wrong direction because the guy plowed into him, spilling coffee all over the front of his shirt.
“Oh, sorry, man,” the guy said.
Ben looked at him, wondering why he didn’t look very sorry.
“No problem.”
Reilly couldn’t hide her smile as she handed him a handful of napkins. Ben began wiping at the mess, making sure his assailant had moved out of striking distance before continuing his conversation.
“Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to bring you dinner tonight,” he said to Reilly.
“Tonight?”
“Yes, you know, by way of that proper thank-you I mentioned.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I think it is.” He squinted at her. “Did you say midnight?”
“Yes. I mean, no!” Her cheeks turned the most delicious shade of pink. “I mean, that’s really not necessary. Really, it isn’t.”
He hiked a brow. “Are you passing on a free dinner from one of the most popular restaurants in town?”
“Yes. I mean, no!” She ran her fingers through her bangs, then rested the heel of her hand against her forehead. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think it would be a very good idea. I’ll be exhausted and I probably won’t be very good company….”
“I meant I’d have one of my staff drop something off on their way home from work.”
“Oh.”
“Unless you’d like me to deliver the meal personally?”
“No!” Her shoulders slumped and she tucked her chin into her chest. Moments later he figured she was either laughing or crying. She looked up at him, her laughter filling his ears. “That didn’t sound very good, did it?”
“Good thing I have a pretty good ego.”
“Big, you mean.”
“Mmm.” He let the noncommital sound hang in the air between them.
“Well,” he said finally. “I’d better get going.”
“Yes, you probably should.”
He stared at her.
She gestured toward the boxes. “Some of this needs to be refrigerated pretty quick.”
“Of course.”
“Of course.”
He picked up the boxes. “Call me.”
“We’ll see.”
“Call me,” he repeated.
“Okay.”
He walked toward the door knowing she probably wouldn’t call. But that didn’t matter. Whatever reason she had for wanting to avoid him didn’t stem from lack of attraction. Because he swore, if he checked, he’d have contact burns from the awareness that had arced between them.
He fully intended to be the one to bring her the food tonight.
And he fully intended for both of them to have dessert….
“DID IT, LIKE, majorly suck to be fat when you were my age?”
Reilly snapped her head up from where she was squeezing sweet dough out of a plastic bag with a star tip into two-inch strips. It was eleven o’clock, she had sent Ben’s order to Benardo’s Hideaway over six hours ago, and still faced another hour or so of cooking for tomorrow’s order.
Add to that her fifteen-year-old niece, Efi, sitting on the clean stainless-steel counter against the wall, swinging her legs and banging the back of her platform shoes against the steel doors asking her bizarre questions, and she saw this as a bad end to a perfectly awful day.
She liked her niece. She really did. She just didn’t think she was up to answering her question right then.
“What?”
Efi shrugged, making her short, spiked hair move not at all. “I was just thinking about the picture Mom has of you on the Wall of Fame and was wondering what it felt like to be so fat.”
“More like Wall of Shame. I don’t know. How does it feel to have your hair match the walls in the front room?”
Efi made a face, lifting her hand to touch her dyed and gelled-within-an-inch-of-its-life pink hair.
Reilly squeezed three strips in quick succession. “And I wasn’t fat fat. I was…pleasantly plump.”
“You were fat.”
“I was a hundred and eighty pounds. That’s pleasantly plump.”
“Is that why they called you Chubby Chuddy?”
“I see my dear sister has been telling stories about me again.” She brushed her hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Chubby means pleasantly plump.”
“Chubby means fat.”
She eyed her pretty, usually tactful, too-thin niece. It would take a good five years and at least thirty pounds to grow into her tall frame. She had the physical characteristics of the rest of the Chudowski family. Well, aside from the dark Mediterranean eyes and hair she’d inherited from her father.
As for Reilly, she’d been born with the ultimate fat gene. Her mother told her there was one lucky duck in every Chudowski family. No matter how much she’d dieted, or how little she’d eaten, she’d been much heavier than other girls her age.
Until she’d turned eighteen, consulted a dietician and finally dropped the weight.
“It wasn’t fun,” she told her niece. “What time is your sister picking you up again?”
Efi looked at her watch, completely clueless as to what impact her questioning had. “She knocks off at the seafood restaurant at eleven so she should be here any minute now.”
“Couldn’t be soon enough for me,” Reilly murmured under her breath as she finished with the dough then shook the stiffness out of her hands.
Normally Efi was her favorite out of her seven nieces and nephews. You didn’t have to twist her arm to work. Say the word and she was there and ready, flinching away from nothing, and seeing to everything with a quick, cheery efficiency that made Reilly smile. You had to stop Efi from working, whereas Tina you needed to light a fire under every five minutes to scare her off the phone or get her