Chapter Eight
“Leave them,” a rumbly voice ordered.
If I hadn’t been so inebriated, I would have jumped. Ezra had snuck up on me and I didn’t even notice him standing to my right. “It’s fine,” I told him. “I want to help.”
He dangled my strappy stilettos from his fingertips. Pointing at the tablecloth I was wadding up from the tabletop, he said, “Tell me where they go and I’ll let you handle them, but right now you’re more of a menace than anything else.”
Glaring at him, I continued to ball the tablecloth in my hands. “Obviously they go in the hamper.” It was the first thing that came to mind and I realized how idiotic it sounded. The hamper? Because Lilou also had a laundry room?
“So wrong,” he murmured. “So very wrong. Besides it’s a trick question. When the cleaning crew comes in, they’ll take the linens with them. It would be helpful though if you left them where they are instead of making the nice, hourly-waged people hunt them down.”
Throwing the linens back on the table, I reached for my shoes. He pulled them out of reach and I swayed trying to right my drunken self. “If you’re not going to let me help, then you might as well let me go home and go to bed.”
“How are you getting home?” he asked while holding my shoes in the air where I could not reach them.
I looked up at my shoes, debating on how badly I needed them. It didn’t matter how cold it had gotten outside or that I was pretty sure it was illegal to drive without shoes on in North Carolina.
Just to be difficult, I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “Are you hitting on me, Baptiste? Because holding my shoes captive is a tactic I’ve never seen before. Or maybe it’s old school? Is this how people your age get dates?”
His eyes widened in surprise. He wasn’t expecting snark. “People my age and everyone else that doesn’t want you to die on the way home tonight. I’ll give you a ride.”
“I was going to call an Uber,” I admitted.
He turned around, taking my shoes with him. “I’m cheaper.”
You’re also an asshole. But I didn’t say that out loud. “Seriously, it’s no big deal!” I hollered after him. “I have the app!”
Only, judging by his Lilou website, he probably didn’t even know what an app was. Great. Now I was going to have to explain all of modern technology to him. This night was never going to end.
“I also have your phone,” Ezra shot back. When Wyatt stepped out of the kitchen, Ezra paused to ask him to lock up.
Shoes were one thing, but my phone was vitally important to every aspect of my life. It was basically my soul locked up in gadget form. If he confiscated my baby, he’d have access to allllll of my life—including my very secret, very private Candy Crush obsession.
Ezra disappeared into the kitchen and I hurried after him.
“Is he really giving you a ride home?” Wyatt asked as I zipped by.
“He’s holding my accessories hostage,” I told him.
Wyatt stared at me agape, but I didn’t have time to explain before I disappeared into the kitchen. All the lights were on while Wyatt’s skeleton staff cleaned the remaining dishes and put away food. Ezra waited for me by the side door, holding my shoes and my purse.
“I’ve already cleaned out your bank accounts,” he said when I finally caught up to him. “And destroyed your credit.”
I stilled. “Was that a joke?”
He lifted one shoulder in a barely-there shrug. “I guess we’ll find out.”
“It makes sense,” I told him. “Your restaurants aren’t named after ex-girlfriends. They’re stolen identities.”
His lips twitched once, but he held back his smile. My drunken brain convinced me that I needed to see it. That I needed to witness it one more time just to prove that it was real. I tried smiling at him, hoping to coax something out of him. But he only stared at me and then finally thrust my shoes out like he couldn’t stand the idea of holding them for a second longer.
“I presume you didn’t wear a coat tonight,” he said as way of getting my ass out the door.
With one hand poised against the wall to keep my balance, I bent over just enough to slide each one on. “My weatherman told me it was supposed to be warm this weekend and I stupidly believed him.”
“Your weatherman said it was going to be warmer this weekend and it is.”
Losing control of my motor functions, I reached out and brushed my knuckle over the wrinkled space between Ezra’s consternated eyebrows. “You’re always so serious,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything for a long time, choosing instead to examine my face, and my dress, and the shoes that had already started pinching my toes again.
Imagining what he probably thought of me made me shrink back. I wasn’t like the girls he normally dated. Not that I knew what kind of girls he normally dated. But I had to be so different than what he was used to. With names like Lilou, Bianca, and Sarita, they sounded exotic, interesting. I imagined long-legged pinup models with perfectly coiffed hair and million dollar smiles. They would tie scarves around their heads when Ezra took them for Sunday drives in his red convertible, and smoke cigarettes out of cigarette holders.
He was basically a Cary Grant movie. And I was so different than anything he was used to. My cheeks flushed for the hundredth time tonight, and I contemplated moving out of Durham and North Carolina, and possibly the entire continent of North America.
“If I drive, can you give me directions to your house?” he asked, pulling me from my spiraling thoughts. His voice had pitched low, going extra deep and rumbly in the silence of the empty kitchen.
“Yes. But you can also put me in the back of an Uber and I can give them directions too. I’m very good at giving directions. I can give them to almost anybody. It’s just one of my many talents.”
“You’re drunk,” he said as way of argument. “I’m not handing you off to a stranger.”
He was driving me home for my own protection? I stared at him, trying to make sense of his harsh words on the dance floor and his thoughtfulness in the kitchen. “Okay.” Again, I tried to reconcile his generosity. And failed. “Thank you.”
Holding his elbow out to me, he led me through the big steel door and toward his waiting sleek, sporty, super-expensive black car parked in the alley directly next to Lilou. It sat beneath a rough garage-like structure covered in ivy.
“This is your car?” I asked, dumbfounded. There was obviously no way I could ride in it. It looked more expensive than my entire life. And I didn’t mean that in an accumulated-assets kind of way. I meant on like a physical, existential, me-plus-my-assets-plus-every-other-thing-about-me-past-present-and-future-plus-potential-cats kind of way. This car was insane.
“Pretty, isn’t she?”
I could only nod dumbly.
“She’s an Alfa Romeo,” he told me. “She’s new.”
Holding back a sigh, I said, “Of course she is.” That’s Alfa Ro-may-o for those of you reading it like Romeo and Juliet. Because this isn’t that kind of story, yo.
Ezra held the door open for me and I sobered a little as I slid onto buttery leather. He climbed in a second later and handed me my purse.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I don’t know why I’m still holding onto it.”
“Clearly you want a restaurant called Molly,” I teased. “You’re trying to steal my identity after all.”
He stared at me, his eyes shrewd and investigative. I stared back, brave with liquid courage and unafraid of what he would find. Although I didn’t know what he was looking for or why he was suddenly being nice to me.
“It does have a nice ring to it.” Just one side of his mouth lifted. “Or maybe I would call it MM. M’s? Maverick? The thing about you is that there are just so many possibilities.”
Sliding my tongue over my dry bottom lip, I didn’t know what to make of this sudden sense of humor. “Maverick sounds like a sports bar and that doesn’t really seem like your type.”
“You say that, but you don’t really know what my type is, do you?” Before I could respond, he turned back to his new car.
The car purred to life, rumbling and growling, and making all kinds of sounds I’d never heard a car make before. He expertly reversed out of the alley and then went forward into the flow of traffic. For a few minutes, I just listened to the hum of the engine and wondered if I would henceforth compare all other cars to this one—which was clearly setting me up for a very disappointing life.
Or a future as a stripper.
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t know where I’m going.”
I gave him directions to my apartment complex and settled back into the comfort of the passenger seat. The radio hummed very softly with music I didn’t recognize and could barely hear. Mostly the car was filled with the sound of the engine zipping through traffic or purring at stoplights.
I should have been spitting fire at this man that had so completely insulted everything about me earlier tonight. But alcohol and my friend’s future wedded bliss had made me soft and culpable. So instead of wrapping Ezra in my deadly web and then biting his head off for a midnight snack, I closed my eyes and let myself feel gratitude.
“Thanks again, Ezra,” I said sincerely. “The party was a major success. Lilou was perfect. Meg is a genius. And you already know that Wyatt is the best. You did a pretty great job of swooping in to save the day.”
Of course he picked up on my change in attitude right away. “Are you being nice?”
I tilted my face toward him and frowned at his profile. “I blame the alcohol.”
His lips twitched but I couldn’t be sure if it was because of an almost smile or if he’d developed a facial tick. There was a good possibility he was about to have a stroke. “Me too,” he said.
Not knowing what else to say after that, we both fell silent. I turned in my seat so I could stare out the window, but the streetlights cast a glare and I ended up staring at Ezra’s reflection instead.
From where I sat I could see the faint stubble that had appeared along his jaw, equally as black as the hair on his head. His sharp nose that looked like cut marble in the window reflection. His high cheekbones and long throat. Those masculine shoulders that were so ferociously broad before his torso thinned to a tapered waist. He could have so easily been a model in a different life. Or maybe even this one still. Depending on how the restaurant biz turned out for him.
He drove with pure confidence, weaving in and out of late night traffic like he moonlighted for NASCAR. He commanded the car in the same way I imagined he handled all things in life—with total control and determination. And he never once lost his concentration to look at me.
He didn’t just do things. He conquered things.
All the things.
He was too much for me. Too sure of himself. Too successful. Too self-possessed.
Too manly.
Too way, way, way out of my league.
By the time he pulled up in front of my apartment complex, I had stopped breathing altogether. Nerves ran in panicked circles inside my chest, forever bumping into each other as they tried and failed to settle. I pictured them with their hands in the air and their mouths wide in desperate concern. Abort, abort! They screamed. Run for the hills!
As if I could just jump out of Ezra’s car, ninja-roll into the bushes and live the rest of my life foraging in the Appalachians. Pretty sure that was a future 60 Minutes cautionary tale in the making.
Ezra put the car in park and hovered his hand around the ignition. “Can I walk you inside?”
“Please don’t!” Waving him off, I said, “I got this. I’m just up…” I pointed in the general direction of the sky.
“Do you have everything?” he asked.
I wiggled my feet and tapped my purse in my lap. “Yep.” My hand slid over the door until I found the handle.
“Molly,” Ezra stalled me with just that one word—with just the way he used it.
I half turned to face him. For the first time in our entire acquaintance, I saw hesitation and maybe even uncertainty.
“What you said about my website… I’m just wondering… Maybe if you have time… I would be willing to pay you if you would take a look at it again.”
My pulse skipped as I stared at him in an effort to decipher if he was serious or not. Even if I didn’t have the Black Soul project right now, who would want to work with a restaurant owner that had no misgivings about calling you names and insulting your taste? No thanks. That initial five minute interaction pretty much ruined any and all future work-related collaborations between the two of us.
And hopefully all the non-work-related collaborations as well.
This was what happened when I was nice. I should know better than to be nice.
I prepared a professional excuse in my head, something about a new project and not having the focus for him. But what came out was unfiltered truth instead. “Ezra, that’s a terrible idea.”
“It’s not,” he insisted, not even phased with my answer, almost like he’d anticipated it. “I’m surrounded by ‘yes’ people. Save for Killian and Dillon, I have nobody willing to tell me the truth. They’re all afraid of me.”
I shouldn’t have laughed. Really. He was being open and honest and… open and honest. But the look on his face was like the businessman equivalent to a three year old’s pout.
After I laughed, he looked less adorable. It was more like the businessman’s equivalent of a murderer.
“Molly.”
He said my name and I shivered. I blamed the weather, the leather seats, and the full moon. “I’m afraid of you,” I told him. “Just not tonight because of, you know, the champagne.” He opened his mouth and I quickly added, “And getting me drunk every time I have to work with you is not an option. This isn’t normal for me. I’m usually very responsible.”
“Two Advil, two Tylenol.”
“What?”
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “And an Alka-Seltzer a half hour after you wake up.” His gaze found mine. “For your hangover tomorrow.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling. Tomorrow I would be thankful for his home remedy, but tonight I couldn’t help but analyze him. “You’re always so…” I struggled with the right word to describe him. Thoughtful was the easy choice, but he wasn’t really thoughtful. That implied he was being generous with the information for the other person’s benefit. And Ezra was definitely not looking out for me for the sake of me. No, it was something more like… “Practical.”
Avoiding my eyes again, he looked forward and if it was any other man I would have sworn his cheeks flushed. “I’ll email you the details of what I’m looking for. You can decide for yourself what you think about the project.”
“You’re crazy.”
His smile was short-lived and filled with self-confidence. “I’m used to getting what I want.”
I felt my sigh all the way down to my toes. “Now that I believe.”
His phone buzzed in the cup holder as if accentuating his point at three in the morning. Which meant it was time for me to end our temporary truce and go to bed.
“That’s my cue to leave,” I mumbled more to myself than Ezra.
“That’s not what you think—”
“You don’t have to explain it to me,” I said quickly.
But apparently he felt like he did. “It’s my sister.”
I talked over him, knowing it didn’t matter who it was because it wasn’t my business. “I’ll see you around, Ezra.”
I hurried from the car, partly because it was a chilly night and partly because I couldn’t wait to get away from him. He had been nice. I could admit that.
But I also had to acknowledge that I wasn’t myself around him. Under normal circumstances, I was polite and kind. I listened attentively and responded considerately. I was all the adverbs that were nice, and reserved, and mature.
Something about Ezra made me lose my cool. I became a snarky, nagging shrew with bite. The filter over my mouth and mind dissolved completely and I was left with only raw truth and rough edges. And I had no problem telling the man no. Which was crazy for me, since I was a ride or die people pleaser.
Deciding to forget about Ezra completely and only remember the non-Ezra parts of the evening, I made my way up to my apartment, totally ignoring the Alfa Romeo that waited to drive away until I was safely inside my building. I started stripping as soon as I’d dead bolted my door. Purse on the kitchen counter. Shoes trailing behind me. Dress off. Bra off. Hair up.
I grabbed an oversized t-shirt, then headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth and deal with the excessive process of taking off my party makeup. Why, oh, why was waterproof eyeliner such a vindictive biotch?
I settled for good enough and headed for my bedroom.
That’s when things went off track.
I stared at my bed for a long time. I had made it this morning so it was nice and inviting with the covers turned down at one corner. My phone was on the brink of dying, so I needed to charge it. And then I needed to go to sleep. I was still buzzed and I had things to do tomorrow, and a million other reasons I had to go to bed that I couldn’t exactly remember off the top of my head.
So that’s what I did.
Just kidding. I turned on the hallway light and headed to my studio where I spent the next three hours trying my best to make domineering shoulders and a jawline that could cut glass. I obsessed over eyes that were nothing but endless mystery. And a mouth that could be so inviting and open, and then cruel and closed off in the span of three seconds.
The moon went to bed before I did. And when I finally released myself from my painting prison, I was no closer to getting the lines, angles, and colors right than I had been a week ago.
When I went to bed it was out of pure frustration and defiance. And when I closed my eyes it was his that taunted me from my dreams. His eyes stared at me, daring me to try harder, be better, to give up this fight with my lust, and give in to my tiny, insignificant crush on him.