Working in a restaurant was a little like a ballet. There was a flow to moving through people and a choreography to the dance of hostess—that would be me—and wait staff, bartenders, as well as management. The hierarchy was different in every place.

Bellamy’s was my place.

Okay, so I didn’t own it. But the bistro was mine in every other sense of the word. I knew the clientele. I knew what time to have an afternoon meeting. I knew just how many people were in the restaurant at any given time. I seated them, I talked to them, I knew when babies were born, for God’s sake.

Why?

Because people liked to talk about their life and people liked when you remembered things about what they said.

I always remembered the people that came into the family restaurant that I’d been working at since I was seventeen years old. I’d worked up from busboy to waitress, then head waitress and flirted with management. In the end, the hostess station was where I belonged.

I could do the orders in a pinch for Angel Bellamy, the owner and manager, but that wasn’t my strength. I was born for this. For the floor. For the eighteen tables on the covered patio—this was Seattle, after all. It was going to rain, or drizzle, or mist. And during those lovely moments of sun we didn’t quite know what to do, so we were perpetually ready for being a little damp.

Inside, I had another twenty-six tables and a bar at each end of the bistro. One for the regulars. It was just the way things were done. We didn’t have a sign up or anything, you just knew that’s where you’d find the same people night after night. Then there was the hipster douche bar. At least that’s what we called it. Young executives that came in for the happy hour libations and an appetizer before they shuffled off to their respective houses, or in the case of many of the people in this area, back to work.

Chapel Enterprises was right across the street.

The land of workaholics.

I wasn’t quite sure what they did over there. It seemed that Chapel had their fingers in nearly every business in Seattle, but they certainly helped keep us in business. Between the orders in for lunch, the catering for meetings, and the executives that escaped to our bar, we saw many a Chapel employee.

“Georgia?”

I turned with my iPad mini in hand. “Please don’t tell me Paula is calling in again?”

Chelsea grinned. Her bronzed cheeks flashed with the diamond chips she’d had strategically placed in her adorable dimples. “No.”

“Good. Dean already bet me that she would call off and I’d have to do a shot with him.”

“Dean is a troublemaker.”

“Yes, but that troublemaker brings all the girls in.” I glanced over my shoulder at our resident flirt. And of course, there was a line of women three deep trying to vie for his attention. He wore a tight black t-shirt with Bellamy’s across his chest in bright white, and tight, dark washed jeans—the uniform of the wait staff and bartenders. Simple and effective.

But not for me. I had to dress up a little more, which suited me just fine. I had an addiction to dresses and the restaurant let me feed that side of me. Win-win as far as I was concerned.

“Mr. Chapel called in for a table.”

My belly jumped. “Which one?”

“Max.”

I smoothed the cropped part of my two-piece ensemble. The royal blue halter left only an inch of skin between it and the high-waisted black skirt, but suddenly it felt too tight. I loved this outfit, dammit. The fact that I couldn’t seem to keep my shit together when Maximus Chapel walked through the door was no one’s problem but my own.

After a moment’s hesitation, I shot into gear. “Open up a bottle of Fetzer to let it breathe. If he doesn’t order it, I’ll give it to the Porters when they come in at nine.”

“Got it.” Chelsea rushed off.

I moved to the small table at the edge of the outside patio. Max liked to eat alone, but he also liked to be out of the way. I was pretty sure he liked to people watch, which was why he always requested the same area. He normally ordered a bottle of wine and some sort of beef dinner and stayed for exactly forty-five minutes before going back across the street.

And my entire body would be alive and buzzing by the time he left.

Not that I ever acted on it. Number one he was a client, number two he was a Chapel. Steering anywhere into those choppy waters would end up with me being the one capsized and drowning, not Max.

But some nights it was harder to remind myself of that.

I set his table myself and added one of the wine glasses that he preferred, specially made for the red wines he drank. God, I was such a headcase. He’d never complained about the service. Was that because I was a freak and made sure every last detail was correct?

Did he even notice?

Why did I care?

I swung through the restaurant and headed into the kitchen. “Andre, Max is coming in.”

Our resident chef turned from the huge stove that he manned with militant precision and orders to boot. He had a royal blue skull cap on his bald head. Today it was a festive design of flying doves with the ties dancing down the middle of his back. His monstrous shoulders pushed at the seams of his chef jacket in blood red. “I have a perfect Porterhouse he might like or rosemary-infused sirloin tips in a wine reduction. If he wants something special, tell him to give me three ingredients and I’ll make him a masterpiece.”

“You are my hero, Chef.”

“One of these days you need to sit with the delicious Maximus. He’s far too attractive to be eating alone three times a week.”

“You don’t know what he does the other days.”

“More of the same, cara. Now, shoo, get out of my space or I’ll make you sit at the chef’s table and eat.”

“I’m going.” I skimmed my fingers along the back of the iPad that I wore like an extension of my hand. As a joke, the waitstaff had made a handhold mold for me for Christmas that was built into the back cover.

Seriously, best present ever.

“You find out if that man wants to play footsie with me or you, eh?”

I rolled my eyes. “TMI, Andre.”

“The things I could teach that man.”

“La-la-la.” His booming laugh chased me out of the kitchen.

I zipped through the main aisle of the restaurant with minimum stops. A smile, a wave, I stopped and picked up a child’s toy on my way by—all of it done without thought. I was on autopilot.

I tapped through my schedule of reservations, mentally shifting the staff in my head and pushing the notification of the changes to the head waitress. When I looked up, Max Chapel walked through the door. The night was warm so he wore a black summer-weight suit with a crisp white button-down shirt under it. A flash of crimson slid around his wrist as he tucked his tie into his pocket.

When he walked into the room, there was this slow-motion thing that happened. I probably watched too many movies or had a too active imagination when it came to this man, but my goodness. The precise cut of his hair wouldn’t allow for a stray hair anywhere else but along the front. There, it fell forward a little. As if there was just a touch of the wild inside of him and couldn’t be contained. It had an added bonus of making his brown eyes seem even darker. Add in broad shoulders and lean hips...

There was nothing on this man that I could find lacking.

He spotted me and gave me the harassed smile he perpetually wore. His phone was in his hand as usual, his thumbs quickly flicking over the screen before he tucked it away in his suit jacket pocket opposite his tie. “Good evening, Georgia.”

Smooth whiskey over ice. So cultured and deep, but the wash of heat that followed his baritone would eventually fade into a dull buzz that I carried for the rest of the time he was there.

“Hello, Mr. Chapel.”

“One of these days you’re going to call me Max.”

“Today is not that day, Mr. Chapel.”

His chiseled lips tipped into a half smile. “Maybe you’ll do it for my birthday next week?”

“Oh?” I tapped my fingers lightly against the back of my tablet. “Will we be catering for you?”

“Perhaps. If I give Andre enough warning, maybe he can do something masterful. Maybe you’ll even join me.”

My belly fluttered and I resisted the urge to cover the bit of stomach that showed. Surely he could see the flush of my skin and know that I had far too many dark thoughts about his lips and my flesh.

Wow.

It was going to be one of those nights that I ended up spending too much time in a cool shower.

“You know I never have time to sit down.”

“If I can make the time for forty-five minutes in your fine establishment, you should be able to do the same.”

“You and Andre are ganging up on me tonight.”

He glanced down ever so quickly and his hooded gaze touched my legs, midsection, and skimmed over my breasts before he locked his gaze with mine. I swallowed.

Max was rarely this bold. It wasn’t unheard of—he was terribly familiar with me some nights. One of the dozens of reasons I had such a hard time keeping myself together around him.

“A beautiful woman shouldn’t work herself into the ground.”

“When we close those doors, I promise I’ll have some of Andre’s fettuccini.” I turned on my heel. “We’ve got your table ready.”

“Excellent. I’ll be here a little late tonight. My office is being renovated and I hate to bring work home.”

“Well, I have a gorgeous bottle of Fetzer breathing for you, so that should help the night go a little smoother.” And there went my night.

“I think half the reason I come in here is to see just what you’ll put together for me.”

Me. I would put me on a plate and sit in front of you as an appetizer.

Not good, Georgia.

And definitely not on the menu.