CHAPTER EIGHT
DOMINIC
I hadn’t suffered a major injury since I was a kid. It was rotten timing for me to break that streak when I had a restaurant to open, but I only had myself to blame. My lack of sleep coupled with a stubborn insistence on doing everything my way had finally caught up to me.
Seventeen stitches in the hand made any kind of manual labor a little tricky, so Gio sent some help over in the form of Tim, an Espo 1 employee. Tim had been working for us in the kitchen for over a year—great instincts when it came to food, but in some ways he wasn’t the brightest star in the galaxy.
“Hey, Dominic,” called Tim from the kitchen, “where do you want me to put these dough racks?”
I looked up from the complex bureaucratic form I’d been immersed in as I sat at the lunch counter. “I thought I set them out of the way against the wall.”
“You did. But I figured you might want to put them somewhere.”
I had put them somewhere. I had put them out of the way against the wall.
“Ah thanks, Tim. But I think they’re fine where they are.”
“Oh.”
Fifteen minutes later . . .
“Hey, Dominic!”
“Yeah, Tim?”
“The upright freezer isn’t working.”
My head was starting to pound. I pinched the skin between my brows. “Why do you say that, Tim?”
“It’s not cold.”
“It’s not plugged in, Tim.”
A long pause.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I unplugged it myself.”
“Oh.”
There was no reason to keep the freezer going if there wasn’t any food to freeze. There wasn’t any food to freeze because the opening was still a few weeks away, and I didn’t want to keep the freezer stocked right now just for shits and giggles. I could have sworn Tim and I had suffered through a similar exchange yesterday when he became alarmed that the under counter freezer was warm to the touch. It was probably a mistake to send Tim to the kitchen for organizational duties, but I needed him out of my hair while I looked over the liquor license application. I should have taken care of this already, but with one thing or another, it had somehow gotten sidelined.
“You ready to go over the check run?” asked Melanie as she suddenly materialized, looking as fresh as a blooming rose. Her black hair hung in soft waves halfway down her back, and her cheeks were charmingly flushed. The sight of her shouldn’t rattle me the way it did. From the way my heart jumped, you’d think I’d never laid eyes on a good-looking woman before. But there was no easy way to shove powerful physical attraction under the carpet and keep it there.
We’d been working together every day for the past week. Sometimes we clashed, and sometimes we got along great. And then sometimes the sexual tension between us was so fucking electric I had trouble remembering why I couldn’t put my hands all over her, but I was determined to stay focused. Sure, I was tempted to make a move on Melanie. I’d never felt more tempted by anyone. But in the end the restaurant was what mattered.
Melanie was good for the restaurant. Gio was right about that. She was unfailingly attentive in every task she tackled. I’d never had a more conscientious employee, and the fact that she seemed to care about every aspect of Esposito’s about as much as Gio and I did stirred my admiration.
Yet for some reason I had trouble telling Melanie just how much I appreciated her. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that as she stood next to me, I only pretended to look at numbers and invoices when I was really checking out the shape of her hips in a tight black skirt and the cute frown she wore when she was concentrating.
When she asked a question and suddenly glanced up at me, I could swear she’d heard my thoughts as plainly as if I’d shouted them. A blush colored her cheeks, and she licked her lips, but then all she did was crisply ask if I needed to borrow a pen to sign the checks. It wasn’t the first time we’d had a moment where we were clearly balancing on a tense edge, where the smallest breeze or gesture might send us colliding into each other.
At least today Tim’s presence helped serve as a buffer.
“Nothing but productivity all around,” I said mildly. “Right, Tim?”
There was a brief crash in the kitchen. “What did you say, Dom? I couldn’t hear you over the can opener.”
“Why are you using—oh hell, never mind,” I grumbled, trying to peel my eyes away as Melanie stretched her arms toward the ceiling and yawned. She’d been wearing more clothes when she got here this morning, but she must have lost something along the way. I would have remembered that black tank top. It would have been on my mind all morning.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked. I’d been keeping the air at seventy degrees.
Melanie looked down and blushed. She crossed her arms suddenly, like she was embarrassed. “Sorry. I shed my cardigan back in the office. It’s about fifteen degrees warmer in that room.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.” She was amused. “You’d know that if you ever sat at your desk.”
I looked down at the papers that were spread all over the counter and shifted my weight on the counter stool. “Somehow I can concentrate better out here.”
The comment seemed to bother her. She probably took it personally, thinking I was avoiding the office because I didn’t want to be around her. She was right. But she might not guess the real reason.
“Oh hey, Melanie,” Tim said cheerfully as he emerged from the kitchen. He held up a pair of pizza peels and pointed them at me. “What should I do with these?”
“I thought I hung them on the new hooks between the two big ovens.”
Tim nodded. “You did.”
“Okay. Well, how about returning them there, Tim?”
“You bet, Dom,” he said and whistled as he returned to the kitchen. He reappeared less than three seconds later. “You mind if I take lunch now?”
It was ten thirty. “Sure, Tim. That sounds fine.”
Tim waved and skipped out the front door.
I raised an eyebrow at Melanie. “Hard to believe,” I said.
She cocked her head. “What is?”
“When Tim isn’t misplacing things in my kitchen, he studies astrophysics.”
Melanie laughed. “You lie.”
I held up my bandaged hand in a mock oath. “I swear. He’s a junior at Arizona State.”
She laughed again, and then our eyes met. She stopped laughing, cleared her throat, and fussed with a strand of hair.
“I’ve looked over about eighty-five resumes so far today,” she said. “I have two interviews set up for tomorrow, and I’m just waiting for some return calls to make more appointments.”
I clicked my pen, feeling a little surprised. “Gio’s not handling any of the new hires?” Gio had always been the one to hire the staff.
“He’s dealing with the kitchen staff, interviewing them over at Espo 1. I’ve been given complete freedom to hire the rest of the servers. We discussed this yesterday when he came by for the meeting. Don’t you remember?”
I didn’t. “Oh yeah.”
Melanie stared at me and then pointed to my hand. “When do you get the stitches out?”
I flexed my fingers and looked down at the bandage covering the wound. “Tomorrow. Actually I was thinking about cutting them off myself.”
She wrinkled her nose. “No. Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
She thought about it. “I don’t know. But you could get an infection or something.”
“Whatever you say, Nurse Melanie.” I turned back to my paperwork, aware that she was hovering.
“Is that the liquor license application Gio asked you about yesterday?”
“Yes. And I have to finish it.”
In other words, Please take your hot little ass out of my sight so I can think about something that’s not filthy.
Melanie didn’t disappear, though. She decided to lean against the counter, about eighteen inches from my work space.
“Dominic,” she said in a low, unwittingly sexy voice. “You know I can do things for you, right?”
Good god, was she trying to kill me?
“You can do things for me?” I repeated blankly, my mind running amok with possibilities of what Melanie could do and the positions she could do them in. And just like that I was so fucking hard my balls ached.
Melanie smiled sweetly, completely unaware of the X-rated movie playing inside my head.
“Of course,” she said. “Why don’t you turn that paperwork over to me? I’ll get it done right away, and all you’ll have to do is sign on the dotted line.”
“Thanks, Melanie, but I’ve got everything under control.” I turned away from her and stared intently at the liquor license application until she got the message.
“All right,” she said, mercifully backing away. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
As soon as I was finished with the application, I stood in the hallway outside the office and called to Melanie that I was stepping out to drop off the liquor license application in person. I didn’t wait around to see if she heard me or not.
Outside the cool sanctuary of Espo 2, the heat was punishing. Summers in the desert tended to linger well into September. After a decade of living here, I ought to have been used to it, but there was never anything like that blast of fire on a Phoenix street.
I jumped in my pickup truck and navigated the short distance to the Department of Liquor Licenses and Control. I didn’t know what my problem was when it came to Melanie. She was beautiful and she was intelligent and I really wanted to see her dancing naked on the counter, but I should’ve been able to get over all that by now. Jason kept teasing me about the fact that I hadn’t gotten any action for more months than I cared to think about. Life had been nothing but work and dreams of work. That must be the reason why my brain and my libido were all scrambled these days.
If I was being honest, then I would have admitted that my reaction to Melanie wasn’t just physical. The day she’d told me about her parents as her eyes filled with painful tears, I wanted nothing so bad as to collect her against my chest and stroke her hair as she wept. The way I felt around her was not something I felt regularly. That made it more dangerous, and even tougher to resist. And that’s what I was afraid of. Somehow Melanie wasn’t just tempting my dick, she was inside my head. I knew if I ever got a taste of her, I might forget all kinds of good manners and family promises.
There were moments when I thought that if she wanted it, I’d fucking take her right where she stood and then carry her away with me. The problem was I’d always have to turn around and come back before I got very far. In the end the needs of the restaurant took precedence over anything else. Esposito’s was more than a business venture; it was my name and my family and every plan I had ever made. Melanie wouldn’t understand that, and I wouldn’t expect her to. If we got together, she’d wind up frustrated and unhappy and probably in search of a new job. What’s more, Gio would hit the goddamn roof when he found out.
Yet those cold realities never kept me from imagining several dozen creative ways to get down and dirty with Melanie Cruz. Thank god she wasn’t psychic.
By the time I returned to Espo 2, Tim was back to disorganizing the kitchen, and Tara had arrived for a visit with baby Leah.
“There’s my princess,” I said when I walked through the door and saw the baby tangling her chubby fingers in her mother’s hair.
“Well, hello, Dominic,” Tara laughed. “I’m happy to see you too.”
Melanie had emerged from the office. It appeared as if she and Tara were having a friendly chat. I thought I remembered Gio saying that the two of them had really hit it off, that they’d even known each other years ago. Right now I didn’t care. I only had eyes for my baby niece.
Tara handed Leah right over when I walked toward them with my arms out. Even though my brother’s family lived in a neighboring condo, I’d been keeping such weird hours I hadn’t seen the baby in over a week.
Leah smelled like soap and innocence. She immediately drooled all over my shirt. I’d never had any interest in babies until Leah was born, but the first time I held her in my arms, I knew I would do anything for that little girl.
“She’s teething,” Tara explained. “Those first two bottom teeth just broke through yesterday. Watch your fingers because if she gets too close, she’ll try to chew them off.”
I looked into her angelic little face. “You wouldn’t do that to Uncle Dominic, would you?”
Leah blew spit bubbles in my direction and laughed.
“That’s right,” I told her. “Don’t forget that I’m your favorite uncle in the whole world.”
Tara and Melanie started chatting about art museums and other bullshit, so I carried the baby into the kitchen for a tour.
“Let’s see what you think of Daddy and Uncle Dominic’s restaurant,” I told her.
Tim was in the kitchen staring at a stack of gray food bins that we used to store the pizza dough while it was rising. He blinked at me.
“Is that a baby?” he asked.
“No, it’s a polar bear,” I joked.
Tim looked alarmed.
“Tim, this is Leah, Gio’s kid.”
He scratched his head. “Gio has a kid?”
“Yeah, you must have seen her before. Tara’s been bringing her around to the restaurant since she was a week old.”
“Who’s Tara?”
Was this guy bullshitting me? Maybe he was high. His pupils did look a little dilated now that I could see him up close.
“Tara is Gio’s wife,” I answered, bracing myself for the next question.
Recognition clicked in his face. “Oh, right,” he said. He pointed through the cutout window in the brick wall that separated the kitchen from the dining room. “There she is.”
“Yes,” I said, slightly relieved that Tim was at least partially present.
I decided to send Tim back to Espo 1 for the day. He seemed happy enough to leave his stack of mixing bowls right where they were.
“What do you think?” I asked Leah a minute later as we walked around the Espo 2 kitchen. Meanwhile I could hear snippets of the conversation Melanie and Tara were having in the next room.
“I’m actually going out for once,” Melanie was saying. “When I’m not killing myself at work, I’ve become far too comfortable sitting on my couch in my flannels and talking to my cats. So tonight I’m trying something different.”
“Ooh, hot date?” Tara teased.
Melanie giggled. “Close enough. Braxton’s a former colleague.”
“Good for you,” Tara said. “Hold on, Gio’s texting me.”
Tara had her face in her phone when I stepped out of the kitchen, but Melanie looked my way. Maybe she was admiring Leah, because she stared for a long handful of seconds. Then she smiled and turned her head.
A few minutes later Tara announced that she had to get back to the East Valley for some kind of Mommy and Me playgroup. I gave Leah one more kiss on her plump little cheek and handed her over to her mother. Once they were gone, I noticed Melanie was watching me with a confused expression.
“What?” I said.
She grinned. “I just never saw that side of you before.”
“What side?”
“The one that lights up like a Christmas tree over a baby.”
“Only that baby.” I paused. “So you’ve got plans tonight?”
She looked surprised. “Yes. Rare, but it does happen. Why?”
“Just making conversation.” I picked up some scattered papers and pretended to study a supplies contract. The idea of Melanie out with some guy shouldn’t have gotten me all bent out of shape. She didn’t belong to me. Still, I kept trying to picture the kind of man who would attract Melanie. This Braxton character was probably some big shot executive who drove an eighty-thousand-dollar car and habitually manscaped all the visible parts of his body. I pictured him laughing with Melanie over a bottle of wine as his dick hardened in his designer suit. I kind of hated him a little.
“Dominic?” Melanie said. “Are you okay?”
Sure, I was fine. Some unknown douchebag named Braxton was going to be drooling over Melanie in a few hours. That was no reason for me to feel like growling like a rabid dog.
“Yeah,” I told her. “I just, ah, bit my tongue.”
She was still staring at me.
A change of subject was overdue. “You get all those interviews set up?” I asked.
Melanie nodded. “A few. Still waiting for some calls back.”
“I think a little hustle is in order,” I said, a little more harshly than I meant to. “Our doors will be opening before we know it.”
She frowned. “I know that. You have nothing to worry about. I promise I will assemble the most competent serving staff in the state.”
“Good.”
I hoped that was the end of it, but Melanie lingered. I didn’t look up even as she stepped closer. She cleared her throat to get my attention. I shuffled the papers in my hands.
Her face was full of curiosity as she looked up at me. I was glad she’d covered that tank top up.
“Is something bothering you?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Nothing in particular, but I’ve got a million and one things on my mind. There are a lot of essential pieces that need to fall into place. Like liquor licenses. And staff.”
She looked a little hurt. “Dominic, you can trust that I’m on top of the staffing issue. I promise.”
“Good to know.”
Melanie sighed. “So we understand each other?”
“I think so.”
“Is there another reason why you’re aggravated?”
I tossed the papers onto the counter. “Why the hell are you so worried about my state of mind, Melanie?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she took a step backward. “I’m not,” she said, and began stalking back to the office. “By the way,” she called over her shoulder, “there are two interviews set up this afternoon in case you want to participate. One at two o’clock and the other at three.”
“Won’t make it,” I called back. “I’ve got to stop at the lawyer’s place and sign some paperwork. I’ll email you some questions to cover.”
“Yes, sir,” she mumbled and then closed the office door behind her. She didn’t slam it, but I got the picture.
I sat there for a few minutes, just staring at nothing and wishing like hell that the wine closet was already stocked. When my phone buzzed, I ignored it the first time, but then it rang. I smirked when I saw who the caller was, and answered.
“What’s up, Jay?”
“Texted you three times.”
“Didn’t see it yet. Care to summarize?”
Jay dove right into his story, talking rapidly. He often lunched at this place in Scottsdale called Hot Tips where the waitresses were all busty, blonde, and barely covered. He’d been flirting with this one girl for a few weeks and asked her today if she wanted to make plans after hours. Well, it turned out he put his foot in his mouth, because the waitress was brand-new. The girl he’d been flirting with, the one he thought he’d been making a play for, was actually her twin sister. Turns out this sort of thing happened to them all the time, and they had a sense of humor about it.
“Dude,” I interrupted him, “I don’t believe a word of this shit.”
“Be quiet, Dominic,” he scolded. “I’m getting to the best part.”
“Is it going to make me nauseated?”
Jay made a disgusted noise. “Not unless you’ve really and truly gone off the deep end.”
“Have at it then,” I said.
“A situation like this doesn’t exactly come along every day—”
“In porn it does.”
“Dominic!” he roared, and I chuckled.
Jason took a breath and continued. “When I mentioned that I had a buddy who was a high-profile restaurant owner, the girls were all kinds of interested. They are ready and willing to meet up tonight. You get what I’m saying?”
“Twins. Ready and willing. I get it.”
“So you’re in?”
For some reason I swiveled in my chair and glanced down the hall. I couldn’t see the office, but I knew the door was still closed.
“I’m in,” I said.