Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Avery
Walking back toward the office, Avery tried to settle her nerves. Chances were, Nick wanted to talk about something to do with the shift. Or maybe have a private moment with her, but considering it was a shared office, she didn’t think so.
As she approached the ice machine, Alanna suddenly burst out from the side of it, her face flaming bright red. Jumping back in surprise, Avery put her hand over her pounding heart. It wasn’t uncommon for the servers to be back here, but she literally hadn’t seen Alanna.
“Hi, Avery!” Alanna’s voice was high, squeakier than normal, and she quickly rushed past Avery, headed back to the kitchen. What had gotten into her?
A second later, Avery realized exactly what had happened when she took two more steps and saw Jonathan, another server who was incredibly handsome with black hair and devastating blue eyes, leaning against the ice machine. He grinned at Avery.
“Hi, Chef.”
“Hi, Jonathan.” Shaking her head, Avery hoped Alanna knew what she was getting into, not just a workplace romance, but with Jonathan.
He’d already been through Josie and another one of the servers, Delia.
Delia seemed to have hooked up with Roger since then, but she still had eyes on Jonathan when she thought no one was paying attention.
Not my business.
That was another reason she didn’t want everyone to know about her and Nick.
When Jonathan had been dating Delia, everyone had known it.
When he’d broken up with her and moved on to Josie, everyone had known about that, too.
She’d actually thought Delia might quit for a while, but she’d stuck it out.
Funny enough, Delia and Josie had teamed up. After Jonathan broke up with Josie, almost overnight, they’d gone from mortal enemies to supportive sisters. Everyone in the restaurant had born witness to all of it, and all had opinions about it, which were often shared loudly.
Yeah. No, thank you. Avery did not need or want people watching her romance succeed or fail and didn’t need to hear their opinions about it.
Especially since she and Nick had the slightly more complicated position of him being her boss.
When the servers hooked up, they were on equal footing.
Things would be a lot more problematic if one of them got involved with a manager.
Yeah, maybe stop thinking about that.
She and Nick were different. They’d already agreed to keep work and relationship separate. There would be no between-shift bathroom sex with this chef. The very idea made her shiver. Marquis’ bathrooms were kept pretty clean, but still. Not for her.
Knocking on the door, she opened it. Another reason nothing would happen in this office. She was hardly the only one with that habit, and locking the door would be suspicious as hell.
Sitting behind the desk, Nick looked up and grinned when he saw her. Avery shut the door behind her.
“Hey there,” he said, getting to his feet and coming around the desk. Her eyes widened as he approached.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, putting her hands up in front of her when she realized he was coming in for a kiss.
Dark eyebrows rose quizzically. “Well, I was going to give you a kiss.”
“Nope.” She crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her head. “We said we weren’t doing that.”
“I’ve kissed you in the restaurant before,” he pointed out, a smug smile playing on his lips. “It’s not new.”
“Nice try.” Avery couldn’t help smiling as she shook her head again.
Maybe if she hadn’t just walked by Jonathan and Alanna doing exactly that…
but she had, and nope. It had been okay before she and Nick talked about keeping their relationship out of Marquis, but they’d had the conversation, and she was sticking to it.
“What did you want to meet about?”
Nick
Would a real Dom insist? Or sweep her into his arms and kiss her, anyway?
Nick didn’t know, so he decided not to risk it since she seemed serious, despite the smile on her face. Ah, well, it had been worth a shot. He would have liked a kiss, but he understood.
“I wanted to see if you want to get together tonight... outside of the restaurant.” He winked at her.
Avery’s cheeks turned pink, which was damn cute, as her hand swept along her hair as if trying to smooth down the flyaways from her blonde ponytail. They flattened for a moment before drifting back up again.
“Oh, um… Yes. If you want to.”
“Oh, I want to,” he murmured, letting his gaze move up and down her body. It didn’t matter that she was still wearing her baggy chef pants and coat. He knew exactly what was under them. “Your place or mine?”
“Mine.” Pursing her lips to hide her smile, she turned around, shaking her head and muttering, “We’re taking a shower first this time.”
That sounded good. Get nice and clean, so they could get down and dirty.
“Works for me.” Then he did something he’d wanted to do for months—he reached out and smacked her ass.
Avery jumped and spun around, her lips popping open in shock. Nick grinned at her and waited as they faced off for a long moment, Avery’s cheeks getting pinker and pinker.
He wasn’t sure what she would have eventually said, but he never found out because the door opened, and Gareth, the front-of-house manager for the evening, stepped into the office.
The oldest of the managers, probably in his fifties, had salt-and-pepper hair with a grey beard, dark brown eyes, and a bit of a belly, though he was still in pretty good shape.
“Oh, hey, guys,” he said, glancing up from his phone for a second before turning his attention back down to whatever he was looking at.
Thankfully, his distraction meant he didn’t see anything weird going on between Nick and Avery, even though Avery had jumped about a foot in the air and was bright red.
“Hey, Gareth. How are things? I mean you. I mean, how was tonight?”
Wow. Avery was terrible at this. Nick stared at her. Even Gareth finally lifted his head, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.
“Uh, excuse me, I gotta go. Exhausted.” Avery darted out the door, swiftly closing it behind her.
Slowly, Gareth turned his head to look at Nick, his eyebrows raising. Their gazes met, and Nick crossed his arms over his chest, keeping his expression blank. He had absolutely no idea what he could say. It felt like anything would only make Avery’s behavior seem more suspicious.
After a moment, Gareth coughed and looked down at his phone again, heading for the desk.
“I am Jon Snow,” he murmured. In other words, he knew nothing.
“Thanks,” Nick said before also vacating the office. Avery had already fled, but that was okay. He’d meet her at her place.
Avery
After fleeing the scene, Avery went straight to her car, silently vowing to get better at acting.
She’d done well during her actual shift.
She’d only been thrown off because Nick had given her that little swat right before Gareth had come in.
Who wouldn’t have been flustered, given the circumstances?
She wasn’t mad at Nick, exactly. At least, she hadn’t been until Gareth had opened the door.
If she was honest, she’d been turned on, which was why she hadn’t been able to find the words to rebuke him.
She still should have been mad. It had been a little easier to summon that emotion after Gareth walked in, although her embarrassment overwhelmed pretty much everything else.
“Argh.” She banged her head against the top of the steering wheel to clear it.
Not that it actually worked, but strangely she did feel a little better.
Putting the car in reverse, she got out of there, making sure she was gone before Nick followed her out.
Just in case anyone saw them leaving at the same time.
Well, hello there, paranoia. You look like fun.
Making it home in record time, she gave Rae a call as she was walking in the door.
She needed to talk to someone who could talk some sense into her, and since Rae didn’t have a kid or boyfriend, Avery figured she was more likely to be free than Domi.
It made her feel like a terrible person, but she didn’t want to infringe on Domi’s night, especially because it was already pretty late.
“Hey, girl, what’s up?” Rae always got straight to business when she answered the phone.
“Hey… I…” Avery’s voice trailed off. She was full of worry and tension, but now that she wanted to tell Rae about it, she found she couldn’t find the words.
“Everything okay?” The concern in Rae’s voice came through clearly as if she’d been relaxing and was sitting up. “Nick didn’t fuck up already, did he?”
That startled a laugh out of Avery.
“No… at least, well, maybe sorta? But not really.”
“Very descriptive. Do Domi and I need to come over?”
“No, no,” Avery said quickly, sitting on her couch. Rubbing her forehead, she leaned back and let her head drop. That felt good. “Nick’s on his way over. He’s following me home from the restaurant.”
There was a tiny pause.
“Okay, so that’s a good thing, right?”
“It is. I… before we left, we had a moment in the office. He gave me a little swat when I was heading out the door, and it surprised the hell out of me, but it was kinda hot, you know? I jumped, then turned around and stared at him. I couldn’t think of what to say or do, so we stood there, staring at each other, then one of our managers opened the door and came in, and I freaked out, so I rambled at him…
kinda like I’m doing to you right now, so I’m sure if he hadn’t been suspicious something was going on between Nick and me, he definitely was after that.
” Avery took a deep breath, feeling lightheaded.
That had been a hell of an info dump. She’d charged through it so fast, she was surprised Rae wasn’t asking for a replay.
The pause this time was a lot longer. Avery nibbled on her thumbnail, waiting for Rae’s reaction.
“I know you don’t want anyone at work knowing, and I get that, but this manager—do you think he’s likely to tell anyone?”
“Well… no.” A little piece of the weight pressing down on her lifted.
Gareth wasn’t like that; none of the managers were.
Though she was pretty sure they talked among themselves, they didn’t gossip the way the others did.
They only shared information with each other when it might affect the front-of-house staff—like which girl Jonathan was dating that week.
They didn’t bother worrying about the kitchen, leaving that up to Nick.
She relaxed a little more.
Even if Gareth realized something was going on with her and Nick, he had no reason to tell anyone, not even the other managers.
“Now that you’ve been in the situation once, you’ll think of a million other ways you could have handled it, so if it happens again, you’ll be prepared.”
Rae made it sound so reasonable, Avery nodded along as Rae spoke before coming to her senses and shaking her head.
“It better not happen again. I’m going to tell Nick—spankings on the second floor only.” The words had no sooner left her mouth than there was a knock on the door. Avery jumped to her feet, heart leaping up in her chest. “Crap, here’s here.”
“Go get him, girl! I’ll talk to you later. We need to hang out soon.”
“Definitely. Good night.”
“Night!”
Hanging up the phone, Avery went to answer the door. Nick stood outside, a cocky smirk on his face. Jerk. It wasn’t fair that he looked so damn good when he was arrogant.
His eyes lit up when he saw her, his face brightening, and for that one small change in his expression, she realized she would forgive a lot.
“Hello there.” Stepping in, his hands cupped her face to pull her in for a kiss before she could respond.
Avery grabbed onto the front of his shirt, her lips parting beneath his as she stepped back into her apartment. The door slammed behind him.