Chapter FourMicah
Chapter Four
Micah
I’m chalking this one up to luck, even though Kinley is calling it fate.
I guess the two things are not dissimilar.
Even so, when I reach the catering company, I can barely contain my excitement.
Lila has never let me come on my own before, and this feels like she’s finally trusting me to handle some of the planning.
It might not be an actual promotion, but if Lila is okay with sending me out when the rest of the planning team are busy with a corporate employee appreciation party this week, who am I to question it?
When I get to the caterer’s building, Fischer exits the car right in front of the doors. He beat me here, which isn’t hard to do, but at least I was on time.
He looks down at his watch.
Okay, I was mostly on time.
“It’s only five minutes,” I say airily.
“Seven,” he replies gruffly. Someone must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Hopefully it wasn’t because of my texts.
“It’s five if you round down,” I say with a shrug. “Now, if it had been eight minutes…”
He doesn’t show any hints of cracking a smile. Tough cookie, Fischer Price.
Yeah, I’m not going to be able to take him seriously if I think of his whole name like that. He’s going to have to be just Fischer in my head unless he wants me laughing at him every time I look at him. (He definitely would not want that.)
“How is that calendar app treating you?” I ask, even though he’s starting to fidget as we stand outside instead of going in.
“I haven’t had a chance to look at it.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets.
He isn’t wearing a suit coat today, but he’s still in well-fitting slacks and a tie.
I like the forest green shirt he chose today.
It’s a good color on him, though I imagine he’ll look good in anything with his dark coloring.
His eyes are so black and his hair such a dark brown that he could choose basically any bold color and look good.
I like to wear blues and greens. Very cool colors, though I spice things up every now and then with something bright and fun.
He clears his throat.
I grin. “Well, if you had looked at it, you would have seen that Debbie moved back our meeting by ten minutes. So, technically, I’m on time.”
His lips twitch, and he glances down at his shoes for a second before he looks back up at me.
“Okay,” he says. I was hoping for a “touché” or something kind of flirty like I read in my book last night—an adorable enemies-to-lovers rom com with a fake relationship—but I guess Fischer isn’t the banter type.
I should have guessed as much after my interactions with him yesterday, but what can I say? I’m a sucker for good banter.
Fischer glances at his watch again, which probably means our ten minutes are up. “Shall we?” he says, gesturing toward the door.
I sigh. “One of these days I’m going to get you to smile, Fischer.”
I might be imagining it, but as he holds the door open for me, I’m pretty sure the corner of his mouth creeps upward as I pass. “You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that,” he mutters.
Oh, he has no idea what’s coming.
Debbie is waiting in the front lobby, and she greets me with a hug that lifts me off my feet.
She’s built like an MMA fighter but cooks like Julia Child, and it took me a year to convince Lila to consider her a favorite.
All that effort was worth it, though, and we’ve had nothing but rave reviews about the food at our events since switching to Debbie.
“I’m so glad you were free,” I tell her, and I really mean that. I don’t know if I could trust anyone else with an event this important to me.
She scoffs. “For you? Always. I’ll just have my sous chef handle the wedding we have that day. Though, I was surprised by the ideas Lila sent over. It’s not her usual style, but I think we can make it work.” Her eyes flick over to Fischer. “Who’s your friend?”
I glance behind me and choke back a laugh because he’s still standing by the door like he’s ready to run. “Debbie, this is Fischer.” I can’t bring myself to say his full name out loud. “He works with the client. Fischer, I hope you came hungry.”
“With what Lila suggested, I hope you didn’t,” Debbie mutters so only I can hear. “I’ll just have you two wait here while I go make sure everything is ready for you.”
As soon as she’s gone, I whirl around to face Fischer. “She’s not going to eat you.”
“It’s not what she eats that I’m worried about.”
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who so readily has a response to the things I say, and he says it all without a change in his expression. Especially today, he’s got the perma-grump thing going on, which means he’s just begging for his feathers to be ruffled.
“Would you relax?” I say, stepping toward him.
He takes a step back. “You do know that no one ever relaxes when someone says that, right?”
“I’ve known Debbie since I was a kid. She used to work for my dad.”
“That doesn’t inspire confidence.”
But her food will. I grew up on this stuff, and it doesn’t matter if it’s the most hated type of food in the world; Debbie can make it taste good. “You, Mr. Price, need to learn to have a little faith in people.”
“Fischer,” he corrects as he tucks his arms behind his back. “And I’ve learned it’s dangerous to put faith in anyone but myself.”
Hmm. There must be something deeper to that, though it’s not like I can ask him about it. Maybe in a few days, after I’ve worn him down a bit. “So, you don’t trust me?”
He ducks his head, looking up at me through his gloriously long lashes.
I don’t think I ever understood that phrase in books until this moment, though I’ve never heard of a man pulling that move.
Regardless, Fischer does it incredibly well, and it adds an intensity to what he says next.
“Have you given me a reason to trust you?”
“Okay, we’re all set!” Debbie whirls back into the lobby and offers me her arm, just like she used to do when I was a kid. I lean into her as we walk, my head against her upper arm because she’s so much taller than me. It’s not hard to be taller when I’m only five foot two.
“I miss being in your kitchen,” I say wistfully. “Leftovers aren’t the same as your cooking.”
She laughs. “Don’t tell me you’re still going out with boys every other night.”
“Sometimes it’s every night.”
Fischer makes a sound behind us that’s something between a cough and a laugh. I choose to ignore him.
“Last night was a preschool teacher,” I tell Debbie.
“I had high hopes for this one, but he didn’t ask one thing about me.
He just wanted to talk about the kids he teaches.
” And while it was adorable, Nate from the cafe will not be getting a second date because he didn’t even ask where I work so he could send me flowers.
It’s not that I’m a diva, and the flowers are starting to get old, but I want a guy who puts in some effort.
If they want to go out with me again, they have to figure out where to find me because I never give out my phone number.
“I don’t understand these boys,” Debbie says with a sigh. “How could anyone not want to know everything there is to know about my little Half-pint?”
I love that she still calls me that. My Briggs siblings adopted the name as well, but Chad’s the only one who still uses it.
I think it makes him feel more connected to us, using the nicknames we had as kids.
Houston is Texas because of his name and big personality.
Brooklyn has been Blondie since the day she was born, when she had almost white hair.
Chad is Grizzly, though I shortened it to Grizz because the full thing was too hard to say when I was little.
I always hoped to grow out of my name, but I pretty much stopped growing in the fifth grade.
“Have a seat, Fischer,” Debbie says as I settle on a stool. “As you can see, I’ve made up samples of everything Lila requested, as well as some alternatives for any allergy-sensitive guests you may have.”
While Debbie has made everything look as fancy as always, the cucumbers topped with chicken liver paste kind of look like cat food.
“Let’s try the bruschetta first,” I suggest, hoping we can avoid tasting the liver altogether.
I pop the tomato-laden cracker into my mouth, barely suppressing a moan when the flavors hit my tongue.
“Do you think I could convince my dad to hire you as my own personal chef?” I ask with a mouth full of food.
Debbie brushes my nose with her finger. “He asked me to move to Diamond Springs with him, you know.”
“What? When?”
“Before he married Stella.”
“That was like nine years ago!” And while my stepmom has become a pretty great cook since marrying my dad, she’s got nothing on Debbie. “Why didn’t you say yes?”
Debbie shifts the plates in front of us, pushing the mini crab cakes forward for us to try next. “Where would you be without me here in Sun City? I must have known you would need me.”
The crab cake is even better than the bruschetta. “Okay, yeah, you’re never allowed to leave New Mexico. You have to work with Ember Events always.”
Debbie makes a humming noise but doesn’t say anything, which has me feeling nervous. Is she thinking about cutting ties with Lila? But no, she wouldn’t do that without telling me. As if she sees my panic, she smiles and brushes my nose again. “I’ll always cater your events, Micah. Don’t you worry.”
Thank goodness.
“What do you think, Fischer?”
Oh, I forgot he was next to me. He meets my gaze for a second before looking down at his plates, where he has only taken small bites of everything so far. Even the chicken liver.
“It all tastes adequate,” he says slowly. “Better than adequate.”
“But I was wondering if you have meatloaf,” I say to Debbie, as if Fischer and I are totally on the same page. Based on the way he looks at me like I’ve gone crazy, we are definitely not even in the same book.