Chapter 3 #2
“I’ll be cleaning the tables,” Rebecca said and then embarrassingly headed instead towards the back, making it crystal clear just what she was doing.
Leaving the two of them alone-ish, other than the pair of tourists by the window who were sharing a ham and gruyere croissant sandwich and a large pot of coffee.
“Hey,” Taylor said.
“Come in to discover what you’ve been missing?” Rocco asked. His brain kept screaming, hot guy, hot guy, hot guy, and he couldn’t seem to help the flirty comment.
Taylor gave him one of those blank-ish, stern looks with his light blue eyes, and Rocco shouldn’t have been so into that, but he was, undeniably.
I just want to know how deep that ice goes.
“I’m not here for coffee,” Taylor said.
Oh yes, please, Rocco’s uncooperative subconscious purred.
“But surely I can persuade you to try something. I promise, I’ll keep my goat cheese to myself,” Rocco teased. But that’s all I’ll keep to myself.
Taylor flushed, and there it was. The first inkling of what lay beneath all that composure. “Maybe . . .uh . . .what doesn’t have coffee in it?”
“Hot chocolate? Caramel apple cider?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t take those off the menu, too,” Taylor said, his voice calm and serious, but his eyes full of amusement.
He was teasing, just like he had last night, and Rocco liked it, maybe a little too much.
Well, at least if you end up faking it, it’ll look really convincing.
“I’ll make you anything you want, even pumpkin spice,” Rocco said, leaning across the counter. Taylor stuck his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “Anything at all.”
“How about uh . . .that apple cider? That sounds good.”
“You got it,” Rocco said. He didn’t bat his eyelashes flirtatiously. After all, he was a goddamned professional.
Taylor watched him carefully as he grabbed the cider from the fridge under the counter and heated it up in one of his metal pitchers, then as Rocco swirled homemade caramel sauce into a cup.
He didn’t ask Taylor if he was enjoying his beverage here or taking it to go.
Maybe that wasn’t professional, but he wanted Taylor to hang around for at least the time it took for him to enjoy his drink.
“Did you mean what you said last night?” Taylor asked quietly.
It wasn’t hard for Rocco to know which thing he was asking about.
But he wasn’t against making Taylor work for it, a little.
“Which thing I said?” Rocco asked, feigning ignorance as he carefully poured the cider into the mug. He topped it with whipped cream and another swirl of caramel sauce. Setting it on the counter in front of Taylor, he gave in to the temptation and shot him a single smoldering glance.
“Uh, you know,” Taylor said, stammering again a little.
“One sec. Let me make a coffee and I’ll join you. That corner’s quiet.” Taylor looked like he was about to say something like, all your corners look quiet, but before he could, Rocco added, “And yes, I know. It’s quiet today. But hopefully, we can fix that.”
“That’s the idea,” Taylor said.
Rocco quickly made himself a latte and then joined Taylor at one of the tables.
“So you changed your mind,” Rocco said.
Taylor shot him a look that promised he wasn’t nearly as cold as he presented as being.
“I never made up my mind,” he retorted. Took a sip of his cider and gave Rocco an approving nod.
“This is delicious. I had this probably half a dozen times before you bought this place and it never tasted this good.”
“I know,” Rocco acknowledged. “I changed a few things.”
Taylor chuckled. “Are you incapable of leaving anything as it was?”
“Pretty much. I like to improve things. It’s a personal strength and apparently also a failing.”
“This town isn’t big on change,” Taylor said gravely.
“Believe me, I’ve learned that. The hard way.”
“Well, I think you were right about one thing. We can help each other,” Taylor said.
“Oh?” Rocco raised an eyebrow.
“Remember how I said last night there were no other serious, qualified candidates for my job? Well, scratch that. Someone applied this morning. Someone who was born here, is not young, and has a picture-perfect Christmas card family.”
“Ouch.”
“It doesn’t make me a worse candidate, necessarily, but it does give me more competition. I’ll need to work harder to look better in the city council’s eyes.”
“And that’s where I come in.”
Taylor nodded. “That’s where you come in. You make me look settled and happy, because God forbid anyone could be settled or happy without at least a partner.”
“Hey, sex makes a whole lot of people happy.”
Rocco enjoyed watching Taylor choke on his cider. “That isn’t . . .I didn’t mean . . .”
“Chill,” Rocco said. “I said fake, which means we’ve only got to convince everyone we’re getting it on, not that we’re actually getting it on.”
Not that he’d be averse. In fact, the opposite was true. But Taylor’s reaction to him even saying the word sex told him everything he needed to know. Taylor might be intrigued by him, but he wasn’t even close to ready to tangle in the sheets.
“Right. Okay.” Taylor cleared his throat. “You really want to do this, then?”
“Sounds like we both need to, now,” Rocco said.
Taylor sighed. “I hate the thought that the council might vote for me and not for this other guy because of this, but I know I’ll be better at the job. From what Mona said, I’m certainly going to be more committed to this town.”
“Sometimes we do shitty things for good reasons,” Rocco said.
Shot Taylor a lopsided grin. The certified Moretti grin that never failed to reel anyone in within a ten-foot radius, and it didn’t come close to failing now, either.
From his pink cheeks to the tremor of his fingers as he gripped his mug, it certainly seemed to have some kind of effect on Taylor. “Besides, it might be fun.”
“Fun?”
“You know what that is, right?” Rocco joked. “Or are you too buttoned up, too committed, too much of a workaholic—”
Taylor shot him a look, interrupting Rocco’s recital, and this one wasn’t just warm, it was downright hot. “I know what fun is.”
“Alright.” Rocco nodded, pretending that his throat wasn’t suddenly dry.
He liked playing with fire, but only when he was sure he wouldn’t get burned.
“We’ll need to have a plan,” Taylor said, all official. That shouldn’t have been hot, either, but it definitely was.
“You don’t want to just play it by ear?”
“Did you ‘play it by ear’ when you took pumpkin spice off the menu?” Taylor challenged.
Rocco wasn’t surprised the guy had thought it. Taylor wasn’t old, couldn’t be more than thirty, and he was up for a promotion—a position that he was told was really the whole power behind the town—so he was hardly a slouch. But Rocco was surprised he’d said it.
“Fair. Ouch, but fair,” Rocco said. “For the record, I do have a business plan. A good one, actually.”
“I believe it,” Taylor said, redeeming himself, slightly.
“Alright, so a plan. Like a dating plan?”
“I was thinking about this. First, you gotta get into the town more,” Taylor said. “Let people see you as more than just the idiot who took pumpkin spice off the menu and tried to force-feed them goat cheese.”
Rocco winced. “I think we either need to ban that phrase or . . .” He paused, an idea blooming in his mind. “We should actually make it your safe word.”
Taylor’s eyebrows rose, nearly to his hairline. “My safe word?”
“Well, our safe word,” Rocco revised. “For example, if I ever do something that makes you feel uncomfortable. Too coupley. Or too romantic. Or too much like you want to drag me to bed? Just say goat cheese.”
Taylor threw back his head and literally cackled.
Rocco had never seen him laugh like that and couldn’t help but pat himself on the back and also let himself actually enjoy the sound of Taylor’s laugh. The sheer joy in him, that he, from everything Rocco had seen, didn’t let anyone see.
If that was why he wasn’t immediately the front runner for the city manager job, that was probably why.
He kept this part of himself so restrained, so hidden, and God, it was wonderful. Rocco couldn’t stop staring at him as he laughed.
“What about your safe word?” Taylor asked when he finally stopped laughing.
“You don’t want to share goat cheese?”
“Gladly,” Taylor said, still chuckling. “So that’s that part of the plan, I guess.”
“As far as I’m concerned, that’s the most important part,” Rocco pointed out.
“What else . . .well, we’ll need to establish how we started dating?”
Rocco considered this. “Better to stick to the truth, right? The first time we met, I was intrigued, and then the other night, I deliberately sat next to you at Rudolph’s. You were also intrigued and got my number. Asked me out on a date . . .we’ll say, in a few days?”
Taylor leaned back in his chair. “You’re scarily good at this.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Rocco would take the compliment, especially considering how fiercely his ego was smarting over the Jolly Java situation.
“Do I want to ask why? You said your cousin did this . . .”
“They weren’t all that convincing though,” Rocco said, not realizing he’d made a tactical error until a frown appeared between Taylor’s eyebrows.
“You said it worked out, though.”
“Well, yes, it did,” Rocco added hurriedly. “In the end, they absolutely convinced my Auntie that they were dating. The rest of us? Well, it was a little bit of an over-the-top performance so we were less convinced.”
“But she was the target, so it was okay?”
Rocco relaxed a fraction. “Exactly,” he confirmed. That wasn’t entirely accurate but it was accurate enough. And hopefully Taylor would never need to know the truth about the origin of his cousin Enzo and his boyfriend Will’s very loving, very real relationship.
“Alright. So we stick to the truth as close as possible. We don’t overact.”
“Should be pretty easy, acting like you’re into me,” Rocco said, winking.
Taylor chuckled. “Does that work? Scratch that. Don’t tell me. I bet it does. Ridiculously well.”
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Maybe this time you should,” Taylor joked.