the kitchen door and leaves me wishing I could hate him for that cheesy closing line instead of melting on the floor like I am.
Chapter Thirteen
Ryan
“How’s the new junior chef working out?” I ask Nia, my sous chef back in Chicago. She’s been running everything while I’m away, and normally, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, worrying about all the ways my kitchen will be run into the ground while I’m gone, but with her in charge, I know I have nothing to worry about.
“Slow. But he’s learning.”
“How many times have you made him cry?”
“Only three.”
I smile and switch my cell phone from the car speaker back to my phone as I pull up out front of June’s house. “Well, that’s an improvement.”
I cut the engine and look out my window. She’s not expecting me, so I don’t think she’ll be too happy to see my face. I’ve realized that June likes to be 100% in control of every aspect of her life. Which is why I make it my life’s mission to uproot her finely tuned plans.
“You’re coming back Sunday night, right?” Nia asks as I open my car door and get out.
I pause, taking in June’s white bungalow and teal front door. The wooden porch seat looks lonely. Sure, it has a sunshine-yellow pillow on it, making the whole scene look happy, but when I picture June sitting in that chair all by herself, I get the urge to drive straight to Home Depot and pick up another matching one to plop down right beside hers. I’ll put a dark-blue pillow on it. It’ll be my pillow.
I make a half-hearted grunt noise into the phone. “Yeah, Sunday.”
Nia laughs, misinterpreting the cause of my disgruntled sound. “I feel ya. Sunday is too many days away when you’re ready to get back to your kitchen. Don’t worry, though; I won’t let it burn down.”
Yeah, ‘cause that’s really my problem: wanting to get back sooner.
I think if Nia called me tomorrow and said, “So sorry, but I accidentally spilled gasoline all over the restaurant and then lit it up like the Fourth of July,” I would only feel relief. What does that say about me?
Just then, movement catches my eye, and I see June’s front door open. She doesn’t see me across the street when she tiptoes out with bare feet to grab a package off the front porch. It’s only about fifty-five degrees outside, and her spaghetti-strap tank top and PJ shorts provide little in the way of warmth, so she crosses her arms across her chest and shuffles her feet quickly to retrieve the box by the stairs.
If I knew who that delivery man was, I would kiss him right on the mouth for putting the box so far away from her front door. I look around, half-expecting to find him lurking in a bush somewhere with binoculars, having intentionally put the box far away from her door because he knows she’d come out dressed like this.
June is all feminine curves, tan skin, and wild brown hair. She’s not a waif like the women I’m used to seeing come through the gourmet restaurants where I’ve worked. She’s real and soft, and suddenly, I want to break the delivery man’s binoculars into two because I don’t want anyone else looking at her. Mine. Not sure when I became the jealous type, but here we are.
“Nia, I’ll call you back,” I say, keeping my eyes on June and ending the call before she replies. She’s going to add extra salt to my famous hollandaise sauce because she hates when I hang up on her like that.
June must have heard my voice, because when her hands land on the box, her eyes shoot up to me. And then she frowns, those brows pulling so tightly together they are practically touching. I smile and cross the street.
She backs toward her door, saying, “No, no, no! Why do you keep showing up at my house at the crack of dawn?”
“We need to go to the store to get the food for tonight. But June,”— I’m rushing up the front steps to catch her—“I swear, if you shut another door in my face, we’re gonna have problems.”
“We already have problems, Ryan! Go to the store without me.” She turns around quickly before I can look at her face.
I put my hand on the door as she’s trying to shut it. June is the physical embodiment of Katy Perry’s song where I’m concerned. Hot