Who's the Boss? - Erin McCarthy Page 0,30
burned before this was all said and done. Burned? Fuck. I was going to be fully lit on fire.
Six
The plan to drive Sean crazy was backfiring.
Because mostly, I was just driving myself crazy.
I liked flirting with him.
I liked seeing his eyes darken with desire.
I looked forward to seeing him every day at work. And like Dakota, I had suddenly found the name of my restaurant worthy of a giggle. Bone. It was all I could think about when Sean was in the kitchen.
After days of me dressing like I was going out to dinner or a nightclub instead of going to work, Sean appeared largely unaffected. Occasionally, he offered an innuendo in response to something I said, but he didn’t look in danger of losing his cool or wanting to quit to prevent himself from ravishing me in the kitchen. The only comment he’d even made about my wardrobe was to tell me I should wear nonslip shoes.
It made me irrationally and unreasonably angry at him.
Chef Eight Dates. Pfft. He was probably boning half of Brooklyn. Unlike me, he probably wasn’t sexually frustrated, so he could handle being around a woman (as in, me) and control himself. Dakota’s strategy had done the exact opposite of its intention. I appeared to be the only one distracted. Which was bullshit. He could at least have the decency to be rattled, but nope. He was Chef Casual.
He was also a talented chef, confident, with a balance to his food. I wouldn’t say he was the most creative chef that had ever existed, but he had a deft hand, a subtle flair, and an excellent palate.
He was also standing outside of the door to my studio apartment.
After my shift I had rolled out of work as fast as possible and walked home in a cold rain. Three quarters of the way home I’d realized I had left in such a hurry I had forgotten my phone in the break room, but since it was raining and I had to be back at work in the morning, I didn’t bother to return for it. I trusted no one would steal it. When my intercom buzzed I had jumped. Almost no one used that thing anymore. People usually texted me directly to request access to the building.
It was after eleven, so I debated not answering it at all, but then curiosity got the best of me. “Yes?”
“Hey, it’s Sean. You forgot your phone at work, so I thought I’d swing by on my way home.”
I eyed my cat, Scott, releasing the button so Sean couldn’t hear me. “Is it a bad idea to invite my boss upstairs?”
Scott, an impassive tabby, had no opinion. He was deep into a grooming session in his cat bed by the sofa.
I hit the intercom button again. “Oh, great, thanks so much. Do you want to come up or should I come down for it?” I wasn’t wearing pants but I could rectify that quickly enough.
“I can come up.”
I closed my eyes briefly. This was such a bad idea. But then again, so had auditioning for Chicago when I absolutely can’t dance but that hadn’t stopped me. I had fake-kicked my way into the Bad Audition Hall of Fame, if there was such a thing. I hit the buzzer.
“What?” I grumbled at Scott, who had briefly paused in his licking to toss me an expression of disdain. “You don’t understand. You’ve been neutered.”
That seemed to offend my cat. He jumped out of his bed and did a leg stretch, then regally went over to the window ledge. I loved that furball. He was my constant companion and my number one cockblock. He did not like men. At all. He’d been known to inflict some serious flesh damage to my dates.
The thought of Sean getting a swat to the nose or a nip on the ankle was more satisfying than was healthy. I really needed to let it go. So Sean wasn’t hot for me. That wasn’t the point anyway. The point was to secure my job.
I glanced around my apartment as I unlocked my interior door for Sean. I wasn’t a messy person and tried to keep on top of tidying up, so it didn’t look bad. I lacked Savannah’s talent with decorating, defaulting to the easy route of ordering from Ikea and calling it good, but at least the space was clean. Not wanting to have my bed do double duty as my sofa, I had both crammed into the