bit of a player. But no. Cillian is a squeaky clean. He does his job, and he follows the rules.”
A tiny sliver of hope blooms in my heart. She’s never heard of him asking someone for a date… Does that make me special?
“I guess I’ll just have to settle for looking at him from afar—or across the table tonight,” I joke, feeling unable to hide my smile. He’s never asked anyone out before!
“Normally you would. But not Sunday’s. Cillian doesn’t work Sunday night. He gets Sunday through to Tuesday lunch off. So the next chance you get is then, my friend. And be prepared to get in line. We all want the chance to sit right next to him and accidentally brush against those muscular thighs of his.” She smiles and sets the finished drinks on a tray, along with the ticket. “Now, why don’t you take a break from your Cillian watching to run these out for me?”
“No problem,” I say, lifting the tray. “And thanks.”
She lifts her brow. “For what?”
“For not laughing at me.”
She frowns. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
I bounce a shoulder. “You’d be surprised. At boarding school…I didn’t exactly fit in.”
“Well, you’re here now,” she says, flashing me a smile. “And this place is where you belong. Welcome home, Hazel.”
Welcome home…
Cillian
With the collar of my jacket turned up against the cold, I shove my hands in my pockets and hunch forward as I walk the short distance between the restaurant and my parents’ bar. Every Sunday since we were kids, they close up early and we have Sunday dinner. Now as adults, we’re still doing the same, but now I’m the one doing the cooking so Mam gets a break after all these years. Benefits of having a chef for a son.
My cell buzzes in my pocket with a message from my older brother, Branagan: Mam is on the drink and won’t stop telling me to get under skirt??? Trick said you could explain??? Explain!
I smile to myself as I type back: Be there in ten. Feed her some bread
Da isn’t much better, mind you, he sends back, the message flashing on my screen just as I slide the phone back into my pocket. I shake my head. Our parents have always loved their whiskey, and Bran has always been uptight about it. Sometimes I think ‘uptight’ is his middle name. He’s some big corporate guy, constantly working, or on the phone talking about work. The only night he takes off is Saturdays when he runs the bar to give Mam and Da the night off. They think he’s a saint because of it. The rest of us help out too, but Bran seems to do everything bigger and better than the rest of us. An overachiever if ever I saw one. Not that there is animosity between us, we’re as close as brothers can be, but it also means that we’ll happily call each other kiss-ass whenever it suits us.
Most weeks, I’ll head over to him when I’m finished at the restaurant to help him close up and have a beer together to catch up without the whole Kelly gang listening in, but last night I skipped out, too shellshocked by the realization that Hazel is the boss’s daughter to want to shoot the shit.
To be honest, I never thought I’d meet his daughter. I’ve worked for the man for six years and I haven’t once laid eyes on this kid. It turns out, she’s been at boarding school the whole time. Whenever he took time off, he was going to see her on his parents’ property upstate. But now high school is over—that’s right, high school—and she’s come back to Boston for good, he’s decided to teach her the restaurant business. She could end up being my boss. But for now, she’s my boss’s’ eighteen-year-old daughter. Eighteen. What the fuck is wrong with me wanting a girl that young?
In my defense, she seemed a hell of a lot older when I was talking, well, flirting with her. But I guess you never can tell based on looks. Had George not walked in when he did, I would have finished asking her out then been out of my ass when I went to pick her up from his house—career over. And just my luck, the one girl I asked out from work is the last girl I should even think about that way. I need my head read. Especially when all I could