Daring Devlin (Lost Boys #1) - Jessica Lemmon Page 0,25

direction. I’d been blown off before. This felt like the moment in high school that afternoon when Joshua avoided me for two entire days because my ex-friend Jackie had started a rumor that I’d kissed Carl Young.

I dumped my coat in the storeroom and tugged my apron over my head. Devlin was back at his workstation, cubing steak and tossing the pieces onto a metal tray filled with various other vegetables. I watched him for a few seconds, trying to decide how to start a conversation. Should I be witty or—

“What do you want?” he growled.

I blinked at him. His face was stone. Angry stone. Was this the same man who had turned me inside out with an intimate kiss yesterday?

I opened my mouth to say “Screw you” or a more colorful version of it, but then I remembered he was still my boss. Sadly, I couldn’t afford to be fired for giving my tongue free rein.

So, I left the kitchen, unsaid words eating through my organs like acid.

Around nine that night, I’d been cut from the floor. Relieved not to have any last-minute guests (or, campers) at my tables, I was past ready to go home.

Devlin had gone out of his way to ignore me the entire shift. Even when he’d come out of the prep area to do some “general managing” of the kitchen staff. Of course, I didn’t go out of my way to speak to him. So maybe the fault was partially mine.

No. Screw that. It was his.

My side work duty for the night was the unpleasant job of hauling boxes of rolls from the freezer to a shelf in the kitchen where they would thaw overnight. I grunted past him four times while dragging a heavy box, and he did a spectacular job of refusing to lift his chin and concede that I existed.

As I was huffing and puffing, I thought of Roy’s nephew, Barney, and wondered if he was a gentleman. Our kind-of-date was Sunday, and I’d begun to think I might enjoy meeting a nice guy. A real boy who wouldn’t ask me to do his dirty work and then punish me for it twenty-four hours later.

I’d been used by Devlin. That hurt. My first venture out of my singledom cave and I’d been caught in a snare. So unfair.

I blamed what happened next on being hopped-up on my own indignation.

Someone called for a food runner for the dining room. My arms already hurt from a full shift, and the box-hauling. Plus, the tray was packed with four wide, oval platters of ribs and braised pork chops and surf and turf, and I knew from experience those suckers were heavy. All I wanted was to restock my sugar caddies, wipe down my booths, and go home. Maybe lick my wounds a little. Draw a cartoon image of Devlin with horns and a forked tongue.

That might make me feel better. That, and a stiff drink.

The call came again and I ground my back teeth together. Other than Bess, no one was in the kitchen but me, and she was busy tallying her receipts for the night. She wasn’t wearing an apron any longer and had taken down her curly hair. She’d swipe a few of those curls through barbecue sauce if she attempted to shoulder the tray.

Sigh. I begrudgingly walked toward the tray as a voice boomed over my left shoulder. Devlin’s voice.

“If I don’t have a runner for this food in three goddamn seconds—”

Anger pent up from the day, I forgot my place entirely, gestured to the tray in front of me, and boomed back, “What the hell do you think I’m doing?”

The kitchen had fallen so quiet it was like the air had been sucked out of the room. I’d screamed at him. Full-on screamed. All eyes were on me. Including Devlin’s. Finally. But the heat in his eyes wasn’t the answering heat I’d been hoping for earlier.

He was pissed. And eerily calm. He pointed at the floor and said, in a voice of pure steel, “My office. Now.”

He stalked away from me. I felt the fury broiling under his surface like I was standing at the mouth of a volcano about to explode.

Melinda lifted an eyebrow. Then smiled. Her dancing on my grave was a sign that what I’d done was bad. Like, bad, bad. But I refused to be intimidated. Chin high, I marched toward the office, past the dishwasher, two other servers wheeling racks of frozen mugs to the