curled up in the corner of the sofa to sip her tea. “Yeah, that sounds like Tom. When Mason and I were first together, he was so freaked out by the idea of Mason dating somebody who worked for him that he made us sign papers agreeing I wouldn’t sue him if we broke up.”
I stopped mid-sip, my eyes locked on her over the edge of the glass. “He did what?”
“Oh, you heard that correctly,” Ava laughed. “It was pretty ridiculous. But, in the end, I guess I can understand where he’s coming from as a businessman.”
Before I could make any more comments about that particular line of decision making, the guys came back inside. Mason went straight for the baby and scooped him up into his arms, kissing his face until Robert laughed joyously and clutched his father’s cheeks in his hands.
“You ready to get going?” Tom asked, looking at me.
I nodded. “Sure. It was really nice spending some time with you, Ava. And you, Robert.”
“Definitely come back and hang out more,” she said.
“I will.”
As Tom and I left the house, I realized I was starving. My stomach rumbled, and he laughed.
“I guess we forgot to eat,” he said. “I think the hotel restaurant is open for another hour. You want to go grab something?”
“That sounds good,” I said.
We got to the hotel and went directly into the almost desolate restaurant. Only one other table had anybody at it, and it was just an older couple nibbling their way through desserts as they both read books and held hands across the table. I couldn’t help but smile when I looked at them.
And it was the kind of relationship I dreamed of having one day. The kind when you wanted to be with the other person so much you could be doing anything else, but you still wanted to be beside them.
We sat down and looked over the menus. The waitress let us know that several of the menu items had already sold out for the night, so we chose from what was still available and she walked away. As she did, Tom took a sip of the water the hostess gave us when we sat down.
“Amanda, I want to thank you again, so much, for coming out here. I know it’s going above and beyond, and it means a lot to me.”
“You don’t need to keep thanking me,” I said. “This is what you needed me to do, so here I am. It’s fun having a change of venue. It’s like I’m a secret agent on assignment.”
As soon as I said the words, I wished I could shove them back into my mouth. I could not believe I’d said something that stupid to him. Here he was, my older, dignified, and completely gorgeous boss, and I just told him I’ve been running around playing pretend as a secret agent.
He didn’t seem to notice. Or he just had the decency to not make fun of me. I decided to try to drive back some of my dignity with a more serious direction for the conversation.
“You were telling Ava we don’t have any specific timeline for how long we’re going to be here,” I said. “Do you have any idea at all? Even a ballpark?”
“It might be a little while,” he said. “I need to handle all of this and oversee the bar reopening. I think we can manage work from here just as well as we could from the home office if we use somewhat of a creative approach. But I completely understand if you need to go back to San Francisco at any point. You just let me know, and I will arrange for you to go back.”
“I can’t see any reason why I would need to go back sooner than you do,” I said, hoping that sounded professionally willing and not overeager. “And speaking of a creative approach, I know Landon is prepped and ready to be handling the meeting tomorrow morning but are you still considering using videoconferencing to be there?”
His widened eyes told me he had completely forgotten about the meeting.
“What time is that meeting?” he asked.
“Nine,” I told him.
“Seriously, I don’t know what I would do without you. Yes, I still want to do a video conference into the meeting. He is more than capable of managing it, but I want to be there and see how it goes. My brain is just in a thousand places right now, and I barely even know what