S.E.C.R.E.T.: An Erotic Novel (12 page)

“Why did my dad have to buy
this
building and put a daytime café on
this
street? And why did the Castilles have to build
that
condo right across from us?”

He let his pencil drop. It had been a bad month financially.

“Special delivery,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. I pointed to the Americano
on his desk that I’d freshly brewed for him. He didn’t even look at it.

“What if we put a half-dozen tables in the back on my parking spot, string some patio
lanterns, pipe in music and call it a patio? It might be pretty back there. Quieter,”
he said in a daze.

I could have been anyone standing there.

Just then, Tracina bounded into the office.

“If we’re talking about renos, fix the toilets, the broken chairs and the goddamn
floor tiles on the patio first, babe.” She tossed her purse onto the chair in the
corner. Then she whipped off her baggy white T-shirt in front of me and Will and changed
into a tight red one she plucked out of her purse, the one she always wore on the
night shift. She was so casual, so confident with her tiny, perfect body.

I tried to avert my eyes.

Spring Fling gave Will more gray hairs than losing business to Mardi Gras or the jazz
festival. But gray hairs on Will only made him hotter. He was one of those guys who
got better looking with age, something I had been about to say out loud that morning
when Tracina interrupted. My two escapades and the boldness they were engendering
in me had me blurting out all sorts of things. I was even swearing more, much to the
consternation of poor Dell and her little red pocket Bible.

“Busy today?” Tracina asked, tucking in her T-shirt.

I was ending my shift just as she was beginning hers, with no tables to hand over.
It was that dead.

“Not really.”

“Not at all,” said Will. “Spring Fling.”

“Fuck Spring Fling,” she said, prancing out of the room.

I watched her fluffy ponytail bob its way down the hall to the dining room.

“She’s amazing,” I said.

“That’s one word for her,” Will responded, dragging his fingers through his hair.
He did that so often I wondered if there were trenches in his skull. Finally, he seemed
to notice I was there. He looked up at me. “Plans tonight?”

“Nope.”

“Not seeing that guy?”

“What guy?” I asked, perplexed.

“The guy from Halo.”

“Oh
that
guy,” I said, my heart speeding up. It’d been weeks since that night and neither
he nor Tracina had brought it up, Tracina because she was probably too drunk to remember
and Will because he never pried. Had he seen something after all?

“That guy was just a one-time date. There was no real chemistry.”

Will squinted as though he remembered things a little differently. “No chemistry?”
He turned back to his adding machine and punched in more numbers. “Could have fooled
me.”

When I asked Matilda what to do if I ever ran into someone I knew while out on a S.E.C.R.E.T.
date, she told me that the truth was always better than a lie. And yet, here I was,
lying.

“Will, Tracina’s here, so I’m off. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, making ready to
bolt.

“Cassie!” Will said, startling me.

Please don’t ask me any more questions
, I prayed silently.

Will met my eye. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said.

I saluted and left.

“Cassie!”

What did he want this time?
I turned and walked back to poke my head through the doorway.

“You looked really … good that night. Great, even.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks,” I said, no doubt blushing like a teen. Oh, Will. Poor Will. Poor
Café Rose. Something had to be done soon.

It was inevitable. That evening Tracina got the heel of one of her neon pumps caught
in a crack in the sidewalk. Her toes moved forward, but the heel stayed put, wrenching
one of her bird-like ankles. She had warned—and had been warned—about the cracks in
the pavement and the perils of wearing those pumps at work. But such is a woman’s
vanity, and such was my life, since I was the one who had to absorb a few of her night
shifts until her puffed-up ankle returned to its normal dainty size. I complained
to Matilda, who had asked me to keep her aware of my work schedule. I was hoping my
next fantasy would take place in the Mansion, and I was also hoping it would happen
soon. But it was looking more and more like this month might be fantasy-free. “Not
a problem,” she said. “We will just schedule two
events next month.” But still, memories of that interlude in the jazz bar were fading
and the truth was, I was longing for more.

Thank goodness for Spring Fling was all I could think, while wiping down the tables.
I couldn’t have made it through a week of double shifts if we’d been busy. The days
stayed dead quiet, but the early evenings cast an even sadder mood over our part of
the city. There were so few customers to absorb the glow off the streetlights, it
just bounced around the walls and glass, giving the Café the feel of a lonely painting.
Will was staying at Tracina’s to help her get around, so his reassuring presence wasn’t
felt upstairs. I didn’t mind. I had a couple of good books on the go, and was even
boldly using my free time to scribble some thoughts into my fantasy journal, which
was the only homework S.E.C.R.E.T. had asked me to do.

That’s actually what I was doing at the bar when the door chimes alerted me to what
I thought was a late-night customer. But it was the pastry delivery man, odd because
normally those guys made their drop at the crack of dawn, when Dell was around to
sign off on the waybill. I had sent the cook home hours before, since the only things
I’d serve after 7 p.m. were coffee and dessert, and only to people who were wrapping
up their meal. I turned to watch as a young man in a gray hoodie pushing a dolly stacked
with pastry boxes walked right up to me without saying a word.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sliding off my stool and hiding my journal behind my back, “but
aren’t you a little late? Don’t you normally come in the mor—”

He moved past me, removed his hoodie and shot me a smile over his shoulder. He had
close-cropped hair, a chiseled face with dark blue eyes and forearms covered in tattoos.
In my mind I saw a freeze-frame of every high school bad boy who’d made my heart ache.

“I’ll just put these in the kitchen. Meet you there?” he said, holding up his clipboard.

I had a feeling I was going to receive a lot more than two-dozen beignets and a tray
of Key lime tarts. Seconds after he punched open the doors to the darkened kitchen,
I heard a crash that made me glad Will wasn’t upstairs. And the cacophony didn’t happen
just once. It was in stages. First a crash, then a series of bangs, then another metallic
nightmare.

“Oh my God!” I yelled, inching my way to the kitchen door, behind which I could hear
groaning. “Are you okay?”

I shoved the door open and felt a body, his body, move a little. I felt along the
inside wall and hit the fluorescent overheads, and there he was lying on the floor,
clutching his ribs. Pastries of various pastel hues were smeared across the floor,
leading to the walk-in fridge.

“I seriously screwed this up,” he grunted.

I would have laughed, but my heart hadn’t calmed down enough.

“Are you okay?” I asked again, gingerly approaching him like he was a dog that had
been hit by a car and might run away if I moved too fast.

“I think so, yeah. Wow, sorry about the mess.”

“Are you one of the guys from … you know?”

“Yeah. I’m supposed to ‘take you by surprise.’ Ta-da! Ow,” he said, grabbing his elbow
and collapsing back on the floor, a box of pecan pie his accidental pillow.

“Well, you did take me by surprise, in a way,” I said, laughing at the mess he’d made.
From the looks of it, his dolly had careened into Dell’s steel-topped kitchen island,
sending all the pots and pans suspended over it crashing to the floor.

“Want some help?” I asked, extending my hand. What a face. If a bad boy could also
be angelic, he would look like this. He was twenty-eight, maybe thirty, tops. He had
a slight Cajun accent, too, local and very sexy. He unzipped his hoodie, shrugged
it off and whipped it across the floor to get a better look at his injured elbow.
He was oblivious of the fact that he was revealing a boxer’s torso under his white
tank top, with intricate tattoos covering his arms and shoulders.

“That’s going to be a really nice bruise tomorrow morning,” he said, standing next
to me.

He wasn’t tall, but his sexy brutishness gave him incredible presence. After he shook
off the last vestiges of pain, he stretched backwards, taking me in.

“Wow. You’re really pretty,” he said.

“I … think we have a first-aid kit or something around here.”

As I walked past him towards the office, he grabbed me by the elbow and gently tugged
me close to him.

“So? Will you?”

“Will I what?” I asked. Hazel. The eyes were definitely hazel.

“Will you do this Step with me?”

“That’s not how you’re supposed to say it.”

“Damn,” he said, racking his brain.

He was so cute, but not too swift, this one, which I suppose didn’t matter.

“You’re supposed to ask, ‘Will you
accept
the Step?’ ”

“Right. Will you accept the Step?”

“Here? Now? With you?”

“Yeah. Here. Now. With me,” he said, cocking his head, giving me a crooked smile.
Despite his rough-hewn exterior, and a hairline scar on his upper lip, he had the
whitest teeth I’d ever seen. “Are you going to make me beg?” he added. “Okay, then.
Pretty please?”

I was enjoying this. A lot. And decided to play it out a little longer. “What are
you going to do to me?”

“I know this one,” he said. “I’m going to do everything you want, nothing you don’t.”

“Good answer.”

“See? I don’t totally suck.” So sweet and so sexy. “So? Will you accept the Step?”

“Which one is it?”

“Uh … three, I think.
Trust?
”

“Right,” I said, surveying the damage in the kitchen. “You come in here just as I’m
closing and wreak the kind of havoc that’s going to keep me here after hours cleaning
up.” I put my hands on my hips and squinted at him as though I had to really think
about my choice. This was too much fun. “And do you really think you’re in any shape
to—”

“I don’t get it. Are you saying you don’t accept the Step?” He winced as though in
real pain. “Fuck, I screwed up.”

After a good, long pause, I said, “Nah. I’ll … accept the Step.”

“Wooo!” he said, clapping his hands hard, which sent me giggling. “I won’t let you
down, Cassie,” he said, flicking off the fluorescent overheads, leaving us lit only
by the warm glow of the streetlights streaming in through the kitchen cutout. He took
a step back towards me and held my face in his hands.

In the end it wasn’t the special late-night delivery or the accident that took me
by surprise. It was
this
. This kiss. Suddenly he had me against the cool tile wall of the kitchen, his firm
body pressing hard enough to let me know that he meant it; Jesus, I could feel him
getting hard. A second later, my shirt was off and tossed on top of his hoodie on
the floor. There had been no kissing the first two times and I hadn’t missed it. But
this,
this
was something else. My knees softened to the point where he had to move his hands
to my waist to prevent me from collapsing to the floor. When had I
ever
been kissed like this, with just the right amount of urgency? Never in my life.

His tongue explored my mouth, with a need that matched my own. He tasted faintly like
my favorite kind of cinnamon gum. After a few more seconds of deep kissing, he gently
bit my bottom lip, and then his beautiful mouth moved from mine down the side of my
neck, searching and kissing and finally landing on a spot just above my collarbone.
He kissed
me there, demandingly, which made me sigh. His hands seemed to pave the way for his
mouth, so after they had freed my breasts from my bra, his mouth eagerly followed.
His mouth traveled over one nipple until its hardness sent him searching for the other
one, while he slipped a hand down the front of my jeans to discover what I had suspected
was true: I was completely wet. He stopped kissing me and held my gaze while his fingers
explored me, his eyes glassy and intense. Then he took his hand out of my pants and
put a finger into his mouth. I thought I would come right then.

“I’m starving. Get these jeans off, will you? I’ll set the table.”

The feral look in his eyes, the layer of sweat sheening his perfect body, the hangdog
smile. My God, this boy had me. I looked around at the creamy sweet carnage smeared
all over the floor.

“Here? In the kitchen?” I asked, pulling my belt loose.

“Right here.” And with a sweep of his tattooed arm, he cleared the rest of the debris
off Dell’s stainless steel table. The metal bowls, the pots and pans, the whisks and
plastic utensils all went clattering to the floor. Then he grabbed a checkered tablecloth
from the shelf beneath and flung it across the metal top. I stepped out of my jeans
and stood there with my arms crossed over my nakedness.