Serving Pleasure (14 page)

“They sound like a sweet couple.”

His face softened even more. “They are very devoted to each other. And to me.”

“No other siblings?”

He ripped off his sketch. “No. I’m it.”

“Only child.”

“Yes,” he replied dryly. “It’s exactly as wonderful and lonely and sad and whatever else the stereotypes are. Straighten your legs?”

She straightened them, surprised to find her legs asleep. Good thing he was moving her around, or she might actually be in pain at the end of this.

He caught her wince. “Do you need a break?”

“No. Pins and needles in my legs is all.”

He leaned over, grabbed a cloth from the table and wiped his charcoal-dusted hands off before he rose and took the couple of steps to the couch. Unexpectedly, he put his hands on her legs and massaged them softly, until the discomfort was gone.

“You fondle all your models like this, Micah?”

His dark eyes met hers. “No. Only you.” He lowered his head and pressed a kiss on her hip, rising with a self-satisfied smirk when he heard her indrawn breath. “I would fondle you some more, but you wanted this to be professional.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “Yeah, yeah. Keep drawing, sir.”

R
ana glanced
up at the two enthralled men in front of her. “I hope everything is to your liking.”

The blond cleared his throat, his eyes fixed on her breasts. “Everything looks great.”

With one last pat on the back of the loveseat, she straightened away from the sofa nestled in the corner of the restaurant. She’d pestered her sisters into ordering the plush couches last month, and the after-work crowd tended to love them. “There you go. Best seat in the house.”

“I doubt that.” The dark-haired man leered at her.

Normally, she might have smiled, but these two were barely welcome as it was. She gave a nod. “Your waiter will be with you shortly.”

“Rana, you won’t be waiting on us?”

So you can have too many martinis and make veiled innuendos you think I’m too stupid to understand?
In a perfect world, Rana could have banished the assholes from her restaurant after the first and only time they’d decided to ogle her ass and act like obnoxious, sexist fifties ad executives instead of progressive, intelligent humans. Sadly, diplomacy and customer satisfaction had been drummed into her head from an early age.

Still, the front end was her domain, damn it, and its people were her responsibility. So far, at least, these two behaved around the other waitstaff. If they didn’t, she would ensure they never came back.

“Sorry, boys, not tonight. Enjoy your dinner.”

Rana walked away, leaving the men nudging and grinning. Rana could feel their gazes on her ass. Out of their sight, she rolled her eyes. Jerk wads.

She surveyed the restaurant, mentally checking off every employee’s position in her head as well as each customer’s general well-being. As she skirted through the tables, she smiled and greeted the table of blue-haired crones who came in every Friday for dinner, righted a toddler’s sippy cup, and signaled a waitress to refill drinks.

As she put some distance between her and the problem customers, her mood perked up. More than one person had commented on her happiness today. How could she hide it? It was basically impossible.

She’d avoided her sisters, fearful they would somehow take one look at her smirking face and know she was bringing shame on their family by posing naked for a world-renowned artist. And having sex with him, sex with so many lovely orgasms. Without a single thought to putting a ring on it! My, she was naughty.

The modeling part was surprisingly tiring work. Last night, their second session together, Micah had her standing in different poses for almost two hours before she’d called uncle, tired from the strain of not moving. Lying-down poses were much easier. She didn’t have to think quite so much, and could simply enjoy the pleasure of being naked while he admired her.

To his credit, he had spent a good half hour massaging her muscles and fingering her clit before sending her home on weak legs, so she couldn’t complain that he didn’t take care of her. And she got to do it all again tonight. Halleluiah.

“There you are.”

Oh, shit. Rana hid the instant flash of guilt, and turned to face her sister. Leena was frowning at her. Bah. What had she done now? Other than the whole naked-modeling thing.

“Hey there, you,” Rana said, with such forced cheerfulness she was surprised Leena didn’t immediately challenge her on it. “What are you doing here? Thought you were grabbing a bite with Rahul.” Look at that, she managed to say the guy’s name without hissing like a cat. Leena’s long-time boyfriend wasn’t overtly awful, but Rana disliked him intensely. When Leena was with him it was like she became someone else, all of her personality sucked away.

Gosh, though, he was a doctor, so their mother had been in love with him since the moment Leena had brought him home almost four years ago. Enough that she’d turned a blind eye to the two of them living together. It was understood they’d be married as soon as he finished his residency. As far as their mother was concerned, living in sin could be forgiven if one ended up with a doctor son-in-law.

Leena froze for a beat, but then recovered. “No. I’ve been looking for you. Did you tell the contractors to wait a week to paint?”

“I— Oh! Oh, yes.” They would have expanded to this second location a long time ago, but for their mother’s worry it would be a bad risk. Mama wasn’t in charge any longer, but all three of them found it difficult not to defer to her. “I did. Because we didn’t talk about what the color scheme will be.”

Leena made an impatient noise. “It’ll be the same as here, obviously.”

“No, see it doesn’t have to be.” Rana reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone, bringing up the picture that had triggered her imagination. “Ta-da!”

Leena eyed the soft blue dress. “I don’t like the cut.”

“Not the cut. The color. That’s the color that should go on our wall.”

Leena gave a frustrated sigh. “Rana. Please call the contractors tomorrow and tell them to slap some red on one of the walls so we can see what it looks like, okay?”

Rana wilted a bit. “I think…”

“We don’t have time to get held up on tiny decisions like this.”

Paint colors weren’t a tiny decision. They would influence the whole feel of the restaurant.

“But…” Rana was about to say as much when she caught sight of Jyoti out of the corner of her eye, scrambling away, her face flushed and long braid swinging. Odd. The girl did get flustered, but that didn’t look like simple bashfulness. “Hang on. We can continue this conversation later.”

“We’re not continuing it. I told you, we’re on a tight schedule.”

Ugh. If Rana had time to get her mad on properly, she would, but she didn’t right now. She gave her sister an irritated wave and followed Jyoti.

“Hey, girl,” she said when she caught up to the younger woman at the hostess stand. “What’s up?”

Jyoti cast her a terrified glance. Her eyes were red with unshed tears. “Nothing.”

“Something’s wrong.” Rana leaned against the counter. “Spill.”

Jyoti clasped her hands together. “Those two men at table eleven made some lewd remarks when I delivered their food, is all.”

The ad execs. Rana clenched her hand into a fist. “Lewd, eh?”

“One said I—” Jyoti bit her trembling lip. “I can’t repeat it. I’m sorry. They didn’t touch me or anything. It’s okay. I overreact sometimes.”

“Aw, no, darlin’. No such thing as an overreaction when a dickhead’s dicking.” She would have moderated her language for Jyoti, but she was furious. The girl didn’t seem to mind, a sign of how upset she was.

Jyoti nodded once. “Do you…? Could you maybe assign Ken to finish waiting on them? He could have my tip and everything,” she tacked on, referring to one of the busboys.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rana soothed, and moved over to the register. She quickly tapped in some information and waited for the check to print. “You’ll be getting your tip. But you don’t have to see them. They’re leaving.”

“Oh.” Dismay made her face fall. “You can’t mean you’re going to kick them out. I didn’t want to cause any trouble.”

Rana smiled at her, making sure not to direct her anger at the girl. Jyoti was painfully young, and it seemed like she wasn’t used to people sticking up for her. Not her fault. She did, however, have to get used to Rana sticking up for her.

These were her people.

She wanted to kick herself. She should have booted the assholes out the second she got a bad feeling about them. Her instincts rarely led her astray.

Mess made. All that was left was to fix it as best she could.

“You have two choices, Jyoti. You can either watch me kick these jerkfaces out and get some satisfaction from that, or you can go into the kitchen and wait there for five minutes to avoid the unpleasantness.”

The waitress’s shoulders sagged. “I’d rather wait in the kitchen, if that’s okay.”

“Sure thing.” She knew Devi would see the girl’s upset and feed her some happy-making food to cheer her up. Rana slipped the bill into a folio. “And, Jyoti.” She waited for the girl to look at her. “You didn’t cause any trouble. They did. We don’t serve troublemakers here, got it?”

Jyoti didn’t look entirely convinced, but she nodded and scurried away. Rana strode to the table o’ dickheads and gave them a bright smile. “Gentlemen. Everything going smoothly?”

Demonstrating their general assholish tendencies, the blond checked out her breasts, the brunet her legs. “Sure thing,” Boobs said, leering at her.

“Awesome.” She slapped the check down on his full plate of food. “Now leave.”

“Hey,” Legs protested. “What’s this about?”

“This is about being rude to the staff.” Rana kept her voice low and measured. The nearest table was far enough away they wouldn’t overhear, so long as everyone was civil.

“She’s lying,” Boobs muttered.

“Hmm, see, you say that a little too easily,” Rana remarked, not letting her instant rage seep into her voice. “Makes me wonder how many times you’ve said it before.”

“Look—”

“This isn’t a negotiation. Pay your bill and leave.”

“We’re not paying for food we didn’t even eat,” Legs objected.

“Oh, no.” She flipped open the folio and slapped a pen down on the check. “We’ll absorb the cost of the food. You are, however, leaving a nice-sized tip.”

Legs’s lips twisted. “Or what?”

Rana smiled. She leaned down until her face was even with his. “Listen up, douchecanoe. You think I haven’t dealt with men like you before? Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to leave a forty-percent tip, and then you’re going to quietly get up and leave and never come back. In return…” She picked up the chapati
from his plate and slowly crumpled it in her fist. “I won’t take your balls and play Ping-Pong with them. And in case you don’t believe that threat? I won’t tell your boss you’re running around harassing underage waitresses.” Jyoti was twenty, but she looked young. Let the men sweat.

Boobs tried to be brave. “You don’t know our boss.”

The sweet man baby. He was adorable. Rana sighed. “You’re Bob. That’s Martin. You work four buildings over. Your boss is Gerald. He likes to pick up his lunch every Wednesday. Usually lamb korma, medium spicy.” Rana opened her fist and let the ruined chapati
fall onto his cooling food. She wiped her buttery hand on her apron. Honestly, did these men think she was new? She was an incurable gossip and incredibly nosy. There were few regular customers she
didn’t
know way too much about. “Actually, let’s make that a fifty-percent tip, hmm?”

“Is there a problem here?” Leena’s pleasant voice came from next to her, and she silently groaned. The more people who stood around the table, the more attention they would attract.

“Yeah, actually,” Legs started.

“Ping-Pong,” Rana reminded him, barely above a whisper.

He clammed up, then shrugged awkwardly. “No. No problem.”

Boobs was silent, but he had pulled out his wallet. He yanked out an impressive number of bills and dropped them on the table.

“They were just leaving.” Her remembered annoyance at Leena rose up, and she bristled, waiting for her sister to challenge her, but Leena only glanced at the men, back at her, and nodded before walking away. Leena wasn’t as comfortable with customers as Rana was. She tended to stick to the back office unless she truly had to deal with unpleasantness or Rana wasn’t there.

She didn’t leave the table until the men stood, and she followed them to the door, holding it open for them. As they passed, she looked at one angry face, then the other. “Ping. Pong.” Then she tapped the doorframe and gave them her brightest smile. “Have a great night, boys.”

“
Y
ou’re tense tonight
.”

Rana rolled her neck. “Sorry.” She was draped on the couch again, on her stomach, her head lying on her stacked arms.

His stool scraped across the floor. He did that a lot. When he wasn’t moving her, he was moving himself. He studied her from every angle with an absorption she might have found unnerving from someone else. With Micah, she was fascinated.

“Did you have a bad day at work?”

Oh thank God. She still hadn’t determined if he actually liked talking to her, or if he had figured out she loved babbling and simply wanted her relaxed. Part of her didn’t care. She’d take any excuse to spill out her feels. “Had to boot some assholes out during dinner tonight. They were harassing the staff.”

“They harassed you?”

The cool menace in the question made her smile. Aw. “Not really. Probably ’cause they knew I wouldn’t take their shit. They said some stuff to Jyoti. The girl who brought you to the back office that day you came to see me.”

He made an immediate disgusted noise, soothing her. “Assholes, indeed.”

“Nothing new. Asshole’s gonna ass.”

“How poetic.”

She sighed. “I’m not torn up over it. Sometimes I don’t mind playing bouncer. Gets my aggression out in a healthy manner.”

“So if it’s not that, then what has your back all knotted up like this?”

She raised an eyebrow. The man was like Sherlock when it came to how attuned he was to body language. “Meh.” She rubbed her cheek against her arm. “I’m kind of annoyed at my sister. We’re opening a second location.”

“You had mentioned that.”

“It’s a smaller space, more like a bistro rather than a full sit-down restaurant. It was supposed to be another revenue stream, like our catering business.” She pursed her lips, the tension headache reappearing at the base of her skull. “All it’s been is an exercise in my sisters ignoring me.” Rana realized she sounded like a pouty child.

She didn’t care.

“That other woman at the restaurant, when I came to see you. That was your sister? You share some similarities.”

“Because we’re brown?” she snarked. Leena was almost a foot shorter than her and both she and Devi took after their mother, while Rana looked way more like their dad.

“No,” he responded calmly. “Because your nose is distinctive.”

Instinctually, she covered her nose, her least favorite of her features. “It’s not that noticeable.”

“It’s not noticeable, but it is distinctive. You share it. You both also have the same hands.”