This called for a little recon.
It was something I did with particularly difficult clients. I would go into the place of business and snoop around from the ground floor on up to C-Suite. Sometimes you really needed to get the pulse of a place before you could diagnose what was wrong, and often it was the things the executives didn’t even know about.
I quietly crept towards the swinging door to the front of the bakery and nudged it forward enough to peek out through the crack at Thomas’ broad muscular back.
He was boxing up a large order of cupcakes, brownies, and a variety of mouthwatering pastries. I couldn’t cook worth a damn, my first two dates in the city actually got food poisoning when I tried cooking them a homemade meal.
Luckily I was paid well enough that I could order out. But there was no romance in that, no love or affection. It was good, but it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t like that plate of baked delicacies calling my name back on the stainless steel countertop.
Thomas finished boxing it all up in small brown boxes. He was fast, his fingers flying as they folded, pinched, and then tucked away the tabs of each box until they popped up like something out of a children’s book. “There you are Misses Clemens, say hi to the girls for me will you?”
The old lady, who I didn’t recognize took out her ridiculously large purse and began fishing inside. “What do I owe you, Thomas?”
Looking at everything he had boxed up, I did the mental math. I didn’t know his supply numbers just yet, but I had a ballpark and I knew what the shops in New York charged.
Thomas leaned forward onto the counter with his elbows and cupped his chin in his palms. “How about you share your famous apple pie recipe with me?” he teased.
Misses Clemens gasped and swatted at him. “You’re incorrigible! How many years have you been after that recipe? You don’t know when to quit young man, that’s your problem.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said with a throaty chuckle. “You can’t blame a guy for trying. Let’s see then, no ‘famous apple pie’ discount, you sure? No? Well, all right. I’m afraid the damage comes to…thirty-five dollars then.”
The old woman fished out some bills and began counting them, but there was a smirk on her face the entire time. This had the feeling of a familiar banter between them. I let the door shut and leaned my back against the cabinet nearby.
Thirty-five dollars? Is he insane? That is easily a hundred. No wonder he was hardly making any money, he’s practically giving this food away!
I peeked back out just in time to see Thomas hop over the counter as effortlessly as can be. He scooped up the boxes, balanced them on his palm like a waiter, and extended his free elbow to Miss Clemens like he was escorting her to a ball.
The bell for the shop chimed pleasantly as they left and I returned to the spread-out documents with new insight. I did my best to separate the man I saw before me from my new business partner. I learned from experience that you never mixed business and pleasure.
How exactly should I broach the subject with him? His prices were idiotically low. From a quick glance at his records, it cost him nearly half what he charged in raw goods to make most of what I’d seen in the shop so far. And that doesn’t account for the hours of work - which people always forget about when they’re the boss and the worker - nor the cost of running the ovens and machinery to make it.
By the time Thomas came back in, I was pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off a headache I felt coming on. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.
While part of me wanted nothing more than to finish up with Dad’s estate and leave, the other part was drawn to the prospect of sticking around for at least a week or two. I had enough vacation time saved up for that. I hardly used it after all.
This was the sort of mental puzzle I couldn’t let go. Dad always told me I was like a dog with a bone when I had a particular problem that wasn’t easily solved. Not to mention there was an empty storefront right next door wasting space and potential revenue.
I still had no idea what to do about that. One problem at a time, I reminded myself.
“Thomas?”
He removed the dark apron and set it on a hook. “Uh oh.” Thomas came to sit down and smiled at me. It felt like somebody had just strummed a chord stretched tight between my collar and navel. His eyes were as dark as my coffee, just the barest suggestion of brown.
“What do you mean, ‘uh oh’?”
“You’ve got that ‘bad news’ look.”
I do not have a “bad news” look.
Trying not to pout, I cleared my throat and pressed on. He didn’t know me anymore, and I needed to prove that. More to the point, I needed to prove that this was a business relationship.
“I had a look over your financials and it’s pretty clear that you’re charging way too little. Even accounting for the ridiculous real estate prices in New York and the quality of what you have here, you should be charging at least double what you charged Miss Clemens.”
He had the good graces to look slightly embarrassed. Good. Maybe I could work with him after all if he was able to realize his mistakes.
“About that,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Miss Clemens lives on little more than social security. She doesn’t have much money, so I give her a pretty hefty discount. I realize it’s not good for business, but I couldn’t bear the thought of having her come in just to get one or two items because each muffin is six bucks.”
That chord strummed again and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I had to keep reminding myself he wasn’t as good a man as he seemed. It was getting harder in the face of all the evidence staring me down. I felt my face flush and looked away, hiding it by staring and shuffling through the papers.
If only I could fan myself with them, but that’d be so obvious. Not to mention a cliché I wasn’t keen on succumbing to. Why did Thomas being so sweet and kind to a little old lady get me all hot and bothered anyway?
Because you’re used to sleazy businessmen who would sell their grandma to earn a dollar. They’d have fleeced that little old lady for all she was worth and done it in a way that had her thanking them for it.
Thinking about men like Greg and Steve back at the office helped to cool me down a bit. Enough to talk at least. “Then I have some ideas about how you might be able to offer a sort of loyalty system for people like that. It’s shown to work quite well, there’s a reason so many places do it. Let me show you some numbers.”
Thomas got up and leaned over me to look. The clean masculine scent of him enveloped me in warm comfort and awakened a longing in me I thought dead and buried.
Oh God, how am I going to do this?
8
Thomas
The apartment smelled great. I had a roast in the oven and fresh bread from the bakery along with a few odds and ends. Claire and I had spent all day poring over the records I had as well as those she’d found in Richard’s things.
Slowly we fell back into old routines, the closeness came easier but there was always a reason to interrupt the moment. It was like being fifteen and awkward again in my own body.
Did she like me? Was I doing this right? Could she like me?
I shook my head and kept stirring the sauce so it wouldn’t scald. We’d taken a break around lunch, and several more times throughout the day as I helped customers that came in. I saw her out of the corner of my eye peeking out, “observing” as she put it.
It was cute as hell.
I couldn’t get over how gorgeous she still was. Time turned her from a beautiful girl to a stunning woman. Legs that went on for days. A plump, firm ass like a peach. Hips that made me lose my mind, and a pair of breasts that complimented her figure perfectly.
No wonder I never got over her.
Sometime in the afternoon, she excused herself to go look over the numbers in private. The bakery had gotten fairly busy by that point and I wasn’t contributing much to the conversation so I understood, but I did manag
e to extract a promise that she’d have some dinner at my place to discuss any plans moving forward.
There was a clear inner-battle being waged just behind those brilliant green eyes of hers, but she eventually caved. I was beginning to wonder if I could disguise spending time together as being about the business.
It wasn’t that I was being untruthful, I did want my business to excel, but I also wanted to spend time with her. Even though she had left me without so much as a word, and not a single one since coming back into my life, I couldn’t stop myself.
Something drew me to her. It was inescapable and I was tired of fighting it.
I knew it would end the same way as it did before. She’d storm out of my life and I wouldn’t see her again. There was a big part of her life I wasn’t a part of. Would never be part of. I knew that, and still, I asked her to dinner. I’d even gone through the trouble of making everything fresh.
Immediately after she left I closed up the shop and bolted over to the butcher to get a prime cut of beef, then to the market to get some fresh greens, onions, scallions, and herbs to go with it. I felt slightly foolish for all the trouble I was going through.
There was a knock on my door as the clock struck seven o’clock. Claire had always been punctual but this was on a whole other level. I wondered if she timed her knock to be at the precise time she said she’d come over as I went to answer the door.
I could just imagine her, waiting outside my door staring at her watch. Waiting until the scheduled hour to knock precisely on time.
So it was with a stupid grin plastered on my face that I answered the door. Claire gave me one look over, noticing I had ditched the suit for a more informal shirt and comfortable jeans. She’d changed and let down her dark hair into tumbling curls that bounced as I let her into the apartment.
Her scent filled me and I lost myself to the bright citrusy aroma that mingled with her feminine scent.
“What’s so-“ she had started. Without another word she wandered over to the kitchen, practically drifting on the scent like one of those classic cartoons. “This smells amazing.”
Her praise sent me through the roof. I was grinning ear to ear. “It’s our dinner, and it’s not quite done yet,” I said placing my hands gently on her firm lower back and guiding her out of the kitchen. “Go make yourself useful. There’s cutlery and napkins in the cabinet over there. Plates over here.”
She perked up at the sound of me giving her orders. It wasn’t something I ever did when we were younger. I was very much a “people pleaser” and always wanted to know what everybody else wanted before I weighed in.
The trouble with that is that you end up leaving your own opinions out of the equation. You forget you have any and that leaves you feeling hollow and empty. And it makes you look boring from other people’s perspective, the exact opposite of what I was trying to achieve.
A hard lesson to learn, but a useful one.
Ever since then, I always made sure to let my opinions be known, and if anybody disagreed we could discuss it. Nobody worth having wants a pushover in their life.
Claire had known me well enough to know what I liked, but even she tried to get me to come out of my shell back then.
“Okay, okay,” she said with a giggle suppressed with a hearty cough. “You better not let anything burn!”
I saluted and marched over to the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the meal. From time to time I caught her staring at me, and it took all of my willpower to keep focused on the task at hand.
“So, I was thinking,” she said leaning over the breakfast bar behind me separating the kitchen from the dining area.
“Yeah?”
“Mhm. I tend to do that from time to time.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “You were saying?”
“Why don’t you just sell the place and move to a city where your baking skills would be appreciated?”
I raised a wooden spoon covered in rich au jus gravy. “Firstly, I never owned it until right now. And even then we’d both have to agree, wouldn’t we? Besides, I enjoy baking and experimenting. Who would hire some random guy from a small town nobody’s ever heard of to bake for them anyways? I’ve got no degrees, no certifications.”
There was a long pause, so I looked over my shoulder at her, making sure to continually stir the gravy. I had only caught a glance at her before, but now I saw the effect the scooped neck shirt she’d changed into had on her cleavage. I tried not to stare, failed, and forced myself to turn back to the meal.
The heat rushed to my face, and further south. I was glad the only thing in front of me was an oven, or this would get awkward fast. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice.
Her creamy white skin stayed in my mind even as I mentally swatted at it. I couldn’t turn around with a tent pitched in my jeans.
“I’d hire you,” she finally said.
I couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “You’re different.”
“How do you figure?”
“You see more than others do.” It was obvious, wasn’t it? “You’re more in tune with people than most. You’ve got this superpower that you can just aim at somebody and have a good judge of their character. You don’t judge somebody just because they come from a poor background, or don’t have some fancy title attached to their name. You look past that. You see who they are, better yet, you see who they could be.”
She snorted and I heard her shuffling about. I nearly jumped out of my skin when she gently prodded my arm. She paused, and I saw her eyes widen out of the corner of mine. She poked the hard muscle again as if unsure it was real.
Finally, she seemed to recall her train of thought and said, “Yeah? How would you know that?”
I shrugged and turned off the burner, setting the pot aside to cool. “Am I wrong?” I asked, nudging her with my hip to get her to step back. Once she did I opened the oven and pulled out the roast.
“No, I guess not.”
“There you go.”
There was no witty reply, no further denial. Instead, she followed me to the butcher block I had set up in the center of the table where I set the roast down. She stared at it while I returned the pan to the kitchen.
“Is that what you were interested in doing?” I asked, bringing the bowl of chopped salad over. “Grab that will you?” I nodded towards the gravy saucepan.
We danced around each other, setting the meal up on the table for the two of us. I noticed she set the table on opposite ends instead of right beside each other with a faint pang of disappointment.
She seemed too distracted and lost in thought that even had my erection been there in full force, I doubt she’d notice.
“Not…precisely,” she said. “Beth did mention that she has a buyer willing to pay a hefty markup for a quick sale, as-is.”
“She’s told me.” Claire looked up at me as she sat down at the table. A flicker of something behind those beautiful green eyes.
“Has she now?”
“Every other week or two,” I said as nonchalantly as possible. She couldn’t possibly think Beth and I were a thing, could she? “When it was obvious she couldn’t get your dad to sell, she started hounding me. I don’t know why she thought I could convince him though. That man is as bullheaded as they come.”
Claire stared at her plate, and it took me a moment to realize my slip up. I cursed at myself as the mood turned somber. “Was,” she corrected me.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Sometimes it feels like I could just walk over with a plate of croissants and he’d open the door before I even knocked.”
“I know what you mean.” Claire wrapped her arms around herself, and I wanted to leap over the table and hold her in mine. Pet her hair and tell her everything would be all right. I couldn’t, but it was a nice fantasy. “I keep thinking he’s going to waltz back into his apartment and this’ll all have been one of his horrible practical jokes.”
I groaned. “Oh man, he was the worst!”
&nbs
p; A ghost of a smile graced her face and I tried to put on a brave front for her. Capitalizing on the momentum I served us dinner, carving her a few healthy slices of roast beef cooked to a perfect medium-rare.
We spent most of our time talking about Richard. In a way, I think it was for the best. I knew him as her dad, but he was often working when I would visit Claire’s so I didn’t get to see too much of him. I only truly got to know Richard later in his life, after I was a man.
He’d been good to me. Practically a father, and considering my own wasn’t worth remembering, I often thought of him as such. I never did know if he saw me as anything other than that scrawny neighborhood kid that came over to eat four nights out of the week.
I knew he loved his girls beyond measure and how important they were to him. It warmed my heart to know that Claire felt the same, and I’m sure Jemma did in her own way as well. I was far from a wine snob, but I had a few good reds lying around and broke open one halfway through the meal.
We toasted to Richard’s memory, talked some more and finished up the meal. I couldn’t remember the last time I had the opportunity to cook for somebody like this. It felt good, and Claire’s sighs and moans of pleasure as she cleaned her plate of everything I put on it made me feel like a god.
It also made my dick rock hard. The entire time all I could think of was if these were her moans over food, how would her other moans sound? I made sure to keep my waist below the table while passing the rolls.
The dinner had turned into something entirely different than either of us thought it would end up being. We barely talked about business except for the first few minutes and then afterward we spent most of it trading stories about Claire’s dad.
She seemed less sad about it, and more at ease knowing he hadn’t been alone. I never knew she felt so guilty for leaving him here. It’s not like she could have taken him with her, there’s no way that old guy would’ve left without a fight.
By the time dinner was over and we were saying our goodbyes something had changed between us. Even when she was standing across the room, she felt closer. And standing less than a foot from her now with my hand on the doorknob all I wanted to do was pull her in and slam the door behind her.
Kneading You Page 6