There was a pause as the person on the other end of the line spoke. Then Michael said, with so much bitterness in his voice it didn’t even sound like him, “well, what else could I possibly want to hold onto? I poured my love into this restaurant and it stayed true to me, unlike you. I suppose I should be thanking you for showing me what a lie love is.”
The person on the other end started to say something, but Michael cut them off. “You don’t get to say that. Not when you spent months fucking my employee behind my back. My fucking protégé, I mean, Jesus Christ, you just had to pick the person I trusted most besides you, it’s the ultimate sick joke, you know that, right?”
Michael sighed, and I realized who he must have been talking to: his ex-wife. Virginia.
Fuck.
Well, I couldn’t go in there and seduce him now. Not when he was hurting like this. It would be, well… he wouldn’t be in the right headspace and honestly, I’d feel almost like I was taking advantage of him. He must be vulnerable in that state of mind, and I didn’t want him to fuck me because he was bitter and upset. I wanted him to be with me because he actually saw me as someone he could be with. Someone whom he was genuinely attracted to, someone he could fucking have feelings for just the way I had feelings for him.
But I couldn’t just leave him alone in there to argue with that woman.
I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
There was a pause on the other side, and then I heard Michael saying, “I’ll call you back.”
A moment later the door was opened and Michael was staring down at me.
He looked so tired. It was horribly unfair - why should his wife get to run off with some pretty boy and strip Michael dry when he’d been doing all this hard work with the restaurant all these years?
“Everything all right, Stevie?” he asked.
Shit. I needed to think of a reason for knocking on his door and comforting you after I heard you arguing with your ex-wife is probably not going to cut it.
“…I was wondering… since it’s a special occasion and all… could we have a bottle of champagne?” I gave him my most winning smile.
Michael laughed in a startled kind of way. “Last I checked, people graduated high school at age eighteen, not age twenty-one.”
God, the low gravel of his voice was just - the hottest thing ever. I dared to take a small step closer and look up at him through my lashes. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Michael shook his head. “No way, your parents would kill me.” He put his arm around my shoulders. “And don’t you give me one of those pretty pouts, either, it’s not going to work.”
Pretty. He thought it was pretty when I pouted. It felt like my entire chest lit up in response.
“C’mon, I think it’s time we cut the cake,” he said, and led me back to the main room - still with his arm around my shoulders.
The warmth of him pressed against my side, the weight of his arm, the firm muscles I could feel against me - I thought all about it later that night as I was lying in bed. Oh, God, yes, I imagined him picking me up and lifting me against the wall easily, making me whimper and moan for him, telling me to spread my legs for him…
But I couldn’t just waltz in and seduce him like I’d originally planned. No. Michael still saw me as too young, as a child, and he was still dealing with the loss of his ex.
Well, that was fine. I could be patient.
I didn’t know the whole story about his wife, but I did know from the phone call I’d overheard that she’d been with Michael’s protégé. I’d met him a few times—Theo Simmons, almost ten years younger than Michael, early thirties, handsome, tattooed. You know, the works.
With the man he’d been training gone, Michael would need a new protégé, wouldn’t he? Someone who could be relied on, someone he could come to trust and care for.
But of course, that protégé would need to have gotten through culinary school - and how convenient, that’s what I would be doing.
Once I was a professional with training, once a couple of years had passed, after there’d been some time apart where he hadn’t seen me… Michael would come to see me as an adult. As someone he could care for, and someone he could be attracted to. Not a child, not anymore.
I was going to go after what I wanted, and I wasn’t going to give up.
Wanna find out how this one continues?
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Beautiful Mistakes: Contemporary Romance Boxset Books 1-4 Page 65