Chapter 13

Cadence

I told myself that I wasn’t going to send her any more messages unless she sent me one first, but I couldn’t help myself.

If I were a worm, would you still let me be your assistant?

Sending her shit like that was always fun because I liked getting her responses.

Why would you be a worm, and why would I have a worm working for me? Is this like the cockroach book?She responded.

It’s just a silly thing. But would you? I asked.

Cadence. A worm could not be my assistant. How would you type. I could almost hear the impatience in her message, and it made me giggle.

I’d scoot along the keys. Or I’d hop on them. I’d make it work. I responded.

This is an utterly ridiculous conversation, Cadence. She sent.

Eloise had been saying my name more and more lately, and it was doing all kinds of things to me. Allll kinds of things. Good things that were actually bad things.

She didn’t know I was flirting with her, but I was absolutely flirting with her. There was no other way to look at it. I was flirting relentlessly and shamelessly with my boss, and only the fact that she was straight and oblivious to queer flirting was saving my ass.

If she knew, I was absolutely going to get fired.

I had to stop. Had to stop flying too close to the sun.

And then she’d call me Cadence, with her voice or in her messages and I would completely fucking melt.

She was going to destroy me, and I was absolutely going to let her.

This could only end one way and it was going to end with me losing this job.

* * *

“Does anyone call you El?”I asked her at the end of our morning meeting. We’d kept them up, and after we went over business, I distracted her from getting to work with usually inane questions.

“Camille does. Sylvia does sometimes. Why?”

I shrugged. “Just wondering. I know you don’t like my nickname, but I was wondering how you felt about nicknames in general.”

She studied me for a beat. “I’m not against nicknames.”

I grinned. “Just against mine.”

She straightened her laptop on her desk. “I’ve told you that I’ll call you Cade if you want me to.”

No. I didn’t want her to. I liked that she was the only one who called me by my full name. My initial annoyance had morphed into something else that warmed my insides like eating a chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven.

“I like being Cadence with you,” I said and then realized how that sounded. I coughed and wished every embarrassing thought I’d ever had wasn’t instantly written on my skin for all to see.

Part of me almost lifted my notebook to hide my face. But then that would have drawn even more attention.

Across the desk from me, Eloise was quiet for a moment, those eyes lasering into me. Our gazes caught and held and if I didn’t know better, I would have said she was looking at me in the way that you look at someone you’re attracted to.

She wasn’t. I was just hoping that she would, creating fantasies in my mind that weren’t real.

Eloise was straight, first of all. And she was a glamorous bestselling romance goddess. Compared to her, I was nothing.

Her phone went off with a notification, making us both jump.

“We should—” I said at the same time she said, “I should—”

Both of us let out little trembling laughs and I rolled my chair back over to my desk and wished she couldn’t see how my blush had covered the back of my neck too.

* * *

“How about wego out for lunch today?” Eloise said during our morning break.

This was new, and completely unexpected.

“Oh, uh, sure,” I said, unable to figure out what was happening here. “Is there a special reason?”

She seemed hesitant to answer, ducking her head with the first hint of shyness I’d ever seen.

Adorable. It was adorable.

She held up one hand, as if she was trying to stall me from asking more questions. A pause. “Technically, it’s my birthday.”

I jumped up and almost knocked my chair over. “It’s your birthday? Wait, how did I not know this already? I should have known this already.”

Why hadn’t I known? This was very basic information about her.

Eloise rolled her eyes. “Because I don’t really celebrate my birthday. Never have. No one in my life makes a big deal out of it because I asked them not to. So don’t make a big deal out of it.” She pointed her finger at me, as if that was going to do something.

I sat back down and had to collect my thoughts so I didn’t immediately start arguing with her about it.

Of course she didn’t have to celebrate her birthday if she didn’t want to, but to just let it go was intolerable.

“Fine. I won’t make a fuss. But you’re letting me buy you lunch. It’s the very least I can do. And we’re getting dessert. I know I have no grounds to order you to do anything, but, Eloise Roth, I am ordering you to let me treat you to lunch and dessert.”

I had no idea where my confidence had come from, but the minute her mouth dropped open in shock, it was worth it.

Eloise snapped her jaw closed and shook her head slowly.

“I knew you were trouble from the start.”

I grinned at her. “And yet you still hired me. And then gave me a contract. My only other rule about this lunch is that you get to pick where we go.”

That was probably going to cost me. I bet Eloise went to expensive places with executive chefs that had competed on TV shows and had won awards.

It was so obvious that she wanted to argue with me. That she wanted to say no. I stared at her with what I hoped was rigid determination. I wasn’t backing down from this.

“Fine,” she said at last. “But I’m driving.”

“Deal,” I said, sticking my pinky out at her.

“Not this again.”

“Yup. Gotta seal it. Come on.”

She huffed but linked her pinky with mine and booped my thumb three times.

“Am I allowed to say ‘happy birthday’? Or is that against the rules?”

Eloise let out a groaning noise. “You are allowed to say it that once and not again after that. And if you sing, you’re fired immediately.”

I snorted. Seeing her horror at me singing to her might be worth getting fired in the moment.

“Fine, fine, I won’t sing. I’ll just hum quietly to myself.” I hummed the Happy Birthday song and the look Eloise cut me was glacial.

“Gotta get back to work,” I called as I all but sprinted back to the office.

* * *

Eloise’s carwas so much cleaner than mine. It was a relief she’d wanted to drive so she didn’t see how bad mine was.

I buckled up as Eloise backed out of the driveway and adjusted the air. Her car smelled like it was fresh from the dealership. I knew she got it detailed regularly, since dropping it off and picking it up was one of my tasks.

“Where are we going?” I asked after several moments of silence. Eloise had put on a pair of designer sunglasses as I pulled down the visor and shaded my eyes if I needed to.

“One of my favorite places,” she said.

“It’s in this country, I hope. I didn’t bring my passport.” Come to think of it, was my passport even current? I should probably figure that out. If I continued to work for Eloise, international travel wasn’t out of the question, which was wild.

“Yes, it’s in this country. We’re not even leaving the state.”

“Bummer,” I said.

“You said to pick where I wanted to go, and this is where I want to go.” Eloise didn’t drive with music or anything, which wasn’t a surprise. When you turned my car on, my playlist would just start blasting.

“If you won’t tell me where we’re going, can I ask why you don’t like to celebrate your birthdays? Has that always been the case, or is it a new thing?” Was she ashamed of her age? She’d brought it up a few times with me. Most of the time how old she was wasn’t something that I thought about. Sure, she was older than me, but I bet she’d been like this her whole life. Even if we’d been the same age, she would have acted more mature.

“I think it’s a childish thing to do. What’s the point? I don’t understand it. And I don’t like the reminder that one more year of my life is gone.”

Well. That was a strange way of putting it.

“I suppose,” I said, not wanting to rock the boat.

“You don’t agree,” she said as we sat at a light.

“I think birthdays are fun as hell. Sure, you have to think about getting another year older, but you get presents and there’s cake. I’ll take any excuse to have cake.”

Eloise glanced over at me from behind her sunglasses.

“You feel that way now, but come back to me when you’re getting closer to forty and tell me if you feel the same way.”

“I mean, I can’t predict the future, but I don’t think I’m going to change my mind about a day when I get to eat as much cake as I want.”

She snorted as the light turned green.

* * *

Eloise tookme to a nice bar that was bright but atmospheric with leather chairs and a dark wood bar and warm golden lighting. A surprising choice, but I realized why she’d picked it when she went up to the bar and started chatting animatedly with the bartender. They clearly knew each other.

I fought back little stabs of jealousy. There was nothing to be jealous about, yet here I was wondering who the hell this other woman was.

The place was pretty quiet, and a hostess brought us to a cozy table in the back and handed us menus. I was relieved when I saw the prices weren’t too outrageous, and the food actually looked good.

“Come here a lot?” I asked Eloise when the hostess had left us to ourselves.

“Pretty often. I’m friends with the bartender, Dom. Known her for years.”

Why did that make me want to throw myself off a cliff? Get it together.

“How nice,” I said, wondering why this was the first time I was hearing of this Dom that she was so close with. Had she been hiding her from me?

From this angle, I could see Dom as she worked behind the bar. She was stunning. Truly stunning.

Fuck.

“She’s a good one. Makes my drinks just how I like them. And I like watching her work and talk to people.” Now we were both looking at Dom, who was trading banter with one of the other bartenders, both of them laughing together.

“So, uh, what’s good here?” I asked, wanting to stop talking about Dom. Wishing we’d gone anywhere else. This lunch idea had really blown up in my face. At least they had cake.

“My favorite is the bourbon barbecue burger and fries. It’s my go-to. But the spicy chicken sandwich is good, too. Honestly, you can’t go wrong. The food here is better than it has to be.”

I thought back to when I was telling Hunter about Eloise and thinking that I couldn’t picture her eating pizza. Yet here she was, eating burgers covered in barbecue sauce.

This I had to see.

* * *

Eloise did order the burger,and I watched her eat it with relish, somehow managing not to get her face covered. It was incredible. I’d gotten the same thing after she’d told me how good it was. Of course, I ended up covered in sauce. My face, my hair, my clothes. The table.

Eloise kept trying to hide a smile as I struggled to wipe myself down.

“You did this on purpose,” I said, rubbing at a spot on my chest.

She sighed and opened her purse, handing me a stain-removing wipe.

“You got any more of those in there?” I asked. One wasn’t going to do it.

“Probably not enough,” she said with a smirk, handing me two more.

The burger had been delicious. I just wish I wasn’t wearing so much of it while Eloise still looked perfect.

“It’s a good thing I always have a change of clothes in my car,” I said. There was no way I could get through the rest of the day like this.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Eloise said, still eating her fries. I’d demolished mine already and was ready to devour some cake.

“Did I not put that on my resume?” I asked.

She laughed. “No, but I figured it out the first few times I ate with you. I don’t even know how you do it.”

I went scarlet with embarrassment. “Just unlucky, I guess. I have other talents.”

Eloise tilted her head to the side and picked up her iced tea.

“I know you do,” she said and, if I didn’t know better, I would have said that was a flirty comment. But it wasn’t. Eloise was just messing with me. Making fun of me because she could do that and I’d let her.

Our server came back and asked us about dessert. Eloise ordered the chocolate cake and I did the same.

“I’m not sharing,” I told her.

“Didn’t ask you to,” she said. “And I’m not sharing either.”