Hadley blew a raspberry. “No more about wine. Mom, I think you should put Gianni on the cover of Tastemaker. Don’t you all think she should?”
Everyone at the table spoke up enthusiastically, and Ellie deflated like a week-old balloon.
“I mean, seriously, you’re always complaining that people don’t read magazines as much as they used to,” Hadley went on. “Why not put someone on the cover who will actually sell copies?”
“That’s enough, Hadley.” Fiona gave her daughter a stern look. “Why don’t you go turn on the coffee pot?”
“I can do that,” I offered, grateful for a chance to leave the room. Maybe if I wasn’t in there, Ellie would get one more chance to talk about her work at Abelard.
But it wasn’t even a full sixty seconds later that Ellie came into the kitchen carrying a few empty wineglasses, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “They want you back in there. I was asked to bring out the coffee and dessert.”
My heart sank. “Fuck. Really?”
“Of course, Gianni. Who really wants to listen to me talk about wine when they have a celebrity chef here to entertain them?” She placed the dirty wineglasses into the storage box. “Just go. I want to finish up and get out of here.”
“I’m sorry, Ellie.” I touched her shoulder. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known it would be like this.”
She glanced at my hand and shrugged. “I’m not surprised. Go do your encore so we can leave. This dinner already went later than I planned, and the storm is getting worse. I don’t want to end up stranded here.”
“Me neither.” I grinned at her. “I don’t trust that teenager one bit.”
Ellie didn’t even crack a smile.
While the guests drank coffee and ate dessert, Ellie and I bundled up and loaded the car. The snow was knee-deep and still falling. The wind howled out of the north. The temperature made our noses turn red with cold.
I started the car to warm it up, but I wasn’t looking forward to the drive—visibility would be shit and the roads were going to be a mess. It was ten-thirty already, and I guessed we wouldn’t get home until after two in the morning. I wondered how Ellie would feel about staying at my place in Traverse City, since the drive up Old Mission Peninsula would probably be horrific. I could give her my bed and sleep on the couch.
Trying to remember if my spare sheets were clean, I closed the hatch of my SUV and went back inside, stomping the snow from my boots.
“I’ll wait in the car,” Ellie said, slipping past me with her bag over her shoulder. “Can you get the check from her? She just went to write it.”
“Sure. You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She went out the door, gently pulling it shut behind her.
I felt terrible she was so disappointed—I’d seen Ellie mad a million times, but I didn’t often see her sad, and I wished I knew how to make her feel better. It occurred to me that for as long as I’d known her, and as much as I saw her at work, I didn’t really know her on a personal level.
What were her favorite things? What made her happy? What did she see for herself five, ten, twenty years down the road? What were her guilty pleasures? What did she think about when she was alone in bed at night?
My mind started to wander—as it often did—down a slightly dirtier path.
What was she like in bed? How did she want to be touched? Had she ever been with anyone who knew what he was doing? Given the jackasses she’d dated during high school, I doubted it, unless her taste had drastically improved in college. The side of herself she showed me at work ran cool and tart, but I had a feeling she ran sweet and hot beneath the surface.
Most importantly, why had she been staring at my crotch in the car on the ride up? I chuckled to myself at the way she’d denied it, because it had been obvious that’s what she was doing. Not that I hadn’t stared at parts of her body from time to time, but I’d at least been stealthy enough not to get caught. And mostly when I thought about her body, I was alone with my pants off, my dick in my hand.
I had this one fantasy of her that I loved, where she crawls across the kitchen floor toward me wearing nothing but that Cherry Princess crown and a smile. I tell her we can’t, I insist that we shouldn’t, I warn her if she comes any closer, I won’t be able to hold back. But she refuses to accept my gentlemanly caution and confesses that she’s only pretended to hate my guts all these years and she can’t hold back any longer—she has to have me or she’ll go crazy.