“After I’ve grated an infant’s head worth of cheese, what should I do next?” Sloane asks as the sound of the grater continues in the background. For a second I wonder if I might have moaned out loud.
I clear my throat, suddenly blanking on the ingredients I put in the bag for her. “Uhh, wash the asparagus and trim the end off the stalks.”
“Okay.”
The grater continues with a steady beat. I run my hand through my hair and resolve to pull my shit together. “So, you said you were in Boston for work. A meeting?”
“Umm…yeah.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“Investigator Meeting.”
“That sounds…terrifying.”
Sloane huffs a laugh. “Yes and no. They’re not investigators like police investigators. It’s what we call study doctors who run our trials at their clinics. An Investigator Meeting is where we train them and their staff on the study. The meetings are only a bit scary if you have to present. Being on stage in front of a bunch of doctors can be a bit intimidating. There could be fifty people in the audience, there could be three hundred. I’ve done lots of them but sometimes I still get nervous when the tech guys put the mic on me.”
“A mic? Like the whole Madonna, Britney Spears-type thing?”
Sloane giggles. “Sometimes.”
So much for resolving to pull my shit together.
The thought of Professional Sloane in a fucking curve-hugging pencil skirt and a Madonna mic, standing on stage as she bosses around a bunch of doctors with her raspy lounge singer voice is the fantasy I never knew I needed.
I’m a fucking goner.
“Cool, cool…” I say, shifting my stance as my cock practically begs me to march up to her door and fuck her on the kitchen counter. “Can I come watch?”
Sloane laughs. “No…？”
“Please?”
“No, you weirdo. You cannot come watch.”
“Why not? It sounds both hot and educational.”
Her husky laugh warms my chest. “Because it’s all confidential, for one. And for two, you’d distract me.”
My heart lights up with fireworks. “With my pretty face?”
“Pfft. No.” That ‘no’ is totally a ‘yes’。 I can virtually see the burn of her blush through the phone line. I wish I could FaceTime her, but Sloane would know where I am, standing across the street like a smitten fucking fool, too nervous to scare her off to actually go to her door but too desperate to be near her to really care. “I have a baby’s head’s worth of cheese. I’m doing the asparagus now,” she says, her voice soft.
“When you’re done that, put some salted water on to boil.”
“Okay.”
The chopping starts in the background, reaching through the absence of Sloane’s voice. I close my eyes and lean my head against the tree as I try to imagine Sloane with her hand expertly wrapped around the handle of a knife. I don’t know why that’s so fucking sexy, but it is. Just like the thought of her on stage with her little Madonna mic. Same as the image of Sloane in the booth at my restaurant, bent over a sketch.
“Why do you work there?” I ask abruptly.
“At Viamax?”
“Yeah. Why not art for a living?”
There’s a pause before she snorts. The flush on her throat and down her chest must be absolutely crimson. “I’m not really going to make money selling bird sketches, Rowan.”
I’m surprised she’d go there, after the way she looked toward the booth at 3 In Coach as though she wanted to take a flamethrower to that drawing she left behind, and probably the whole fucking restaurant. But as much as she’s going straight to this moment that clearly embarrassed her, it’s still a deflection. “But you could. You could do other art, if that’s what you want.”
“It’s not.” Her firm words ring between us like she’s waiting for them to settle into my head. “I like what I do. It’s different from the career I envisioned for myself when I was young. Like, who does, right? Not many of us end up as dolphin trainers or whatever.” She snickers and pauses again, but I don’t press her this time, content to wait her out. “Art brings up bad memories sometimes. I used to love painting. I’d paint for hours. I started experimenting with sculpture too. But things…changed. Sketching is like the foundation. It’s all that was left when the rest burned down—the only thing I still enjoy. Well, that and my webs, which feel like art to me.”