I skirt the sensitive topic even though I’m curious. Instead I steer the conversation towards what else Mikayla enjoyed here, and then towards recent movies and a popular band that’s touring here next week. Talking to Mikayla is easy, and I find myself enjoying her company. Our lunches together were this way too, but we were discussing work. I didn’t expect to find myself having so much fun with her.
Once we are done with our brunch, we grab coffees and wander the market. I couldn’t help it; my hands instinctively go to Mikayla’s waist, her back, that delicate curve of her body that gets the blood rushing to my cock. Tiny touches that I knew better to do, but I do them anyways. It is a damn good thing the farmer’s market is too busy for people to get a good look at my jeans. I’m finding it impossible to suppress my desire for her. I would have taken her back home then and there if it wasn’t for the fact that she’s introducing me to a few of the local suppliers for our new menu. It was good to meet these people, to listen to the work that they do to make their food as well as for their communities. It reassures me that this was the right direction to take with Red Canyon Steakhouse.
Mikayla asks her friends about what’s good and turns to me.
“Would you like lamb for dinner?” she asks.
“Lamb?”
“Well you said you wanted me to cook...” she pauses uncertainly. “They’ve got a lovely rack of lamb. I figured I could do a mint sauce too, maybe some potatoes on the side. But I don’t have to if you’re busy with work stuff.”
“It’s not that,” I assure her. I like that she wants me to stay this weekend. “I thought you were going to make bacon carbonara.”
“I can do that tomorrow night.”
I think of another twenty four hours with Mikayla, and it sounds good.
“Tomorrow night then,” I say. “And I’m holding you to it.”
What I think will be a quick ten minutes turns into a lot longer as she carefully selects her ingredients. Where I see just a slab of meat, Mikayla notices the marbling of the fat and the color of the meat. She presses mint between her fingers to smell for freshness. The dedication she takes with her food is fascinating and deeply admirable. She didn’t just say she cared about local, fresh food to get a job. She lived it. I can’t remember the last time I dated someone who wasn’t artificial. Mikayla’s like a breath of fresh air.
“Okay,” she says once she’s taken us around the market and picked up a few things for dinner. “I’m ready to go back if you are.”
I can see a smile tugging at her lips. She’s as excited as I am to go back.
“Good,” I say.
Taking her hand, I cut a path through the crowd. I don’t want to waste another second out here. Not when there’s so much more I want to do with her. We’re almost at the exit when my phone rings. I pull it out.
“Damn it,” I mutter. It’s Sean. I don’t want to deal with work. I want, for just one day, for the company to not be in a crisis. “Hold on a second Mikayla.”
I take a few steps before I hit the button to pick up the call.
“What is it?”
Sean gets right down to it. I listen for a minute, a tight fury building in my abdomen as he tells me what he’s found out.
“Thanks,” I say once he’s done. “I’ll come in right away.”
I slip my phone back in my pocket. Mikayla’s at a flower stall, bending down to smell a flower, her cloth bag bulging with the feast she is going to prepare for me tonight. I like the way she moves, easily and gracefully unaware of her own beauty. I’m surprised by just how reluctant I am to put her aside for work, yet another first. But there’s nothing for it. I need to get rid of the poison in my father’s company. Only then can I relax, and what? What else did I have in my life aside from work?
Mikayla?
Mikayla
Even though I’ve finished up with creating the new menu, work hasn’t stopped. There’s the next season to think about, plus extra menu items that didn’t make it into the relaunch, like desserts, appetizers, etc. But I haven’t been able to focus on any of that. It’s been almost three days since Logan and I talked. Not that I’m obsessively keeping track or anything, but of course I sort of am. After he got off the phone at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, he explained that something important had come up at work, something he’d been working on for a long time now. It was supposed to hopefully ensure that Red Canyon Steakhouse never got into the situation it is in now. So of course I told him it wasn’t a problem. I thought it would only take a day or two, but since then I haven’t gotten a chance to even see him. I guess that work thing he had must not be going well.