Page 26 of Judge

“I couldn’t leave them short-staffed with barely any notice.”

Resting my elbows on the table, I raise my brows at her. “What time does your shift end?”

“Eleven,” she quickly answers, looking around at the empty tables. “It’s a quiet night for a Saturday, so I may get to leave earlier.”

“How about you leave right now.”

“I can’t leave Kate here on her own.” She looks around her again, and then says quietly, “The cook is kind of a creep.”

I rub my hand over my forehead, exhaling loudly. “Damn, you and your benevolence, Indie. Fine, I will stay until you finish and watch you personally leave your resignation on the counter.”

“You can’t stay here watching me work for hours. That’s stalking and intimidation. You’re a lawyer; you should be very familiar with that term.”

“I’m also familiar with the term numerous health violations and can have this place shut down in a matter of minutes. Do not test me, Indie.”

Indie throws up her hands, letting out a frustrated breath. “Fine. Stay, for all I care. You're impossible.” She bends down, picks up the menu that dropped, then storms off and grabs a cup from behind the counter, filling it with coffee and returns to my table, placing the cup in front of me.

“Coffee is on the house.” She smiles at me. It’s as fake as the leather on these cheap seats. “Jerk,” I hear her mutter under her breath as she walks away.

I pull out my phone from my jacket pocket as I take a sip of the coffee. It doesn’t even make it to the back of my throat before I spit it back out into the cup. The coffee tastes like mud; it’s lukewarm and gritty on my tongue. Looking over at Indie, she’s grinning smugly at me from behind the counter.

“Refill?” She laughs. Indie laughs, and it’s fucking glorious. Her whole face lights up. Her blue eyes sparkle, and she has the cutest little dimple on her left cheek. I’ve only ever seen her sad, angry, or exhausted. I’ve never seen her genuinely happy. Well, happy might be an exaggeration. Amused, perhaps, would be a more fitting word. Either way, I fucking love it. I’m almost tempted to take another sip of my mud just to see her laugh again. I want more of this Indie. More of the woman I know she has inside of her. The woman beneath all that responsibility and heartache.

I catch myself laughing back at her, and she looks as surprised by it as I am. I laugh, don’t get me wrong. I joke with my friends just like the next person, but I never laugh at myself. Maybe I am not laughing at myself; maybe it’s just Indie’s laugh that is so adorable and fascinating, it’s contagious.

Chapter Seventeen

Indie

“HOW DO YOU GET HOME from this place at night?” Roman asks me as I clear the plates from the booth in front of his. He has been watching me like a hawk for the past hour and a half, and it’s beyond getting on my nerves. Roman gets under my skin. He finds a place of annoyance and starts scratching and gnawing at it until I can’t breathe properly around him.

“I walk,” I answer him.

“You walk?” He repeats my words as if he needs to say them out loud for himself to believe them. “Do you have a fucking death wish?”

“Some of us don’t have the luxury of personal drivers, and in case you didn’t notice, the tips aren’t running hot here. I don’t get paid enough to take a cab.”

He covers his eyes with his hand. “Just another reason why this will be your last shift here.” Pulling his hand from his face, he regards me for a long moment. If I didn’t look past the disappointment in his eyes, I would have missed his concern. Why the hell does he even care? Oh, that’s right! His money. He doesn’t give two shits about me; it’s the money he won’t get if something bad happened to me that concerns him. The longer I think on that though, the more it makes no sense either. Roman has an abundance of money. Ten thousand dollars is play money to someone that lives in the penthouse apartment of the biggest building in Seaport.

“How do you get to and from work at the office every day?”

“I take the subway.”

I don’t know what he is thinking; his expression is blank. Kate’s expression, on the other hand, tells me she is enjoying every minute of my interrogation. She keeps dancing her eyebrows at me, grinning. I have worked with Kate for a couple of years, and although we don’t socialize outside of work, I guess you could say she’s one of my only friends. Kate’s ten years older than I, and the thought of working at this place at her age makes me depressed beyond words.

I walk away, eager to free myself from Roman’s interrogation and stand behind the counter, I watch him from an angle where he can’t see me. He is scrolling through his phone intently. The dark strands of his hair fall messily on his head. It’s not slicked and styled as I have always seen it. He’s wearing black jeans with a short-sleeved pale blue button-up linen shirt. It’s casual but tidy. I’ve never seen him wear anything other than a tuxedo or a suit. The look suits him. Even though he’s not by any means less intimidating, he does seem more human like this.

I never picked him for a full-sleeve guy, but the tattoo running the entire length of his right forearm hints that it travels all the way up his arm. It looks dangerously hot. I’ve always been attracted to men with tattoos. Why the hell does he have to have tattoos? Is it not enough that my heart can barely beat on its own in his presence when he is wearing a suit? Now, he has to be even sexier out of one.

“Who’s the hottie at booth nine?” Kate comes up from behind, startling me.

“He’s an asshole, that’s who he is. Don’t let his good looks fool you,” I say as I continue to fill up the saltshakers, making myself look busy, while in truth, I’m perving on my control freak of a boss that, apparently, is also now my prison guard.

“Asshole or not. That man has some seriously good genes.”

I sigh, looking at Roman agonizingly. “I know, right? It’s such a pity that all the ridiculously hot ones are such dicks.”

“Speaking of, I bet he has a huge one.” Kate accentuates the word huge as she stretches out her hands with a big shit-eating grin.

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