Page 12 of Roommate
“Absolutely. I put myself through cooking school while working at a Starbucks.”
“Not the evil empire!” Audrey yelps.
“Sorry. That’s who was hiring.”
All three of them laugh, as if Roderick’s worked here for years. It’s obvious that Audrey loves him, and Zara is getting there. He’s really working hard out there.
I wish he weren’t so charming. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad.
I peer out the kitchen door again, getting another glimpse of Roderick’s dark hair and bright blue eyes. At eighteen, he was attractive, so it’s not exactly a surprise to note that eight years later he’s devastating. The men must fall at his feet. Or women. I guess I really have no idea. Sometimes the company we keep at eighteen doesn’t reflect who we really are.
Ask me how I know.
“And there’s just the one grinder?” he asks, gesturing with a muscular arm.
“Yep,” Zara agrees. “We don’t serve flavored coffees, so we don’t have to clean it out all day long.”
“Gotcha.”
And then the inevitable happens. Roderick turns his chin a notch and glances in my direction. And I handle it all wrong. Instead of stepping out to greet him, I duck back into the kitchen and out of sight. Eavesdropping was a stupid thing to do.
Fuck.
“Hey—who’s the Peeping Tom?” I hear Roderick ask.
All my blood stops circulating.
“What?” Zara asks, and I can hear her walking this way.
“The spy in the kitchen,” Roderick says with a chuckle.
I have all of about two seconds to panic before they file into the kitchen. I throw the cookie dough mixing bowl into the sink and blast the water as Zara introduces Roderick to my back. “This is Kieran Shipley, who’s only with us in the mornings. Kieran—this is Roderick, who might be working with us.”
“Nice to meet you, Kieran,” Roderick says.
“Same,” I grumble over the water’s spray. I turn my chin a fraction to nod at him.
But somehow it’s enough. The smile falls right off Roderick’s face as his eyes widen. “Oh,” he says stupidly, recognition settling into his expression.
And now I know that Roderick has a killer memory to go along with his killer body. It’s just my luck that the dude remembers my face. I didn’t think he would. The high school gym thing happened seven or eight years ago, in some seriously bad lighting.
But he’s blinking at me with curiosity in his eyes.
And he called me a Peeping Tom just now. Which, I guess, I am.
Jesus Christ. There is no end to the humiliations that life doles out. I turn back to the dishes in the sink and get to work, Roderick’s gaze burning a hole in my back.
Roderick
Kieran Shipley. All these years later, I finally know his name. We weren’t in the same class at school. We never spoke. But of course I remember him. Who could forget?
At eighteen, I thought of myself as a wild man and a party animal. I wasn’t afraid of anything. My plan was to become a famous guitar player and screw the world’s most attractive men after each concert.
Sexual encounters beneath the bleachers were my idea of a raucous good time. And if a younger guy wanted to watch, the more the merrier.
From the look on his face, though, Kieran Shipley doesn’t share my fond memories. He has daggers in his eyes as he turns back to his work.
So this is a setback. Twenty-six-year-old me needs a job. Badly. I wonder if Kieran is going to screw this up for me. He’s a Shipley, too, like Audrey.
