Page 39 of Forget Me

11

MATEO

A couple daysafter I’d managed not to embarrass Mimi in front of Larissa at the golfing range, I was, as my cousin Lito might say, cautiously optimistic.

Fuck that.

I bounced like a kid on his way to a birthday party as I rode up in the glass-walled elevator to Mimi’s floor in the Synergy building, carrying my precious bundle. As chief of security for the CEO, Cooper Fallon—or, as I called him, my cousin Lito—I had a Synergy badge, and I didn’t need an escort to surprise my girl with food.

I’d won points with the pollo guisado and the empanadas, so I was going back to the food well with a guaranteed winner in my tote bag: my tía’s chicken mole.

She’d be hungry. She never remembered to eat. She’d give me one of those cautious smiles like she had at the golf course when I showed her how to hit the ball. She might even let me kiss her again. I’d done it as a nice touch for Larissa, and, frankly, a little for myself since Mimi hadn’t been so prickly that night. Then, when my lips had touched the smooth skin at her temple, it had felt so right I’d wanted to kiss right down her neck.

Obviously, I hadn’t done it. That would’ve been too far for Mimi. And definitely too much in front of her boss.

But today, maybe I could get away with a peck on the cheek, another hit of that vanilla scent her skin carried. Squashing my cigarette cravings had been easy; every time my fingers trembled for a smoke, I’d recalled her warm spiciness, and it had washed away. All I wanted was another chance to get close to her. A brush of my hand on her hip. Jesus, I couldn’t wait to dance with her at the gala.

The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out onto Mimi’s floor. Heads turned as I walked past the low-walled cubicles, and each worker I passed gave a hopeful sniff. By the time I made it to Mimi’s desk, every eye on the floor peered at me from behind ferns and around the sides of computer monitors.

“Hey,” I said softly so I wouldn’t startle her.

She jumped anyway, whacking her knee on the underside of her desk. Rubbing it over her black slacks, she rotated to face me. Her eyes widened.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“I brought you lunch.” I lifted the tote bag to her eye level.

Her gaze flicked to the time in the corner of her screen. “It’s two o’clock.”

“Have you eaten yet?”

Her stomach growled, and she laid her hand over her baggy gray sweater. “No.”

I clicked my tongue. “This is why you’re so—” I clamped my jaw shut.

She sat in squinty-eyed silence for a second. Then she surged out of her cube and beckoned me toward the employee breakroom. In the small white kitchen, she whirled on me. “Why I’m sowhat,exactly?”

I was notabout to use the wordhangryagain around her. Not when she was snarling at me like a ravenous lioness.

“Smart?” I said. “To wait for me to bring you lunch?”

She scrubbed a hand over her face. “That’s not what you were going to say.” She inhaled and swallowed. “What did you bring?”

“Ah.” I’d won her over again with food. Three for three. “Tía’s special chicken mole.”

“Mole?” She took a step back as if I’d said I brought her a live tarantula. “What’s in it?”

I chuckled, bringing out the plastic container. “I thought you were an adventurous eater. You didn’t ask me what was in the pollo guisado.”

“That’s because I didn’t think it had chocolate in it. And I’m allergic to chocolate. Does your aunt put chocolate in her mole?”

“I…I don’t know. I haven’t seen her make it. I never thought about it.”

“People with food allergies always have to think about what’s in their food,” she snapped.

Fuck, Ben had warned me she was allergic to chocolate, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that she might have a reaction to the mole. The dish was absolutely magical. But I stuffed it back into the sack. Poisoning Mimi would lose all the points I’d gained.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go get you something else. What would you like?”

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