Page 6 of Always Be My Baby

“Just do it.”

I set the warmer down on the bedside table. She glanced down into the bowl while pushing up to remove her bra, tossing it on the chair close to the bed.

“Aroma therapy?” she asked.

“Close. Now, on your belly, woman.”

“Kinky,” she teased, but she rolled over to lie on her stomach.

I shifted her hair over one shoulder then dipped two fingers in the oil, painting the opposite hand with the warmed oil and rubbing my hands together to completely coat them.

The palms of my hands ran down her spine. Lee released a sigh that just about undid me. Slowly, I moved my hands from the small of her back up to her neck and back down, using my thumbs to work out the knot of tension between her shoulder blades.

“If I didn’t love you before…” she managed to whisper between more heavy sighs. “Then I’d sure love you after this.”

My hands continued to work their magic as I kept at her, working out all the places I knew she held on to stress and not paying a lick of attention to the fact that Lee’s erotic sighs had ceased. Her breathing evened out. Lee was asleep.

There went my evening plans.

After twisting off the warmer, I moved around the bed to climb in next to her, gathering her into my arms.

We’d try again tomorrow.

Marilee

Icouldn’t ask for a better student than Lena. Her grasp of my day-to-day duties gave me real confidence in her abilities to take the helm when necessary. The problem was Serena. Not that she wasn’t kicking butt as lead server in her own right. My confidence bucket overflowed with, well, confidence in my employees to handle themselves.

But Serena was young and gorgeous, and she filled out her sleek uniform like no one’s business. No different today, she strutted into work wearing one of those artfully messy, complicated braids that men couldn’t help but play with. Her makeup accentuated all the natural beauty the good lord bestowed on her. And her killer curves would’ve made starlets like Ava Gardener throw themselves down on a settee in fits of jealousy. Old black-and-white movies always showed distraught women throwing themselves on settees. It was a thing.

Whereas I showed up in my sensible flat soles to work, Serena wore these expensive wedge booties, giving her height and a long, lean line. And I had to call bullcrap when she insisted they were “more comfortable on her feet and back than her flatter shoes because of the cushioning wedge.”

All the men—save for maybe Polk because he was hopelessly devoted to his wife, Becks—fawned all over her. I hadn’t yet seen Harrison fawn, either. But I’d seen his woman, so I got it. But come on, two men out of the entire staff? Those weren’t great odds for the rest of us ladies. Even Girard fawned in his own way. When we made our morning coffee run, he grabbed one for Lena and one for Serena.

And no, I wasn’t accusing him of anything. He got off on being nice, especially this week to our trainees. But sometimes old insecurities took hold, giving me a hard time shaking them loose again. Serena’s job put her in the kitchen more often, thus, they spent more time together during the day. More time together meant inside jokes that I wasn’t privy to—okay, so I hated being left out and you couldn’t explain an inside joke because then it simply wasn’t funny any longer. I got that, too. Didn’t mean I liked it.

Just yesterday, he tried to retell a story from lunch service, one he found particularly funny, only to cut himself off to tell me, “You really had to be there.”

What if all we had was great sex and a mutual love of cooking? Was that enough to keep a relationship going strong? Guess who had no idea about how to keep a relationship strong? That would be me.

Lena, now... Lena might know. She’d been in a few relationships in her lifetime—not that she wasn’t living it up as a carefree single lady these days. As far as I could see, she was single and out there to mingle.Go her!Women’s lib and all that—sexual freedom. Not that she slept with every guy she dated, but if she did, it wasn’t my business.

When she joined me in my office sipping on her coffee thanks to my boyfriend, I had something more important on my mind than training.

“You busy tomorrow?” I asked after she shut the door.

She cocked her head. “I suppose not. Why?”

“Because I want to go shopping.” Tomorrow happened to be my one day off a week, Monday. The only day the restaurant closed during the week.

“Aren’t you too busy being all loved up in Girard’s den of iniquity?”

“Ha!” I barked. “It’s not a den of iniquity. Nothing immoral about having a whole lot of freaking amazing sex.”

“Seriously?Freaking amazing,still? Doesn’t that man have an off day?”

“It hasn’t happened yet. My girl parts are immeasurably happy.”

“I seriously hate you right now,” she said, laughing. “The last guy I let in lasted maybe ten minutes and got all disgustingly sweaty as he got off. Apparently forgetting he had a partner’s needs to see to as well. Dude rolled off me and tried to go to sleep.”

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