Weekend Wife (Sassy in the City 1)

I had guessed she was either an actress, singer, dancer, or all three. That was the majority of the wait staff. Another reason I had vowed to steer clear of Leah. I didn’t do d

rama. My entire childhood was a theatrical production starring my mother.

“Did you just get hit by a cab?” the other waitress exclaimed, holding the door to the diner open. “That’s insane!”

She usually worked on Wednesdays too. A few years older than Leah, she always had heavy makeup on and rolled her eyes a lot. She was the kind of waitress who didn’t even attempt to move beyond a lazy stroll and forgot any special requests.

Leah was always smiling and moved with a quick step.

“Can you get her some ice?” I said, before carefully putting Leah onto the stool I had been sitting on.

“What is going on?” The manager appeared by our side, a man in his fifties, with a substantial middle girth, looking annoyed. “Leah, you have tables.”

“She sprained her ankle,” I said, gesturing to her foot. “She needs to go home.”

“We’re really busy,” the manager said. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

His attitude annoyed me. “Call in someone else. She can’t work like this.”

“Who the hell are you, by the way?” he asked, already pulling his phone out of his pocket. He looked at Leah’s ankle and swore under his breath.

“He’s Grant Caldwell the third,” Leah said, giving me a wink.

The way she said my name made it sound very important and very pretentious. I wasn’t sure if she was making fun of it or not, but either way, my name did hold weight in certain circles. My grandfather made billions developing blighted neighborhoods in both Manhattan and Miami Beach in the sixties and seventies. By the nineties, his return on investment was so great he’d bought a pro basketball team, which my father oversaw. My mother came from old money in the Hamptons and spent the early eighties partying with rock stars, snorting cocaine, and spending money.

Then without warning there was me.

Their one-and-done child. Their “holy shit we didn’t think this parenting thing through” child. The child they left to be raised by the nanny and later sent to boarding school. Which frankly was better than if I had been left fully to their influence. Mom’s idea of affection was taking Xanax together. Dad’s was gleefully beating me at golf. When I was six.

Now I was thirty and running the entire real estate development branch after devoting my twenties to proving my worth.

I worked my ass off. I got what I wanted. That’s the Caldwell way.

Getting what you wanted, anyway. Working your ass off had skipped a generation.

The other waitress slapped a glass filled with ice down onto the counter and grabbed one of her orders out from under the warmer. I frowned at the glass. How was I supposed to use that to ice her ankle? I meant bring it in a towel or something. The diner used small paper napkins so those would be of no use with a glass of ice cubes.

“I think she missed the point,” I told Leah. “I wasn’t suggesting ice for a cocktail.”

“I could use a cocktail, to be honest,” she said. “But yeah, that’s Theresa. I’m surprised she brought it at all.”

Improvising, I loosened my tie and pulled it off over my head. I eased off her shoe and her sock.

“What are you doing?” Leah’s eyes went wide.

“Making do.” I looped the tie around her foot and tightened it, leaving it just slightly slack. Then I eased cubes of ice between her swollen flesh and the tie all the way around. I put her sock back on as carefully as I could and tucked the tie into the top of it. “There.”

Not bad for an amateur. I looked up from my handiwork to see she was staring at me, looking taken aback.

“What?” Maybe I shouldn’t have taken her shoe and sock off for her. Or touched her. But it was a minor medical crisis, what the hell was I supposed to do? Her co-workers weren’t exactly jumping on the situation.

She shook her head and reached up to tighten her ponytail. “Nothing, other than that was just the hottest thing in the entire universe.”

Damn.

Maybe I’d been wrong about Leah’s flirting.

Her voice was amused, but tinged with a bit of awe, and I was very aware of the fact that I was hunched down between her legs. Thank God for the excessive fabric of her poodle skirt because all of my previous fantasies sprung back to life. I could just ease that skirt up and skim my hands over her naked thighs and…