The kitchen was cleaned and prepped in time for their morning service, and everybody went into it in awesome spirits and with smiles on their faces. Tina retreated to her office to order inventory, and after finishing that task, she sent Harris some pictures of her and Libby both covered in cake.
That looks like a waste of some perfectly good cake.
I made the cake.
I take it back! Looks like it got exactly the treatment it deserved. She laughed at that brutally frank comeback, but really there was no arguing with the truth.
I’m at the airport. I have a six pm flight home today. The news disturbed her; she wondered if he would have told her if she hadn’t texted him first.
Oh. Travel safe. She didn’t know what else to say.
Thanks.
“Don’t be stupid, Tina,” she told herself sternly after she put her phone down. “He doesn’t have to tell you anything.”
She got up and paced the tiny confines of the office for a moment before heading back out into the bustling restaurant. People called out greetings, and she absently waved and returned the smiles and the hellos, but her mind wasn’t on what she was doing. She needed to figure out what else she wanted from her life. Because it currently felt like she was stuck in limbo.
“I’m thinking of selling my flat. And I was wondering if you had any advice for me. Some dos and don’ts, maybe?” The achingly familiar voice, coming from so close by, startled Harris. His head jerked up, and there she was. Right there in his office, standing just inside the closed door and staring at him with wide, nervous eyes.
“Tina?” He shoved himself up and rounded his desk, not even aware of what he was going to do until after he’d done it. Before he knew it, he was within a foot of her, crowding her against the door. He swallowed and took a deliberate and extremely reluctant step back to give her some space.
“How did you get in here?” he asked, and she smiled, the parting of her lips beautiful but also a bit strained, as if she, too, wasn’t yet sure what she was doing here.
“I called Greyson and made him order your PA to let me in without forewarning you. Apparently, he’s a bigger boss than you are,” she said, her smile widening tentatively.
“Yeah, he could probably fire my ass if he wanted to,” Harris quipped. Only half his brain was on his words; the other half was wholly preoccupied with dealing with the bombardment of his senses. Her scent, her voice, the warmth of her body—his pupils dilated to take in as much of her as he could. She was dressed in another one of those fantastic dresses. This one was aquamarine, strappy—a nod to the warm early-spring weather—with a sweetheart neckline, form-fitting contours, and a flirty little ruffle at the knee. Her long red hair—crackling with good health—tumbled to her pale, freckled shoulders in a mass of vibrant curls.
She was so damned sexy that he was having a very hard time keeping his hands to himself. He folded them behind his back and instead leaned toward her like a total creeper and inhaled the fresh scent of her hair.
“You look—” He stopped himself in time. Not sure anything he wanted to say to her would be considered remotely appropriate. He settled on “nice.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s good to see you again.” He couldn’t stop those words from emerging, and he didn’t fucking care what she made of that.
“It’s good to see you too,” she echoed faintly, and she genuinely looked like she meant the words.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, remembering himself and where they were and taking another step back from her. “And why are you in Cape Town? Who’s running the restaurant?”
“I couldn’t expect Libby and Ricardo to pick up the slack—they each have a lot on their plates as it is—so I asked Greyson to keep an eye on things while I’m gone.”
Grey? That was new. Since when did Tina trust Grey enough to ask him for a favor like that?
“He didn’t mention it to me,” Harris said, feeling a little betrayed; he and Grey had been sharing a lot more of their everyday lives with each other lately.
Tina cleared her throat uncomfortably, looking strangely guilty.
“I asked him not to. I figured if you knew I was coming, you’d try to avoid me.”
He said nothing in response to that. He couldn’t deny the truth in her words, and after an awkward pause, she cleared her throat again.
“We should have lunch,” she suggested evenly, and he stared at her for a moment, not sure what to say in response to that. Her voice softened and she added, “Please, Harris. Let’s have lunch.”
It would take a stronger man than he to deny the gentle appeal in that husky voice. He glanced back at his desk; he was still jet lagged after his return from Australia two days ago and wasn’t getting much work done anyway.