CHAPTER NINETEEN
OLIVIA COULDN’T REMEMBER much of class although it had ended only half an hour before. She’d managed a halfway decent presentation on staffing and hiring practices, but she’d been distracted by her frantically working brain. An urgency had overtaken her, a need to turn her plans into action. But as she’d broken the class into groups to work on a mock budget, she’d managed a few spare thoughts for Jamie.
A few X-rated thoughts, despite her fractured mind. She loved the way he moved. The way his hands shaped ideas as he brainstormed with the group. The way his mouth stretched into a smile when someone cracked a joke. His shoulders were so wide and straight. His stance so confident. Watching him made her sigh, and when Jamie caught her looking, she didn’t even blush. She just stared straight at him and let him see her lust.
She wasn’t going to be weak anymore, not if she could help it.
Their lunch plans took them to a restaurant that would serve as a good comparison for Jamie’s ideas. But Olivia couldn’t stop herself from floating an idea of her own. “I have a proposal,” she said firmly.
Jamie looked up from the menu he was studying.
“I’d like to frame this in a different way. I’d like you to be my client instead of my student.”
“You want me to be your…client?”
“For the restaurant! Not the…other stuff?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Other stuff?”
She wanted to blush and stammer, but instead she held his gaze. “The sex will continue to be free.”
He smiled so widely she could see his back teeth.
“What I mean is that I’m moving forward with my plans. I’m going to start this business, consulting with restaurateurs. Helping them with start-ups.”
“Wow! That’s great, Olivia.”
“I’m moving slowly, but what I’d like to do is use you as a test client. At no charge, of course.”
“I thought I already was. Isn’t that why we’re doing reconnaissance at this fancy Italian place?”
“Yes, but I’ve been teaching you. Helping you figure it out on your own. What I’m proposing is that I work it up for you, as if you were a client who’d hired me to do just that.”
“Isn’t that cheating?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not helping you with a class project. I want to help you make this real. I want to help me make this real.”
He took her hand. “Absolutely. If you want to do this, it’d be a godsend for me. What do you need?”
“All your files. Everything you’ve put together. I’ll turn it into a portfolio. A really glossy one with photographic mockups of the interior and exterior. Finished menus. Profit and loss reports. Budgets. All of it.”
“And what will I do?”
“Work with me, of course. And maybe allow me to use your brewery portfolio as a selling tool for my consulting firm?”
“Absolutely.”
Relief swept over her. “Thank you. This will be great. And it’ll save you from having to do reconnaissance on the other brewpubs. I know you were uncomfortable with it, but now you won’t have to do it. I will.”
“That would be amazing. Although I’m not sure how I feel about you flirting with other bartenders.”
She tapped his foot with hers. “I won’t flirt with them.”
“Promise?”
“Well…only if it means getting more information.”
“But you’re not going to give them some sob story about how you don’t know how to have fun, are you? I still can’t believe I fell for that.”