The Negotiator (Professionals 7)

Somehow, though, this felt special. Maybe because Christopher was not a friend, because my feelings regarding him were shaping up to be a lot more than friendly.

And because the fact that he even knew how to make a frappe, let alone did it for someone else, had been shocking to Alexander and Cora —two people who seemed to know him better than anyone else.

So maybe it actually meant something that he did it for me.

Sure, I could have been fantasizing the issue a bit, but it just seemed something a little extra, a little special.

And like being on the receiving end of that smile, getting a man like him to make me coffee just felt really nice.

In fact, just about everything about Christopher was starting to feel nice.

“Okay, try this,” he offered, holding out the sweating glass as he stuck a stainless steel straw into it.

Obediently, I took a long sip, tasting the milk, the coffee, the chocolate, and a hint of something else.

“Something is different,” I told him, looking up at him.

“Yeah? What is it?” he asked, head dipping to the side a bit, making me realize he was challenging me to try to remember what things tasted like, how they went together.

This was an easy one.

What went really well with milk and chocolate?

“Caramel,” I told him, getting another of those warm smiles.

“There you go. You got this, angele mou,” he said, making his way past me, giving my hip a little squeeze, then disappearing outside.

Angele mou.

I didn’t know that one.

Mou was ‘my.’

And ‘angele’ sounded almost a lot like ‘angel.’

My angel?

Could he possibly have been saying that to me? Calling me that?

I could practically hear the guys at work scoffing. That anyone would think of me as an angel, that anyone would dare to say it to my face.

I would have been scoffing with them just a few weeks before.

Now, though?

Now, I had to admit, my stomach did an unexpected little flip-flop at the endearment.

I wanted to hear it again.

Preferably with his lips close to my ear while he was inside me.

I should have cared about lines of propriety, about keeping professional and personal issues separate, about not sleeping with someone who had sort of kidnapped me, and kept me from the outside world.

Yet, I did not.

At all.

For a second.

I was going to get that man in bed.

And I was going to enjoy every last second of it.

After I figured out what to feed these guys.

With another couple of sips of delicious frappe in my system, I seemed to start moving on autopilot.

I lined a baking sheet with the chicken breast, carrots, potatoes, peppers, some lemons on the chicken, a little rosemary and garlic, and drizzled the whole thing with olive oil.

About an hour later, I was arranging some olives around the baked dish, sprinkling some feta because, well, why not?

And then, wholly pleased with myself, I was making my way to the dining room where Christopher, Alexander, Laird, Collis, and Marco were all situated, waiting for me.

I never liked the idea of serving men before. It always seemed to come with a sort of built-in sexist undertone. Serving men. As though it was a woman’s job to do so.

But there was no denying that as I walked in with the sheet pan, and all those eager male faces turned to me, hungry, excited for what I had so carefully made for them, there was a swelling of pride inside at being able to feed them, to impress them with my concoction.

I placed the pan down on the center of the table next to the small salad Alexander had already brought out for me, drizzled with a dressing I had made myself out of olive oil and spices with a hint of lemon.

“Alright, well, dig in,” I suggested when everyone just sat there.

With that, they did, loading up their plates, digging in, making approving noises, going in for seconds.

Even I had to admit—and I was being critical of myself—it was pretty damn good. All of it, too. The only thing that might have made it even better would have been some homemade bread. Which I vowed to learn how to make.

“I told you that you could do it,” Christopher told me, coming into the kitchen where I was scrubbing the sheet pan in the sink.

“It was pretty edible, right?” I asked, giving him a tentative smile as he moved in beside me, rolling up his sleeves, reaching for a towel, starting to dry the plates I had already washed.

“It was perfect,” he corrected, making a warm feeling bloom across my chest. “Cora would be so proud,” he added, just making that sensation move all through my body until it chased away any chilly corners inside.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the frappe,” I told him, suddenly too aware of the way his arm brushed mine as he dried the plates, feeling weirdly short of breath from the chaste contact.