“Ah, that’s it. It seemed familiar, but I couldn’t figure it out.”
The man Noah talked to a few minutes before came back out with a plate in each hand, setting them down in front of them. He nodded to her before turning to walk away.
“Thanks, Liam,” Noah called at his retreating back.
Lily glanced down at her plate, her eyebrows raising when she saw the food. “Eggs Benedict?”
Noah glanced over at her. “Is that okay? Liam can make something else, if you’d rather.”
“No, this is fine. I just wasn’t expecting this from a bar.”
He chuckled as he handed her a glass and passed the pitcher of orange juice. “We get that a lot. Liam runs the grill part of the business, but he’s more like a chef than a bar joint cook. None of us are complaining, though.”
She forked a bite into her mouth, moaning as flavor expl
oded on her tongue. “Oh my God, this is amazing. Why in the world does he work in bar when he can cook like this? He could be a famous chef with a five-star restaurant. Oh, wait, is he an Enforcer, too?”
Nodding, he took a sip of juice before answering. “He is. And all of us own a share in this place, so he’s technically not just the cook.”
“Liam… O’Brian, right?”
“How did you—” he broke off with a chuckle. “That’s right, you’ve seen the deed. Yeah, that’s him.”
“And Damara must have been the D. Costas. If I’d remembered her last name, I could have worked her accent out on my own. There were two of those names, though.”
“Her brother, Dmitri.”
She nodded and they fell silent after that as they finished their food. The meal was delicious, and she couldn’t help thinking they were an interesting bunch so far. Noah was an ex-Marine, Liam was a chef, and Damara and Dmitri were from Greece. She wondered what little tidbits she’d learn about the others before her time there was up.
She’d just taken her last bite when the front door opened and a tall man with dark hair and olive skin walked in. He glanced around, his brow unfurrowing as his eyes landed on Damara, who was sitting at a table with Blake, and he nodded at her as he started walking back to the hallway.
“Wait a minute, Dmitri,” Blake barked as he stood from his seat. “Where the hell have you been? You missed a meeting last night and no one seemed to know where you were.”
Damara looked down at the table, the same innocent expression on her face she wore the night before, and Lily suppressed a smile. She had a feeling that wherever Dmitri had been, his sister knew but wasn’t telling.
“I only had one missed call,” Dmitri replied, his accent thicker than Damara’s, and his voice was a little rusty, like he wasn’t used to speaking much. “If it had been urgent, you would have kept trying to get ahold of me.”
“You still didn’t answer my question.”
“Because what I do on my personal time is my own damn business and not yours.”
Lily’s eyebrows rose as Dmitri walked away, leaving Blake scowling behind him. Blake was a big guy—not gigantic like Noah, but bigger than Dmitri, and he was clearly pissed off. Not to mention, she thought Blake was the boss, but Dmitri didn’t seem concerned in the slightest that he just made him angry.
“I was right when I said Blake was your leader, right?” she asked, waiting for Noah’s nod before continuing. “Why didn’t Dmitri answer him, then? He basically defied a direct order.”
“Because Dmitri’s a dickhead,” Blake muttered as he stomped behind them on his way to the hallway.
Noah chuckled as he watched him go. “Dmitri’s really not a dickhead. He just does what he wants. It drives Blake crazy, but as long as Dmitri’s here and follows orders when it really matters, he lets him get away with it, for the most part.”
Damara walked by, taking her plate to the back. “Hey, Dmitri has a point. What we do in our down time is our business. It’s clear you’re both from military backgrounds. Defying a direct order. Sheesh.”
Noah chuckled, but the military comment made Lily pause as she realized she hadn’t thought of Brandon and the last few painful years at all that morning. He was usually the first thing she thought of when she woke up in the morning, and the last thing she thought about before falling asleep.
But that morning, she’d immediately thought of Noah.
Her heart skipped a beat, and she gave her head a quick shake. Not specifically Noah. Not him as a person. Although, she thought as he stood up to take their plates and her eyes ran up and down his tall frame, thinking about him like that first thing in the morning wouldn’t be a bad way to wake up.
No. No thinking about Noah like that. He’d been like a brother to Brandon, so that meant he was kind of like a brother-in-law to her, and that was gross.