No, there’s way too much at stake to take a single step down that path.
Cameron is a great guy and I appreciate his help today, but we’re never going to be anything more than friends.
Just friends, just friends, I repeat silently to myself as I join the crew in the kitchen, where Cameron already has the rest of the team hard at work at their stations. After assuring everyone that I’m fine and thanking them for their concern, I return to my routine from yesterday, slowly circling the kitchen with my tablet, taking notes as Cameron calls out the fake orders I punched into the system earlier, one by one.
He’s every bit as accomplished at running the service as he was before, but the warm, cozy energy that filled the kitchen is gone, replaced by a brisk efficiency that makes me sad.
Sad, but determined to keep things purely professional between us from now on. After all, I know almost nothing about this man. Sure, he seems great, but so did Phillip…at first.
By the time my ex showed his true colors, I was pregnant—and crazy about him. So crazy I hung on for far too long, addicted to the stupid hope that he would go back to being the person who made me feel happy, loved, and special, and stop scaring the shit out of me every other week. But he never did.
Things just went from bad to worse to flat-out fucking terrifying.
But maybe if I’d taken the time to get to know him better—to meet the few family members he hadn’t shut out of his life and the friends who reminded me of the “mean kids” from a 1980s teen movie—I would have been able to drag my heart back from the ledge before it was too late.
That’s where my head is as we break for lunch. I take a table as far away from Cameron and the two station chefs who seem to be his closest friends and pretend to be deeply absorbed in my lunch service notes.
And then a gorgeous Asian woman with tears streaming down her face bursts in through the heavy curtains shielding the seating area from the lobby, and I’m overcome by the feeling that everything is about to change.
And not necessarily for the better…
Chapter Six
Cameron
The moment Jess bursts through the curtains, I know something is really, really wrong.
Jessica Allison Cho has been one of my best friends since we were kids, and I’ve seen her cry exactly twice—once when she fell off her bike and broke her wrist at twelve, and once when she’d just been mugged outside a sketchy concert venue last summer.
My mind immediately goes to the worst-case scenario, and I practically leap over Betsy’s chair in my hurry to get across the room.
“What’s up? What’s wrong?” I ask, taking her hands and doing a quick up-and-down scan of her small frame, looking for bullet holes or signs of blood loss. “Are you hurt? Is Evie hurt? Did you—”
“No,” she says, shaking her head so hard her hair flies into her face, a few of the strands sticking to her tear-streaked cheeks. “It’s the c-code,” she says between shallow sobs. “Everything I did yesterday. I logged on after going to the gym, like Evie told me to do so my stupid muscles wouldn’t atrophy or whatever, and it was all gone. Erased. Like it was never there to begin with.”
I blink faster, not sure whether to be relieved that she’s not physically hurt or even more worried that she’s this upset over something that happened at work. I take my job seriously, too, but your job shouldn’t reduce you to hiccupping sobs.
And no matter how stressful things get, Jess usually keeps a cool head unless she’s in fear for her life.
“I’m pretty sure one of my team members hacked into my account and deleted it,” she says, her cheeks flushing redder. “One of those shady, lazy, jealous, weasel-bellied fuckers is trying to break me and this code, and I’m so mad I’m afraid I’m going to murder someone, Cameron. Like, literally murder them. For real. Torturous, slow, malicious, bloody murder.” She sucks in a breath and swipes at her cheeks with the sleeves of her puffy red coat. “So, I figured I should come take you up on that free-lunch offer, and let you talk me down before I do something I’ll regret. Because as much as they deserve to be stabbed repeatedly in the spleen, I don’t want to go to prison.”
“Good idea,” I say, some of the tension easing from my shoulders as I realize she’s crying because she’s pissed, not sad. This makes more sense with the Jess I know and should make it easier to help her through this latest crisis. I motion toward a table for two near the bar. “Grab a seat. I’ll bring you some seafood linguini and a glass of Chardonnay, and we’ll plot your revenge.”