Changing Scenes (Changing Teams #2) (6 page)

Chapter Ten

Astrid

Donato: Tomorrow’s Thursday.

Astrid: I was aware of that, Mr. Calendar.

Donato: Fresh.

Astrid: ;)

Donato: Want to go to the market again?

Astrid: Love to.

Donato: Awesome.

Donato: Pick you up at 12:30.

Astrid: I’ll be waiting.

***

Donnie rolled up at twelve-thirty on the dot in the restaurant van. I wondered if any of my neighbors were watching, speculating about all these midnight trips I was going on. Then again, since the restaurant’s logo was painted on the side, they probably thought I was a waitress.

Little did they know that I was a waitress, just not at any place half as nice as Thirty-Nine and Twelve.

I hopped in the van and saw Donnie holding a travel mug. “Hey, babe,” he greeted, then he thrust the mug at me. “Black, just like you like it.”

“Thanks,” I said, then I leaned over and kissed him. That surprised him, but it didn’t stop him from kissing me back.

“I take it you missed me?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

What I left out was that I really had missed him, and after a week of cleaning up spilled drinks and dodging bill collectors I needed to kiss him, and drink the coffee he brought me, and hold his hand while we wandered around in the cold and bought a crap ton of shellfish. The promise of seeing Donnie around midnight on Thursday was about the only thing that had kept me going this week.

Donnie laced his fingers with mine and kissed the back of my hand. “Missed you too.”

I sat back and sipped my coffee. Maybe he did get it.

***

The market was about the same as it had been the week before, though we made the circuit in about half the time. I guessed that Donnie had given me the grand tour last week, probably to ensure I didn’t get lost among the mountains of ice. Once our haul was loaded up we went to the diner, which held the promise of hot coffee and crispy bacon. After spending an hour in a freezing, windy parking lot, it was heaven.

“Why’d you become a model?” Donnie asked, after our food was delivered. “Only job available for gorgeous chicks like you?”

I raised an eyebrow, but let the chick comment slide. Mostly because he’d also called me gorgeous. “It happened in a roundabout way,” I replied. “My cousin Michael—have you met him yet?”

“I haven’t met any of your family,” Donnie replied.

“Oh, right. You’ll meet him at Britt and Sam’s wedding; Michael’s going to be the best man. Anyway, a few years ago he got into photography and performance art, and since he’s so dark he had a really hard time finding stage makeup. Even when he did find a base that was dark enough for him, he ended up looking ashy.”

“Ashy?” Donnie repeated. “Like he was burnt?”

“Sort of. Michael has a warm skin tone, and most bases are cool. That made his skin gray and dull, and no one wants to look gray and dull. At least, Michael didn’t. So we started going to makeup counters together, and I ended up blending custom colors for him.”

“Really,” Donnie said. “How old were you?”

“Senior in high school,” I replied. “Then, since I had a college fund sitting there gathering dust, I applied to cosmetology school.” I leaned closer to Donnie and said, “My mother thought that was scandalous.”

“That’s my girl,” Donnie said, drawing my hand toward him and kissing my fingertips. We’d been kissing a lot, in the van, at the market, and now here. I liked kissing him. “What’s so scandalous about makeup?”

“My parents wanted me to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or something prestigious like that,” I replied. “But that never appealed to me. I want a fun life, not one shut away in an office.”

Donnie nodded. “I get it. So how’d you go from makeup to modeling?”

“A few months after I graduated from cosmetology school, I was working at a photo shoot,” I began. “A fashion site had just run an article about the designer that ripped him to shreds, claiming he was a racist because he only used skinny white girls in his ads. Well, what better way to disprove that than putting your clothes on a black girl? They offered me the gig on the spot, the ads went national, and here I am.”

“They didn’t hire you because you’re black,” Donnie said. “They hired you because you’re beautiful.”

I looked down and poked at my eggs, hiding my warm cheeks. “What about you? What made Donato Coehlo want to be a chef?”

“That is a pretty short story,” he replied. “I like cooking, and I don’t want to be stuck in a suit or an office either. Life’s short, gotta do what you love.”

“I hear you.” In my opinion, a lifetime of waiting tables was better than spending one hour in a cubicle. “So you went to chef school?”

“Nope,” he replied. “I just got a job in a kitchen. I started out as a prep guy, and made head chef about a year later.”

“You don’t have any formal training?” I asked, and he shook his head. “How’d you learn to make things like paella? And all those other recipes?”

Donnie shrugged. “Trial and error, mostly.” He grabbed the carafe and topped off my coffee cup, and then his own. “I mean, we all eat. Wasn’t too hard to figure out what went together.”

“Still, that’s pretty impressive.”

He smiled around his coffee cup. “You think so?”

“I do.”

Donnie set down his cup, then he took my hand. “Thanks, babe.” With his other hand he flipped over the check, then he fished out a credit card.

“Why don’t you let me pay?” I offered. I really couldn’t afford it, especially not with the Visa people hounding me, but I had a purse full of cash tips and was feeling generous.

“No way,” he said. “I buy my girlfriend breakfast, and that is non-negotiable.”

“I’ve been upgraded from girl to girlfriend?” I asked. “I did not know we were handing out promotions today.”

“Do I get one too?”

“Maybe.”

***

The ride back to my apartment seemed shorter than it had last week. I very much enjoyed spending time with Donnie, so much so that I was already looking forward to next week’s trip to the fish market. If the prospect of hanging with dead fish is the high point of your week, your life needs a serious overhaul.

So it looked like I needed to work on every aspect of my life, from career choice all the way down to finances. At least Donnie could help in the relationship department.

“Are you working this weekend?” I asked.

“Every day,” he replied. “My next day off is Tuesday.” He glanced at me. “You working then? Or Wednesday?”

“Both days,” I replied. Man, I needed to ditch this bar job. Getting rid of it would improve both the career and relationship departments, though it would severely undermine the finance division. Since I was still on my agency’s bad side, I needed to show Al all the appreciation I could. “Our schedules suck.”

“Yeah, they do.” Donnie pulled up to my building and put the fish mobile in park. “You ready to be seen in public with me?”

“Isn’t the market a public place? And the diner?”

He laughed. “Okay, in public and in the daylight,” he clarified.

“I suppose.”

Donnie shook his head. “Always playing it cool,” he murmured. “What does it take to crack your shell?”

“Why don’t you find out?”

Donnie grinned, then he turned off the ignition and came over to my side of the van.

“What are you doing?” I asked. He didn’t answer, and instead took my hand and led me to the back of the van. He sat on the back seat and pulled me onto his lap, my belly flat against his.

“Donnie, seriously, what are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m cracking your shell, babe,” he said, and then he kissed my throat. His breath was hot on my skin, his stubble ticklish. I moved my hips against his and felt his cock harden against me. Donnie grabbed my butt and kissed me until I was breathless. I hadn’t made out like that since I was in high school, all giddy with excitement over the boy in my arms.

After we kissed for a while, I asked, “Want to come upstairs?”

“Love to, but I don’t know if the fish would like it,” he replied. Yeah, I’d forgotten that I was making out with him in a van full of dead sea creatures. “Are you working the weekend after next?”

“I have to check,” I said. Granted, I was only supposed to work my three lunch shifts, but I’d already witnessed Al turn into a raging bull when someone asked for time off. If he scheduled me on a different day I’d probably show up just to keep him quiet. “Why? Are you going to come up and see me?”

“Maybe,” he replied, then he kissed me again. “Even if I can’t, there’s always fish market Thursday.”

“Sure is.” Yeah, these market trips were definitely the high points of my week. With any luck, after the holidays I could make my entire life that awesome.

Chapter Eleven

Donnie

After I dropped Astrid off at her place—man, but leaving her was hard—I hauled ass to the restaurant, unloaded the fish, and went home to change. I got back to the restaurant just before nine on Friday morning, in plenty of time to set up for lunch, and unlike last Friday I smelled pretty good. Man, if I kept this up Christa could promote me to assistant manager.

Not that it would take much for me to get that promotion from Christa. She’d been wanting to open a second location for a few years, and thought I’d be a great business partner. If I went along with this plan, I’d be fifty percent owner of the new place, with an option to buy out Christa’s share in five years. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it, but consider it was all I’d done. After five years as head chef, maybe it was time to open my own place.

I made a mental note to ask Astrid what she thought about dating a restaurant owner.

I entered the kitchen and grabbed the day’s menu; being that it was the same lunch we’d done for the past ten Friday’s I could prep it in my sleep. Normally I would have complained, or at least put together a new appetizer, but on that day I was glad to have the familiar. Something to be said for flying on autopilot when you weren’t at one hundred percent, you know?

“Hey Donnie,” Leela called, poking her head through the swinging doors, “rough night?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I replied before focusing on the menu again. Leela and I went way back, all the way back to New Bedford. Her name wasn’t really Leela; it was Sheila Smith, the most generic of generic names. We’d gone on one date back home—two if you count the one in eleventh grade—then I left when I got the head chef position at Thirty-Nine and Twelve. Six months later, Leela showed up looking for work. Since Christa’s a bleeding heart, Leela became our newest waitress.

Over the past few years, Leela and I had engaged in the occasional flirting bout, but that was it. I knew what she was like—one of those girls who only wanted to catch a man so she wouldn’t have to work for a living—and I wanted none of it. The girl I settled down with would be madly in love with me, Donato, not just the idea of a husband.

Did Astrid even want a husband?

Leela sauntered into the kitchen and leaned over the counter. “Donnie, baby,” Leela said, “word is you been bringing a girl to the market.”

“And?” I asked without looking up.

“And since you’ve never brought me to the market, I assume this can’t be anything serious,” she finished. “I mean, we’ve known each other since middle school.”

“Yeah.” I sure did remember her from middle school and beyond, along with all the boys she’d been with in the coatroom, under the bleachers, and any other semi-private spot. “Why would I bring you to the market, again?”

Leela laughed and squeezed my forearm. “Oh, Donnie, you know.”

“Do I?” I grabbed my phone and swiped to the pic Astrid had sent me of the two of us. “Excuse me, I need to take this. It’s from my girlfriend.”

I could feel Leela’s anger as I walked away, but I refused to care. She needed to know that there was no chance between us—not that there ever had been this side of hell—and the sooner, the better. Astrid was more than enough woman for me, and Leela needed to respect that.

I finished my fake phone call, returned to the kitchen, and washed my hands. Leela was at the salad station, portioning out dressing into little ceramic pitchers.

“You really like her?” Leela called over.

“I do,” I replied.

“Good for you.”

Leela stormed out of the kitchen, and I shrugged and returned to my menu. Opening my own place might just be worth it to get rid of Leela’s attitude.