Page 168 of From Rivals to I Do

As if reading her mind, at a certain point, he asked, "Where do you get your product from?"

"I make it all from scratch; they are my father's recipes," she said simply. Abel frowned as if she'd said something incorrect. She ignored it. "Anyway, that's how it's all done. When the restaurant opens, we'll start on the first order."

He did not object or respond to Camilla, and she went on. "Let's look at making the other things on the menu, okay?"

In the hours before opening, Camilla showed him how to make salads, garlic cheese bread, and other side dishes on the menu, with no expectation of his remembering any of them. But, while she trained him, she started to notice little things about him that were sparking her eyes to wander. His height and the way she could feel his breath on her neck when he stood next to her, how his rough-looking hands handled the dough gently as he was kneading it, how he smirked or just said 'sure' when she gave him instructions.

Rough ex-convict that he was, he was attractive, though she would never let me know what she was thinking. There was work to be done, after all. But unfortunately, Camilla needed more time to train new employees and her staff.

Once the day started, she realized that no one else was on the same page with that idea. She had about five teens working the front desk and two young women as waitresses for the restaurant's small dining area. All of them were very interested in Abel. Before the time the doors opened, she'd caught two female teenagers peeking at him through the window and both servers checking him out from afar while giggling in the corner. "Don't you have something to do?" she'd said to both groups to snap their necks back to their jobs. Camilla was beginning to regret the decision to hire Abel already.

Rocky's start was when the doors opened, and it was time to see Abel work in a trial by fire. For the first few orders, things were going well.

"Abel," she said, taking the first ticket. "Pepperoni and Sausage deep dish."

"Got it," he said, getting the dough for the first order. As soon as he was halfway through that order, Camilla read off the second ticket.

"Vegetarian thin crust, no onions."

"Uh-huh," he said, still working on the first pizza. Camilla shifted her feet nervously as he worked. When he finally got that pizza in the oven and started working on the next one, she said, "Next one's a plain cheese pizza, so that'll be easy."

"Yup."

His short responses were starting to annoy her. Did he have the orders? Was she going to have to repeat herself? She huffed and started with the fourth ticket.

"Another thin crust," she said. "Pepperoni and bacon this time."

"Sure."

She glared at him. He looked at her and smirked, seeming to enjoy her bothered disposition.

"Do you have all that?"

"Yup."

She frowned at him. "'Yup'? That's all you have to say?"

He breathed a loud, laborious sigh as he grabbed dough for the third pizza. "First pizza, Pepperoni, and Sausage deep dish. Second pizza, thin crust veggie. The third is plain cheese, and the fourth is Pepperoni and Bacon. Anything else?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Fine. Next pizza…"

They went on this way through the lunch rush, and every time he got the pizza made, and out to the customer, Camilla found herself getting more annoyed. But he was doing a decent job. He remembered every order and made every pizza with fewer mistakes on his first day than anyone else she ever hired.

He was short with her, however. First, he responds with a "Yup" or a "Sure" in acknowledgment. Then, as she got testier and testier, she finally stopped acknowledging her and just made the food in chilly silence.

Finally, she could not take it anymore. She slammed her hands down on the pizza counter before Abel could get another round of dough on the table. "I need a response, so I know you've got the orders."

"What for?" he asked her, crossing his arms.

"What—What do you mean what for? How am I supposed to know you've got it?"

He shrugged. "Have any of them come back?"

"That's not the point," she said.

"Answer my question. Has anything I've made come back?" Abel pressed.

"No, but—"

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