Page 4 of Stepping Up

I smirked at my brother as I answered, “Yup, you’re on speakerphone, Dad.”

Nate frowned at me.

“Great!” Dad boomed, his bright smile audible in his voice. “Perfect, actually. I want both of you boys to come to dinner with me, Jodie, and her family tonight. We’ll have to do something when Bennett gets back into town, all seven of us, but for now, I can’t wait for at least two of my boys to meet the new women in my life. We’ve got to welcome them into the family.”

“Women?” Nate asked, one eyebrow raising at a jaunty angle. “Family?”

“Didn’t you hear?” I asked at a deadpan. “Dear old Dad got married. On a singles’ cruise.”

“Holy shit.” Nate laughed. “Congrats, Pop.”

“See? Your brother is happy for me, Logan.”

“My brother isn’t always the greatest at decision making, either,” I grumbled, and Nate flipped me off from the doorway.

“Well see you at dinner, Pop,” Nate hurried to say, accepting the invitation for both of us. Then he snatched the phone out of my hand, catching me off guard. “We’ve gotta get back to work, though. See you tonight!” He pressed his finger to the phone screen, ending the call.

The second Dad’s voice wasn’t in the room with us anymore, Nate looked at me with wide eyes. “Is he serious? He got hitched on vacation?”

“Seems like it. I can’t believe he’d be so… reckless,” I let out in a huff.

“Not all of us can be as painfully practical as you, big bro,” Nate replied. He stepped further into the room, then flopped down to sit sprawled in the chair in front of my desk. “Maybe she’s good for him. He sounds happy.”

“Maybe she’s after his money,” I rebutted.

“Come on, dude. Dad’s not that naive. Sure, he’s more of a dreamer than you, but you practically have your feet soldered to the ground. Give him a little credit. We can trust his judgment.”

“I sure hope so,” I said, and Nate gave me a soft, slightly-chastising smile as he led me out of the office.

At last, work. I could use a distraction from all of this personal bullshit.

I shifted easily to boss mode as I stepped out onto the busy restaurant floor. This was my element, far more than the role of my father’s eldest son. Servers bustled about, scurrying out of my way when I came stomping through, knowing my tendency to be on a warpath even when I wasn’t in a bit of a foul mood. I’d earned my reputation as a hard-ass, the kind of boss who didn’t accept subpar work or excuses, and as a result, my restaurant ran as a well-oiled machine. That wouldn’t be possible without a few of my employees fearing me.

The front of house manager approached me, then, with a wild look in her eyes and a pen stuck in her black curls. “Mr. McDonald, sir, I’m sorry to bother you, but we’ve noticed a bit of an issue?—”

“Spit it out, May,” I snapped at her, and an extra level of grumpiness came out that made me instantly feel a little guilty. Her face sank the tiniest bit, but before I could think about trying to walk back my attitude, since my bad mood had nothing to do with her, she sprang right into her professional mode, laying out an issue I needed to solve.

Luckily, though the issue she laid out was complicated enough to make my already-distracted head spin, it was a pretty simple solution. I laid out the steps she should follow and watched her shoulders relax. Everyone at Forge was on edge lately, since we were all gearing up for a big event that would define a lot of our careers. Mine especially. I’d been demanding perfection, and I’d accept nothing less.

“Thank you, Mr. McDonald, sir,” my frazzled manager sputtered before she ducked away, scurrying off to carry out my plans.

“Sorry, May,” I muttered under my breath when she turned away from me. Hard-ass or not, I wanted to earn my employees’ respect. May was a good one, hard-working without my brand of intimidation, which made her the favorite manager of a lot of the employees under her. And she’d never shown up late in the entire time she’d been in my employ, which put her in my good books.

“Sorry I’m late.” I heard a slightly-husky female voice break through my thoughts as I was examining marketing materials for our upcoming event. When I turned toward the side door, still ajar from the whirlwind entrance someone had just made, my gaze fell on a lush, curvaceous figure that had my mouth watering.

“You know it’s not like me, May,” the woman was saying, and Christ, the full rosiness of her lips as she spoke made my cock twitch in my pants. The way her teeth sank into her lower lip in an apologetic expression made my brain slide easily from all-business directly into the gutter, wondering how that pretty mouth would look with my full girth filling it up, my cum dripping down her chin.

Snap out of it, Logan, I mentally chastised myself. This wasn’t like me, but I couldn’t help it. I watched this woman speak quickly to my front-of-house manager, and through the sound of her excuses for her tardiness, I traced her soft, perfectly feminine features with my eyes, noticing the striking gray-blue irises framed by dark lashes and the fetching smattering of freckles across the bridge of her slightly-upturned nose. Her dark hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, exposing her ears and a soft jawline, and it was all too easy to sweep my eyes down her pale neck, across her sun-dappled collarbones, and into the deep V-neck of the black top she wore. I only got a quick look at her ample cleavage before she’d tied a black apron around herself and covered those delicious mounds, and it took a lot of willpower not to groan aloud.

Somehow, that shook me out of my horny trance, and Serious Business Owner Logan McDonald was back in full force. I heard myself say, “Excuses aren’t tolerated around here. You’re late,” in a tone as cold as our walk-in freezer.

The beautiful, dark-haired woman’s eyes instantly found me, drilling their intense indignation directly into my own. She lowered her dark brows, and I pretended not to find it femme-fatale sexy.

“I wasn’t talking to you, sir,” she practically sneered, though she was smart enough to keep it borderline. She knew who I was. Everyone at Forge knew me, since I practically lived here, especially lately. Now that I was focusing more on her face, her expression and the words coming out of her pretty mouth, I vaguely recognized her, too. She’d been working here a while, though I knew that we’d never had any direct contact before now. I would have remembered her if I’d ever caught more than a brief glance of her in my peripheral vision.

“But you’re late,” I scolded her. “I don’t accept tardiness in my restaurant. Haven’t you learned that by now, Miss…?” I told myself I wasn’t just fishing to learn her name. That I just wanted to know how best to tamp down her rebellious spirit in front of the subtly-gawking coworkers who surrounded us. But I found myself trying to guess what would come out of her mouth next. Maybe she’d have a name as sultry as her dark hair, like Veronica, or else something a little edgy.

She surprised me, though.

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