Page 7 of Chef's Kiss

I must just be giving off a really good vibe today since I finally landed a job. That’s all it is. Law of attraction in real life.

“You wanna try the register for a bit or stay back here?” she asks, finally changing the subject.

“Back here,” I say so quickly I almost literally spit it out. I’m definitely not looking to be customer-facing if I don’t absolutely have to. And by absolutely I mean the store’s on fire and I just have to point to the direction of the fire exit, while I’m trying to get there myself.

“Suit yourself. I just thought you were on a roll and you might want to test your results.”

“Test my results?”

“Yeah, you know, like how we rotate products, offer discounts, and stuff like that. It’s even easier online where we already know customer preferences, buying habits and things like that.”

“Machine learning?”

“Exactly. But you just test it in real life, on guys. It’s why I keep a journal, to see what outfits fill the tip jar best. To know which powerful guys actually like me being a dom to them in real life. Things like that.”

“You sleep with the customers?” I gasp.

“No, silly. Just the way I talk to them. Powerful guys get off on a woman who doesn’t take their shit and is even more powerful towards them than they could ever be to us. Split testing. You have to try it.”

“I think I know what it is. There are some guys online posing as authors who are always stealing from my favorite author, Flora Ferrari.”

“Come again?” her head jerks back.

“Yeah, Flora only writes under that one pen name, but other authors have literally borrowed, I say with air quotes, her name, covers, way of writing blurbs, story structure, everything.”

“That sounds pretty lame.”

“Very, it’s why I never read their stuff. Rehashed knockoffs of an original are never as good as the real thing, and only make you mad that you wasted time reading something subpar by a guy in his mom’s basement claiming to be a woman.”

“Sounds like internet dating.”

“Sounds like a lot of things in life these days, unfortunately,” I say and we both laugh.

“You’re crazy,” Alexa says.

“Big imagination. Do you read fiction?”

“Nah, I just try and live a life that’s so crazy no one would believe it.”

“So you live it out in real life. I guess we’re more alike than I would have first guessed.”

“I guess so,” she says, with her warmest smile of the day. “If you need anything I’ll be up front.”

“Thanks,” I reply, feeling way better about everything.

But I’m still not sure how I feel about Christian, and I don’t want my guess about what he thought about me to be wrong.

Wait, does that mean I am guessing that he likes me, despite my attempts to convince myself otherwise?

I’m so confused right now. I just need to keep my head down and make some money. My wild imagination, compliments of all those romance novellas I read, was just running wild in here.

There’s a reason I pay ten bucks a month for Kindle Unlimited…because it’s a fantasy. It doesn’t happen in real life, especially not to someone like me.

Does it?

CHAPTER 4

Charlotte

The next morning

I step off the bus and pull my old Nokia brick phone out of my pocket. Thirty minutes early, of course.

I breathe in and out, look around and realize that nothing’s going to be open at five in the morning around here. For this job we have to arrive early to stock shelves and prepare togo items…but not this early.

It’s a habit that was ingrained in me from an early age, beaten into my head like a drum.

“If you’re not ten minutes early, you’re late,” my dad used to always say.

I choke back tears thinking about him. These last five years were a long, drawn out process. I stayed by his side as much as I could, missing school often and falling behind almost every semester. Luckily all those romance books paid off in an unexpected way. Being a voracious reader, even as a child, it helped me catch up so quickly that some teachers actually thought I was cheating. I smile through the tears that run down my face. I was so good they couldn’t even believe it. I was really good at something, and I want to be good at this job.

The doctor had diagnosed dad with prostate cancer five years ago, but that was only after I practically dragged him in there kicking and screaming for an exam. Luckily for Father’s Day one of the clinics was doing free check-ups, but I told him I’d paid for it to get him to go. He wasn’t pleased when he found out later it was free, and I wouldn’t have lost any money if he hadn’t gone, but on the flip side if I could have convinced him earlier maybe I wouldn’t have lost him at all.

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