Page 112 of Champagne Fizz

Because something’s gotta give.

30

SIMON

The storage closet looks like a tsunami hit it. I don’t know how Arie let it get this way, but it’s unacceptable. Thus, I’m now standing knee-deep in napkins and spices, having spent the last hour pulling every item off the shelves and reorganizing them one by one: sugar, alcohol, syrup, canned fruit. Arie can blaze through anything like a Tasmanian devil, but seriously, who puts pickles next to the flour?

I climb up the metal shelving and start hauling down gallon-size cans of pickles. When I finally find a groove by monkey-hanging onto the metal support bar with one hand and swinging buckets of pickles down with the other, Connor walks into the storage closet and locks the door behind him.

“What the hell are you doing?” Connor barks, throwing his hands on his hips and glaring at me.

I’m hanging from the shelving andreallynot in the mood.

In fact, I’m his boss. It’s not the other way around. Just because he’s used to talking back to Arie (and locking her in closets like this one to work out their issues naked) doesn’t mean he gets to throw that same weight around with me.

“This closet is a mess,” I growl back, “and I’m sick of Arie—”

“This is not Arie’s mess,” Connor interrupts. “This ismymess. I stock the inventory in here. Arie can measure ingredients with a surgeon’s accuracy, but she doesn’t organize. Which you should know.”

“I do know that!” I snap back. “BecauseI’mthe one who organizes everything. The books, the marketing, the cash registers, the networking, the orders, the—”

“I repeat, this is my mess, Simon.”

“Well, at least you admit it’s a mess,” I grumble. “I don’t know how I let this go on for so long but—”

Connor stalks up to me and grabs the pickles I’m wrenching down, knocking me off balance and forcing me to jump off the shelf so I don’t create a domino effect by crashing into my carefully coordinated piles.

“I organized this mess in a way I understand it,” Connor hisses. “BecauseI’mthe one who’s in here all the time. You hide the cocktail cherries in a corner where I can’t find them, and you’re going to have pissed off customers at happy hour. So again, what are you doing?”

“I thought I made that obvious.” I grab the pickles from him and put them with the others. “I’m—”

Connor grabs my shirt. “I told you to wait till after the wedding,” he grumbles in my face.

“Excuse me?”

“The wedding planner,” he clarifies. “Tight ass, good tits, wrapped in one big package of yellow? A package you were supposed to wait untilafterthe wedding to unwrap. Am I making sense now?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I feign innocence, trying to struggle out of his grip, only Connor is too strong.

“I’m talking about you fucking the wedding planner and—”

“I’m not—”

“Oh really?” His fists clench tighter and he pulls me so close I can smell the mint toothpaste on his breath. “You two haven’t been playing bounce on my cock the last few days, and then something went south that’s caused you to feel the need to reorganize shit that isn’t your shit?”

“I own this restaurant and this shit—”

“The last time you stepped foot in this closet was when it was empty and Flambé hadn’t even opened yet.”

“That’s a ridiculous over-exaggeration!”

Conner shakes his head and lets go of me. For a second I think he might swing a punch, but instead he crosses his arms and frowns disapprovingly. “I’m not the one lying here, man. I told you not to fuck her, and you fucked her.”

“Technically, I didn’t—”

“Do you know what the girl looks and sounds like orgasming?”

I tilt my head to the side, trying to find the most delicate way to deny that.

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