The Reality of You by Jean Haus Read Free Book Online Page B

and looked at me
pointedly. Keeping my mouth shut, I continued scribbling out his demands. He
sat back and kept going and going and going.
    Reports. Charts.
Documents. Notes. Logs.
    I wanted to scream
and pull my hair out. Instead, my shoulders slunk with the weight he put on
them each time he opened his luscious mouth as I continued taking notes.
    Before I collapsed
from all his expectations, a knock sounded at the door. Swimming in an
abundance of demands, I wasn’t fazed by the sound. He gave me another pointed
look. I stared back at him in confusion. His eyebrows rose, and I gradually
realized that he wanted me to open the door.
    Feeling woozy from
the list he’d imparted, I pushed away from the table and moved toward the door.
Stone-faced servers and their carts waited in the little courtyard outside. At
the thought of food, my stomach gurgled. At the thought of a break, my brain
rejoiced. I opened the door wider.
    Standing, Reese
instructed the servers to set everything up on the opposite end of the table
then removed his phone from his breast pocket and disappeared down the hallway
beyond the fireplace. On the end of the table we weren’t working on, the
servers laid out a table cloth, china, silver, white wine, bottled water,
flowers, and several covered dishes, all while retaining formal stone faces.
    Slightly
uncomfortable, I stood to the side.
    One server nodded
briskly as they left me alone with the savory scent of lemon garlic in the air
and an open bottle of wine. Both called to me. I craned my neck down the
hallway, ears super observant. The suite remained quiet.
    After peeking down
the hall a few more times, with my mouth watering for several reasons, I went
back to my chair and my notes. The length of the notes had me gazing at the
wine bottle with longing. When Reese didn’t appear, I began flipping through
the pages and pages of data, trying to ignore the other smells my nose picked
up.
    Was that pineapple?
    Half an hour later,
though my stomach rumbled loudly in the silent room, I had most of the data
organized in piles when Reese finally came back. He drew out a chair by the
food.
    “I thought we’d
discuss food expectations in the privacy of my suite prior to dinner tonight.”
    Food expectations? Forcing myself not to groan—I simply
wanted to inhale whatever sat under those covers at this point—I grabbed a pen
and paper then made my way to the chair he had pulled out. It was not lost on
my sense of irony that I was having lunch with the man I’d been watching during
lunch for months.
    He filled my water
glass with bottled water. “I’m not expecting you to be a professional food
critic. However, you should be able to report on service, appearance, and of
course, taste.” He lifted the bottle of wine from the ice bucket. “And wine
pairings…” He paused, holding the wine above my glass. “You drink wine?”
    I nodded.
    He poured me a third
of a glass. “How familiar are you with pairings?”
    “Never met him,” I
said with a laugh.
    Reese’s winged brows
lowered a tad. I wanted to add, Is it a
her? I kept my sarcastic mouth shut.
    Though a slight tick
creased his cheekbone, his expression stayed serious. “The wine should
complement the food. You’re essentially at work, but drink enough to make a
judgment on that. Simply take notice of the flavors and contribute your
opinion.”
    Drawing in my
sarcasm, I wrote down more directions. This secretary stuff sucked ass.
    Reese took covers
off the food. Shrimp in what appeared to be a garlic sauce lay over grilled
pineapple slices. A salad of exotic fruit and greens speckled with cashews
stared at me next. And lastly, I nearly drooled at the little cakes with slices
of candied bananas on top.
    It was way past
noon, my normal lunchtime. I was a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks a
day kind of girl. One of the bonuses of being athletic equated to a healthy
appetite that didn’t cause my ass to grow. Since I’d eaten little last