Page 136 of Stay With Me

She turned the plan clockwise a couple of times to help her visualize the room.

“This makes sense to you?” Samantha asked.

Kimberly laughed a cute, little laugh. “Yeah, but I’ve been looking at it for the past two years.”

“And why can’t we use this plan again?”

“Well,” Kimberly said, pulling another paper out of her stack. “The past few parties have pretty much only been couples, and the large rounds accommodated groups of ten. This year we have several odd numbered reservations for large groups so we need to incorporate some rectangular tables.”

She flipped open a small notebook and began jotting down numbers, then went back and assigned letter-number combinations to each.

“A tables are the large rounds,” she explained. “B tables are rectangles, and C tables are two standard rectangles that we’ll push together. I’m assigning the C tables to groups of greater than—”

“Afternoon, ladies.” Nick cut her off, having appeared from out of nowhere along with Chase. They set down two emerald green martinis and a plate of bite-sized dark chocolate torts.

“We need taste testers,” Chase declared.

Samantha lifted an eyebrow at Nick. “Drinking on the job, huh? I seem to remember a policy prohibiting that.”

Nick chuckled and leaned semi close to her face, sliding a martini in front of her. “This is not drinking. This is experimentation for the party.”

“You smell like you’ve been experimenting quite a bit already,” she remarked, unamused.

He flashed his million dollar grin at her and then leaned closer.

“You smell pretty delicious yourself,” he whispered.

She felt her tummy flip at his lips being what seemed really close to hers, as well as began to panic discreetly that he might try to kiss her or something. So she lowered her voice and spoke into his ear.

“Strictly professional, Nick.”

Nick smirked as he stood up straight and seemingly ignored her comment because he held her shoulder. “Just taste it.”

“Sip the martini and then take a bite of the tort,” Chase directed with a sloppy flip of his wrist. The both of them were clearly a bit tipsy.

“I think you two need to go home for the day,” Samantha retorted. “This isn’t the type of creative pursuit we discussed, Chase.”

“We’re fine,” Chase insisted. “Sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty.”

Samantha pressed her lips together and noticed Kimberly looking at her expectantly.

“Are you twenty-one?”

Kimberly nodded eagerly. “I just turned twenty-two.”

“Fine.Onesip,” Samantha asserted.

Kimberly lifted the glass and took a bit more than a sip while Samantha only allowed a minuscule amount of the drink to splash her tongue.

“Now take a bite of that,” Chase instructed.

“Ooohh!” Kimberly exclaimed with a full mouth. “It tastes like a Thin Mint!”

Darn it,Samantha thought. It tasted amazing. So amazing that she took another sip and another bite, then another sip and another bite, then—

“Holy smokes,Chase,” she uttered in total delight, after about her fourth sip and bite.

“Slow down there, Samantha,” he warned, cackling. “It’s stronger than it tastes.”