Page 79 of The Sun & Her Burn

“Just tell us, is he as well-endowed as I imagine in my dreams?” Mary asked.

I mimed zipping my lips. “No comment.”

“That means hell yes,” Rozhin translated.

There was a series of longing sighs.

“But in all seriousness,” Ro said, slinging her arm around my shoulders to tug me in for a kiss on my cheek. “You’ll remember us when you’re rich and famous, right?”

“Like I could ever forget you,” I promised. “And stop acting like I’m skipping town. We’ll still see each other.”

She pouted. “It’ll be different. Itisdifferent. You’re on the up and up, now.”

“Bitch,” Paris joked, elbowing me in the side.

“Astrid worked here, you know,” Shirley said, referring to Astrid Meeker, a relatively well-known TV actress who starredin a supernatural show. “She literally never spoke to any of us again.”

“I’m not Astrid,” I pointed out with a raised brow, smiling at myself when I realized it was an Adam mannerism.

“No, you are not.” Ro shmushed her face to mine as Mary fed me a piece of cake.

“Okay, okay,” our manager, Patrick, said as he came into the hub. “As sad as we all are to see Linnea go, is it too much to ask for you all to get back on the floor?”

There was a general grumbling, but everyone grabbed their things and exited the hub like good little worker bees leaving the hive.

Patrick stopped me before I could follow suit, his hand on my arm, our bodies close in the narrow neck of the hub before it spilled into the hall.

“I’m serious. We will miss you here,” he said quietly, his big brown eyes soft.

I offered him a little smile, a careful one, because Patrick had wanted to get in my pants for a long time, and I wasn’t about to give him the wrong idea about the kind of send-off I wanted now.

He was cute and sweet, and, unlike most of the other people at Affaire, he didn’t sleep around with back- or front-of-house staff. Rozhin had always thought I was crazy not to at least take him for a spin, but she didn’t know the secret desires of my heart.

She didn’t know I liked to be put on my knees, bent and folded like intricate origami by a master who was deft enough to handle me.

Patrick simply didn’t have it in him to satisfy me in the ways I’d always preferred.

“Adam Meyers is a lucky man,” he said, just a little edge of bitterness there.

My smile curled deeper. “Many would say I’m the lucky one.”

“Those people don’t know you,” he said simply.

And I thought it was one of the loveliest things anyone had ever said to me.

I patted his arm and pushed out into the restaurant toward my section to wrap up the last of my tables before Dan took over for the night shift.

Seven plates were carefully balanced in my arms when I looked up from clearing a table to see Sebastian walking towards me. He hadn’t seen me yet, so I took a moment to catalogue how gorgeous he looked in black trousers, a knit, short-sleeved button-up, and slick leather loafers. His ankles were shockingly sexy and tanned, exposed between the hem and the shoe in the European fashion of foregoing socks. He had shaved his usual stubble, revealing the strong planes of his face, and his hair was carefully gelled back from his forehead in perfect waves.

It was as if the restaurant took a collective deep breath of appreciation as he moved through the space, all eyes on him.

So it took me a moment to notice who was with him.

A short, curvy redhead in a lavender sundress that swirled around her ankles the way her curls tumbled around her heavy breasts. She looked like some goddess emerged from the ocean, something beautiful and faintly dangerous.

For one heart-stopping moment, I felt rage consume me like the building had crashed over my head, crumbling my bones to dust.

Jealousy, I realized, after struggling to take a deep breath, was what I was feeling.