Until Mani by Paige Rochelle

Author:Paige, Rochelle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boom Factory Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Vivian

Working with Mani over the past week had been amazing. And it wasn’t just because it felt nice to get back to work. What I liked most about our arrangement was that it allowed me to spend plenty of time with him each day. He worked crazy hours at Bryson’s, just like he’d warned me. We got into the habit of me taking over his office while he was busy elsewhere—which was basically all of the time.

I gained a whole new appreciation for how difficult his job was. I’d always kind of thought that owning a business meant you could set your own schedule, but I was totally wrong. Even with Jayce managing the dining room and bar staff, Mani’s daily to-do list seemed to be a mile long. He handled all of the kitchen staff, ordering, and finances. Then there was the seasonal menu planning, ensuring compliance with health code guidelines, and handling customer complaints.

But even with all of that, he still made time for me—a lot of which involved food. It was turning into kind of our thing. Breakfasts at the diner. Lunch in his office. Dinner in the bar. And tonight apparently...dessert at Mani’s house. “Are we close?”

He flashed me an amused grin before making a right turn into a super-nice neighborhood. “Is that the grown-up version of ‘are we there yet?’”

“Probably.” I squirmed on the passenger seat of his car, feeling a little nervous. Unlike the time we’ve spent together at the restaurant, we were going to be completely alone at his place. No chefs asking questions about one of Mani’s recipes. No customers needing to be charmed. Nobody at all to interrupt whatever it was we ended up doing and all the time in the world to do it. Bryson’s was closed on Mondays, and we didn’t have anything planned for our day off.

We had nowhere we needed to be for the next thirty-six hours, and an entire house to ourselves. And what a house it was. “Holy crap, is this where you live?”

Mani pulled into the driveway of a two-story brick house with a white picket fence and wrap-around porch. It looked like it belonged on a television show or something. It was the perfect family home in a nice established neighborhood. It wasn’t even close to what I was expecting. Nothing about it screamed bachelor pad of a thirty-five-year-old guy. But that’s exactly what it was because he nodded. Then the garage door went up when he pressed the button on his visor. “Yeah, I bought it a couple of years ago. I was looking for something smaller, but I couldn’t pass the house up. It was too good of a deal.”

My car had been the most expensive thing I’d ever owned, but I’d only been able to afford it because I bought it used and got a loan. And then I couldn’t even keep it because I got fired. No matter how good of a deal Mani had gotten on his home, it still had to have cost like twenty or thirty times as much as my car.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.