Unavoidable Chance (6 page)

I open my menu and hold it in front of my face just as the waitress comes to our table and starts telling everyone the dinner specials. I stare at it and get lost in a sea of disgusting sounding food. I wrinkle my nose at almost everything on the list.

“Ava?” Amelia asks.

“Huh,” I say, peeking around my menu.

“They’re asking what you’d like to drink,” she says, looking at me funny.

“Oh, a glass of red wine, please, Cabernet Sauvignon if you have it,” I say, and go back to my menu. Almost everything on this menu is made with goat cheese or fennel or mushrooms. Oh my God, Brussels sprouts. I think I threw up in my mouth just thinking about them.

The waitress comes back with our drinks and starts taking everyone’s dinner order. They all rattle off disgusting sounding thing after disgusting sounding thing.

Finally, she comes to me and I look at her like a puppy in a window for sale. I’m always so embarrassed to ask for something that’s not on the menu, but I just want a cheeseburger. A regular cheeseburger, not one topped with disgusting things or made with anything other than good old beef. Cow, I want cow, not lamb or ostrich and certainly not black beans! I hem and haw and procrastinate. I just don’t know what I want, but damn it I’m starving.

“She’s picky,” Adrian finally says to the waitress.

“Oh, I see,” the waitress says. “I can have our chef make you just about anything you’d like,” she continues.

“Oh, I’m sure he will,” I whisper.

“Pardon,” the waitress says.

“Oh, nothing. Can I just get a regular cheeseburger with cheddar cheese?” I ask embarrassed.

“Sure you can. Would you like regular fries or sweet potato fries with that?” she asks.

Sweet potato fries. Are you kidding me? “Just regular,” I say. “And could I have that cooked well-done, please,” I add.

She gives a small smile and heads back to the kitchen. The family starts to make small talk, and I grab a piece of bread on the table and stop even before I get it to my plate. What in the hell is all over the bread? Don’t people believe in good old white bread? I put it back in the basket and take a sip of my wine. It’s not a good idea to drink a lot of wine on a totally empty stomach.

“What’s gotten into you?” Amelia asks, sitting next to me.

“What? Me? Nothing,” I tell her.

The whole family eyes me and I feel like I’m under a microscope. Asher and Willow look concerned. Amelia and Kyle look amused. Shay and Adrian look like they just won the lottery as Shay nods her head. Shit, that’s right. They saw Jax and me at the cemetery. Chloe and Max have smiles on their face, too. What could they possibly know? Last time we were all here, they weren’t even speaking to each other. Aiden and my mother just look at each other confused.

The waitress comes out with our food and places everyone’s dish in front of them. I look at mine and for the most part it looks alright. There’s some strange green stuff sprinkled on my fries, but hopefully that’s just parsley. I open the bun to inspect my burger. It looks normal. I look around to see if anyone is watching me and take a little sniff. Smells like a regular burger. There’s a little dish of red stuff which I’m assuming is ketchup, and another little dish with a sort of pinkish sauce in it, we’ll just stay away from that one. I scoot it over to the side of my dish so it’s not touching anything else.

I bite into the burger and oh my gosh, this is unbelievably hands down the best burger I’ve ever sunk my teeth into. I devour it in less than three minutes. When it’s gone I kind of wish I had taken a little more time to enjoy it, because it was just that good. Even the ketchup was amazing which is now all gone, I put it all on my burger. I dig into the fries and even those are amazing. They’re crisp on the outside and tender on the inside, but they need ketchup. The pink sauce taunts me to try it. What if it’s gross? It will ruin my whole meal sitting in my stomach. I dip a little corner of a fry into it and stick it on the tip of my tongue.

“What are you doing?” Amelia asks amused.

“What’s the pink stuff? Are you supposed to eat it with the french fries, or was that for the burger?” I ask.

“Are you being serious right now?” she questions.

“Yes, I’m being totally serious right now,” I whisper yell back to her.

“It’s fry sauce you nitwit, yes, it goes with your fries.”

“What’s wrong with just regular ketchup? What’s in fry sauce?” I ask her.

“It’s ketchup and mayonnaise. What family did you grow up in?”

Eww, ketchup and mayonnaise mixed together. That does not sound appetizing. Why would someone do that? I stare at my fries again wishing I just had more of that ketchup. I pick up a fry and desperately try and scrape out the last bits of remnants of ketchup out of the little bowl.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Amelia says. She picks up a fry, dips it in the fry sauce and shoves it toward my face. I back away like she just shoved a snake in my face. She lunges again and this time the sauce gets all over my cheek.

“Now look what you did,” I say angrily.

The waitress comes back to the table and says, “How is everyone’s food? Is it to everyone’s liking?” She looks around the table at everyone shaking their head yes. “Good. The chef wants to come out for himself to make sure everything was to your satisfaction. He should be by any minute now,” she says, and picks up a few empty plates on her way back to the kitchen.

Shit. That means Jax is coming out. I grab my napkin out of my lap and wipe the fry sauce off my face and say, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the restroom to clean my face now, thanks to Amelia.” And I high tail it to the restroom.

My heart is pounding a mile a minute. I don’t want to run into Jax again. I wet a paper towel and clean my face and the glop that dropped onto my shirt, and then give it another five minutes before I think the coast is clear and leave the bathroom.

I open the door and take one step out, and I’m immediately blocked by a man dressed in white. Right at eye level embroidered in dark blue on the white jacket is the name, Jax.

Shit.

“I wanted to make sure your
plain
cheeseburger was to your liking?” he asks, drawing out the word ‘plain’ in a sarcastic tone.

I take a step back and groan. Then I cross my arms over my chest. Unfortunately, it was a fantastic cheeseburger, but I can’t let him know that.

“I have a picky eater at home and I just wanted to make sure it was to your liking and wondered if you liked the secret ingredient,” he says with a chuckle.

Secret ingredient?

“What secret ingredient?” I ask, looking into his amused eyes. I on the other hand am so not amused.

“Did you like it?” he asks again.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what the secret ingredient was and then I’ll tell you if I liked it or not,” I say, getting slightly angry.

“If I tell you the secret ingredient, then you’re for sure going to tell me you didn’t like it. Because I know Sky doesn’t like it either, but she can’t get enough of it when I make burgers at home. Did you like it or not?”

“Alright, I did,” I say, giving in with a sigh. “It was hands down the best burger I’ve ever eaten. Are you happy now?”

“I am,” he says, then turns around and walks away.

“Hey, wait just one minute. I told you I liked it; now tell me, what was the secret ingredient?” I say, catching up to him. He stops mid stride, making me walk right into his back. He turns around and puts his meaty hook on my arm to steady me, bends slightly down and whispers in my ear.

“Blue cheese. I stuffed blue cheese in the center of the burger. It melts into the beef and adds amazing flavor.” His hand on my arm and his breath in my ear sends goosebumps down the back of my legs. I’ve never had goosebumps run down the back of my legs before. I want nothing more than to yell and scream at him. How dare he put gross, moldy cheese that’s blue in my burger without me knowing it? What if I were allergic to blue cheese?  What if I keeled over in my chair in the middle of his crowded restaurant? And why are my feet frozen where I stand? He lets go of my arm, gives me a sideways smile, then he winks at me.

He winked at me.

Of all the nerve, he seriously winked at me then just turns around to leave.

I suddenly come unglued from my frozen spot, and I don’t know why or how the thought even entered my mind, but I reach down and flip off one of my Gucci black patent leather open-toe pumps and hurl it at his back. It lands with a thud dead center, and then falls to the floor. Clearly, I didn’t think this thoroughly through. Shoes aren’t like cats. They don’t land on their feet or in their case on their soles. He stops, my heart stops, then he slowly turns around. He takes two giant steps back toward me and I take two steps back and plaster my back to the wall. He comes a hairsbreadth away from my cheek, then takes a deep inhale. My nipples instantly get hard and if he doesn’t touch me soon I may combust. He growls in my ear like the Neanderthal he is, and then walks away again.

What the fuck was that?

I walk back to the table and slide numbly in my seat, as the rest of the family devours what looks like red velvet cheesecake. That’s my favorite. I push mine away and sit there like I was just stunned with a ray gun.

“I have to go. I have to go back to the office. I have work to do. Thanks for dinner,” I say, and walk out of the restaurant. Outside, the typical Seattle sky opens up and pours on my head. I don’t have an umbrella with me, and seriously, I don’t even care. I need to cool down, like literally from what just happened in there. I think if Jax hadn’t have left when he did, I may have lost all control, and I may have dragged him back into the ladies room and locked the door.

Jax

When I saw Shay and Adrian come into the restaurant, it put a smile on my face. But when I saw the rest of the family coming in, too, I suddenly became a klutz in the kitchen. I dropped one completely dished plate and burned two steaks. Parker finally pushed me out of the way before I made an even bigger mess. Every thirty seconds I’d look out the swinging doors to see if Ava was here, too. There was one vacant seat at the table and I was hoping she’d be the one to fill it. I know when I left her office this morning she seemed like she was pretty mad at me, but she’d still meet her family here for dinner, right?

The next time I looked out the door the seat was occupied. I could see the all familiar brown hair hiding behind an open menu. I smiled to myself knowing that she was trying to hide from me. When Jenna came back and turned in their order, she told Parker that she had a special order for a picky eater. My ears perked up. When she said the guest wanted it cooked well-done, I had to know who had ordered it. Of course it was Ava. First Parker cringed, because everyone knows a good burger is cooked to medium-rare. Then when she described Ava, I was the one pushing Parker out of the way and I knew just what Ava was going to get. I live with one of the world’s pickiest eaters, and I know how to put things in the food that will make it taste better without them knowing it. When you stuff blue cheese in a burger, it melts into the meat and makes for one hell of a juicy delicious burger. I also cooked it just a tad over medium-rare. I perfectly timed it and took it off the grill so there was no pink showing, and not well-done like she ordered.

I told Jenna I wanted to come out to the table, and sure enough, not fifteen seconds later I saw Ava leave the table. I quickly made an appearance at the table and offered complimentary cheesecake, then parked myself outside the ladies room. I smile at myself for being so cocky.

She was less than pleased to see me, and even less pleased to know I put something in her burger that she didn’t know about. I saw her eyes roll in the back of her head when she took the first bite, so I knew she loved it. The banter between the two of us in the hallway had my dick in my pants straining for the first time in two years. When she threw her shoe at me, it was like the dam broke and I just needed to be close to her. In two strides I had her pinned to the wall, her sunshine scent infiltrated my nose and all I wanted to do was sink my tongue deep in her mouth. The hitch in her breath as I took in a deep breath of her, told me she wanted this just as much as I did. I heard the men’s room door open to my left. I caught a glimpse of Parker’s white chef coat before he exited the men’s restroom, and I growled in frustration. Before Parker could see what I was doing, I turned away from Ava and walked back toward the kitchen.

As soon as I walked in, I turned around and walked right back out. Looking out the front windows I see Ava standing on the sidewalk, face to the sky, while the rain drenches her. I see everyone at her table looking at the same thing I am. Several of them start to get up from their chairs, and I don’t even think. Before any of them can get completely up, I rush to the front desk, grab an umbrella and exit the restaurant. I open the umbrella and place it over both of our drenched heads.

“What are you doing? You’re completely soaked?” I ask, looking into her face.

She turns her head and looks into my eyes, they’re filled with lust and conflict, and I’m mesmerized by them. The umbrella falls to the street as Ava takes one step toward me, she grabs both sides of my face with her hands and pulls me to her lips. One of my hands grabs the side of her head and threads in her wet hair, as my other arm snakes around her back and I pull her against my body with a hard thud. The warm rain pelts my face as her soft lips caress mine. Cars on the street honk their horns as they speed by. She stands on her tip toes to get all she can take. I spread my stance to come down to her level as her tongue enters my mouth.

Her hands come down to my chest and she pushes me slightly away breaking our kiss. Her forehead comes to my lips, then she turns her head toward the restaurant and sees the entire Wellington family standing in the window staring at us with their mouths hanging open. She takes a step back then closes her eyes. Her hand comes to her lips and I immediately feel lost without them. Then it’s her turn to turn around and she walks away from me.