Free Going Down: The Elevator Series by Katherine Stevens Page B

starting a fire. “I’m starving.”
    Perhaps the look is not as universal as I thought.
    “Great!” Maggie clapped her hands together. “Let me go grab my purse, and I’ll meet you both downstairs. I’m so glad they got that elevator working again. Do you know I had to walk down eight flights of stairs last night?”
    I barked out a nervous laugh. “That’s crazy, huh? Isn’t that crazy? I should go grab my wallet, too.”
    Way to play it cool, Cici.
    “Roger that, good buddy. Let’s roll,” Maggie replied in her deeper than normal trucker voice.
    “10-4. I’ll meet you ladies downstairs,” Cole quipped.
    Et tu, Bruté? The last thing Maggie needed was encouragement for her big rig fetish.
    Maggie laughed so loud it hurt my ears. “I had a feeling about you, Cole. You’re going to fit right in.”
    ***
    I grabbed my wallet from my purse and started downstairs. I’d never been one who was good at keeping secrets. I could keep other people’s secrets all day long, but when it came to concealing my own from the people I loved, I was rather awful. I tended to blurt things out at the worst possible moment just to alleviate the guilt. Like the time in high school when I confessed at Thanksgiving dinner that I’d let the neighbor boy show me his you-know-what and the aforementioned boy’s entire family was eating with us. My mother packed up a lot of to-go plates that year. To this day, Zach still asked me if I’d “seen anyone’s pee-pee” every turkey day. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep this from Maggie.
    Cole and Maggie were in the lobby when I arrived. Thankfully the walk to Bella Notte would only take a few minutes. I didn’t trust myself around my best friend right now. My verbal filter wasn’t in exceptional condition, and I preferred not to let her know I molested my first assistant within hours of his hiring. She’d probably have to fill out some paperwork on that. The idea of sitting at a table making small talk with my human resources director and the man whose serpent had recently entered my Garden of Eden was not my idea of a relaxing afternoon. I might as well have been walking to the gallows as we entered the small Italian restaurant.
    We were promptly seated by the hostess—an uncommon occurrence in this part of the country. Our waitress was at our table with menus and water glasses before my backside was even in the chair. She was cute and perky and attentive. Very attentive. Cole must have looked like a simpleton to her because she tried twice to help him place his napkin in his lap. When listing off the specials, she made certain to mention that her ex-boyfriend , whom she’s no longer dating, was a fan of the salmon. I cut in to draw her attention to the fact that my place setting was missing silverware, to which she curtly told me to wait my turn. Rounding out her unbridled thoroughness toward Cole, she handed him her mobile number in case he needed anything before she brought out the bread course.
    I’d never seen the likes of this. Maggie had lent me enough of her romance novels to have seen the cliché before. Hunky guy plus big-boobed waitress equals a torrid romp in the bathroom. I didn’t think this extreme behavior existed in the wild. I had experienced waitresses getting a little flirtatious with my boyfriends for a better tip in the past, but Cole wasn’t my boyfriend. Frustratingly, I couldn’t make any claim to him in front of Maggie. All I could really do was fantasize about pelting our server in the back of her curly head with the saltshaker. I should’ve known Maggie wouldn’t brook this nonsense.
    “Listen here”—she craned her head to read the girl’s name tag—“Brittney, is it? I would be much obliged if you would put a leash on your coochie cat and bring some bread for my husband and sister wife. We’re all starving and we don’t have any more room in the harem, if you catch my drift.”
    Brittney stood wide-eyed for a moment and then turned