Read Online Luck on the Line by Zoraida Cordova - Free Book Online

that I want to trace the lines of his muscles under the seam. I bet he’s the type that wakes up with a morning workout, and then eats like a pig because the world is unfair and boys get the fast metabolisms. “I’m not a bad guy.”
    “I didn’t say you were,” I shrug. “But that’s exactly what a bad guy would say. No one looks at themselves and thinks, ‘I’m a douchebag,’ but sometimes it just happens.”
    “You think I’m a douchebag?” He presses his hand to his chest defensively. “You stole my coffee!”
    “That wasn’t a coffee.” I drink my wine. “It was a twelve year old girl’s dessert.”
    His beautiful green eyes widen. I wonder when the last time a girl put him in his place. As much as I’d like to turn his biceps into my dessert, I can’t back down in whatever this thing is. “Has anyone ever told you you’re not a people person?”
    I hide my face in my mug. “Every manager that’s ever fired me.”
    He drinks a little more, this time smacking his lips the way I would when eating sour candy. “Then why do it? Why work in this business? Stella spent the car ride and the party telling me all about you.”
    My insides warm and it has nothing to do with the delicious fuzziness of the wine. “Wonderful things, I’m sure.”
    He goes to the sink and washes the stickiness of the wine off his skin. He has the walk of someone who holds their secrets close to their heart, someone who’s used to watching his back. Also, the kind of walk of someone who does squats. Often.
    I bite my lip hard to pull myself together. Get a grip, Lucky.
    When he comes back, he pulls his barstool closer to me. “She said that you started out in culinary school and then you quit. You went to Simmons College for journalism and then you quit.”
    “Can you stop saying ‘quit’?”
    “That’s what you did.”
    “I didn’t quit , I changed my mind and then left to find something I was more interested in.”
    He purses his lips but decides it’s better not to counter me. Good boy . “After Boston it was some university in Miami, but then you—changed your mind. Then Montana—who even goes there that isn’t a bear trapper or searching for gold?”
    I nearly choke on my wine. “You do realize the gold rush is over, right?”
    James takes the bottle and refills our mugs. “Then after Montana it was New York.”
    “Go Yankees,” I say smugly.
    He makes a gesture with his hands, like he wants to choke the air. “You know, you have to stop saying that. Sports aren’t a joke in this town.”
    For the first time in a few days, I laugh. Really, truly, can’t-help-myself laugh.
    James shakes his head. So this is what he’s like when no one is around. He says, “And now you’re here. Why are you here?”
    And without hesitating I say, “Family stuff. Not the restaurant. I didn’t even know about The Star until I got here. It’s not like she ever answers her phone when I call. We’ve had an understanding since I left the nest—I have to be with her this time of year no matter what I’ve got going on.”
    I let that settle like the dregs of our wine. But I don’t want to talk about me. I don’t want to talk about my father’s death, or that it’s been ten years and somehow it feels like yesterday, even though there’s not a single trace of him in my mother’s perfectly see-through life.
    “Now that you know so much about me, ” I say, “let’s do you.”
    “Jeez, at least let me buy you dinner first,” he says coolly.
    I slug him in the chest, though it hurts me more than him. “You know exactly what I mean. Where have you been, Chef James Hughes?”
    James smacks his lips and laughs and shrugs. “Around.”
    “I’m not talking about beds,” I say, smiling. “I’m talking about states and countries. Don’t chefs go a little bit of everywhere to learn all the cuisine and all that crap?”
    He moves the barstool closer. His face has a red flush of drunkenness. When he smiles, a