Caroselli's Baby Chase

But that was where the attraction ended.

“Looks like she wants to share her table,” Nick said.

“I’d rather wait for a table,” Rob told him. She had ruined enough of his day.

“Stop being a baby and go,” Tony said, giving him a shove from behind. “You’re going to have to get used to being around her.”

But not outside of a work scenario, Rob thought, grumbling to himself all the way to her booth. And while he could have turned and walked out, he refused to show defeat, to let her win. To drive him from a restaurant he’d eaten in weekly for the past ten years.

She smiled up at them as they approached. “Hello, gentlemen. I saw you walk up and thought rather than wait, you might like to share. I stood in line about twenty minutes myself.”

“We’d love to join you,” Nick said, flashing her his “Charming Nick” smile. He and Tony slid into the empty side of the booth, leaving Rob no choice but to slide in beside Carrie, which earned each of them a malevolent look.

The booths weren’t exactly spacious, and with her briefcase on the seat next to the window, there was no hope of putting any real space between them. She was so close he could feel her body heat, and every time either of them moved, their shoulders or arms bumped.

This day was going from bad to worse.

He refused to acknowledge the scent of her perfume, or shampoo, or whatever it was that had driven him mad the other night, or the lusty urges he was feeling as her leg brushed against his. The desire to run his hand up the inside of her thigh again, until he reached the garter holding up her stockings, had him shifting restlessly in his seat.

“Are we a little antsy?” Carrie asked him, but thankfully, before he had to come up with a viable excuse, the waitress appeared.

“Hey, boys,” she said, stopping at the table with a pot of coffee and four beat-up plastic cups of iced water. What the place lacked in class, it made up for in good food and quality service. “What can I getcha?”

Without even looking at the menu, they all ordered their usual breakfast, and after reviewing the menu, Carrie ordered the special, which was a lot of food for a woman her size.

“I take it you gentlemen come here often,” Carrie said, reaching across the table for a coffee creamer, her shoulder bumping against Rob’s.

“Best greasy spoon in the greater Chicago area,” Tony said. “How did you stumble across it?”

“On my way out I asked Dennis where I could get a decent breakfast.” She added a packet of artificial sweetener to her cup. “He told me to come here.”

If Dennis wasn’t such an exemplary employee, Rob might have considered that grounds for termination.

“So what do you think of Chicago?” Nick asked her.

“It’s very cold. And windy.”

“They call it the Windy City for a reason,” Tony said.

“I’ll bet you can’t wait to get back to the West Coast,” Rob said, and she shot him a sideways glance, as if to say, Don’t you wish.

“I think I’ll like it here,” she said. “Though probably more when it warms up a little.”

“Do you know where you’ll be staying?” Nick asked.

“Not yet. I’m hoping to find a rental. I don’t suppose you know a good local agent?”

“My brother-in-law David is in real estate law,” Tony said, pulling out his phone. “He could probably give you the name of someone reliable.”

He found the number in his address book, and she entered it into her phone.

“I miss the days when we used to write things on paper,” Nick said.

“Have you got a piece of paper?” Rob asked, and grinning, Nick held up his napkin. “Pen?”

Nick felt his pockets, then frowned and said, “I used to carry one all the time.”

“I would be lost without my phone,” Carrie said. “My whole life is in this thing. Of course I keep it all backed up on my laptop, which I also could not live without.”

“So what kind of place are you looking for?” Nick asked.

“A two-bedroom apartment or condo, preferably furnished, in a building with a fitness room and a pool, or close to a pool. I like to swim every morning.”

“I think I may know just the place,” Nick said. “My wife, Terri, has a condo that she’s been thinking of putting on the market, but it would probably mean taking a loss. She had entertained the idea of renting it out, but she’s heard so many horror stories about bad tenants that she’s been hesitant. It has pretty much everything you would need, and there’s a fitness center with a pool a couple of blocks away. And it’s not too far from work.”

It also wasn’t too far from Rob’s loft, which didn’t exactly thrill him.

“It sounds perfect,” Carrie said. “I can pay her the full three months up front.”

“I’ll talk to her today and give you a call.”

“Sounds great,” she said, exchanging numbers with him, which irritated Rob even more. It was bad enough that she would be around for three months. Did she have to pretend to be so nice to everyone? Which she was clearly only doing to make Rob look like the bad guy.

“So, on the rare occasions that I might have a free day,” Carrie said, “what attractions would you gentlemen recommend? There are so many things to do in the city, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

His cousins tossed around suggestions like the planetarium and the aquarium and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

“How about you?” she asked Rob. “What would you suggest?”

“The Museum of Science and Industry.”

“Really,” she said, looking thoughtful. “For some reason I imagined your preferring someplace a little less…academic. Like a sports museum.”

“And you assumed that because, why? You know me so well?”

She looked amused, as if this was some big joke to her.

The waitress dropped their food off at the table and when Rob looked at Carrie’s plate, he could feel his arteries tighten. The special consisted of three eggs, four sausage links, hash browns, white toast and a stack of pancakes six inches high. A heart attack on a plate, his fitness instructor would call it. Which was why Rob had ordered his usual egg white vegetarian omelet, lean ham, tomato slices and dry whole wheat toast, of which he would allow himself half a slice. Unlike some people at the table, his goal was to live past his fortieth birthday.

“Do the three of you live in the city?” she asked them, and when her leg bumped his, he wrote it off as accidental, until he felt the brush of one shoeless foot slide against his ankle.

Was she coming onto him?

He shot her a sideways glance, but she was looking at Nick, chewing and nodding thoughtfully as she listened to him describe where each of them lived in relation to Caroselli Chocolate.

Okay, maybe it had been an accident. But what about the way she just happened to get syrup on her fingers, and instead of wiping them with a napkin, sucked it slowly from each digit, one at a time. Which of course reminded him of her sucking on something else.