Michelle Celmer - Caroselli's Baby Chase

“Who are you betting on in the playoffs?” Nick asked him, walking backward to the door.

“Steelers-Lions,” Dennis said. “And the Lions will take it.”

“No way! The Lions haven’t won a championship since what, the fifties?”

“Fifty-seven,” Dennis said. “But this is the year.”

Nick laughed. “Dream on. I say Steelers-Chargers, and the Steelers will take the championship.”

Dennis grinned and shook his head. “Keep dreaming, boss.”

Nick laughed as they walked out the door into the bitter wind. Parking was a bitch downtown, so they pulled up their collars and walked the three blocks to the restaurant. The pavement was slick, so it was slow-going, and by the time they got to the diner it was already filling up with the lunch crowd. Every seat was taken and there was a line of people ahead of them.

“Feel like waiting?” Tony asked.

Rob shrugged. “Could be a while.”

“I say we wait,” Nick said. “It’s too damn cold to go back out there.”

“Hey, Caroselli!” someone called. Rob followed the voice, cursing under his breath when he realized whom it belonged to.

“Is that Carrie?” Nick asked.

“That’s her,” Rob said. She sat alone in a booth near the back, and she was waving them over. She was still wearing the ugly suit, but she’d lost the shapeless jacket. She’d let her hair down so it fell in soft waves over the shoulder of a rose-colored shirt made of some sort of stretchy nylon that clung to her curves.

Tony’s mouth dropped open. “Holy hell. No wonder you picked her up. Look at her.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “Her body is…wow.”

Yes, it was, and as much as he didn’t want to, Rob couldn’t help but look. Just as he couldn’t help it the other night either. In her clothes she was smokin’ hot, but out of them she was a goddess. A work of art.

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.