Serving HIM Box Set
All series and box sets from M. S. Parker
Serving HIM Box Set
By Cassie Wild and M.S. Parker
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Belmonte Publishing LLC
Published by Belmonte Publishing LLC.
Serving HIM
Vol. 1
Chapter 1
Aleena
I’d be willing to bet if you asked a number of people my age what they planned to do on their twenty-first birthday, it would involve something along the lines of copious amounts of alcohol, and maybe a strip club. I know that was pretty close to what I’d had in mind.
I certainly hadn’t counted on waiting tables during the lunchtime rush at one of New York’s priciest restaurants. And yet, that’s what I was doing.
Biting back a sigh, I shifted my weight as I wove through the sea of tables and flesh, carrying my burden of overpriced, oversized lunch entrees.
I’d come to New York City six months ago. Like so many others, I’d left my small-town life –Iowa for me– and come to the big city, but so far, nothing was turning out the way I’d hoped. Granted, it might have helped if I’d actually had some sort of plan in mind. Something other than
I’m tired of not fitting in, I’m tired of not belonging
.
Now, instead of not fitting in anywhere in small-town Iowa, I got to not fit in here in New York, one of the biggest cities in the world.
I’d hoped coming here would help me figure out who I was, what I wanted to do with my life. Since then, I’d figured out exactly one thing—I was a half-decent server. Nothing earth shattering. Nothing that steered me in a new direction.
I did learn one thing about myself—I preferred the city. I did miss my dad, even though I talked to him once a week. I sometimes felt guilty that I never got homesick, but there was little to miss about my old life. My mom had died when I was eight and my grandmother a few years ago. Now, other than my dad, there was nobody else left I really cared about.
“Here you go!” I smiled at the group of people gathered at table 216 and passed out the plates. Not a single one of them looked up, or spoke.
One of these days, I might get used to people totally ignoring me. Back home, people said
thank you
when you gave them something or at least offered a smile of appreciation.
Here? People acted like
they
did you a
favor
by
letting
you serve them.
That’s just one of the differences between the Midwest and the East Coast. Just one.
As they dug into their meals, I gathered up empties and stacked them on my tray. I was checking out the tables when I heard my name.
“Aleena!”
One of the other servers nudged me and I looked up to see my best friend, Molly, give me a quick wave from back near the kitchen. I grinned at her and gave a head bob in return, the best I could do with both of my hands full.
Molly Walters was three years older than me. With bright red hair, freckles and a wide, open smile, she’d been asked more than once if she was still in high school. The fact that she was tiny, the very definition of petite, didn’t help any. She’d been working here for two years and had been the one to show me the ropes when I’d gotten hired. She wasn’t just the closest person to me in the city. She was the closest friend I had, period.
She glanced around and then pointed at something she held.
I widened my eyes at the cupcake she held in one hand.
It was gone in the next instant, but I’d gotten a good look. It was one of those little ones with icing piled up so high on the top that it was almost bigger than the cake itself. Best of all, there was a candle right in the middle.
A blast of pleasure swam through me, almost obliterating this shit ass of a day. My feet were
killing
me. I’d been working for well over five hours and I didn’t foresee a break in my near future. I wasn’t even going to think about the three separate patrons who’d decided it was perfectly acceptable to cuss me out.
Oh, yeah. My asshole of a manager had ‘accidentally’ touched my ass twice this morning.
He’d asked me out my first day on the job. He’d been subtle about it and had seemed congenial when I told him no, but I could see the displeasure in his eyes.
Ever since, he’d gone out of his way to make my life pure hell here.
Molly kept saying I should file a lawsuit against him, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.
He glared at me?
He glared at everybody.
He scowled a lot?
He wore a permanent scowl.
Every time he’d
accidentally
gotten too close, I could think of a dozen times when I’d legitimately accidentally bumped into somebody too. Accidents did sometimes happen.
Reporting him would cost me my job. People can talk all they want about
affirmative action
and
equal opportunity,
but if you were broke and barely scraping it by from day to day, sometimes, you were just…stuck. You had to have money to live, right?
Molly worked here with me—she’d helped me get the job. Any day with her made the day better. Thoughts of her and my birthday cupcake danced in my mind as I turned.
An older woman, walking with her friend, gesticulating wildly. “Can’t you see how things are just going
south
in this country?” the woman demanded of her friend. As she spoke, she flung out an arm, catching me right in the face.
Pain flooded through me, a starburst from my cheekbone. I stumbled and the pain teleported to my ankle. I had a split second to register that my cheek hurt more than my ankle, but it didn’t matter—I was going down. I was going to hit the floor and dishes were going to fly—
Then hands caught me and I stumbled into a hard body. The scent of a spicy cologne flooded my head.
Both appreciation and apprehension twined through me—appreciation for the as-yet-unseen male, and apprehension for the plates I couldn’t hope to keep balanced.
“I got you,” he said.
Yeah…you do,
I thought, dazed.
For the briefest of moments, I thought he’d even catch the plates. They teetered on the brink before they crashed to the floor.
Silence descended. The odd kind that always follows such a spectacle spread throughout the restaurant. For that brief moment, I was able to just stand there. A body of solid, hard muscle held me steady. Through the thin back of my cotton dress-shirt, I felt the rise and fall of his chest. Carefully, I eased away and turned, lifting my head to gaze into a pair of the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen.
My heart gave a hard thump.
Oh…wow.
He was almost too pretty. That hard jaw saved him from it, though it was close. His mouth curled as our eyes met and hot, sweet heat spread through me. He smiled and my heart fluttered just the slightest. There were disarming grooves that framed his mouth. A few years ago, they had probably been an amazing set of dimples and now, they made for a smile that probably threw women, young and old, off-guard.
“Hello.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Chatter resumed, people no longer interested.
Dishes had been broken, but nobody was hurt or angry—life will go on, right?
Or…maybe not.
A split second later, I heard the
clop-clop-clop
of thick-soled shoes. Dread twisted in me and I looked up in time to see a short, stocky man striding toward me.
My boss.
The scowling ass-grabber.
Gary was in his mid-thirties, but dressed and acted ten years older. His hair was already thinning, but instead of accepting his losses and cutting it short, he left it long and combed it back, slicking it with some sort of hair grease that smelled like coconuts.
He often reminded me of a rodent—his complexion ruddy even on the best of days. Today wasn’t the best of days. He was red, so red it would have worried me if I hadn’t seen my fate dancing before me.
Some of the people close to us cast curious glances our ways. Nervous, I smoothed down my skirt. I
hated
being the center of attention.
As he drew nearer, I couldn’t decide if I’d rather have him do this here or back in his office. I never liked being alone with Gary, but I thought it might be worth it just so I didn’t have all these people staring at me, including the extremely hot man standing so close I could still smell his cologne or whatever it was he was wearing.
“Come with me.” Gary grabbed me, his fat fingers digging into the flesh of my upper arm.
Shame made my skin grow hot and I focused on the floor as we passed by the patrons. I could hear his murmured apologies.
“I’m so sorry. Please excuse this inconvenience…”
This wasn’t going to end well.
The moment the door shut behind us, I twisted free.
“What the hell were you doing? Don’t you know how to carry plates?”
I guess there wasn’t a point in telling him that somebody had hit me. My cheek still stung from the blow. Swallowing, I just stared at him.
“You made a fucking mess out there!” He stabbed a finger toward the door. “What sort of incompetent idiot
are
you?”
I could ask you the same thing
, I thought mutinously. My dad ran the best restaurant back in our hometown and one thing he’d drilled into my head—
you treat your staff the way you’d want to be treated. You treat them with respect and they’ll respect you
.
But Gary didn’t want my respect.
He wanted in my pants.
So I just stared at him. It only made him angrier.
He opened his mouth. Dread curdled in my gut.
Aw, no
.
I needed this job.
“I don’t even know why I let Molly talk me into hiring you.”
You hired me because you wanted to get into my pants
. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying it. Erring on the side of diplomacy, I said, “I’m really sorry, Gary. It won’t happen again.”
“I know it won’t.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
No, no, no
…
Just then, the door opened and the hot guy who’d caught me walked in as if he owned the place.
“Gary, right?” He flashed a charming smile.
Gary gaped at him for a split second and then shook himself, attempting to regain his composure. “Sir, you can’t be in here.”
“I just wanted to help straighten things out.” He glanced at me and then nodded at Gary. “You see, Gary, what happened out there wasn’t her fault.”
I wasn’t sure who was more surprised, Gary or me.
“It was mine.”
He took a step forward and I suddenly realized how big he was. In the rush of the moment earlier, I’d missed it, but he was almost a foot taller than me—and so damn sexy. He wore a suit that fit him so well, I didn’t doubt it had been specially made for him.