She looks me up and down, from my shiny silver boots sticking out under my wool overcoat to my sequined cat ears. “Again? Seriously?”
I put on a Cheshire cat smile, and do a little shimmy-dance right up to her, in time with music blaring out of somebody’s car.
She sits up. “Seriously? How much did it raise your tips?”
“Does it matter?” I tease. “Sienna, only one cat can be alpha queen.”
“Cats don’t have alphas,” she says. “They’re not pack animals.”
I hold up four fingers.
“Four percent better?” she asks.
I smile even more widely, shaking my head.
“Forty?!?”
“Forty.” And that’s not counting Max’s great tip. Far more than the cost of his meal.
“Are you messing with me?”
I shake my head. “Not messing with you.”
She narrows her eyes. “It could’ve been the shock of the new outfit.”
“Possibly.”
She studies my getup. “Lemme know if the tips stay good. If this thing holds, I’m doing alpha-queen cat, too.”
“I’ll let you know,” I say.
And I will. Sienna’s not the nicest, but we all deserve more money.
I do my route, taking my pair of financial industries buildings first, because those guys are all at work at five in the morning, so lunch for them is around ten. I head to the next building, a mammoth office complex. I check my tips between buildings, and they are definitely staying high. In fact, the more expressively I do my meow, the higher they go. I’ll definitely let Sienna in on that.
It’s half past twelve by the time I hit Maximillion Plaza. I deliver up, and before I know it, I’m on the twenty-fifth floor. I walk down past the glorious receptionists and continue on down the glorious hall and knock. “Meow Squad,” I say.
“Come.” Because he can’t be bothered to say come in.
I push in with my cart.
My belly turns upside down like it always does when I get into the presence of Max. His beauty crackles through the air like an electric charge. It gets inside you and melts your will to hate him.
He sets down his phone and leans back in his chair, stretching his arms slowly upward, then places them behind his head as a lazy smile overtakes his face. It’s as if every fiber of his being is saying, Ah! A big, delicious dish of humiliation. Can’t wait to dig in!
I grab his bag of cheese puffs from the cart and head toward his desk—that’s a Meow Squad thing; you’re not supposed to pull the cart right up to people’s desks. It gives more of the illusion of table service, I suppose. In an office with as much square footage as Max’s, I have to cross several feet of tundra.
He nods at a space that’s been cleared in front of him. “Lay it out here.”
I put down the bag that contains his roast beef croissant sandwich, and set the cheese puffs next to it. Now’s my chance to reverse-chase him. I have a few ideas.
“Mia,” he says. “Did I not say to lay it out?”
“What?”
“Lay. It. Out.” He waits, all sparkling arrogance with a streak of smug pleasure.
I suck in a small breath and hold it. Like maybe if I don’t breathe, somehow this won’t be happening.
Lay it out.
Lunch layout is definitely something he has a right to request, but it’s designed for conference scenarios, in order to minimize distractions during meetings. So that people can keep their attention on the project instead of on crinkling bags and switched orders and extra napkins.
What is it not designed for? A jerky billionaire in an office ordering you around.
Now I have to set his place for him like a servant? But of course, it’s what he wants.
I give him a cool stare. “You’re asking me to lay it out?”
“Yes,” he says.
I regard him with amused consternation, like it’s such a ridiculous request I can barely process it. Acting skillz!
“Is there a problem?”
I give him my trademark cool smile. “If that’s what you need,” I bite out. As in, If that’s what you need to feel good, jackalope.
His eyes glitter. “It is what I need, Mia. Thank you.”
It is what I need, Mia. Thank you.
Millennial Dean Martin, thinking he’s ending our rivalry once and for all in a blaze of glory that leaves me eating his dust.
Eating the dust of his dust. Uh!!
With perfectly steady hands, I take the sandwich from the bag and set it aside. I form the bag into a placemat in front of him. Meow Squad is an eco-friendly place where we repurpose the packaging when possible—there’s a whole training video on it, but I’m taking it further. I’m smoothing it down with an extra fussy flourish, like he’s such a ridiculous person to have requested a layout. I’m also taking an obnoxiously long time.
I set his roast beef and swiss croissant sandwich upon the bag and pull up the four corners of the wax paper by the edges. The video doesn’t have you unwrap the sandwich, but how can I resist? I happen to know that Max is the kind of guy who gets annoyed by fussy inefficiency.
I get each of the wax paper corners to curl slightly outward, as if to say, look at how fussy your demands are.
“This is how you lay it out?”
“Shh.” I take the three mustard packets from the bag and arrange them to splay out from the upper left, like a small hat—a fascinator, if you will—for the sandwich.
Sir Ian McKellen himself couldn’t squeeze more mockery out of a performance if his life depended on it.
Max, of course, shows me nothing, unless you count the slight enlargement of one of his neck muscles, which I definitely do.
I set the chips down, pull my hands away and make a square with my thumbs and pointer fingers, as if to examine the presentation.
“Are you quite done?”
“No.” I reach back down and set the chips at a jaunty diagonal. “There we go.”
I look up and find him watching me sternly.
His pillowy lips twist.
My heart does a lightning-bolt zig zag.
“Or perhaps you’d prefer something more symmetrical,” I find myself saying. I line the mustards up, three soldiers in a row. It’s hilarious, what with his gaze so stern.
His expression is unreadable.