To Know You

Ten: Olive

Sitting across from my boss in a packed dining room surrounded by couples made the deep-rooted awkward feeling dig deeper. Only an hour ago he was dragging me out the boutique like a rag doll, and now, he sits across from me in this overly expensive Italian restaurant glancing upon the tall, red back menu with a stern expression. One he has carried all day long. His neatly trimmed chocolate brown hair was once neat but now is disheveled and tossed about on his head as if his hands could not contain themselves and just simply had to ruin it's perfect appearance. My hands in a way that I shouldn't feel, itched to reach out and gingerly stroke his week-old stubble. It was a darker shade of brown then his hair, perhaps a shade similar to mud? He was a tall man in my eyes, nearly six-three and when he stood, he always towered over me.

He's married...

The voice within me whispers into my ear reminding me of the super model he calls a wife. Cheyenna Zamuel is anything but ugly, the moment my eyes fall upon her portrait I knew her beauty shined bright like the stars and Seth stares at her as if the stars have fallen and she has taken their place.

He stares at me as if my worth was nothing more than the dirt beneath his feet.

It was almost an insult for the other women to compare her to me for there was not an ounce of me that could be compared to Cheyenna for she was simply just perfect. Perhaps my eyes are tainted with reality for I do not know why everyone seems to think me and Cheyenna are the same woman. When I first saw her portrait, my breath was taken from my lungs for she was the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on. Then when I discovered that she was Seth's high school sweetheart it was like meeting the main characters in some teenager's romance book.

"I know the Chef, so anything on the menu is good." His gravelly voice grumbles out as his eyes barely even flicker over my form. His enchanting dark grey eyes stare down at his wedding band with hidden emotions. The menu now laid on the table in front of him.

His eyes reminded me of a midnight moon in which wolves howl to...

"What would you recommend Mr. Zamuel?" We may have spent the whole day together, but it didn't erase the fact that the only relationship we can have or will ever have is boss and chef. I kept my tongue held tightly in a chokehold for I feared to say the wrong thing, truth be told I need this job more than Seth needs a chef. If I fail to keep this job, then I won't be able to stay in Houston. Without money a person is like a shark without fins, it won't survive. I would be forced to leave Houston and possibly even Texas for I can't return to Dallas because of Jasper.

That's the problem with falling in love with snakes, they get you addicted to their venom and freeing yourself from their tight grasp nearly kills you...

"Seth."

My eyes flicker up to his and upon finding his full stormy glaze upon my body I felt like a mouse being stalked by the great eagle of the sky. I resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably in my chair, but I remind myself this is not the first time I have ate dinner with a very successful man.

"What?" Deep down I knew what he was saying but my mind demanded conformation and won't settle for anything less.

Sighing, he repeats himself perhaps thinking I am no smarter than a box of rocks. "Call me Seth, Olive." He grumbles out my name as if he is testing it upon his tongue and memorizing the sound of his lips uttering it.

A part of me wants to call him by his name for maybe then he will treat me with kindness and not with the harshness of a Minnesota winter. However, the moment I fled from Jasper I made a promise to myself that I would never fall for another guy in a fancy suit and tongue so charming it could tame a snake.