Page 2 of Reckless Bratva Daddy

"That puts it too close to the fire exit."

"Then move the fire marshal's opinion of your table," he said, "and not the table."

I laughed, sharp and surprised, the kind of laugh that startles even the person doing it. "You can't just override the fire marshal."

"You'd be amazed what people overlook for the right price."

"That's either the most helpful thing anyone's said to me all week, or deeply illegal, and I genuinely cannot tell which."

"Both," he said. "Frequently."

"Do you always negotiate furniture placement like it's a hostage situation?"

"Only the pieces that deserve it."

"This table's done nothing to you."

"Yet," he said, and picked it up anyway, setting it exactly where I had wanted it in the first place.

I gave him a look meant to be stern and knew it landed closer to delighted. He did not rush to fill silence the way I did, constantly, out of some deep need to keep the air moving so panic could not settle into it. He simply stood there, patient, watching me work out the geometry of a problem that had nothing to do with him at all.

"You're very calm for someone taking orders from a stranger with a clipboard," I said, mostly to fill the quiet, because apparently even his silence made me nervous in a way I had not figured out yet.

"I've taken worse than paperwork."

"High bar or low bar?"

"Depends on the day."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he agreed. "It isn't."

Something in the way he said it, flat and amused at once, made me want to keep pulling on that thread, but the next round table needed moving and the clock above the door reminded me that AV was now officially forty minutes late, which meant I had exactly zero time left to be curious about a man whose name I still did not know.

"Round tables, loading dock, you know the drill by now," I said, tapping the clipboard he was still holding. "I'll start on linens. If anyone from AV finally shows up, tell them I want the risers up before I lose the will to live."

"I'll relay the message."

"With those exact words, ideally."

"Word for word," he said, and something in his tone made it land like a promise instead of a joke.

For the next ten minutes we worked in a rhythm better than any setup morning I could remember. He handled the tables as if they weighed nothing at all. He answered every clipped instruction with either compliance or a one-line rebuttal that somehow turned out to be right. When I told him the round tables needed six inches more clearance from the wall so servers could pass through, he measured it with his own stride instead of arguing, and landed it exactly right on the first try.

"You've done this before," I said, half question, half accusation.

"I've moved a table or two."

"Nobody moves furniture like that without practice. What'd you do before this? Events circuit? Catering?"

He considered the question longer than it deserved. "Something like that."

"Very mysterious. I respect it."

"I contain multitudes," he said, and the dryness of it startled another laugh straight out of me.

Our hands brushed once, passing the clipboard back and forth over a folding chair. I felt it more than I wanted to admit, a small electric jolt that had no business showing up on an ordinary work morning surrounded by dust sheets and scaffolding. I covered it by talking faster. That was my answer to most things.