Francis glanced over at Ivy as she spoke fluent Spanish with a couple visiting form Barcelona. He mentally slapped himself in the face as he remembered how her face crumpled at his comment that morning. He didn't mean it the way it came out, honestly. It's just that he gets so tongue tied around her.
The sundress she was wearing fit her curves perfectly, hugging them in all the right places. Ivy wasn't stick straight, and that was what Francis loved about her. Along with her long curly black hair, and her dark mocha chocolate eyes, her enticing Spanish curves were just begging for him to reach out and grab.
Francis has seen the way men look at her as she bends over to get a pastry from a low shelf or how often they flirt with her as she asks for their order.
"Excuse me?" asked the girl in front of him, annoyed that his attention wasn't on her. "I asked for two chocolate crepes" she said flirtatiously batting her blue eyes.
"Of course cher" Francis replied with a suave smile, "Just tell me which two you want."
Ivy saw the long line of girls freshening up their makeup and hiking up their shirts in front of Francis's station. She rolled her eyes as the girl he was working with "accidentally" dropped chocolate in between her cleavage. Ivy watched as the girl sensually scooped up the chocolate and popped into her mouth with an exaggerated moan.
"Delicious" she heard her say as Francis looked at the girl hungrily.
A pang of sadness washed over Ivy as she saw the look in Francis's eyes, the very one he had every day when he took a girl home.
"Senora?" A voice snapped Ivy out of her thoughts.
"What? Oh, yes, that will be $16.75" Ivy responded to the young couple warmly.
She finished up the order and glanced at the clock, it was 1:50 ten minutes to the siesta. Ivy happily got on the ordering microphone and announced:
"Attention, it is almost 2:00 which means the siesta. Something Sweet will be closing for one hour and will reopen with fresh goods until 8:00. So please, finish your selections and thank you for shopping here today."
As Ivy repeated this in several languages, she heard a loud groan from Francis's line.
"That's not fair!" one girl whined.
"I didn't even get to talk to him!" said another.
Ivy rolled her eyes at the whimpering girls and rubbed at her aching temples. She needed this one hour and she couldn't waste it shooing all of Francis's needy customers away. Before she could gather her courage and storm to his line to take control she heard the door jingle.
"Welcome to Something Sweet, how may I-"
"AHHH a ghost! There's no one at the door!" screamed a customer.
Ivy once again rolled her eyes, "Hello Mattie, I'm just finishing up, come around the counter."
"Thanks Ivy," Matthew mumbled as he walked towards her. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Can you finish ringing this up for me? I just need to grab my purse and we're off for lunch" she smiled kindly at him.
Francis couldn't peel his eyes away from the sight. Since when was Ivy so nice? Since when did Ivy kiss anyone on the cheek? Did that mean that the so called Mattie was her boyfriend? Impossible, she would have, no should have, said something!
His line of girls cleared out with the final customer and he saw as Ivy linked arms with Mattie and waltzed out her Café to only who knows where.
Ivy was his woman
Hell no.
