“So, what is the queen of the night doing up at this hour?” Jessica slid over a cutlery set wrapped in a napkin along with her cocoa.
Natalya glanced sideways at Cal, but didn’t have a good answer. Her design team in Portland started their day at nine only under duress. They had enough East Coast clients where it was already noon, that they had to. But she still preferred working at night and often did—they all did.
Six a.m. was an hour always safely buried somewhere deep in her REM state. Add in the blast of thick, lukewarm coffee at the B&B and her system didn’t know whether to panic or shut down, leaving her jittery and off balance.
And then there was Cal. Pouring on enough maple syrup to drown his pancakes rather than flavor them. If she ate even a bite of that, her system would go
