by Cassia Leo
Ethan’s smile disappears. “You came in here looking for a job after being out of work for, what, six months. After what you did to my brother—”
“What I did?”
“What you did to my brother—”
Letting out a loud huff, I spin around and make for the door. “I won’t stand here and listen to you gaslighting me. I got enough of that from your brother!”
I shove the swinging doors open. The two people working in the pastry kitchen are now staring at me. Rushing past them, I glance over my shoulder at the sound of the kitchen doors whooshing open behind me.
He’s following me.
“Are you seriously walking out of an interview after six months of unemployment?” he shouts as I push my way through another set of doors into the dining area.
“You’re very observant!” I shout back.
He jogs and quickly catches up to me. “Okay, okay. I reckon we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. Can we please discuss this calmly?”
I stop in the middle of the dining room, steps away from the enormous ladder I saw earlier. “Calmly? You insult me in front of thirty strangers and you want me to be calm?”
He looks as if he’s going to explode in expletives, but he somehow gets a grip on himself and releases an exasperated sigh. “I’m sorry. I really think most of this is just a huge misunderstanding. But—” He shoots me a look to stop me from interrupting him. “Look, I obviously know who you are.”
“I wish I could say the same about you,” I reply snarkily, trying not to think about how I know Edward’s body so well, and how this technically means I’ve already seen this complete stranger naked.
Don’t think of his penis!
His smile returns. “You’re right. Let’s start over,” he says, extending his hand again. “Ethan Thorne. Pleased to meet you.”
I shake my head. “No.”
He tilts his head disapprovingly at my defiance.
I glare at him for a moment before I finally reach forward and take his hand in mine.
His handshake is firm but not crushing. The heat of his skin sends a soft chill coursing through me. It’s been more than three months since I’ve been touched by a man—since my best friend Minka’s housewarming party.
That night ended with me going home with the guy who had the hottest moves on the tiny living room dance floor. He turned out to be a complete flop in the sack. Guess that proves the old adage wrong. Good dancer does not always equal good in bed.
I wonder if Ethan is good in bed.
Stop! I scream at myself in my head.
At least, I thought it was in my head.
“Stop what?” Ethan replies, barely stifling a laugh at my strange reaction.
“I’m sorry,” I reply. “I must have blurted that out unconsciously. I didn’t mean…” I trail off as I recognize the dimple in his cheek. It’s exactly the same as Edward’s. “Oh.”
“What?” he asks, reaching up to touch his cheek. “Do I have something on my face?”
Does beauty count?
I shake this thought from my mind before I accidentally blurt it out. “No, I just noticed—nothing.”
He glances down at our hands. “Can I have my hand back?”
“Oh! Of course,” I say, releasing my grip on him. “I’m so sorry.”
He waves off my apology. “Don’t worry about it. I get that a lot.”
I cock an eyebrow. “You get what a lot?”
“Women…clinging.”
My jaw drops.
He rolls his eyes. “It’s a joke, love. So, are you going to introduce yourself?”
I draw in a deep breath as I try not to imagine other women clinging to him in bed. “Alice Lopez,” I say, ignoring the heat rising in my cheeks.
He tilts his head. “See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?” he says, ignoring how I respond by also rolling my eyes. “Can we crack on with the job interview now?”
I take another deep breath to give myself time to think. “Actually, I’m not so sure Forked is a good fit for me.”
“You’re rejecting a job offer I haven’t even made?”
I manage to keep my expression impassive. “We both know this is probably a terrible idea. You obviously hate me though we’ve never met.”
“I don’t hate you,” he replies, but there’s uncertainty beneath the incredulous expression on his face, similar to that brief look of recognition I saw earlier.
“You don’t hate me? Oh, how generous of you,” I reply sarcastically.
“No, I don’t hate you. I loathe you,” he says with a cocky grin, but this time I don’t misunderstand the joke. “Seriously,” he continues, “I heard through very reliable sources you were in need of a job, and your father seemed like a good bloke, so I brought it up with him. But if you don’t, in fact, need this job, feel free to walk out that door. No hard feelings.”
I think about this for a moment, but the more I consider his words, the more confused I feel. “No hard feelings?” I begin. “No hard feelings? You’re offering me the opportunity to be a hostess when I graduated with honors from Le Cordon Bleu and have worked as a sous chef in some of the most demanding kitchens in New York for almost a decade? I’m not supposed to have any hard feelings about that? Especially when I was told I was interviewing for the sous chef position, and it was never mentioned I would be interviewing with a man who looks exactly like the man who ruined my life. No hard feelings?”
His features soften for a brief second before his cocky smirk returns. “Look, Alice, the hostess job is basically a paid internship. It pays seventeen qu—dollars an hour and comes with a promotion to sous chef in six months, assuming you can keep it together that long.” Ignoring the shock on my face, he presses on. “The promotion comes with a pay rise to $145,000 a year. If you want the job, you have until noon tomorrow to get back to me. I don’t really give a toss one way or the other. There are plenty of wom—other chefs who would jump at this opportunity.”
He turns around and heads toward the kitchen, leaving me to contemplate what the hell just happened. Did he just offer to make all my troubles go away if I can withstand six months of whatever just transpired over the last few minutes? Or is this some kind of setup?
Chapter 3
ALICE
Minka pulls up outside my parents’ house in her new white Prius. She looks directly at me and honks her car horn, knowing how much I hate the sound. Twenty-nine years living in New York City and the sound still feels like nails on a chalkboard to me.
I slide into her front seat. “I could have gotten a professional Lyft driver, but instead I got you.”
“Girl, you can’t afford a Lyft. Stop frontin’.”
“I know,” I say, giggling as I tuck my purse under my feet on the floor. But it only takes a moment for the reality of her words to hit me smack in the face, and my smile disappears, “Why?” I plead more with the universe than with my best friend. “Why does this have to be my only job offer in six months?”
She shakes her head as she pulls away from the curb outside the Strand Book Store, where I’ve been mulling over the interview. “Are you forgetting that totally legit photographer on the Gram who offered you $3,000 an hour to pose nude?” Minka reminds me.
I tilt my head as I recall the greasy guy who DM’d me on Instagram last month. “Maybe I should unblock him…”
She shoots me a severe look.
“Maybe my dad can get a raise, and then I won’t have to start paying him rent next month,” I suggest.
“Are you listening to yourself?” Minka says as she flicks on her turn signal. “You can’t keep depending on Daddy to bail you out. Do you want to live with your parents for the rest of your life?”
“I’ve only lived with them for six months,” I reply, rolling my eyes to hide the sting of my internal shame. “And you were only able to move out of your parents’ house because you got a second job. I wouldn’t exactly call that freedom.”
Just as I say t
his, her phone lights up with a notification.
“A pickup?” I ask.
She nods. “Chelsea.”
I groan. “Ugh. Avoid driving by the restaurant. I don’t want them to see me.”
She cocks an eyebrow as she examines the directions to the address where she has to pick up her next rider. “Are you ashamed of my girl?” she says, stroking the dashboard of the Prius.
“Prissy’s beautiful. I just don’t want to catch sight of that self-absorbed, cocky, little tattooed clone of Edward.”
“Hmm… At least you have job prospects. A lot of people in the unemployment line these days.”
My body tenses. “Why are you attacking me with facts today?”
She pulls up in front of a dark-gray gentrified apartment building on 21st Street, where a young guy stands with an enormous hiking backpack propped against his leg. “You need to hear the truth. This may be your only chance to get a sous chef job for months. Maybe years!”
I bite my lip to keep from admitting to her that the job offer is for a hostess position.
The guy with the backpack perks up when he sees the Prius and rushes to the curb to meet us. “Minka?” he asks, glancing at me as he pokes his head into the back seat.
“Yup,” she replies, tapping her phone. “David?”
He nods as he tosses his backpack onto the seat and slides in after it. “Do you have another stop before me?” he asks, glancing at me again.
Minka pulls out onto 21st. “Nope. She’s my trainee.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m Alice. Nice to meet you, Dave.”
“It’s David,” he corrects me.
And that’s our cue to change the subject to something less personal, as we usually do on ride-alongs. But as we approach 8th Avenue, I realize Minka has forgotten my request for her to avoid the restaurant. I decide not to say anything. The odds any of the restaurant employees who witnessed my embarrassing interview a couple hours ago being outside at this exact moment are next to none.
Minka prepares to turn onto 8th Avenue. Just as I’m about to unlock my phone to email her a link to my latest Spotify playlist, I spot Ethan walking out of the entrance doors of Forked. We’re going to pass right by him.
Ethan’s gaze bounces off the Prius, then he does a double-take, his dark eyes locking on mine. A smile spreads across his handsome face and my stomach flips the way it did when Edward used to smile at me in the early days of our relationship.
Then Ethan does something strange. He nods his head at me like I’m one of his buddies. The gesture both enrages me and makes me feel special; like a nerdy girl whose beauty is suddenly acknowledged by the captain of the football team.
Gag!
I slide down in my seat from embarrassment at my own pathetic thoughts. “Keep driving,” I whisper to Minka.
She looks at me with confusion. “What are you doing?”
“Just keep driving!” I hiss.
“There’s traffic! I’m going as fast as I can.”
I stare up at her, my eyes pleading as I realize how pitiful I must look right now. “Just pretend I’m not here.”
“What?”
“Pretend I’m not here and maybe he’ll question whether or not he actually saw me.”
“Who saw—” She stops short as her eyes seem to find him. “That piece of—Wait… Wait a minute. That’s not Ed—No, it’s… Oh, my God. Is that him?”
I let out a sigh.
She looks perplexed. “Why is he hotter than Edward if they’re twins?”
Someone behind us honks their car horn and Minka pulls forward a few feet to close the distance between her and the car in front of us. If we didn’t have a Lyft passenger in the car, she would have cursed at the jerk behind us for being impatient. But I can sympathize with him. Why did we have to get stuck in traffic right here, right now?
Minka is still staring in Ethan’s direction as her mouth forms a slow grin. Curious as to what could possibly be so interesting, I peek my head up to see Ethan very clearly flirting with a woman on the sidewalk. They seem to be discussing the window signage.
The woman runs her fingers through her light-brown hair, a coquettish smile on her full lips, as she points back and forth between the window and the tablet tucked into the crook of her arm. He smiles and tilts his head as his gaze travels up and down the length of her body. The woman reaches up as if to rub a stitch in her chest just above her left breast, like she’s having a damn heart attack.
Minka shakes her head and pulls the Prius forward a few more feet. “Looks like he’s got his hands full with the restaurant opening,” she remarks. “I can see why you’re on the fence.”
The car comes to a complete standstill and I close my eyes to block out the sounds of the city, but the voice in my head is just as harsh. I wish I could figure out why Ethan seems so intent to give me a chance.
After the interview with the potential boss from hell, I went to the Strand bookstore, where I pretended to read a book while I googled Ethan Thorne. When we were together, I never googled Edward. I’ve never even googled myself. But something felt wrong about my interview with Ethan. And the fact Edward never mentioned he and Ethan were twins—who worked in the same industry—was too intriguing to ignore.
When the google search results for “Ethan Thorne” appeared on my phone’s browser, I nearly died. If I thought Edward was an overbearing overachiever, it was only because I had yet to meet his brother.
Ethan Thorne earned his first Michelin star at the age of twenty-two. He owned four restaurants by the age of twenty-five and got his second Michelin star at twenty-six. His first restaurant, Smoke, won best restaurant at the British Restaurant Awards—twice. The James Beard Foundation called him “one of the most versatile chefs in the world” because he’s mastered Indian cuisine—taught to him by his Bengali mother—French cuisine, Korean cuisine, and Italian cuisine. And now he’s set his sights on conquering American cuisine.
One glaring similarity he shares with Edward is his reputation for sleeping with his coworkers, according to the headlines of the articles I refused to read.
It’s no wonder Edward was so desperate for that second Michelin star six months ago. At the age of thirty-two, my ex is straggling far behind his brother in culinary achievements. The fact Edward took out his feelings of inadequacy on me is not something we women in the culinary world are unfamiliar with. But what Edward said to me that day is unforgivable. If Ethan is anything like his twin, I’d be smart to stay as far away from the prickly Thorne brothers as possible.
Finally, the Prius starts moving and I can sit up straight again, slightly disappointed Ethan didn’t attempt to talk to me while we were parked only a few feet away from him. Okay, maybe more than slightly disappointed.
“Does this mean you’re not taking the job?” Minka asks as we drive away from the American Airlines terminal after dropping off David-not-Dave.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “You’re right that this may be my last job offer for a long time, but I can’t stop worrying the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I mean, they have the exact same DNA.”
Minka is silent for a while as she contemplates this. “Maybe. But have you considered it’s your dad who got you this job interview. Do you think he would want his baby working with someone if he thought they were a raging ego-maniac like Edward? You know your dad never liked his bougie ass.”
I chuckle at this. “He loathed Edward,” I reply, and Minka laughs at my use of the word “loathe.” A word Edward loved using.
I smile to myself as I recall the time my father called my ex “a man-child with his head so far up his ass, he can detect the notes of blackberry and stone fruit in the glass of wine he had with lunch.”
We stop at a red light and Minka rounds on me with a serious look in her eyes. “What he said to you was awful. Blacklisting you from the restaurant scene…even worse. I don’t blame you for wanting to protect yourself,” she begins. “But this is your dream, too.”
>
“I know,” I shrug.
“Dreams take risks,” she continues with her pep-talk, undaunted by my low-energy response. “Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to at least give the job a try? You can always quit.”
My body relaxes at the idea of an easy way out. “Why do you always have to be so right?”
She shakes her head. “Girl, I’m gonna need you to put that in writing for Eric. That man has been driving me crazy with the decorating bullshit. Who knew I was moving in with a man with such strong opinions on not mixing mid-century style furniture and macramé plant hangers?”
I smile at her cohabitation woes, though I secretly pine for that kind of closeness. Minka and Eric are couple goals. The man is an aspiring foodie who can’t cook to save his life, but she has never once told him that to his face. Eric thinks Minka’s attempts to get me to teach him basic cooking skills are her way of getting the two closest people in her life to bond over food. It’s adorable.
Minka lets out a brief snort. “Imagine how pissed Edward will be when he finds out you’re working with his brother?”
“His better brother,” I correct her.
“Say what?”
“Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you I googled him. Seems Ethan is about four times more successful than Edward.”
The shocked look on Minka’s face melts into cackling laughter. It takes her a good minute to catch her breath. “No wonder he was so pressed about you walking out on him,” she says through her wheezing. “That little creep was using you to compensate for his shortcomings.”
My face goes slack. “What?”
“He obviously used you,” she replies. “If he could have gotten that second star without you, he wouldn’t have given two shits if you walked out that door.”
“Holy, crap,” I whisper as her words hit me like a freight train. “I never thought of it that way. You’re so right.”
“Of course, I’m right. You were just a stepping stone to him.”
“Ouch,” I say, physically recoiling from her words.
