by Cassia Leo
“What truth?”
I grip the chair tighter, and my stomach tenses at the memory. “I’m not sure if you’ve been to his restaurant in Tribeca, but it’s an open-concept kitchen theater, so I was able to watch him talking to the reviewer while I was basting her swordfish in butter. Let’s just say…they knew each other. And not just as friends.”
Ethan looks skeptical. “How do you know that?”
I pause for a moment, wondering if this is something Ethan wants to hear. “It was something he did when he walked away from her table, after he patted her on the shoulder.”
He looks confused as I pause. “Is that it? He patted her on the shoulder.”
“I wish. You see, her long hair was covering her shoulders. So, after he patted her shoulder, he…he sniffed his hand.”
Ethan’s eyebrows shoot up, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Yeah, it was the same thing he used to do to me when we first started dating. Sometimes, we’d go out behind the restaurant during our break and—” I stop short when Ethan shakes his head, signaling me to skip this part. “Anyway, when we were dating, I asked him why he did this, and he said the smell of my hair made him feel close to me, as if I was right there with him.”
Ethan looks like he’s ready to crawl out of his skin. “So, he was cheating on you? That’s why you broke up?”
I shake my head. “No. Even if I thought the hand-sniffing was suspicious, it wasn’t proof. It was what he said to me when I confronted him about it.”
Ethan stands up straighter, steeling himself as he seems to understand we’re getting to the bad part of the story.
I take a long, deep breath before I continue. “I told myself I wouldn’t say anything about the sniffing thing until after the reviewer left. No sense in making a scene and ruining his chance for another one or two stars based on my possibly shaky suspicions. But Edward walked in to the kitchen as I was plating her swordfish, and I got distracted for a second as I imagined them having sex… And I dropped her fish on the floor.”
The discomfort in Ethan’s face turns to sympathy. “What did he do?”
I chuckle at the memory now. “He told me to wake the fuck up. It wasn’t the first time he’d spoken to the kitchen staff like that, but he’d never done it to me. And after what I’d just seen, I lost it. I went to hide in the walk-in cooler for a while to collect myself, but he followed me in there.”
Ethan uncrosses his arms and his stance softens as if he’s preparing to comfort me.
“He said he didn’t have time for me to have an emotional meltdown,” I continue. “He said I should act like I needed the job. I told him I didn’t need the job, that I’d gotten a job offer from that influencer who came in a couple weeks earlier.”
“Did you really have a job offer?” Ethan asks curiously.
I’m suddenly reminded of the internship offer I’ve been hiding from him, but now is not the time to bring that up.
I nod slowly. “Yeah, but it went up in smoke after they found out about what happened with Edward.”
“So, he was pissed you hid the job offer from him, and you were pissed he cheated on you? And that’s why you broke up.”
I shrug as if I don’t know the answer to this question, but I’m really just trying to give myself a moment to collect my thoughts, because we’re quickly approaching the difficult part. “We argued a bit more, but the only part of the argument that really stuck with me is what he said before I walked out. I told him I didn’t need the sous chef job, and he said I might not need the job, but I needed his validation like I needed air to breathe. He said, ‘Without me, you’re nothing.’”
“Fucking tosser,” Ethan whispers.
“That’s not it,” I continue. “After he said I was nothing, he said he would make certain of that. He definitely kept his promise… Anyway, then I said, ‘Well, not only do I quit, but now I’m breaking up with you.’ And his response was, ‘Good. Now I can stop pretending I enjoy shagging your fat arse.’”
The silence that follows is heavier than the proofing cabinet we loaded into Tino’s truck a few days ago. And the fury in Ethan’s eyes is unmistakably not directed at me.
“You stay here,” he says, reaching for the door handle.
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he replies impatiently, and his eyes fill with shame when he sees me physically flinch at his tone. “I’m sorry, just…please promise me you’ll stay here.”
“I don’t need you to fight my battles.”
“I know you don’t, but you promised me you’d let me handle Edward today,” he reminds me. “Besides, this is personal. This is my restaurant opening. This is between me and my twat brother. I don’t want you dragged into it. You understand?”
I nod as I realize he’s sparing me the reputation of being responsible for ruining his opening.
“Good,” he replies, his tone softer now. “Just stay here.”
The way he’s taking charge of the situation, and removing my agency, if I’m being honest, reminds me of the way he went caveman on me at the hotel a few days ago. I remember the British-caveman voice he used, and I find myself wishing he would whisper filthy caveman words in my ear.
“Yes, Chef. I stay here. You fight battle.”
His shoulders relax and a smile spreads across his gorgeous face. “Be right back, love.”
I watch from the doorway of his office as he pushes through the “Employees Only” door. Then, I race toward it, pushing it open a couple inches until I have a slim view of the corner booth. Ethan strides toward Edward like a man on a mission.
Their argument appears heated, with Edward rolling his eyes and shaking his head as if he can’t believe what Ethan is saying. I can’t hear their conversation from here, but I can feel the rage coming off both of them as Ethan folds his arms across his chest and they stare at each other for a long moment.
Finally, Edward stands up and they come face to face. This doesn’t look good. Maybe I should go out there and break them up. If only I could hear what they’re saying.
I’m about to push the door open to head into the dining room, when Edward starts shouting.
“You’re kicking your brother out on opening night?”
Ethan doesn’t react. He simply stares at Edward with such contempt I can feel it across the room. After another staring contest, Edward turns around suddenly, knocking over a glass of ice water near the edge of the table. The lavender-haired woman gasps as the cold liquid rolls off the starched tablecloth and lands in her lap. Edward grabs her wrist, yanking her out of the booth before she can grab a napkin to sop up the water.
“Out of my way!” Edward barks at our busboy, Emilio, who has raced over to offer the woman a clean towel.
Edward and the lavender pixie storm past the other slack-jawed patrons. The couple that arrived with Edward trails not far behind, and all four of them soon disappear into the bustle of the dark city.
Ethan helps Emilio clear off the table, then he announces to the entire dining room that everyone’s dinner is on the house. This elicits an enormous round of applause and profuse expressions of gratitude. I quickly retreat back to Ethan’s office before he can catch me watching him.
Taking a seat in the chair, I can’t wipe the smile off my face as I wait for him to return. When he enters the office, immediately closing the door behind him, the intensity of his energy makes me wonder if he may be upset with me. Maybe he feels like I pressured him into doing what he just did.
He looks down at me with an unreadable look in his eyes. “Get up.”
He’s upset with me.
I let out a deep sigh as I rise from the chair.
But I’m not worried about the possibility Ethan is angry with me. I’m anxious because, after what he just did for me, I have to tell Ethan about the internship in Paris. And I have to accept whatever consequences he wants to dish out.
“Ethan, I need to tell—”
Before I
can get the words out, his lips are on mine.
His kiss is both urgent and sweet, the pressure of his lips both gentle and intense. I pull back for a second, gasping to catch my breath. But he grabs my face, and I let out a soft whimper as his mouth falls over mine again.
His tongue brushes against my tongue, lighting a fuse that sizzles through me and explodes in my center. I moan as the throbbing sensation between my legs intensifies. He returns the sound as his hands tangle in my hair.
I wrap my arms around his waist and clutch his shirt in my hands. A small gasp escapes my lips as I’m prodded by the stiffness forming in his pants.
His smile curves against my mouth. “You drive me crazy. You know that?”
I tilt my head back to look in his eyes. “I do now.”
His lips are on mine again, harder this time. His moans turn into groans, and his groans turn into growls as I tighten my arms around him, pressing our bodies even closer together. I find myself wishing there wasn’t so much clothing between us. But just as the solution to this problem enters my mind, the office door swings open.
Warner’s eyes widen as he sees Ethan and I in a very compromising position. “Uh…sorry. I didn’t—”
Ethan slams the door in his face.
I immediately let go of him and stumble backward, tumbling into the chair I was just sitting in. “Oh, no,” I whisper as I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I hold my head in my hands. “Isn’t Warner friends with Mario?”
Mario is one of our two current sous chefs. Ethan has assured me that neither Mario nor Shanice will have their hours or pay cut if I’m promoted to sous chef. But one of us—likely the weakest cook—may see some of our duties shift to those more in keeping with a garde manger, responsible mostly for charcuterie, cold soups and salads, and sorbets. Shanice seems okay with this prospect, while Mario has been heard grumbling about it on a few occasions.
Then, of course, there’s my father.
Ethan kneels in front of me, taking my chin between his thumb and forefinger to force me to look at him. “You don’t have anything to worry about. We don’t have any policies against fraternization.”
“I’m not worried you’re going to fire me,” I reply incredulously. “I’m worried about the appearance of impropriety when you eventually promote me, and…and I’m worried about my father.”
He looks stricken by this information. “You know about the promise I made your father?”
“What promise?”
His eyes widen. “Nothing.”
My stomach drops as I realize what’s going on. “My dad made us both take the same vow of celibacy.”
Ethan chuckles as he rests a hand on my knee. “I’ll talk to Warner. No one will find out about this. I’ll make sure of that.”
I look him in the eye. “We can never do this again,” I say, my chest aching at the thought of never again kissing his perfect lips.
He looks confused by my obvious disappointment. “I said no one will find out about it. I didn’t say we needed to stop.”
I smile as I throw my arms around his neck.
And just like that, it became Ethan and I against the world.
Chapter 12
ETHAN
It’s been days since I tasted Alice’s lips, and I’ve thought of nothing else since. Her mouth tasted of cinnamon and honey. I have no idea if she had recently consumed something with those flavors or if that’s the way she normally tastes, but I can’t get it out of my mind.
Not that I want to stop thinking about it, because whenever I do, I inevitably start imagining her and Edward together. I imagine him touching her hair and sniffing his hand. I imagine her watching him do that and then giggling to herself.
I shudder at the thought.
Pouring myself a large dram of whiskey, I carry the glass into the sitting room. Taking a seat on the edge of the sofa cushion, I prop my mobile up against the metal bowl on the coffee table. Then, I take a deep breath as I hit send on a FaceTime call I’ve been dreading since opening night.
My mother answers faster than she normally does, her eagerness only serving to ratchet up my anxiety. “Darling, what are you doing up so late on a Wednesday?” she asks in her British-Bengali accent. “Isn’t it, what, three in the morning in New York?”
She has an uncanny ability to calculate the difference in time zones between London and Manhattan with surprising swiftness.
“I was finishing up some paperwork,” I lie, already getting the conversation off to a rough start. “How are you, Mum?”
My father enters the kitchen, doing a double-take when he sees my image on my mother’s mobile. “Ethan? By God, I almost didn’t recognize you,” he says, his standard twin joke, which no one has laughed at in more than twenty years.
“Good morning, Dad.”
My mother pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “It’s three in the morning in New York. He can’t sleep,” she tells my father, as if the paperwork excuse I gave never happened.
“What’s wrong? Is it girl trouble?” my father says as he presses the button to turn on the electric kettle.
“Why does it have to be girl trouble?” I ask. “Why can’t it be business trouble or insomnia or something?”
Both my mother and father laugh at this suggestion.
I shake my head as I realize how foolish I was to think I could hide anything from these two.
They’re like two peas in a pod. Together nearly forty years, and they seem more in love now than they did when Edward and I were children. My inability to commit to anyone in the last decade cannot be attributed to their example. The blame for that rests solely on one person: Priya.
My mother stops laughing and clears her throat. “Sorry, darling, but it’s a bit more like you to have a problem with a girl. You so rarely have problems in business. Take it as a compliment.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, this time it’s more complicated. It’s… My problem is related to business…and a woman.”
“How is that different?” she replies as she accepts her cup of tea from my father. “I thought you only dated women you work with.”
My father chuckles. “Son, tell us something we don’t already know.”
“Brilliant. I ring you to have a serious chat and all I get is a comedy tag-team.”
My mother ignores my complaint. “Tell me what is going on. Maybe I can help. I also used to sleep with my coworkers.”
“Mum!”
My father is no longer in the video frame, but I can hear him guffawing somewhere nearby.
My mother takes a sip of her tea and smiles. “Okay, no more mucking about. Talk to me.”
I gulp down some whiskey before I continue. “Have you spoken with Edward?”
She purses her lips. “You know he only calls me once every few months. We haven’t spoken to him since…oh, gosh…shortly after the new year.”
I shake my head as I realize this was about five months ago. “Well, then, I’m glad I’ll be the one to tell you the opening went quite well last week.”
She claps her hands together. “That’s wonderful, darling. Not surprising, but quite wonderful.”
I smile at her enthusiasm. “But… Edward and I had a bit of a confrontation at the opening.”
“Oh?”
I wince at her curiosity. “Uh, yes, it… Well, it had something to do with the way he treated one of my employees. I had to eject him from the restaurant. It was…not pretty.”
“Eject him?” she says, looking somewhat confused. “You mean you booted your brother out of your restaurant?”
“Well, not quite so literally. I wasn’t wearing boots. But, yes, I chucked him out for something he said—did to one of my employees. It was bloody inappropriate.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “Are you two fighting over a girl?”
“What? No! I mean—” A thin layer of sweat sprouts across my brow.
“Now you’ve really done it,” my father chimes in from where he’s l
ikely seated across the kitchen table.
“I haven’t done anything,” I lie again.
“Then why does your face look like that time when you were fifteen and I saw your browser history?” my mother asks.
I can’t hide anything from this woman.
“It’s his ex-girlfriend,” I mutter.
“Alice?”
“You know Alice?” I ask, surprised Edward would have spoken about her.
She cocks one of her perfectly threaded eyebrows. “Are you kidding me? I only know about her from the Google. Your brother tells me nothing.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Yes, Alice. She’s working for me now.”
“Way to go, mate,” my father says and my mother shoots him a disapproving glare.
“Ethan, please tell me you and Edward are not double-teaming her.”
“Excuse me?” I say, unable to comprehend how my mother knows this sexual term, much less that she’d use it in a conversation with me. “No! We are not double-teaming Alice. Bloody hell.”
“Then, what is the problem?” she asks, appearing somewhat bored with the conversation now that I’ve clearly steered it away from the topic of a ménage à trois.
“The problem is I chucked him out of the restaurant after I found out the reason he and Alice broke up. He was a complete bastard to her, Mum.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know where we went wrong with that boy.”
“Yeah, well, his narcissism is really the least of my issues. The real problem is he’s holding my feelings for Alice over me. Somehow, I let him get the best of me. And now he has the power to get my restaurant taken away if he finds out I’m…”
My mom leans forward curiously. “In love with Alice?”
“What? No! I’m not in love with her. I—” The cheeky grin on her face stops me. “I’m not in love with her,” I insist.
She nods as if she believes me. “Okay. Whatever you say, baba.”
She only calls me baba when she’s buttering me up or get me to see things her way.
“I’m not falling for that.”
“For what?” she replies innocently.
