The Difference Between Us

by Rachel Higginson

  “And I thought Killian was scary,” I said loud enough to catch Wyatt’s attention.

  His head snapped up and I had the pleasure of watching his cheeks turn red. “Killian had me for a sous chef,” he growled, throwing a murderous glance to the back of his kitchen. “And I didn’t run my mouth constantly.”

  Kaya dropped a tray of chocolate mousse cups next to Wyatt. “That’s because you were too busy using it to kiss his ass.” She walked away making smooching noises.

  Wyatt glared at the desserts. “So help me God, if these aren’t perfectly fucking executed.”

  “I should put a cuss jar back here,” I told him. “I’d be rich.”

  “You’re trying to push me over the edge, aren’t you?” Wyatt snarled at me. “You’ve joined forces with Satan’s mistress and the two of you are in cahoots to give me an aneurism.”

  “Who’s Satan’s mistress?”

  Kaya raised her hand. “That would be me. It’s our esteemed chef’s affectionate pet name for me. Along with Madam Satan, She Devil, the Antichrist’s Baby Mama, and Mrs. Bin Laden.”

  Mrs. Bin Laden?

  I swallowed a laugh since it was obvious Kaya didn’t appreciate her nicknames. “Quite the hostile work environment you’re fostering, Wyatt.”

  He grumbled more curse words beneath his breath, but overall chose to ignore my comment. “What can I help you with, Molls?”

  I shrugged and took a nervous sip of my champagne. “Just stopped by to see how you were doing. I was hoping you would be done by now and could come hang out with me.”

  Wyatt reached up to tug at his tall chef’s toque. “Wish I could, but I have to finish up desserts. I’ll be out as soon as we clean up.”

  “So in like three hours?”

  “Sorry.” He frowned. “You hired me to work. I’m still working.”

  I didn’t really hire him. He volunteered. But I understood that he still had a job to do, and I didn’t want to get in the way. “Find me later?”

  His expression softened and his eyes warmed, transforming his looks completely. Wyatt was a total bad ass. At only thirty years old, he already commanded one of the best kitchens in the state. He’d inherited Lilou from Killian, taking over to fill giant shoes. But Wyatt hadn’t faltered for a second. From what Vera had told me, Ezra was seriously impressed with how Wyatt was able to handle the kitchen, the menu, and the staff.

  Wyatt wasn’t hard to look at either. He was tall and lean, his corded muscles like taut ropes against bone. High cheekbones, a square jaw, perfectly shaped ears, on top of a rock-hard body, and kick ass kitchen skills? Yes, please.

  Also, I only noted his ears because his shaved head drew attention to them. I didn’t have like an ear fetish or anything weird.

  But what put Wyatt at an entirely different level than most of the good-looking men I knew, was his bad boy attitude complete with facial piercings and tattoos. All the tattoos. From his wrists they snaked upward, over sinewy forearms and cut biceps, ducking beneath his clothes and reappearing around his neck, all the way up to those strangely attractive ears. Wyatt was the kind of guy that made butterflies leap, and dance, and dive—and panties melt right off your body.

  The first time I met Wyatt I thought for sure I was going to combust from sheer nerves. Because he wasn’t just pretty to look at, he was also one of the coolest people I’d ever known.

  Unfortunately for me, we’d gotten to be too good of friends. For like a hot second I thought there would be something between us. But now he fit firmly in the friend zone. And I knew I was the same for him.

  It was a bummer I would never get to know what it was like to make out with him, because I knew, I just knew Wyatt would be the best kisser ever. Instead, I had to settle for a good friend that I could actually rely on.

  It was the worst.

  Also, in case of a flat tire or if I ever needed help moving, it was the best.

  He smiled at me and my heart warmed with platonic affection. “Save me a dance?” he asked gently.

  “Only if you promise not to kill your sous chef,” I countered.

  His eyes hardened again just thinking about Kaya. “We’ll see.”

  I left the kitchen only to run straight into a brick wall. Thankfully, I saved my champagne before the delicate flute smashed against Ezra Baptiste’s six pack of steel abs. I landed my free hand on his chest that seemed to be made out of the same super-human muscle metal.

  I let my hand linger as I pretended I needed help balancing—okay, maybe I really needed help. Apparently I’d had more to drink than I realized. I looked up at his angry expression and tried not to cringe. “Oops.”

  He glanced over my shoulder. “Were you in my kitchen again?”

  I shook my head quickly. “No?”

  Ezra let out a huffy sigh. “Molly.”

  “Not all the way in,” I amended. “More like on the fringes. Just the edge. The door barely closed behind me.”

  His jaw ticked. “Why?”

  I tilted my head to the side, trying to make sense of his question. “Why what?”

  “Why were you in there,” he clarified. “What do you need?”

  My stomach dipped at his question, like I’d been unexpectedly thrown in the front car of a rollercoaster. “N-nothing,” I told him. “I was just looking for Wyatt.”

  If possible, Ezra’s eyes darkened even further and an angry cloud took up residence over his head. He was always too handsome to look directly at, but like this, with his eyebrows scrunched together over his nose and his jaw hard and firm and so angular, he looked like a god, like a marble statue that had been expertly carved. I had the strongest urge to run my fingers over his nose, to memorize the exact curve of his jaw and trail my finger through the wrinkles next to his eyes so that next time I painted him I would get every single detail right.

  “You need Wyatt?” Ezra asked.

  “To dance.”

  “To dance?”

  I nibbled the corner of my lip and tried to collect my thoughts. “He’s busy so he can’t dance with me.”

  Something changed in Ezra. His demeanor shifted, moved, and then settled. It was hard to explain how I noticed it because it wasn’t something physical. If I was painting him right now, it wouldn’t have been something I could have marked with physical features. And yet it was there, in his aura, in his being. I would have had to throw away the painting altogether and start over from scratch, trying to capture the essence of this mysterious man.

  “I’ll dance with you,” he said.

  He couldn’t have surprised me more if he would have told me he was about to fly to the moon. “You don’t have to—”

  His hand covered mine that still happened to be on his chest. “Come on,” he said, cutting me off. Then he stalked off toward the dance floor, tugging me after him.

  I just managed to set my champagne on a table we passed before I was swept up on the dance floor with him and all of the other guests. I caught Vera’s dad’s eye as he sat at a table with a few other people his age. He waved at me and smiled. I think I managed to look panicked in return.

  Ezra‘s free hand settled on my waist and he stepped into me so that our chests brushed. I felt the press of his muscular thighs against my bare legs thanks to my mini dress. He towered over me, making me feel small, delicate… feminine.

  One of the corners of his mouth lifted in a confident smile and I realized there was no running away without making a ridiculous scene. I was trapped.

  I was stuck dancing with one of the world’s crankiest, hottest, most difficult men.

  Chapter Seven

  Surreal.

  That’s how I felt. Wrapped in Ezra’s strong arms—the softness of his clothing a distinct contrast to the muscles beneath—was absolutely surreal.

  All around us the music pulsed and the atmosphere bewitched, friends laughed and dishes clinked, and I stood there frozen with confusion. I blamed the champagne.

  Henceforth, I would avoid expensive, delic
ious, hypnotizing drinks and stick to the cheap grocery store bargains I was used to.

  Goodbye, Dom Perignon.

  Hello, Martini and Rossi, my old friend.

  Because obviously the better brands got me into trouble!

  To be honest, I could hold my own on the dance floor. I’d even been on enough blind dates to navigate any enthusiastic fondle with ease. But this was an entirely new level of stressful firsts.

  I stood, stiff as a board, in Ezra’s arms. And he wasn’t any better. We swayed back and forth like thirteen-year-old strangers forced together by well-meaning teachers at a middle school dance. I half expected my seventh grade science teacher to lay her hand on my shoulder while she measured the distance between Ezra and me with a ruler.

  Except there was also this air of adult awareness that made things bizarrely and sexually intriguing. Ezra’s thighs brushing mine. His hand pressed against my lower back. The occasional resting of his jaw against the top of my head. I felt every single inch of him and not one part felt lacking or less than. Ezra was completely, wholly, utterly man. He made every other past dance partner and blind date feel like the junior high cesspool I’d ridiculously compared us to.

  He wasn’t a thirteen-year-old boy enslaved to hormones and braces. Ezra Baptiste was smooth, successful and so freaking sexy I felt jittery with anticipation. He didn’t jolt me back and forth or step on my toes. He moved me around the dance floor with grace and skill, wowing me, charming me… seducing me.

  Even if his seduction was accidental.

  He cleared his throat and I fixated on the long, slender column of his neck. I was constantly, and possibly weirdly obsessively, trying to figure out how to paint his face. Trying to figure out how to get his expressions just right and bring out that something invisible I couldn’t explain. And yet he had so many other parts and pieces I hadn’t even begun to dissect yet.

  Like his throat. Or the width of his shoulders and the alluring way his clothes hung off them. I glanced at our entwined hands and tried to memorize the way mine looked so delicate and small compared to his. I wanted to draw the way his tie cinched around his collar or laid against his solid chest. I wanted to measure the width of his shoulders so I could recreate them on paper, canvas or a bathroom stall.

  I felt like throwing back my head and screaming at the top of my lungs, Fine, I’m attracted to him! Are you happy now?

  It was yet to be determined exactly who I would be yelling at. The universe? God? Cupid? It didn’t matter. Whoever they were, they were to blame for this inconvenient attraction to one of the world’s tersest men.

  Yep. Tersest.

  “Are you okay?” he asked with that smooth, even voice that could not be ruffled or perturbed.

  Ever so elegantly, I pulled myself from my tangled thoughts and replied, “Huh?”

  “You seem tense,” he added.

  Champagne forced the truth from my lips. “You make me nervous.”

  His concentrated gaze found mine. “Why?”

  Oh, how to answer that loaded question. I tilted my head to the side, my long hair fell over my shoulder and I confessed, “Probably because the first time we met, you told me my style was juvenile at best.”

  His eyebrows drew down. “I didn’t say that.”

  The truth strengthened my courage and I added, “You also said that your clientele was too wealthy for my cheap taste, and that if I ever wanted to make it in this city I was going to have to try harder.”

  His eyebrows dipped further. “That doesn’t sound like something I would say.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He looked so… affronted! “Are you serious? That sounds exactly like something you would say!” I felt myself loosen up in his arms. His hand pressed tighter against my back, drawing me closer to him. “You asked me for advice and then hated everything I had to say.”

  “That’s not at all how I remember it,” he countered, referencing the first time we’d met. Vera and I had made reservations at Lilou and then waited six weeks to get in. When we finally did, Killian had given us the five-star treatment, but Ezra had stopped by our table for all of five minutes. Just long enough to insult me. He continued, “I distinctly remember you calling me an old man with dated taste and a tacky dinosaur of a website.”

  I was positive my expression was a mirror image of his, insulted, outraged and maybe, possibly a little ashamed. “I wouldn’t say those things,” I countered. “I’m not that bold.”

  His laugh was hard, bit out with the barest amount of real amusement. “Molly, every single thing about you says otherwise.”

  Stepping back, I pulled my hand from his and dropped my voice. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He didn’t tolerate the space between us, lunging forward and crowding me once again. “That you’re not only bold, you’re also a snobby know-it-all.”

  My chin trembled once, betraying me. I took another step back and willed my spine to straighten and my nerves to steady. It wasn’t that his insult had wounded me so severely or that I really cared all that much what Ezra thought of me. But I had never been great at conflict. Actually, I was kind of the worst at it.

  Regardless of how right I felt or how zingy my insults were, the few confrontations I’d braved in my life had always ended in tears—my tears.

  It had been an issue all my life. Oh, how I desperately wanted to be tough, to stand up for myself with steely grit and relentless mettle. I would watch movies about girl fighters or women overcoming immense odds, and would pep-talk myself into believing I could be one of them. I would practice imaginary conversations in the shower, coming up with the best comebacks.

  But then something like this would happen and instead of evolving into the empowered, tenacious, take-on-the-world boss-bitch I knew that I was, this wimpy, pathetic version of myself would emerge instead.

  The tears were just the icing on the tragic cake.

  “You don’t know me,” I whispered, not caring if he could hear me or not over the loud music and celebrating crowd. I took another step back, anxious to flee before the tears came and Ezra lost whatever remaining shreds of respect he had for me. Feeling a punch of misplaced courage, I added, “And you don’t know the first thing about web design.”

  His teeth slammed together making his jaw jump from the impact. I took two more steps backward and he didn’t follow this time. I nearly stumbled when I ran into a body behind me and when I turned around and saw that it was Vann, I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.

  “Are you okay?” he asked in my ear.

  “Now I am,” I told him.

  Vann’s arms wrapped around me in a rare hug and he squeezed me tightly. He was the older brother I’d never had and even though we were rarely touchy with each other, I could tell his protective instincts were already on high alert.

  I tried to pull back, but Vann held me close. “Seriously, are you okay, Molls?”

  Nodding against his shoulder, I confessed, “Seriously, now I am.”

  He absorbed my words without asking me to explain. “Want to dance?” he asked after we’d been hugging and swaying for long enough that people around us probably already assumed that’s what we were doing—even though the music wasn’t slow, and I was wrapped around him more like a boa constrictor trying to swallow him whole than a girl trying to get with him.

  “Yes, please,” I told him, unable to hold back a single sniffle.

  We started dancing, albeit in a subdued, careful kind of way. Vann wasn’t a big dancer and I was suddenly very tired. He smiled gently at me. “I was coming to rescue you,” he said. “You looked pissed, and I know Ezra can be an asshole.”

  “He is an asshole,” I snarled. You’re a snobby know-it-all. I might have even growled.

  Vann grinned. “Maybe. But it looked like you were handling yourself just fine.”

  I never handled myself just fine, but I didn’t need to remind Vann of that. “Where’s your date?”

  “Subject ch
ange much?” he asked me with two raised eyebrows. Still he said, “I don’t bring dates to family events. There’s too much commitment implied.”

  Restraining an eye roll, I wondered if Vann would ever be ready to settle down. “We can be old maids together,” I told him. “Eventually, we’ll move to a house in the suburbs where you can have a garage full of bikes and there would be room for my thirteen cats. You do the cooking. I’ll do the laundry.”

  Vann stared at me in horror before it turned into something more… perverted. “Plus, then we could get laid whenever we want.”

  Bleck! Sleeping with someone I considered family was basically the grossest possible future. I made a gesture at his crotch region. “I don’t want or need any of what is happening down there. I’m positive it needs to be tested, Mr. Afraid of Commitment.”

  “You’re one to talk, cat lady!”

  We laughed at our lack of prospects, and then spent the next hour having a great time and drinking more champagne cocktails. Or maybe the champagne was just me?

  I forgot all about Ezra and the crappy way he made me feel, and also the guilt that I knew I didn’t deserve. I hadn’t initiated anything. I’d only been defending myself. So why did slinging insults make me feel so bad?

  Eventually the kitchen staff filtered out, stripped down to t-shirts and black work pants. They greeted the other industry people they knew and grabbed drinks in an effort to catch up to all the fun.

  That’s really when the party really started. Wyatt grabbed me from Vann’s care and forced celebratory shots on Vera, Killian and me. Then we moved back to the dance floor and tried to groove off our buzz. Until Wyatt shouted shots again and back we went. Rinse and repeat.

  Basically, it was a fabulous night of laughter, love, and so much alcohol. I even danced with Trent until he got overly touchy and started suggesting lewd ways to end the night. I pawned him off on Steph who didn’t seem to mind his grabby hands at all.

  By two, the guests had mostly left, my head was light, and my blood buzzed beneath my skin. I stared down at my bare feet and wondered where my shoes had gone.