Who’s The Boss?

by McCarthy , Erin

  It was just like that. We hovered, we waited, then suddenly my name rolled off Sean’s lips in a low, raw demand. “Isla.”

  Together we exploded.

  The kiss wasn’t tentative or light or questing. It was confident, hard, commanding. When our lips touched, I felt it everywhere. His hands were gripping the collar of my coat, holding me close to him, but it felt like he was stroking every inch of my body. I didn’t shiver. I didn’t melt into him. I collided with him, a hot, furious frenzy of sexual desire.

  His tongue invaded my mouth in a sensual dance, a promise of things to come, as he urged me against the wall. I could feel the hard thickness of his cock against my hip and I rocked into it, unrestrained, untethered. It was wild and reckless and filled with raw moans, deep kissing, and his teeth sinking into my tender flesh.

  Sean’s hand had shifted and he was cupping my breast, teasing at my nipple. Somewhere in the back of my lust-addled brain, I knew this was a bad idea, but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to stop it.

  Then the elevator dinging penetrated the haze.

  Someone was about to enter the hallway.

  Another minute left alone and Sean would be entering me.

  Instead, Sean let go of me so fast I almost fell. I actually stumbled forward, reaching up to wipe my swollen and moist lips. He was breathing hard and he adjusted his hard cock in his pants so it wasn’t as obvious. The corner of his mouth turned up in a sly smile.

  “Damn. I kissed a grumpy girl and I liked it,” he said, voice low and rough, still laced with desire.

  He turned and knocked on the door, while I struggled to find my equilibrium. What the hell was that? We’d gone from zero to ninety in two seconds.

  An older couple emerged from the elevator and started toward us. Simultaneously, the apartment door swung open and revealed a woman in her sixties, poised and stylish. “There you are,” she said. “God, Sean, can you be on time for anything?”

  “Hi, Mom.” He stepped forward and kissed her cheek.

  “Is this your date?” she asked, giving me a once-over and a polite smile.

  I could only imagine what his mother saw. Pink cheeks, swollen lips, disheveled hair, guilty expression. His mother. Jeez.

  “No. This is a friend of Felicia’s who was on the elevator with me. She’s also late,” Sean said, giving me a quick grin.

  He had just thrown me under the bus with his mother. Charming. He also looked totally unaffected by our kiss. Or our groping and grinding session masquerading as a kiss. Maybe he made out with strangers in hallways all the time, but I didn’t and it had me rattled.

  I cleared my throat and managed to say, “Hi, I’m Isla. The elevator actually got stuck. We’ve been trapped in it for ten minutes.”

  “Welcome, welcome,” she said. “Come in. You look like you need a drink after being trapped with Sean. God knows I would.”

  There was affection in her voice, but also a little bite. Sean kept his easy smile in place, but I could see his jaw twitch in response to his mother’s jab. I felt a smidge of sympathy for him, as well as for Felicia, who was getting this woman as a mother-in-law. She turned and retreated back into the party.

  When Sean leaned over to me and murmured, “Give me your number,” I shook my head.

  Did I want to go into a dark room and do dirty, sexy things with him? Yes. Yes, I did.

  But something about him brought out heightened reactions on my part. I would lose my cool if I spent any sort of time with him.

  I didn’t like to lose my cool.

  If you lose your cool, you give someone the upper hand. And I wasn’t doing that.

  Not even hot sex was worth that.

  I wasn’t surprised the gorgeous brunette turned me down, but I was disappointed. I wasn’t even sure what had happened between us other than it was hot as hell. One second we’d been arguing in the elevator, the next we’d been crushed together and slipping each other tongue like the world was ending in five minutes.

  “Why not?” I asked her, because if we had that kind of chemistry after ten minutes, what could we do with a whole night together? It was worth pressing her for an explanation. Let her use me to hate fuck out her anger at some other guy who had obviously made her bitter. I would take that hit and enjoy every single second of it.

  “Because I don’t like you,” she said, entering my brother’s apartment.

  It was loud inside, festive, with holiday decorations everywhere. She peeled her coat off and I tried to take it from her to hang it up, but she waved me off. “You don’t even know me,” I pointed out, wishing for once my mother had kept her casual disdain of me to herself. She hadn’t sold me very well to Isla.

  Normally it was just a mild irritation that my mother liked to take cheap shots at me. It was because I was my mother’s dirty little secret. She had stepped outside of her marriage in her thirties, bored with being a housewife, had an affair, and gotten pregnant with me. I had found out purely by accident when I was seventeen after getting kicked out of prep school for drinking. I overheard my parents arguing and it was obvious that my mother thought her reckless behavior had replicated in my own DNA, since I was a bit of a loose cannon.

  My mother thought of Michael as the golden child, and hell, he was. He was a doctor who hadn’t dated for years after his wife’s death and did a crap ton of charity work. He was a good man, who walked a straight line. Me? I was a bit of a fuckup in my earlier years, even before I found out my father wasn’t actually my father. Afterwards I had some really bad years as I tried to reconcile my identity and forgive my mother.

  But I didn’t resent my brother at all. He was who he was and I was who I was. It had taken the kitchen to help me understand my origins didn’t matter. What I did as an adult was what was important and I worked my ass off.

  “I don’t want to know you,” she said.

  That annoyed me just a little. Isla was too instantly dismissive.

  “You don’t have to either know me or like me to have a good time with me,” I said. “Obviously. Unless you’re the world’s greatest actress.”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  She visibly bristled. “I’m an amazing actress,” she said, her chin up, eyes flashing in anger.

  That made me think she was actually in reality an aspiring actress and I had offended her. If anyone was keeping score, I was losing the match with Isla.

  I didn’t have a chance to respond before my brother approached us. Normally he would shake my hand and give me a bro hug, but he looked annoyed with me.

  Welcome to the club. I had a trifecta going on. Mom, Michael, and Isla all thinking I sucked. I suddenly wanted a drink.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Michael asked me. “You’re like an hour late.”

  “I got stuck in your fucking elevator. Don’t you ever look at your phone?” It hadn’t been for an hour, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “It’s my engagement party. I’m not staring at my phone. I don’t even have a text from you.”

  “That’s because I told you texting from elevators is dicey,” Isla said. “Like it would have killed you just to push the help button?”

  She’d pushed the button and it had done exactly no good. I didn’t bother to point that out though, because I may be a lot of things, but I’m not petty. They were doing introductions and I decided there was no way in hell she was going to give me her number at this point. Time to cut my losses and head for the bar cart.

  It had been an entertaining and arousing eight minutes.

  “Well, nice meeting you,” I said to Isla, which I was sincere about. She had certainly distracted me from my claustrophobia in the elevator. She gave me a glare, which pricked at me. I should have kept my mouth shut, but I kept going. “And yes, I mean that sarcastically. I’m going to get a drink.” I clapped my brother on the shoulder. “Congratulations, you crazy son of a bitch. I wish you a lifetime of happiness and hope you never find yourself tied to your bed with your ball
s glued to your thighs.”

  Personally, I was going to stick to dating apps and anonymous hookups. I didn’t have time to navigate the minefield of actually trying to find a woman I could have a meaningful relationship with. As I walked away, I heard Michael asking Isla what the hell that was all about.

  I didn’t stick around to hear her answer.

  There was a bourbon with my name on it.

  Maybe that would warm up my blue balls.

  One

  Four months later

  “Maybe it’s a surprise party for you, Isla,” my friend Savannah said to me over the phone. “A promotion party.”

  As I walked the final block to the restaurant I was a chef at, Bone, I marveled that only sweet Savannah could put a positive spin on what was clearly not a fantastic situation. “I don’t think that is either Nico’s or Sid’s style. No, this mandatory afternoon meeting is clearly to announce the new executive chef and it’s not me. If it was me, I would know already.”

  Which was disappointing as hell. I’d been working my butt off for three years at Bone and would love to be promoted to head chef. But at the same time, the other staff chef, Martin, was older, had more experience, and had been at Bone at least six months longer than me. So I couldn’t exactly get angry if he had gotten the position over me. Fair was fair.

  That didn’t mean it didn’t suck, though. When the previous executive chef had announced his departure three weeks earlier, I’d had a moment of both optimism and panic. Because if Martin got the position, which he clearly had, what was I supposed to do? Hang around as number two for the next who-the-hell-knew-how-many years, or try to move on to another restaurant? I didn’t want to leave. I liked the family of staff I had become a part of at Bone. So I’d already decided I would stay for at least another year or two and see how things shook out working under Martin.

  “I appreciate you’re trying to cheer me up,” I said as I rounded the corner and approached Bone. “But it’s okay. I’m not thrilled to be passed over, but I get the reasoning behind it and I’ll live.”

  Spring in Brooklyn hadn’t arrived yet and there was still the remnants of a slushy snow that had happened two days earlier. The sky was overcast, suiting my mood.

  “You need a win, Isla,” Savannah said. Then there was rustling. “Sully, put that down.”

  Savannah was the mom of our group, both literal and figurative. She had a son that was just weeks shy of his first birthday and a new fiancé, her brother’s best friend from childhood. I was thrilled for her, but not thrilled with her constant insistence that I needed to date in order to find some sort of personal life fulfillment.

  “If you’re second, you’re last, is that it?” I asked her, amused. I tapped the glass on the locked door of Bone and waved to Carla, one of the servers, to let me in. We didn’t open for dinner service for three hours.

  “No! I just mean that I want you happy.”

  That actually warmed my heart. She meant it. She was always sincere. “I am happy. It’s all good, Savannah.” I was happy. Maybe restless. Bored. In need of some hot sex. But not unhappy.

  Carla opened the door for me with a smile. “Hi, Chef.”

  “Hey, Carla.” I stepped inside and then I knew something was really up. The area where we usually had meetings, in the back of the restaurant, didn’t just have the usual setup of tables pushed together.

  Yes, it was one long banquet table. But it was set for service. We never did that for staff meetings.

  “I have to go,” I told Savannah. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  After ending the call, I shoved my phone in my back pocket. “What’s going on?” I asked Carla. I saw the majority of the staff was milling around the restaurant. “I thought this was a management meeting.”

  Carla shrugged. “I have no clue. They won’t let us in the kitchen. Nico is all hyped up. He’s like giddy or something.”

  Carla did not look giddy. She looked like she’d spent the night before partying. Her hair, which was usually in a tight server’s bun, was wild and sticking out in multiple directions. She normally took out her nose ring before her shift, but now it was on full display, and her skin was splotchy, like she’d just rolled out of bed. She was shuffling like her head hurt.

  “Nico is hyped up?” He was the general manager and he was a pretty no-nonsense kind of guy. I wouldn’t have described him as someone who got easily excited.

  Martin was standing in the corner, talking to the bartender. I went over, unzipping my leather jacket. “Hey, does anyone know what is going on?” I fully expected Martin to mention his promotion or hint.

  My co-workers both shrugged.

  “No, I have no clue at all,” Martin said, actually looking seriously annoyed. “And if you don’t know what is going on either, you know what that means.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You’re joking. Nico and Sid wouldn’t. Would they?”

  The door to the kitchen flew open and the most junior staff server, Raul, came out with a tray with plates on it. Appetizers.

  “Apparently, they would,” Martin said grimly.

  The owner, Sid, had gone and hired someone from outside the restaurant to be the new executive chef.

  Sid followed behind Raul, beaming and calling out a greeting. “Grab a seat, everyone. We have some exciting news.”

  I swallowed hard, unprepared for the shift in fortune. I could work under Martin. I knew him, knew his quirks and demands and strengths. I did not want to work under a total stranger. That would be a complete pain in the ass, adjusting to a brand-new personality in our kitchen.

  Yanking out a chair next to where Martin had just sat down, I dropped my ass onto the wood, eyeing the appetizers Raul was placing around. It wasn’t a dish currently on the menu. It appeared to be a pickle fry. I tasted the tip. Spicy.

  Sid was going on and on about the appetizer, acting like it was the most creative thing since avocado toast.

  It was a fried dill pickle. Nothing super innovative about that, though damn it, that spicy breading was really tasty.

  I glanced over at Martin. He was fuming. I reached under the table and squeezed his thigh. If I was pissed, he had twice as much reason to be angry. It also sucked big-time that neither Sid nor Nico thought that maybe a heads-up for me and Martin would have been appropriate. Just take the two chefs aside and explain their decision-making process so that we weren’t both sitting there feeling like complete underappreciated losers.

  “It’s just okay,” I murmured to Martin under my breath.

  “My fourteen-year-old can make this,” was his response.

  I didn’t doubt it. Martin had one of those amazingly talented and creative families. His wife was a professor of women’s studies at Fordham, his son was the state cello champion, and his eighteen-year-old daughter was a huge civil rights activist.

  I shoved the pickle around on the plate, fighting the urge to stab it repeatedly with my fork. Martin had gotten a really raw deal.

  Nico came out of the kitchen.

  “So I’m asking all of you to give a huge welcome to our new executive chef, who comes to us by way of the Greenhouse Tavern, Sean Kincaid.”

  My head snapped up.

  Oh, no.

  Oh, hell no.

  It couldn’t be.

  There had to be more than one Sean Kincaid, right?

  If there was, it didn’t matter, because this was the same one.

  The very same jerk-off I’d been stuck in an elevator with for eight minutes last December. My friend Felicia’s now brother-in-law since Felicia and Michael had eloped.

  The man who had brought up every competitive bone in my body, and got me hot and bothered all at the same time. The man who had kissed me like we were going down with the ship and needed to spend our last moments on earth in carnal pleasure. The man who I had spent the next few nights in bed alone both fuming and fantasizing about.

  There he was. In my restaurant. Standing in front of the kitchen door, Nico’s a
rm around him, smiling at everyone.

  Sean looked the same as I remembered. Smoking hot, sexy as hell, arrogant as hell. His expression was friendly, but very confident.

  “Hi, it’s a pleasure to meet all of you.”

  My heart was pounding and the pickle was stuck in my throat. I tried to swallow but nothing happened. I reached for my water glass.

  It was then, as his gaze swept down the table, that he saw me.

  His eyes widened.

  Mine narrowed.

  Then he grinned.

  Well, this was just fan-freaking-tastic. My new boss was possibly the most annoying man on the planet who could simultaneously piss me off and make my nipples hard all at the same time.

  I gripped my fork tighter.

  Well, fuck yeah. My day just got even better.

  I’d been all prepared to come into Bone and reassure the existing staff that I was a decent guy who wasn’t going to go all Gordon Ramsey on their ass. What I had not expected was to see the one woman who could distract me from my paralyzing claustrophobia.

  This was an unexpected pleasure and an added bonus to my new position. Because seated midway down the table was the woman who had made a hell of an impact on me. It was Isla the Sarcastic. Isla the Gorgeous. Isla the Intimidator.

  That was how I’d started to think of her after our encounter in the elevator. Our meeting hadn’t ended well. After a kiss that had given me the world’s biggest hard-on, we had gone into Michael and Felicia’s engagement party, sallied a few parting shots, and promptly avoided each other for the rest of the night.

  But I hadn’t been able to get her out of my head the whole damn party.

  Or truthfully, in the months since.

  She was rude and hated me, and I couldn’t even argue the why of it. I had been a dick to her. My only excuse was that being in a close space was a real challenge for me, and I had gotten on the elevator hoping to be alone so I wouldn’t embarrass myself. Then when the fucking thing had stopped moving, I barely remembered what I said after that until we were safely in the hallway. But I was sure none of it was good because she looked at me like I was a cockroach she wanted to smash with her boot.