Who’s The Boss?

by McCarthy , Erin

  Yet, she was gorgeous, there was no denying that.

  She had both the look and the attitude of an eighties punk rocker.

  She had shoulder-length hair that had been bleached almost white on top, with the bottom strands going darker the lower you looked. She had big expressive brown eyes, a cute little nose with a tiny silver stud in the side, and lush, full lips.

  That I had kissed.

  Kissed, sucked, bit, devoured…

  Lips that I had tried to forget.

  Now she was staring at me in both shock and anger, eyes snapping, mouth wide open.

  It seemed I’d actually made her speechless, which was a hell of a feat from what I remembered of her.

  “Thank you, everyone. I’m excited to be a part of the great team here at Bone,” I said, dragging my gaze off of her.

  I was not there to eye fuck Isla.

  Making sure to make eye contact with each person around the table, I used a reassuring tone. “I know you are running like a well-oiled machine here, so I promise not to come in and change everything up. I want to work with all of you to keep Bone the amazing establishment it is, while kicking it up a notch.”

  It was the usual corporate talk. I’d been in the business long enough to know what was expected of me at a meeting like this. Reassure everyone. Make them feel like nothing is going to change.

  All while knowing you were about to switch out half of the menu.

  No executive chef came in and wanted to serve his predecessor’s food.

  Nico and Sid had told me there were two staff chefs when they had come to me with the job offer. They hadn’t given names, but I was familiar with Martin because he’d been on the scene in Brooklyn for years, long before Brooklyn was trending, and I had known he worked at Bone. He was at least ten years older than me and I had thought it was going to be a challenge to win him over because I knew he would be pissed that he was being passed over.

  I hadn’t known who the second chef was and I hadn’t bothered to ask because that wasn’t relevant to my decision-making process. Call it what you want, but I had a goal, and the staff surrounding me wasn’t going to prevent me from earning that spot. For a decade I’d been working towards the title of executive chef, so once it was offered from a reputable restaurant, I hadn’t been concerned about details.

  Isla rolled her eyes.

  Now I wished I had asked.

  I would have been better prepared for that icy stare. And my cock’s reaction to it.

  There were only two available seats at the table and one was the head spot. I knew better than to sit there. It was a douche move and I wasn’t going to make it.

  The other spot was next to Isla. I walked over to it and eased the chair out. She watched me, her nostrils flaring.

  “Good to see you again,” I murmured.

  “I can’t say the same,” she replied.

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot,” I said. “Maybe we can start over.” That sounded good. Polite. Appropriate. Unlike what I really wanted to say, which was that I wanted to take her out back and finish what we started while she screamed my name.

  “And maybe you can choke on an ox tail.”

  I laughed, not in the least surprised. I also didn’t doubt that she was just as hot for me as I was for her, even if she didn’t like me. Or that I was her new boss. “At least I know where I stand.”

  “Do you two know each other?” Nico said, sitting across from us.

  I didn’t think he’d heard our exchange. I nodded. “We have met briefly. Mutual acquaintances.”

  “It was just for a few minutes,” Isla said. “I didn’t even know Sean was a chef.”

  “Likewise. We were on an elevator together going to the same party.” Then my tongue had been inside her mouth and her body pressed against mine. “That was the extent of our meeting.”

  During which I had come to the conclusion she was both infuriating and arousing.

  “The elevator stopped running. We were stuck for a couple of minutes,” Isla said. “It was no big deal.”

  She sounded remarkably calm for a woman who was clutching a fork like she wanted to jam it into my jugular.

  “I would totally freak if I got stuck on an elevator,” one of the female servers said.

  She had a nose ring and hair that looked like she’d forgotten to brush it in a few days. Ten years ago, she would have been my type. The party girl.

  That gave me pause. I wasn’t sure what the hell was my type now other than women who made no demands on me beyond sex.

  “No one has ever died from being trapped in an elevator,” Isla responded, sipping her water. She gave me an amused look.

  It had been no small secret I didn’t exactly enjoy being trapped. Her amusement gave her the upper hand and I hated that. “Do you have actual statistics on it?” I replied, bumping my knee into hers. “I can guarantee it’s happened at least once.”

  Her hand shook as she set the water back down, revealing either nerves or anger. Maybe both.

  “Yes. The answer is zero.”

  She was lying, of course. Arguing with me just to argue. “Someone has to be the first. It could have been me.”

  “Too bad it wasn’t you.”

  She said that with enough bite that the ten staff members around the table all seemed to pick up on it. I had clearly made a hell of an impression on her in the elevator.

  “Oh, damn,” the male server with dark hair said.

  I was going to have to go on a crash course to learn everyone’s names. I wished Nico had introduced everyone, but since he hadn’t, I was going to have to take the initiative.

  Martin gave a grunt that actually sounded like he was in agreement with Isla.

  Fabulous.

  Not the way I wanted to start off a new position.

  “What the hell is this all about?” Sid asked.

  He was the owner, but very hands-off from what Nico had led me to believe. He was a nineties rap star who had always wanted to own a restaurant. He’d lost a bunch of cash early in his career to a flashy lifestyle and a lousy manager, but now he seemed to be a good guy who kept an eye on his investment, while not pretending to know how to be a house manager.

  When no one responded, he added, “Is there a problem? Isla?”

  I could hear her breathing through her nostrils. She sounded like a bull ready to charge. But when I watched her, I saw she was controlling herself, getting her emotions in check. Her expression was neutral.

  “No, there’s no problem. None whatsoever.”

  “Good. Because if you have a problem, come directly to me. Let’s not hash something out in front of the whole staff.”

  Ouch. She wasn’t going to like that chastisement.

  Isla just nodded. “Understood. My apologies.” She turned to me. “Welcome to Bone, Chef. I’m sure you’ll be an excellent addition to our family.”

  It must have nearly killed her to say that.

  She didn’t seem like the corporate-speak type in the first place and then, well, she hated me.

  Did she have any clue that when I watched her eyes sparking with anger, I just wanted to lean down and finally take another kiss? Take her?

  If we weren’t at the table in front of my new staff, I would right now.

  Instead I settled for making her monstrously uncomfortable. “Thank you, Chef. I’m looking forward to working very closely with you.”

  She visibly swallowed, but didn’t respond. She just turned back to the table at large. “Why don’t we go around the table and introduce yourselves to Sean?”

  “Excellent idea.”

  They all seemed like good people. I didn’t anticipate any issues with any of the front-of-house staff or the management. Just the kitchen. Martin looked like he’d swallowed a lemon and Isla was studiously refusing to look at me. The three of us were going to need to have a private meeting. I had assumed Nico and Sid would tell Martin and Isla about my hiring, but it was clear that they hadn’t, which s
et up a poor dynamic between the three of us from jump.

  Of course, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if they had known in advance. Martin was pissed and offended he hadn’t been given the position and Isla already disliked me. But at least they would have had time to process the information.

  The entrée was brought out and everyone chatted. There was a nervous energy in the air and I didn’t like it. The servers kept looking to Isla but she was quiet. I got the feeling that was never the case. I knew Nico and Sid had wanted this to have a celebratory vibe but it definitely did not.

  “So, any questions you have, direct them to Chef Sean,” Sid said.

  Isla made a sound in the back of her throat.

  Yep. We definitely were going to have to have a private meeting and hash all of this out.

  Because I wasn’t going to let Isla ruin this opportunity for me.

  Nor was I going to suggest she hate fuck me, even though I really wanted her to.

  Two

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said to my best friends as we sat in Savannah’s apartment. I leaned against her couch cushions and rubbed my temples. My head was pounding. “I’m going to have to quit my job. I cannot work for Sean. I’m not even sure I could work with him as peers. I sure in the hell can’t work for him.”

  The very thought made my blood pressure increase.

  Not even the sight of Sully stumble-walking could improve my mood.

  “You can’t quit,” Savannah said as she hovered behind her son, arms out to catch him if he fell. “You love working at Bone.”

  “How hilarious is it that your restaurant is named Bone?” Dakota asked.

  She said that about once every six months, straight out of nowhere. She should no longer find it funny, but that was Dakota. She was easily amused. Right now she was lying on her stomach on the floor, making faces at Sully as he walked toward her.

  “Seriously,” Leah said, sitting on the couch next to me. “What would quitting accomplish other than potentially ruining your career?”

  “Sean isn’t that bad once you get to know him,” Felicia said, lounging in a chair, her hand over her tiny baby bump. “He’s just…” She tossed her dark hair back, clearly searching for the right words.

  “See?” I said, pointing at her. “You don’t even know what to say and he’s your brother-in-law.”

  “He isn’t really like Michael at all,” she admitted. “For brothers they’re very different. But Sean isn’t a bad guy. He’s a hard worker, he is nice to his mother even though she constantly picks at him, and he brings lovely gifts.”

  “He’s arrogant.”

  “Confident,” she corrected. “There’s a big difference.”

  “Some people might call you arrogant, Isla,” Dakota said. “It’s a tough city and you’ve worked hard to get where you are. You deserve to feel proud of yourself. Maybe that’s how Sean feels. He’s worked hard and earned the right to be a little impressed with himself.”

  I had no answer for that and that also annoyed me.

  “We’re supposed to be entering a Best of Brooklyn cook-off over Memorial Day weekend. That means we have to plan a whole special barbeque-inspired summer menu, which means I have to sit there and keep my mouth shut and do whatever Sean wants to do. I’m not sure I can handle that. I’ve had ideas for this cook-off for months.”

  “How do you know he won’t listen to you? Run your ideas past him,” Savannah suggested. “He can’t act like a dictator.”

  “You haven’t worked in the food industry,” I told her dryly. “It’s full of dictators.”

  “Then you should be able to handle Sean.”

  “At least he’s hot,” Dakota said, rolling onto her back so Sully could climb on her stomach. She made faces at him.

  He was. Which was not a positive. It was hell. Because he was hot and my body knew it. I hated that he turned me on, just a little. Not a lot, but a little. Okay, I was lying. A lot. I wanted to climb him like a tree.

  “How is that relevant?” I asked.

  “Having a hot boss is never a bad thing.”

  “You have a hot boss,” Leah said. “The coach is a seriously attractive man.”

  “He’s not my boss,” Dakota said. “And he’s grumpy. Like, seriously grumpy. That is so not attractive to me.”

  “And arrogance isn’t attractive to me,” I said. “See how that works? It doesn’t matter if someone is hot if you don’t like them as a person.”

  I pulled Nico up in my contacts and typed out a text that I was quitting. I deleted it. I typed it again. There was no way I was sending it. I couldn’t quit. I groaned. “This sucks so much.”

  “Are we ordering food now?” Felicia said.

  Obviously my crisis wasn’t hers. “I’m having a meltdown and all you care about is eating?” I asked.

  “I’m pregnant and starving!” she protested. “You have to feed and water an expectant mother.”

  Food was my passion, my love. I had always enjoyed helping my mom in the kitchen as a kid, and then during my middle school years I had become obsessed with cooking shows, to the point my parents had sent me to a junior chef summer camp. But then in high school, after both my mom and my dad passed away, I had thought I wanted to be an actress. It had seemed like a great outlet for my overabundance of emotions. I was a girl who bottled up her negative feelings and then exploded for the dumbest reason ever.

  Acting had given me a voice. Along with a way to avoid the memories of cooking with my parents.

  But trying to succeed in the entertainment business had meant nothing but rejection and poverty. There are only so many auditions you can go on before you start to think the universe is telling you something. When my grandmother had passed away when I was twenty-two after a brief fight with ovarian cancer, I’d lost my desire to be front and center on stage. I wanted all my memories back, to when life was easy and good and my parents were around to love me. So I’d returned to my first love– cooking.

  It had taken me years to get to the position of respect and responsibility I had and I would be an idiot to walk away from Bone. It had become a place of stability and happiness for me, with people I really cared about and I wasn’t going to lose that.

  But I wasn’t sure I had it in me to take orders from a guy who drove me that insane. I would need all my zen and then some.

  My phone notification dinged. I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced down at it.

  It was a text from Sean. We’d been given his number by management and likewise he had gotten mine.

  We should get together. We need to work out a few things. Drinks tonight?

  I made a face. That was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

  “Sean wants to meet for drinks,” I announced.

  “Like a date?” Dakota asked, sounding gleeful.

  “No! To talk about our work environment.” Which was going to suck. There was no way around it. I knew I couldn’t look for another job without Nico and Sid finding out about it. That was the way it was in the industry– everyone knew everyone on some level and people talked. I’d have to quit first before I started shopping around for a new position.

  I didn’t want to leave the restaurant that I felt at home in. I had worked with the previous chef to get Bone on the map. The staff were my friends and I didn’t want to be pushed out of my turf.

  My rent had just been raised eight percent. Which doesn’t sound like much but trust me, in Brooklyn that’s a substantial chunk of change when your rent is already stupid high. I had a studio because I didn’t want roommates anymore (I’m not easy to live with, I can admit to that), so I was on the hook for a hefty rent. I can’t say that I had exactly prepared for a period of unemployment. My savings account wasn’t well padded. Quitting my job would be a financial disaster as well as emotionally difficult.

  One I was almost willing to take because… Sean Kincaid and his smug face. Ugh.

  “Sean does grow on you,” Felicia said, trying to be enc
ouraging.

  “Like mold?” I asked dryly as I stared at his text message.

  Damn it. I was going to have to say yes. I needed to establish that he wasn’t going to be the big man in the kitchen with me. I was his peer, no matter what title he had been given.

  “Don’t do something impulsive,” Savannah said. “You’re always telling me not to be impulsive. You need to take your own advice.”

  There was nothing worse than having friends who knew you so well they could throw your advice back in your face when you least wanted them to.

  Sully toddled over to me and grabbed at my phone. I gave it to him, knowing it would be returned with baby drool on it. But his little round face was too cute to resist.

  “I hate that you’re right,” I said to Savannah, frowning.

  “Did you just say I’m right?” she asked, looking very pleased with that fact.

  Okay, so I might be known as the hard-ass in my friend group. That was probably true. But I didn’t trust people. I’d been given too many examples first-hand of how selfish people could be. Always out for themselves. I liked to proceed with caution when it came to trusting people. I didn’t like to lose or get hurt. Who did, right?

  I didn’t trust Sean Kincaid. He might throw me under the bus. Sabotage my career for his own gain. Or the more likely outcome would be that he would just be an irritating and demanding boss.

  That’s why I needed to pretend he wasn’t hot. I had to forget that he had delicious eyes and broad shoulders and muscular arms that could haul a woman up and toss her on the nearest bed. I needed to be in control.

  I would go for drinks. I gave Sully a smile. “Can I have my phone back? Please?” I held my hand out.

  He gave me a gummy grin and gave it to me.

  The minute I typed the words agreeing to meet Sean, I pictured those very eyes and those damn muscles and for whatever reason, my stupid mind visualized him peeling his shirt off and stepping into a hot, wet, shower. With me.