Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Hazel Parker

“Not right away. Tell me, where are we now in relation to Ms. White’s restaurant? The one she’s going to be working in today?”

  “DuMonde’s?” he answers. “Only a few blocks.”

  “That’s perfect. You can drop me off here. I’ll call you later this afternoon when I need to be picked up.”

  Curtis glances at me again in the rearview. I was right—his eyebrows are practically fighting with his hairline for dominance.

  “Will you be joining Ms. White for lunch, then, sir?” he asks, connecting the dots.

  “That I am.”

  “And will you be picking her up from her restaurant?”

  “That I will.”

  “And how will you conduct her to the location of said meal?”

  “The old-fashioned way, Curtis. We’ll walk. I have no doubt that Ms. White can direct us to a local establishment of good repute.” I get out of the car and wave to Curtis. “Really. I’ll be fine.”

  “As you like, sir,” he says, rolls up his window, and drives away.

  The florist, while she tries to be helpful, seems intent on selling me roses.

  “First time having flowers delivered to her?” she guesses.

  “First time,” I confirm.

  “Our luxury red suede box of three dozen preserved red roses is quite popular.”

  Roses seem so generic. I say so.

  “Red roses, maybe,” she concedes, then tries another angle. “Perhaps copper roses instead. They’re a fairly new hybrid breed and exceedingly eye-catching.”

  “I’m sure they are, but I’m looking for…something else. Something unconventional.”

  “Perhaps you’d care to browse the store?” she asks. “See what grabs your attention?”

  “I think so, thanks.” The florist leaves me to wander the rows upon rows of increasingly elaborate flower arrangements in their cold cases.

  On a whim, I reverse my path and go back to the first case. There, inside, is exactly what I’m looking for.

  “Find something you like?” says the florist, coming to stand by my side.

  “Yes,” I answer definitely, pointing. “These. How many of these do you have?”

  The florist hesitates a moment, clearly disappointed that she couldn’t talk me into something more rose-oriented.

  “How many would you like?” she asks.

  I take out my wallet. “All of them,” I reply.

  Chapter 13 - Steph

  I briefly consider just throwing on my chef’s jacket and going on to work as I am, but decide that’s a little too close to doing the walk of shame. I can spare a few precious minutes when I am back in my apartment to throw on some fresh clothes.

  Curtis is waiting patiently outside for me. He holds the door open as I get back into the car.

  “To which of your restaurants will we be going, Ms. White?” he asks once he is back inside himself.

  “DuMonde’s,” I answer. “And thank you again for driving me. Cabs can be hard to come by on a Sunday morning.”

  “Not at all. As I said, it’s on my way back to Mr. Stone’s house, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, even if it wasn’t.”

  He smiles at me, and I return the gesture. I had watched his face closely and listened even closer to him as we had navigated the sparse traffic to my apartment building, looking and listening for signs of…what, contempt, however mild? After all, he had found me in the kitchen earlier, gathering up my things, an unexpected morning guest, obviously there at the behest of his boss.

  Would he think me cheap? I had wondered. Low class?

  I needn’t have worried. He had greeted me cordially and offered me coffee. I had declined as graciously as I could, having been chomping at the bit to get to work as soon as possible. I wanted to get as much knocked out as I could before lunchtime rolled around.

  “Thanks just the same,” I say. “You’re a lifesaver.” It’s only a short ride to the restaurant, but I’m curious. “How long have you worked for Tr—ah, Mr. Stone, Curtis?” I ask.

  “Five years. I came into the household with Mr. Stone’s former wife and stayed on after she relocated.”

  Relocated? That is an exceptionally tactful way of saying that she split the scene. I get the feeling that Curtis would balk at saying a bad word about anyone. I like him more and more already.

  Also, that raises even more questions in my mind. Trent had been married? For how long? What had happened to sour the relationship? Why had Curtis elected to stay with the ex-husband, rather than exiting with the ex-wife? My curiosity is inflamed rather than satisfied, but we have arrived at DuMonde’s.

  “Thanks one more time, Curtis,” I say as I get out of the passenger seat.

  “Not at all, Ms. White,” he says again. “Have a good day.”

  He drives off and I watch him go, the last vestige of a whirlwind evening.

  Well, maybe not the last vestige. I have a whole stack of memories I can leaf through whenever I want, and a visit from Trent himself to look forward to later today.

  For now, though, it’s time to get down to business.

  Even though we don’t open until one on Sundays, there’s still plenty to do beforehand, both to get ready for the day and week ahead. Daniel, my sous chef, clocks in not long after me on these days so we can talk, plan, and prepare.

  He is already in the kitchen, going over some notes and nursing a coffee of his own. I pluck it out of his hand, take a sip, and return it to him.

  “Hey,” he says, “you’re going to be a mooch on top of being late?”

  “Boss’s privilege,” I say, punching him lightly on the arm. “Is there coffee made?”

  “Brewing now. I would have picked you up one from Java Zone if I’d have known you were going to be tardy getting here,” he replies, waggling his to-go cup. “As it is, I’m sorry you drank from mine because you’re obviously getting sick.”

  “I am?”

  He looks at me squarely. “In all the years I’ve known you, I have never once seen you come in late for work. That includes the blackout two years ago when we were closed anyway. Hence, you must be coming down with something.”

  I laugh. I’m feeling in exceptionally fine spirits. “No sickness here, Daniel, just ordinary, run-of-the-mill running-behindedness.”

  “All right,” he says, unconvinced. “You sure? I get the strong feeling you’re not telling me something.”

  I’ve known Daniel a long time, so he’s as much a friend as he is my sous chef, but I don’t feel like sharing the events of last night with him, not even a sanitized version. In fact, I don’t feel like sharing the evening with anyone, at least not yet. I need some time to process it all, and I won’t have that after I get my head in the game here.

  “Right as rain,” I say. “Let’s get to work.”

  I can put Daniel off as far as recounting recent events, but Tira is another matter. She shows up about an hour after I arrive at DuMonde’s. Even though we’re still closed, Daniel lets her in, in customary deference to my best friend, and leads her back to the kitchen.

  “You weren’t answering your phone,” she tells me. “You also didn’t return my texts, either last night…or this morning.” She gives me an evil smile. “Now, dish. How did it go?”

  “How did what go?” Daniel inquires.

  “I had an independent job yesterday,” I say. Then, to Tira, “It went very well, thanks.”

  “Well, make me a Bloody Mary and run me through it,” she says.

  “I don’t know, T. I was late getting here—” Tira’s eyes flick to Daniel’s, and they exchange a look. “—and we have a lot of work to do before we can open up today, and—”

  “Nope,” she interjects. “Sorry, not going to take ‘no’ for an answer. Bloody Mary, good story, in that order, please.” She walks off towards the bar area.

  “Go on,” Daniel urges. “Take five. I’ve got this.”

  I join Tira at the bar and mix up her drink the way she likes it, light on the blood, heavy on the octa
ne.

  “Thanks,” she says, taking a pull and then setting it aside. “You were late getting to work? Are you sick?”

  “Why does everyone think I’m sick?” I ask the empty restaurant. “I’m human…I can be late once in a blue moon, can’t I?”

  “A regular person can, yes,” she says. “But when it comes to DuMonde’s, or either of your other two outfits, you’re more than human.” She looks me in the eye. “So, tell. What’s up?”

  I can’t help it. I break into a foolish grin, which I not so successfully try to hide behind my hand.

  “No!” Tira exclaims. “You didn’t!”

  “Well,” I say and nod.

  “Ah!” she cries. “You two-dollar hussy!”

  “Actually, I’m a four hundred- and fifty-two-dollar hussy,” I clarify for her. “And fourteen cents.”

  She looks at me quizzically.

  “That’s how much Trent spent on the meal last night,” I say.

  She pokes me in the stomach. “‘Trent,’ is it? We graduated from ‘Mr. Stone’ to ‘Trent,’ have we?”

  I grin some more. “He insisted.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet he did,” Tira laughs. “I’ll bet he insisted on quite a bit. So?”

  “So what?”

  “Did you deliver? Or a better question—did he deliver?”

  “T!” I say in mock outrage. “Those aren’t questions you ask a lady!”

  “A lady who still has bed-head,” she smirks. “You might want to re-do your ponytail before you open up the doors today.”

  I blush and begin doing so.

  Tira giggles and drums her feet on the floor. “Ohh, this is great! I’m so happy for you! You haven’t been…ah, delivered to, in the longest time!”

  If I blush any harder, I’ll probably end up looking sunburned.

  “So don’t keep me in suspense!” she says. “Details! I want details! And don’t spare the adjectives!”

  “Well,” I fumble. “I like him…”

  “Oh, you clever wordsmith, I would hope so. Tell me the truth, is it any different, making it with a billionaire? I mean, a drop-dead gorgeous billionaire?”

  “Tira,” I begin, then falter.

  “Yeah?”

  I go back to grinning like a moron. “I’m sore.”

  She cackles and shuffles her feet some more. “So make me another drink and tell me all about it.”

  “But you haven’t finished the one you’ve already got.”

  “Ah, but when I say, ‘all about it,’ I mean ‘all, all about it.’ I want at least two drinks’ worth of sordid details!”

  If I want to be able to get back to work, Tira must be pacified. I give in, make her another drink, and begin to talk.

  It ends up being a three-drink story, and Tira leaves afterward, tottering a bit but undeniably happy. She hugs me hard at the door and insists I call her later with an update. I promise her I will, and she cabs off into the late morning.

  Daniel shoots me a questioning look as I return to the kitchen, but remains silent on the subject, for which I’m grateful. Telling my tale to Tira has seriously cut into my prep time, and we are soon hustling to make it back up.

  Eleven o’clock arrives, and with it, a tap at the locked front doors.

  It’s Trent. I wonder how he got here since Curtis is nowhere in sight.

  “Hi,” he says when I open up to let him in. “I thought you might need to eat a little early.”

  For just a moment there, I had been thinking of begging off from the outing. There’s still so much to be done! But when I lay eyes on him, any thoughts of canceling fly out of my head.

  Besides, my stomach reminds me that I haven’t put anything into it besides coffee so far today. I can take the time to feed myself, I reason.

  Daniel assures me he can hold down the fort for a while longer. He also gives me a look that says light is dawning in his head, but he has the courtesy not to let on otherwise.

  “So, where are we going?” I ask once Trent and I are out on the sidewalk.

  “I should be asking you that,” he replies. “This is your territory. I know what I like, but I feel like you might have a more professional opinion.”

  He’s right. It’s one of the blessings and curses of being a chef.

  “How about Sandy’s?” I suggest. “It’s good food and just around the corner.”

  “Sandy’s it is, then. Lead on.”

  The brunch crowd at the little restaurant is gone, and the lunch crowd has yet to begin filtering in, so we are able to get a table by the windows with no trouble. We order and then regard each other.

  “So,” I say.

  “So,” he counters.

  “I guess you’re glad I didn’t turn out to be a total firebug this time.”

  He toys with his silverware. “I’m glad for lots of things.”

  Here I go, blushing again. I’m beginning to feel like a human strobe light.

  “Plus, I don’t hold last week’s episode against you,” he adds. “I know it wasn’t intentional.”

  “I seem to remember you feeling somewhat differently at the time.”

  “Heat of the moment.” He pauses. “No pun intended.”

  “Curtis is great,” I say, changing the subject. “You’re lucky to have someone like him working for you.”

  “You’re right about that. Lucky he’s here, lucky he stayed when my ex-wife packed up and left.”

  This seems like as good an opening as any.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Melanie happened,” he sighs. “Hurricane Melanie, as I came to think of her. She’s more like a force of nature than a person.”

  “Destructive?”

  “Temperamental. Especially when things aren’t the way she wants them.”

  “So things weren’t lining up with her plans?”

  Trent looks out the window. “Oh, you know the old story—one member in the relationship feels the other works too much, wants him to back off and spend more time at home, but the workload just keeps growing and growing. He spends more and more time at the office. She goes from irritated to outright angry and ends up staying that way. Then, one day, she’s gone.

  “It threw me for a bit of a loop,” he goes on. “I found myself suddenly, unexpectedly single, something I had never dreamed would happen again.”

  “And did the women line up at your door?” I ask. “If nothing else, a single billionaire must have drawn them to you like sharks.”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. If they were, they never made it past my secretaries. Pretty much the majority of my time is spent in the office, so if they wanted to get at me, they would have had to have tried there.”

  “So that golf outing was a fluke, then?”

  “Purely a business thing. A lot of deals are made over the phone, but it might surprise you to know how many are made out on the green.”

  I can’t help it. “And the supermodel?”

  He smiles without much humor. “That was a fix-up. Friends trying to push her and me together.”

  “So, no fireworks, then?”

  He shakes his head. “Not so much as a spark.”

  Luckily, the food arrives at this point, giving me a few minutes to think. Why am I being so territorial? Clearly, last night hadn’t just been some wild fling or we wouldn’t be here now. What are his intentions, though?

  As if guessing my thoughts, Trent says, “Steph, a lot of unexpected things have happened to me over the past year, and a lot of those things have happened over the last several days. I want you to know that last night meant something to me.”

  I poke at my salad without interest, just moving the vegetables around. “So what happens now?” I ask at last.

  “What happens now is that I walk you back to the restaurant so you can get back to work. I have to go into the office myself for a bit.”

  “On a Sunday,” I chide.

  He gives me a handsome smile. “Pot, meet kettle.”

  “Tou
ché.”

  “Anyway, I would like to see you again.”

  “I’d like that, too. I hate to say it, but I’m slammed this week. Trust me; you do not want to see me at the end of the workday.”

  “I respectfully disagree. How about this? Why don’t you pencil me in for dinner on Wednesday?”

  “I won’t even be kind of caught up by then,” I protest with a genuine stab of regret.

  “People like us are never caught up,” he counters, “at least not to our satisfaction. Out of all the days that are bad for you, is Wednesday the least terrible?”

  I have to answer quickly before I can talk myself out of it.

  “Wednesday it is.”

  Trent walks me back to DuMonde’s as promised. By now, it is just after noon, and the springtime weather is nothing short of gorgeous. The sun shines down on us from a cloudless blue sky, and the lightest of breezes accompanies us as we make our way up the sidewalk.

  At the front door to the restaurant, he kisses me for the first time today, and, for the moment, all of my urgency to get back into the kitchen disappears. I could stand out on the sidewalk with him like that for days.

  “See you on Wednesday,” he says, stepping back. “Six o’clock?”

  “Six o’clock,” I confirm, a little faintly. I wonder if I’ll be floating back into the restaurant after he leaves.

  Up pulls Curtis with Trent’s car. He nods at me through the window and I wave back. Trent climbs in, gives me a wave himself, shuts the door, and then they’re gone. I’m left standing there, feeling suddenly hot and bothered, but in a good way.

  I go back to planning the week with Daniel, only now I have to carve out some time on Wednesday evening. Actually, I don’t feel that I have to carve out the time; I feel that I get to carve it out. Were it for anything else, I would likely have found a way to worm out of it and come in anyway, but I don’t think of doing so this time.

  Daniel is a lot like me, in that he lives to work in the kitchen. Unlike me, though, he has a life outside of the restaurant business, but when he’s on the clock, he’s one hundred percent committed. He’s got everything set up for today’s business, and we open at one, right on time.

  I’m still thinking about Trent as the day goes by, but I’m more focused on what I’m doing. Okay, I’m at least equally focused, to the point where I’m not making any mistakes.