by Aria Cole
“Yes, Chef?” Her berry pink lips parted, and I had an instant vision of her on her knees, my dick covered in that pretty pink lipstick.
I swallowed the anxiety crawling up my throat and asked, “Can you expedite for a bit? I need a minute.”
Her eyes softened instantly, looking me up and down as if to make sure I was okay. And hell, I didn’t know why, but her concern for me felt good.
“Sure thing, Chef.” She nodded, and I placed a hand at her back, tracking behind her to the kitchen as the assistant hostess stepped behind the stand to take over for Delaney.
“Thanks, I owe you.”
Her eyebrow arched playfully, full lips curving and making my heart do a weird fucking flip-flop thing. “I'll hold you to that.”
“Then I'll look forward to it.” I shot her grin before stepping outside and fishing in my pocket for a smoke. Leaning back on the wall, I lit it and took my first lungful, the nearest thing to relaxation I ever felt seeping through my veins.
My eyes landed on the name plaque on the side of the brick wall that read éloïse and the address. I’d come a long way in the years since I'd been walking these streets. First, as a student at the French-language school, something my mother had insisted on to “give me back my French roots.” I'd always rolled my eyes and complained about the little tie I was required to wear with that stupid uniform. But the joke was on her because those French roots had formed me more than anything else.
After my mom had passed and my grandmother took me in, she taught me all the recipes her parents had taught her. French stews and ratatouilles, she brought it all to life in her small kitchen. By the time I was a full-blown teenager, I'd lost my way, hanging with all the wrong people and too willing to put every different drug I could find in my arm or up my nose.
But when grandma passed and she'd left me a small inheritance, I'd made the best decision of my life and licked my wounds at the French culinary institute in Paris.
For two years, I lived and breathed traditional French cooking, learning all the basics again and putting my own spin on classic dishes.
Those were the best years of my life, and Grandma had managed to save me yet again in her own, quiet way.
Thank God for that woman.
It was why I'd named éloïse after her.
I owed that woman my life.
I had no idea I was about to owe another woman the second half of it.
I stubbed out my smoke, ducking back into the kitchen and washing my hands quickly. I stepped out of the bathroom just in time to hear Delaney barking orders at a line cook. She was speaking to him in rapid-fire Italian, his head hanging as he nodded quickly, hands working to re-fire a steak.
“Three strikes and you're out, you got it? I won't send another poor excuse for a dish out of those doors.” Delaney ended in English, leveling him with a hard-as-nails glare.
My cock throbbed behind my chef pants.
Jesus Christ, she was a mini-me.
The walking, talking, sexy female version of me.
But then she did the thing I never had it in me to do. Where I usually walked away for a cigarette to calm my nerves, she paused, sidling up next to him and teaching him to test the doneness at the edge with the corner of the spatula.
He nodded, promising he would do just that next time, and she sent him that luscious smile and patted him on the back. “Thank you.”
I stood stock-still, the chaos of the kitchen silent to my ears when she turned, walking back to the warming station where she picked up the next ticket to be expedited.
My heart shattered against my ribs as I watched her, totally fucking thunderstruck by not just her beauty, not just her wit, but her absolute fucking ability to own the kitchen.
She was a woman after my own heart.
She was sexier than hell
She was every damn thing I never realized I was missing, and it took every single ounce of control I had not to haul her off into the walk-in pantry and get lost in her until everything felt right again.
Watching Delaney in the kitchen just became my new favorite pastime.
THREE
Delaney
“This is fancy shit, Lane. Look at you, all upscale!” Gia, my best friend since middle school, hooted.
“It’s not upscale. Believe me.” I shook my head. “It’s just hosting anyway, not like I’m plating those fancy dishes or anything.” I wrapped another fork and knife up in a white linen napkin and stacked it on the pile with the rest.
“But you said the chef had you working in back the first night you were here. Maybe you can start making salads or desserts or—”
I shook my head. “I don’t even know if I want to be in the food business. I’d still like to go to school, get my associates maybe.”
“Associates in what?” She shoved a sucker in her mouth, propped on top of a barstool with her legs crossed. The perpetual thirteen-year-old that was Gia. I loved her for it, but even I knew we’d need real jobs someday.
“I could do secretarial—”
“That sounds boring as shit.” She popped the sucker in her mouth obnoxiously.
“What does?” Chef Jean-Luc walked up behind the bar, brushing against me as he punched a number into the computer screen. He was so close, his scent traveling up my body and warming my insides. Working side by side with the very sexy, very moody Jean-Luc was proving a challenge.
“Lane says she’s going to be a secretary when she grows up.” Gia cocked her head to the side with a wry smile. I rolled my eyes.
“Secretary of what?” Chef scowled. That look on his face had become an embarrassingly regular occurrence in my presence. I was beginning to think he despised even being around me.
“I dunno, a secretary. A medical biller, something behind a keyboard.”
Chef only arched an eyebrow in response. “You should listen to her. That sounds boring as shit.”
Gia belted out a laugh, rising from the chair and sliding on her coat. “I’ve got to run, girl. But I’ll text you later?”
“Text you later.” I blew her a kiss as she plowed backward through the front doors or éloïse.
Part of me wanted to run away with her.
Uncle Nero hadn’t been kidding when he’d said éloïse needed help. I couldn’t figure out why. Everyone knew Jean-Luc Martel; he was a regular personality in the streets of Chelsea and had appeared on a few morning talk shows. He was the up-and-coming celebrity chef to watch right now, and when Food TV had come calling, he’d made waves when he’d declined, then opened his own restaurant right in the neighborhood where he’d grown up. Éloïse was one of the first chic restaurants to hit the streets of Williamsburg, and a wave of them seemed to follow right after. It was clear Jean-Luc wasn’t following the trend; he was the trend.
“A computer job isn’t for you, ya know,” he offered as he punched out on the computer screen.
“And you would know this, how?” I rested my hip on the edge of the bar, taking him in. The thick forearms decorated with dark slashes of ink, colorful snakes and designs trailing up muscle.
The other thing about Jean-Luc Martel—he was drop-dead gorgeous.
Tall, tattooed, and totally badass.
I probably would have sighed and swooned at his feet if it weren’t for the grumpy damn mood he always seemed to be in.
“You think you’d really be happy sitting behind a computer all day?” He stood to his full height, towering over me well over a foot.
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Sure.”
A small huff escaped his lips before he shook his head. “Wanna bet?”
I frowned, not sure what exactly he meant, when he took me by the elbow and hauled me alongside him and back to the kitchen.
“I’ve got fifty more napkins to roll. I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove, but—”
“Shut up, Delaney.” His hands snaked around my torso, fingers weaving with mine before he spread our hands on the cool, stainless-steel counter in the kitchen
. “You come alive in the kitchen.” Our fingertips trailed across the overhead warmer, where I’d stood, expediting the food my first night here. It’d been the most exhilarating thing I’d ever done. “I can see it in your eyes.” His lips were right there, humming just out of reach of my earlobe, though close enough to singe. “I feel it in the way you move.”
I sucked in frantic breaths of air. I shifted, feeling the press of his hard body against my back, from the tops of my thighs up past my shoulder.
“Someone like you needs fire.” He trailed a finger up my inner arm, raising goose bumps in his wake. “We’re the same, Delaney.”
I swallowed, for once in my life, completely at a loss for words.
It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last that Jean-Luc Martel left me speechless.
“I don’t think we’re the same.” Stubborn defiance spat from my lips. “I may be good in a kitchen, but that’s because I was raised in one, not because it’s my passion.”
One hand slid into my hair, causing my eyes to flutter closed before I could stop them. How did he have this power over me?
“You came alive in my kitchen,” he husked at my ear. “It’s all over your face.”
My heart hammered furiously, my palms tingling with arousal as the crotch of my panties flooded with desire. But I still couldn’t shake the moody way he growled and spat orders at everyone he met. Myself included. This guy didn’t have a polite bone in his body, and something about that rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t believe he was malicious, just…too busy to be bothered with things like manners. Or friendly conversation. “You’re seeing things, Chef.”
I heard the curve of his smile in his chuckle, felt the breath that washed across my neck with his words. “My vision has never been clearer, Delaney. I think it’s yours that needs checkin’.”
CONTINUE READING…
Acknowledgments
I have to thank my ever so loving and patient husband. You truly are my HEA, babe. < 3 Thank you to Aria's Assassins for keeping my fire burning. I am forever grateful for your love and cheerleading! I can't thank the ArdentProse team enough. You ladies make my life so much easier and I love you for it! To my ladies... the ladies that love to get lost in books about true and last lasting love... THANK YOU!!! Writing books you love is what keeps me going. You are my rock stars!
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Also by Aria Cole
Black
Swan
White
Scarlet
Bending Bethany
Chasing Charlie
Taking Tessa
The Long Ball
Banger
Cheeky Christmas
Under Construction
Under Her Hood
Valentine For Hire
Sweet Valentine
The Modern Fairy Tale Collection
Under Pressure
