by Amy Brent
“What?” The way he shouted it made her jump, even though she’d expected he’d do as much.
“I know what you’re like as an employer,” she said, even as her stomach and body began to quiver. “I need to know what you’re like as a boyfriend, before I can make a decision.”
“Well, I’ll make it easy for you, then,” he snapped. He pulled out his wallet and counted out another thousand dollars, and shoved them across the table. “Get out of my house,” he said.
It took everything she had not to lose her composure as she pushed away from the table and took off the apron. I don’t need this shit anyway. She folded the apron and left it on the counter and headed up the stairs—and she made the mistake that undid her resolve: she looked at him.
His face had gone a shade whiter, and at first she thought he was angry, which prompted her to hurry that much faster and grab her bag. She was heading down the stairs when he appeared at the foot of the stairs. He looked infuriated. She was about to protest that he’d told her to get out when he said, “Please, don’t leave. I’m sorry. I’m a fool.”
You should leave. He wouldn’t stop her—she could see that now. The pain in his eyes was haunting to endure, and for a moment she felt bad for him, until she remembered how confusing he’d made everything. She steeled her resolve and continued to the door.
“Her name was Talia,” he said, suddenly. “She was amazing in all the right ways. I proposed to her. We rented St. Patrick’s for the ceremony. Everything was going well—and then the priest says the bit about ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ and someone actually stood up.
“He said he was her husband, that her name was actually Rowena, that they’d been trying to con me into giving them God-knows how much money—and I had given her a fair sum—but then the checks stopped coming. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew it was true. Since then, as I said, I’ve learned better.”
She dropped her bag on the stairs, exasperated. She didn’t question that he was telling the truth, but she was frustrated with his push-em-pull-you way of dealing with whatever this was between them. (Could it really be a relationship if she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in one with him?) He sighed a breath of relief. “Thank you,” he said, swallowing. “I know I shouldn’t have pushed you away if I didn’t really mean it—”
“Then why did you?” she demanded.
He shrugged helplessly, holding his head in his hands. “Instinct,” he said, finally. “You don’t get to be where I am unless you can drive a hard bargain.”
“I am not a company to flip or an asset to gain,” she snarled. “I don’t need you—”
“Don’t you?”
She remembered those weeks of numbness, when the mere act of getting a glass seemed like too much of a hassle. He kissed her, now, softly, gently. I’m sorry. “It’s been a long time,” he murmured. “I have some bad habits—I know I do, but I can make you happy if you let me.”
“So what do you want from me, then?” she asked, the heat from his body nearly taking her breath away. “Do you want me to be your chef, or your girlfriend?”
“Why can’t you be both?” he asked, pressing her against the wall, one hand firm on her breast, the other pulling her arm behind her back, while he laid a trail of soft kisses down her throat. “You get me in a way that no other woman could. Let’s just keep it at that, can we?”
We could, she thought, feeling the twitchy, throbbing staff of his cock pressing against her thighs, reminding her of the pleasure it could bring, what it felt like to be awakened for the first time in a long time. He’s right, she realized. If he hadn’t come to her she’d still be slaving away in the kitchens of the Aviary, insensate and dead to the world. But is it enough?
He seemed to have read her thoughts, because he whispered, “Yes.” She ran her fingers down his rippling back, feeling the stern quiver of his muscles as he pressed his body against hers, hot with desire and need. God, how she wanted to believe it. If you didn’t you’d be gone already. If you didn’t you wouldn’t be here, like this, with every fiber of your body begging him to touch you. Suddenly she was able to place that gnawing ache that had been playing at the back of her mind all day—she craved the feeling of his energy against her skin. Her hands began working at his trousers and shirt as he began to work her dress off over her shoulders—and where their skin touched it was as if their bodies fused together.
More.
“I need you,” he said, hoarsely, his lips pressing warm kisses to her breasts, his tongue drawing a path over her body, warm and cold. A shudder began somewhere deep inside her, and as he eased her to the floor she felt his fingers teasing the folds of her pussy, and she could feel something inside her making her move like that, her body twisting and undulating against his in time to a secret primal rhythm, scenting her lust with a wildness that brought out an urgency that she didn’t know she was capable of.
He lowered her onto the stairs and she could feel his cheeks against the inside of her thighs, and hear him breathing in her scent, savoring it, making her wait, giving her imagination time to toy with the anticipation of his tongue against the flesh of her pussy, flicking against the nub of her clit, so that when he finally touched her all it took was the gentlest of caresses, slow and delicate, to send a rush of pleasure through her body.
The surrender was complete—she felt her body spread itself wide, allowing the world to flood in and see her, and her mind seemed to spread, rising on waves of joy, each one higher than the one before, so that when he finally took her she felt weightless, just a being of air and light, pure joy. Somewhere in her mind she was faintly aware that he was inside her, that the tightness was its own source of pleasure, but it all seemed tangential to the feeling of letting it all go in one crescendoing cry.
It wouldn’t last, of course, but as they lay against each other, their bodies fitting together perfectly, it didn’t matter at all. As long as they were together—the purity was something she didn’t quite understand, but she knew that she wanted more. As she felt his heart beat with her palm on his chest, slow and strong, she wondered that it’d taken her so long to accept this.
* * *
She heard Zachary say, “I have a present for you.”
It’d better be a fucking diamond, she thought. She looked up from piping the chestnut foam on top of the sixty spoonfuls of whitefish tartar, and arranging the tiny sliver of chive on top of everything. Three hours to go before the party, and she still had to clarify the consommé, bake the tuiles, flavor the foie gras, temper the chocolate, and make the red wine reduction. She’d planned everything out, and everything was going according to schedule, but right now was hardly the time to spring surprises on her. That was one of the misconceptions that people had about cooking and being a chef: it was fine to be surprising in the conception of new dishes, but the grind involved in getting dishes out in time didn’t allow for any surprises. It was all about following the damn recipe and doing everything by the book. Surprises were for amateurs.
“Come on in,” said Zach. “Don’t worry, she’s nicer than Chris.”
It took her a moment to recall that Zach had backed Christopher Temporino of Wrapped, one of the most faddish restaurants, even by New York City standards: exotic ingredients, served on slabs of shale or tree trunks, flavored smokes, improbable foams. It was at least as much a chemistry lab as it was a restaurant, but the word on the street was that Chris was burning through personnel. Part of it was that he used so many strange techniques to create his food, techniques that most culinary institutes hadn’t even heard of (where the hell did you buy liquid nitrogen?), but most of it was his ceaseless drive for perfection.
And now, she, a culinary school graduate who had only worked as a line cook in a second-rate restaurant in Small Town USA, was getting his sous. Nicole recognized the man right away—his cheerful demeanor, his trademark round glasses and short spikey hair that sported frosted tips, reminding her of a geeky version of Everclear’s le
ad singer. “Gandry Blossom?” she gasped, as he stepped into the kitchen behind Zach.
“I told you she’d know who you were,” Zach said.
“I just put in my notice earlier this week,” said Gandry.
“But—you’re one of the best in the business—” Nicole sputtered.
Gandry shrugged. “I’ve got another gig lined up at Aioli,” he said. “But I owe Zach about two-thousand bucks for poker, and he said he was willing to make it two-hundred if I did this. So, what do you need me to do?”
Nicole found herself looking back and forth between Gandry and Zach, still trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she got to order a world-class chef around. “Pinch me,” she said to Zach.
Zach leaned over and kissed her. “You’ll do great,” he said.
Gandry had found another apron by now, and he was rolling up his sleeves—there were the tattoos of the lion and the unicorn that he’d spent many an interview expounding upon. “Damn,” he said, turning to Zach. “I might have to poach her if she pulled out all this from a home kitchen.”
Zach gave her a See, I told you so look.
“Right,” she said. “Can you start the tuiles? The forms are next to the sink. They need to be baked at three-fifty for five minutes and then shaped against the ladle.”
***
* * *
The party goers were all investors in Zach’s company; some of them had contributed seed money, some of them had given him money to expand his operations. All of them had gotten their money, plus interest, and now they were clients of Zach’s MasterClass experience. “So it’s more like a ‘thanks for your money’ party and less of a fun party,” Zach had murmured, as she put the finishing touches on the hors d’ouevres: foie gras pureed into a light and airy mouse, grounded by a bitter coffee-and-chocolate wafer, topped with a dot of creme fraiche; the cucumber slices that she’d been working on earlier; a consommé so clear and light she served in champagne glasses; cubes of beef covered in spiced bread crumbs floating on a red wine reduction so thick it was more like a cream, hiding the little dot of mushroom cream that held it together in the little amuse glass. And that was just the beginning.
Each hors d’ouevres had its own wine to go with it, and with the champagne, and the truffles that she was shaving into the dessert, even Zach had paled a bit when she passed him the receipts. But as she watched the faces that milled around the living room and patio she decided it was worth it. Zach certainly seemed to have forgotten about the sticker shock. He was in his element, glad-handing people without a trace of the frostiness he was known for, something that several people remarked on. “What can I say?” he said, in response. “I finally got a cook worth a damn.”
More than one person popped into the kitchen when they heard that, wondering who the cook was. When they saw Gandry they invariably assumed that he was the cook—and she knew she should be annoyed but for some reason the anonymity was more reassuring. It meant that they took her to be on the same level as a world-class chef, a fact that was not lost on Gandry, who started pointing out that she was the cook, and he was just her assistant. “But you’re Gandry Blossom,” said more than one confused party-goer. “I know,” he said, winking. “Even I had to start somewhere.”
That fixed her in the minds of all of the party goers—who was this young upstart who was bossing around a great like Gandry Blossom? She smiled and kept her head down, pleased with the attention her food was getting but also a little alarmed, as more than one person invited her to come work for them. She was hearing salaries that she’d assumed that only people like Gordon Ramsey made—salaries big enough for her to afford an honest-to-God apartment in Manhattan—and it was hard for her to believe that this could all be true. By the end of the evening she’d amassed a small stash of business cards from people who were all eager that she call them. “We’ll work out terms,” they promised her.
The last of the guests had gone, and she was still thinking about them. A life as a private chef was a pretty sweet gig—a food budget every week that was equal to what she spent in a month, and some of them had invited her to places like St. Tropez, “so I can let show my kids what real food is”. It would be so easy to call the number and agree to come with them. And yet, for all that Zach was a hard nut to crack, she found herself reluctant to make the call.
All of the lights were off; the penthouse was being lit solely by the glow of New York City at night, and though she could have turned on the lights the darkness suited her thoughtful mood. She was loading the last load of dishes into the dishwasher when Zach came in and said, “Well, that’s how Zachary Spencer does parties.” He held out a glass to her. In the darkness the wine looked like blood. “What is it?” he asked.
“I got at least six offers,” she said.
“I’ll meet them.”
She looked at him—if there was anybody who understood that money wasn’t what drove her it was him, so what was he doing offering her money? “You’re free to go, you know that?” he asked, his voice sounding strangled. He was standing with his back to the window, so she couldn’t see his eyes.
“Do you want me?” she asked.
“More than anything.”
“So why won’t you ask me to stay?”
He was silent for a long time, and then he moved to the breakfast bar and sat down on one of the stools. “It’s not something I can ask of someone,” he said, finally. “Would it make you feel better if I did?”
She shook her head. “You really do have a way with women,” she said, raising her glass.
“But you get me, don’t you?”
She couldn’t help but smile.
***
* * *
A year later she opened the doors to Wrapped, and took down the photo of Chris Temporino. Gandry and the rest of the line cooks, and the re-hired servers, applauded. There was champagne, and then, after poring through menu notes with Gandry, she said, “Right, people, let’s do this! Doors open at six.”
There was something inordinately pleasing about a well-run kitchen. She felt a little bad for Chris—he’d hired good people, and ended up driving them away. Maybe this was why Zach never asked her to stay—if this was where she belonged, then she’d stay, same as the line cooks.
She was writing out the “soup of the day” when she saw Zach in the doorway. “Well?” he said.
Nicole shrugged, knowing what he was really asking: how did Chris take handing over the keys to his restaurant? Between Zach and one of his friends, she’d saved up enough money to make a convincing case for Zach to spot her the money to buy our Chris’s stake in Wrapped. He’d handed over the keys and the lease (unhappily—she’d lowballed him) a month ago, and she’d spent the rest of the money getting the place re-done, so that it was a litte less weathered-wood, more sleek and elegant, with two stoves and one grill instead of the other way around, and a better placement for the sink. The staff who’d come back nodded their approval at the changes.
But now the real work was beginning: running place like this was going to take everything she ever understood about food and cooking and people, and then some. And yet for some reason, she didn’t feel the slightest bit phased by it. “It seems to be going all right,” she said, now, reaching for his hand and squeezing it.
He pulled her against him and pressed a kiss against her, and it took her back to the days in the beginning of their relationship, when it was ice-cold and then red-hot, all within ten minutes. “I know you can do it,” he murmured. It took everything she had to break it off before they started getting naked on the table, but as she headed back to the kitchen she saw him wink at her—it was all she needed to be certain: everything would be all right.
* * *
GAME ON
* * *
Tempest
* * *
Tempest Sinclair had dealt with a lot of men in her life and she knew this day would be no different. She pushed back her mass of springy hair from her shoulders as she watched the
men file into the room one at a time. It was the usual crowd, all tycoons from one organization or another and she, as always, was the one who would deal with the bad attitudes. All of them had the same demeanor, over fed rich men with too much power. She frowned as she waited for the last one, telling herself to take a deep breath before she stood to give the presentation to them.
She loved her job, that much was true but dealing with the big companies was often too much for her to take on alone. She scowled once more thinking of Robert and how he had bailed on her… again. This was the third time, and truth be told she was tired of covering for him. Typically, these big corporate meetings were made up of these big wigs, and they all gravitated towards her male counterpart.
Some part of her had to wonder if it had to do with being a plus sized woman. Sure, she was not some skinny gal, but she was beautiful and curvy and she took good care of herself. Too often men would be intimidated by her, but that simply was out of her hands. If a man wasn’t interested because he was intimidated, then she simply didn’t want him anyway. One of these days she would find someone who fit the bill, but in the mean time she would deal with the men who paid her paycheck.
She stood moving towards the front of the room to turn and greet everyone with a smile and click the button to start the presentation. She did her usual routing about who she was and what she did. Her job was to incorporate new companies into the HR system that she was a part of. They would be a systematic help in hiring and management of all the employees, which was especially helpful with big conglomerates such as these. She gave a little background about the company and showed some of the other holdings they were a part of when the doors flew open and she found herself face to face with him.
She stopped speaking, folding her arms as a mother would do when dealing with a petulant child. He was gorgeous, tall and blond with striking features that he was clearly sure of. His eyes were a clear blue and the smile he gave her was one she knew in an instant that he had likely used thousands of times when trying to get out of trouble. He let his eyes flick over her face and then down the length of her quickly which only added to the anger she was starting to feel creep up.
