by K. K. Allen
19
Auditions
Maggie
Desmond is walking me through creating a grocery list based on the recipe for tomorrow when the door to Edible Desire opens. In comes Faye with her short blond bob, tan spike heels, and effortless smile. She’s a woman on a mission, seemingly always ready to set the world on fire. I can feel it in her presence, the same way I would when a supermodel walked into the room in Los Angeles.
And right now, the world is Faye’s oyster, and Desmond is her pearl. I see the way her eyes lock on him like a prowling tiger ready to pounce. Clearly the two have been more than business associates. It’s written all over the way she lifts her lips in a sexy smile.
A jolt of jealousy hits me in the chest, but something about Desmond’s reaction relieves me some. When he sees Faye, his jaw locks, and his shoulders stiffen. It’s almost like he’s growing uncomfortable with the woman who is promising him the world. Or maybe that’s my wishful hoping.
“You’re early,” Desmond says, stepping away from me and leaving a draft behind him as he meets Faye halfway.
“Only by fifteen minutes, darling.” She places her hands on his broad shoulders and reaches up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Everything ready for the crew?”
“I suppose. Do you need me to clear out an area?”
“No, but…” She taps her mouth as she looks around the space. Then she points at a cooking station near the front of the room. “There. We’ll put them at the cooking station at the front. Is that okay?”
Desmond shrugs and waves his hand for her to check the station out further. “What are you going to ask them to do exactly?”
“Oh, you know. I’ll just go over some basic questions and get a feel for how they take to the camera in a more personal setting. If I’m feeling good about someone, I’ll ask you to come in and chat with them a little. Just ask them about themselves, about their cooking history, comfortability level, that kind of thing.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
After that, Faye begins to wander around the kitchen, inspecting the place, while I move back to the station I’m sitting at in the back of the room, trying my best to focus on the task at hand. It seems easy enough. I’m supposed to write down each fresh ingredient needed then categorize it by food department.
“Hey.” Desmond comes up behind me with a piece of paper in his hands. “This is a list of everyone confirmed for classes starting tomorrow. Can you just call and leave a friendly reminder for each one? Start with tomorrow’s classes, and you don’t have to finish the week’s worth today, but I like to give them at least twenty-four hours of a heads-up.”
I nod and take a seat on the stool while he walks back over to Faye. Soon, a few men are walking through the door with lighting equipment, microphones, and cameras. They begin to listen to Faye’s instructions while Desmond keeps himself busy at the front, prepping a meal for today’s delivery.
My eyes are trained on the set designer, who manages to turn what was once a normal cooking station into an eye-catching focal point for the lens.
“Um, sweetie?” Faye calls out.
My eyes snap to hers, confused by the endearment. “Huh? Me?”
“Her name is Maggie,” Desmond offers, and I’m thankful for the help.
“I’m sorry. Maggie. Do you mind stepping out of the shot? Perhaps Desmond can set you up in the back room so you won’t be a distraction.”
Oh, hell no. Heat flashes through me, but before I can say anything, Desmond is jolting from whatever he was doing and starts making his way to me. “You can use my office.”
When I don’t budge, he reaches for the paper he handed me earlier and leans in toward me. “It’s only for a couple hours, and it’s not like you’ll be able to make phone calls out here with the auditions going on.”
I blow out a frustrated breath and nod. “Whatever. But I won’t let her tell me what to do again.”
Desmond chuckles. “I believe you.”
I follow Desmond closely as he leads me into the back room, which is filled with rows of scoopable bulk items like grains, seeds, flour, and nuts. There’s a set of bathrooms for guests, a locker area for students to place their items while they’re in class, and an elevator that I recently learned will take me up to my new apartment or down to the parking garage. In the very corner of the room, tucked behind a storage room, is Desmond’s office, which I’ve never even seen.
He pushes open the door to expose a disaster of a space. There are papers and boxes everywhere, covering his desk, the couch, and the file cabinet. “Just ignore the mess. I’m barely in here.”
“Yeah, probably because you can’t even walk inside it without surfing across the floor. Holy shit, Desmond. How can you find anything in here?”
He shrugs, seeming to not care. “I don’t. Everything is electronic now. Most of this can probably be tossed, but I need to go through it first. I guess Gretta never got around to it.”
I bite the inside of my lip to keep from laughing. “No wonder why she flaked on you so much. Desmond, this is pretty bad.”
He sighs. “I need to get back out there. Are you going to be able to make your calls in here, or do I need to set you up in the storage closet instead?”
I roll my eyes and push past him toward the desk. I pick up a pile of papers sitting on his chair and place it on another teetering stack on his desk. “I’ll be good. I’m sure there’s a phone here somewhere.”
Desmond’s jaw ticks with annoyance. “You’ll figure it out.” Then he closes the door behind him without another word.
Looking around, I sigh and take a seat before searching for the phone, which I find under another pile of papers. By the looks of it, the mess is just a pile of junk that can be digitally stored and then recycled: recipes, invoices, class lists, receipts, and bills. But I ignore it for the sake of my mission at hand—phone calls, mostly voice mails.
Two hours later, I’m done with my calls and drowning in boredom. I didn’t even realize that I’d been organizing the piles of papers on Desmond’s desk as I was talking. Now what? I look around and frown. This room is so boring. It has no windows and no personality. The only touch of anything interesting is another one of Desmond’s signature food photos. This one is of a man’s hand pressed into a ball of dough. There’s flour everywhere—on his hands, all over the wood table, and on the dough itself. But the coolest part of the visual are the bits of flour in midair that appear to be falling onto the table.
I’ve noticed a trend with Desmond’s photography, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I am deeply impressed. The man knows how to express his emotions well with words, but he damn well knows how to evoke all the feeling imaginable from a photograph. He has a rare gift, and I’m not sure he even knows it.
I shuffle a stack of papers off a hard black object. It’s Desmond’s camera. Well, well, speaking of photography… I recognize it as the one he had in his hands at the game yesterday. Curious, I pick it up and press the power button.
A photo immediately appears in the display on the back of the camera, and I bite my bottom lip over a laugh. I almost forget about the impromptu shoot of me scarfing down my hot dog. Desmond didn’t argue about stopping, but it looks like he’d been at it for longer than I realized. I tap through the photos, admiring his eye for live-action food photography. If that’s a thing, Desmond is a master at it.
Before the hot dog shoot, there are the photos I saw him taking during Saturday’s class. Meal after meal, I find myself mesmerized with the imagery the man is able to conjure up with a simple photo. I must go through hundreds of photos before I spot one of me again. This time, I’m the prime focus of the photo, and I’m standing at my cooking station, agonizing over my lobster ravioli.
Well, agonizing is how I remember it. But that certainly isn’t the same word I would use to describe myself in these photos. I look content, focused, and perhaps like I’m enjoying myself while I get lost in it all.
“Huh.�
�� I set the camera down and shut it off. That’s when I notice a small monitor sitting near Desmond’s computer. I push the power button and jump back when a black-and-white view of the main kitchen comes to life in front of me, sound and all.
There’s a young woman, probably in her thirties, speaking while Faye asks her questions from off camera. Now this is interesting. I smile as I cozy in to watch the poor girl get flustered when simply asked to act natural. That’s all it takes to get her ejected from the shoot to make room for the next girl that walks in.
Three failed auditions later, I’m still glued to the entertainment, but Desmond’s desk is also as organized as can be. I managed to straighten the array of papers into piles: receipts, bills, recipes, and old promotional flyers. Everything is still in desperate need of filing or tossing, which I would have started on if it weren’t for the door to the office that opens, causing me to jump.
“What are you doing?” Desmond’s tone is accusing. His eyes move over his desk and then to the security monitor that I’ve been watching like it’s showing a daytime soap opera. He moves toward me and pushes the power button to shut off the monitor. “You were watching that train wreck?”
I look up and stifle a laugh. “Yup. But don’t worry. I finished all my calls and organized your desk while watching mindless entertainment. No harm done.”
His eyes narrow. “I’ll have you know, that mindless entertainment is going to bring a lot of attention to this cooking school. And what do you mean you organized my desk?”
I ignore his last question and focus on his first statement. “Attention? Is that what you’re after? In that case, why not just have Zach announce he owns the place? That’ll bring in all the attention you need.”
Desmond scrunches his face. “I want genuine interest only. Besides, Zach’s barely around. You think I have the patience to handle the hordes of women that will show up just to see him? I don’t have that kind of time to waste.”
“I don’t think you have much patience at all, but if it’s the attention you want, then what does it matter? Besides, since when do you complain about being surrounded by hordes of women?” I laugh at the sound of my own question.
Desmond doesn’t appear to be amused. “Like I said, I want genuine attention and interest. Can you imagine if all the students who walked through this door were like you?”
“Hey,” I say defensively. Someone’s in a bad mood.
“Oh, don’t get all sensitive now. You didn’t want to be in my class almost as much as you don’t want to be here right now.”
I stand up, wondering how I almost started to tolerate this man—that’s a mystery in itself. He’s just as awful as he was when I first met him. “Well, we’re both stuck with each other, aren’t we? So do yourself a favor and get over what I want and don’t want. Okay?” I slide past him, nudging him with my elbow as I pass. “Oh, and you’re welcome for cleaning up your desk. Maybe you can actually sit at it now.”
I’m fuming as I walk out into the main kitchen and notice that everyone is gone. I don’t know if they just took a lunch break because there’s still lighting equipment everywhere and the camera is still focused on the empty cooking station in the front row. “Whatever,” I mutter as I walk behind the large island that overlooks the room. I can’t believe I actually thought this could work. Me working with Desmond? Yeah, right. We’ll kill each other before the end of the week.
Desmond walks up behind me and opens the refrigerator. He hands me a bottled water then takes the cap off the one he grabbed for himself. “Thank you for organizing my desk. You didn’t have to do that.”
I shrug. “I won’t touch it again. I didn’t even mean to do it. It just kind of happened.”
His lips tip up at the corner, and he chugs half a bottle of water before setting it down on the island. “Be careful. I might ask you to organize the rest of my office. Heaven knows I need the help.”
“You need lots of that.”
He glares at me again, but this time there’s a gleam in his eyes. “Maybe so. How about we start here? I’ve got another meal to prep before everyone returns from lunch. Will you help me?”
“Sure,” I mutter dryly. “Whatever you need, boss.”
Desmond walks me through the recipes, and we split up, grabbing ingredients and making different parts of the meal. When I don’t understand something, Desmond comes over and walks me through it with a gentleness I never witnessed when I was a student in his classes. He always seemed to get so impatient with me. But he can alter his tune all he wants. It doesn’t change the animosity I have toward him now.
“What are you doing?” he asks, approaching me with a light laugh.
I look down at the green beans I’m shelling and shrug. “Removing the bean things.”
He tosses his head back and laughs harder. “Why?”
My mouth drops. Is he really laughing at me right now? “Because they’re in the pod. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
He shakes his head and steps behind me, a lot like how he did the other day. “You’ve never eaten a green bean whole?”
I look down at my work and suddenly feel heat spread over my cheeks. “I mean, yeah, but…” I feel totally humiliated. But just like that, all the tension that has built up between us starts to fade away like magic.
He wraps his hand around mine. “Just cut off the ends, like this. Not too much.” He starts cutting off the ends of the green beans while his mouth is coming dangerously close to my ear. “We don’t want to waste any of the good stuff.”
My body is hot all over from the rasp of his tone and the heat of his breath. My heart rate takes off at a mile a minute. Not even the force of my steady breaths can stop it. There’s this intensity between Desmond and me that is so undeniable, so unshakeable. I don’t even question that he feels it too.
My eyes meet his from over my shoulder, and I gasp at the sharpness in his gaze. Never has a man made me feel so whole with just one look. But it’s like Desmond sees me, even the parts I never let anyone see, and he won’t stop peeling back the layers until he sees all of me.
I might just let him.
His tongue darts out and wets his bottom lip while he moves in closer… closer… until one slight forward movement is all it will take for his lips to touch mine. Suddenly, it’s all I want. But just as my eyes close, I’m startled by the sound of the backroom door opening behind us.
I gasp while Desmond curses so quietly, only I can hear. Then Faye walks in with a knowing smile.
What the— Has she been here the whole time?
She holds up her phone as if to answer my question. “I’m done with my call. Desmond, do you want to grab lunch before we reconvene?”
Desmond takes a step to the side of me, but he looks as if he’s struggling with his response. “I need to finish a meal for a pickup later today. Sorry, Faye.”
“Dinner, then?” she presses, and for some reason, I get the feeling she’s testing him.
Desmond shakes his head again. “I really can’t tonight either. Another day, yeah?”
She smiles, tight-lipped, her eyes shifting to me while mine turn down, and then she nods. “You two are quite the team these days, aren’t you?”
I let out a nervous laugh, and Desmond’s eyes snap to me. Instinct tells me to jump in here. “Hardly,” I say with a wink in his direction. “But it pays the bills, you know?”
Faye quirks a brow. “Is that so?”
“Faye, stop,” Desmond warns.
I look between the two of them, wondering what the hell is going on, because something feels off, and I feel like I’m in the middle of whatever silent exchange is happening between them.
Faye faces me, her entire body centered toward mine, and I feel like I need to brace myself for whatever is to come.
“Maggie,” she starts.
“Faye,” I return with all the sarcasm I can fathom.
“I have a proposition for you.”
My jaw drops, and I
turn to Desmond, who’s shaking his head and rubbing his neck like he’s already tried to stop this exchange from happening. I wasn’t expecting that. There’s only one thing she could possibly be talking about, and there’s no way in hell I’m getting in front of that camera.
I turn back to Faye with an answer already on the tip of my tongue. “I’m sorry, Faye, but I’m not interested.”
20
Five O’Clock Somewhere
Desmond
Faye left Maggie and me alone after the last audition, taking her camera crew with her. I guess it’s a done deal. Maggie isn’t interested in the role, no matter how hard Faye tried to persuade her, and we still don’t have a cohost.
The entire dynamic in the kitchen feels like it has shifted. Hours ago, I was one cohost away from having a television show that could help me advance the kitchen. And now I have no fucking clue.
I don’t know if I should be furious at Faye or Maggie or neither of them. For the past four years, the kitchen has been mine. Suddenly, the fate of my dreams is resting on two women I never sought after, one of whose hands are currently reaching into the refrigerator and pulling out a beer.
“What are you doing?” I grumble.
“Drinking a beer. Want one?”
I step forward and take the bottle from her hand. “You’re still on the clock.”
She rips the bottle back and lifts it to her lips. “Consider me clocked out for the day.”
There’s a layer of spite beneath her tone that sends chills down my spine. I pull the bottle back to me and hold it over her head. “Don’t be angry with me. That was all Faye’s idea.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t try to stop her.”
“I didn’t have a chance, did I?” I glare down at her with a warning. She’s not the only one fired up over this. “And it doesn’t matter, does it? You said no. But I can’t for the life of me figure out why someone who was practically born in the spotlight would turn an opportunity like that down. Isn’t the camera kind of your thing?”
