“Give yourself a little more credit. You know how to be professional.”
“I do know how to do that.” I wouldn’t have gotten where I was if I didn’t.
“Eye on the prize, brother,” Sidney said, standing back up and smoothing down his pant legs. “You want to open your own restaurant, you can’t let some cute chef distract you.”
Sidney and Jasmine were really the only two people in my life who knew my ultimate goal was my own restaurant because well, my mother would have too many opinions, most of them not encouraging. Michael would be supportive, but I wasn’t sure he would believe me. My sister, Maeve, had a successful film career in L.A. and not a lot of time for her family. Most of my friends were in the industry and I wasn’t about to tell them because I didn’t want them mentioning it to the wrong person. So it felt a bit like a secret, and sometimes when it was discussed out loud, I wished it wasn’t. I wanted it now.
But I had to be patient, play the game. Make Isla happy, apparently. “What if she’s a really cute chef? Or more like a warrior woman chef?” I was joking, but maybe not totally.
“Oh, Sean,” Jasmine said.
It seemed to be one of her favorite phrases.
“You like her,” she added, eyeing me carefully.
“No, I don’t.” On that point, I was emphatic. I may have thought Isla was hot, but I didn’t like her. She was far too prickly to be likable. “Now go to dinner and have fun.”
For a second I was worried Jasmine was going to push it. She gave me a long look, but then she just shook her head and reached for her purse on the coffee table. She smiled at Sidney. “Let’s go.”
“Good luck,” he told me as he escorted her to the door.
I carried Kennedy and they both gave her a hug and a kiss and said goodbye and made her promise to be good. It was a routine that had to be honored, but it always wound Kennedy up in a negative way. She seemed to realize that if they thought it was a big deal to leave, she should think it was a big deal they had left. She fretted and whined and threw herself around in my arms, trying to grab at the doorknob after they had shut the door behind them. It was like trying to contain a hurricane.
“No!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Come back.”
“Kennedy, it’s okay, I’m right here. They’ll be back later.”
Her fist nailed me in the chest. It didn’t hurt but I realized she was determined to be miserable. She didn’t usually get this upset.
When the usual methods of tickling and tossing her up in the air failed to calm her down, I pulled out the big guns. My phone. I reached into my pocket and retrieved it, tightly gripping her with my left arm. “Do you want to see my phone?” I asked, holding it just out of reach of her.
She nodded and lunged for it.
“Then you have to calm down and be still. I don’t want you to drop it.”
She stopped wiggling. “Mine!” She held her hand out.
I wasn’t sure I should give in after that surly demand, but I wasn’t her father, so I figured I could get away with it. “Be careful with this,” I warned, and handed it over.
The little punk smiled and immediately held it up in front of me to unlock it with facial recognition. It was unnerving she knew how to do that. But it allowed me to carry her to the couch as she started swiping through my apps. I could guarantee she would find the app of kids’ games before I could even sit down.
But when I settled onto the couch with her on my lap, she said, “She’s pretty,” and showed me my phone.
Crap. She’d swiped right on some woman on a dating app. “Yep. Pretty.” I debated closing the app and risking a major meltdown, then decided I didn’t care if Kennedy swiped on every woman in Manhattan. It had been a long day and the pitch of her screams could actually shatter the eardrums of a dog. They hurt my ears like hell and I was too tense from Nico’s text to need more stress.
So she went to town on Tinder, swiping through profiles. Sometimes she paused to study a picture closer, but mostly she just flipped through them. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to who she paused on. Kennedy had switched directions and was going left now, which might save me from getting contacted by a dozen women I did not have time to meet at the moment. I wondered what the hell was going on inside her three-year-old head. What did she think she was looking at?
I was only casually paying attention.
But then I sat upright and grabbed the phone before she could swipe. Kennedy gave me a cry of irritation but I persisted and took the phone. “I know her,” I said.
It was Isla. I wouldn’t have pegged her as the dating app type, but that was stupid. Every single person in the world was on a dating app, whether they used it regularly or not. They were still out there, just in case. Just because.
“What’s her name?” Kennedy asked, sounding like she didn’t believe me.
“Isla. We work at the restaurant together.” The picture was one of her smiling broadly, which I had never witnessed in person. She was wearing a cocktail dress that showed an enticing amount of cleavage.
“Call her,” Kennedy said.
The toddler cut to the chase.
Considering that if Isla did ever look at her app, she was going to see we had matched, I probably should say something. I could tell her on Monday but would she really believe me that a toddler had been making dating picks for me?
“Fine,” I told Kennedy. “But you have to talk to her, too.”
She gave me an encouraging nod.
Isla answered right away. “Hello?” She sounded generally suspicious and grumpy.
“Hi, are you busy?” I asked. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“Just my hot date with Peaky Blinders. What’s up?”
“So, funny story. I’m babysitting my friend’s daughter and she was swiping through a dating app I have on my phone and we came across your profile.”
“You let a child scroll through your dating app?” she asked, sounding appalled.
“She’s three, she opened the app herself, what can I say? She just thinks it’s pretty ladies.”
“I can’t believe someone let you watch their child.”
“I’m highly offended by that. I can be trusted to take care of a human. It’s like truffles, you handle them delicately. She wants to talk to you.”
“Who?” Isla sounded bewildered.
“My babysitting charge. Here she is.” I handed the phone to Kennedy and put it on speaker. “Make me sound good, kid.”
“Hi, I’m Kennedy.” She set the phone in her lap.
“I’m Isla. Are you having fun with Sean?”
“Yes. He’s funny.”
I gave her a thumbs-up and an encouraging nod.
“He’s hilarious,” Isla said.
Her amused tone was lost on Kennedy. Being allowed access to talking to a stranger seemed to get Kennedy jacked up. She started rocking back and forth, her hands in tight little fists out in front of her as she did a little dance.
“He’s strong and he makes me mac and cheese.” She put a lot of emphasis on the word “cheese.” She clearly had strong feelings about cheddar, as it should be.
This was good. She was building my resume.
“And he smells like cheese. And he has a face like cheese.” She emphasized cheese each time.
Okay, so she was getting distracted. Isla was laughing.
“Say goodbye,” I told Kennedy.
She actually obliged, and handed me the phone. She climbed off the couch and went toward the kitchen, probably in pursuit of dairy. I took the phone off of speaker and put it to my ear. “Sorry, that went sideways.”
Isla laughed. “Well, I don’t think you smell like cheese, I’ll give you that.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that. I’ll let you return to your streaming but I just wanted you to know I didn’t swipe left on you, a toddler did. I wasn’t sure you would believe me if I told you later. I needed backup but getting a kid to do what you want is tough.”
“You’re kidding. Looks like we were both outwitted by babies.” Was that why Nico had sent me the ultimatum? He was worried Isla really would quit? He must really respect her as a chef.
“This is a sad day.”
“It is.”
There was a pause, and then she said, “Well, goodnight. Go make Kennedy some mac and cheese.”
“You should taste my mac and cheese,” I said, because I was proud of it and for whatever reason I wasn’t going to look at too closely, I didn’t want her to end the call.
She obviously didn’t feel the same way. “I don’t need to taste your anything. Bye, Sean.”
She’d already tasted my tongue. Tangling with hers. I was going to point that out but she had hung up on me.
I stood up and went to the kitchen to see what Kennedy was doing. I’d been able to see her from the living room, an advantage of small apartment city living, and she was rooting around in the refrigerator. She had two juice boxes in her hands. She handed me one.
“Thanks, kiddo.”
“Um.” She ripped the straw off and tried to undo the wrapper, without much luck. “You should go to the playground with Isla.”
I took the straw from her and undid it. I popped it in the box and handed it back to her. “I would love to go to the playground with Isla.”
Dirty thoughts that had no business being in my head when I was babysitting crowded my brain.
Shit. From now on, I was going to think of my bedroom as the playground.
Given what my grandfather and I had talked about (feeling lonely, not that deeper stuff about handing someone my heart on a silver platter), I decided if I didn’t want to fall off the radar of my friends, I needed to make sure I was reaching out to them regularly and consistently and being sympathetic to their crowded schedules. I had suggested we all go shopping Saturday but Dakota was the only one who was free and I was happy that at least someone could go. I wasn’t going to get cranky that my girls had found love. I was just going to appreciate when they did have time to hangout with me.
I’m not even a huge fan of shopping but I do like thrifting, so I had talked Dakota into poking around some second hand clothing stores.
“This would look so cute on you,” she said, holding up a sparkly shirt. “You could wear it as a dress.”
That made me snort. “You’re out of your mind. That’s your style, not me. You pull it off. I would just look like I was trying too hard.” My style was a combination of utilitarian and rock with a dose of the feminine whimsical thrown in with my jewelry.
“You're right. I should try it on.”
She already had a stack of clothes over her arm. Dakota was tall, with a lithe body. Sometimes she struggled to find pants that weren’t too short and weren’t strangling her crotch, but otherwise she could wear just about anything. I was a tweener. In-between. Not thin, not curvy, not tall, not short. I felt comfortable in casual clothes like jeans and T-shirts. I could do a dress, but it wasn’t my first choice.
I was actually kind of embarrassed that Sean had found my dating profile. I only looked at it every few months and my picture was from Leah’s engagement party last fall, updated when I’d come home buzzed that night. I’d been wearing a dress and had thought it was a cute shot but now I feel self-conscious that Sean had seen it, along with the quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald I had written underneath it. It was too… revealing. Especially because Sean made me feel flustered and that was super annoying. I would have never posted it if I hadn’t been drinking, and yet, hadn’t cared enough to go back and delete it.
Until now.
But if I deleted my profile, changed the pic, or removed the quote now, Sean would wonder why. If it had anything to do with him. Or conclude that I was super active on the app, which I wasn’t. So annoying.
I pulled a vintage Rolling Stones T-shirt off the rack. I didn’t need yet another rock band shirt, but I couldn’t help myself. Black cotton was my lodestone. It drew me to it.
Dakota went into the dressing room and emerged a minute later in the silver sparkly shirt. It was barely legal, it was so short. “What do you think?”
“One false move and you’re flashing,” I said. “Maybe with tights or skinny jeans?”
She attempted to tug the shirt down but it barely budged. “I think you’re right.”
“Uh, I know I’m right. Put some pants on, girl.”
She made a face but she dutifully went to search out pants. I would have gone back to the dressing room and put my own pants back on first before wandering around a public place in a shirt that could have been bought at Baby Gap, but that didn’t faze Dakota. She started pulling pants off the rack and throwing them over her arm.
A very tall, very muscular guy was trying to move between the racks, and kept bumping into them. He looked twenty-five, but like he still didn’t quite know how to exist in a world where everything was too small for him. He also looked familiar but I wasn’t sure why. I was fairly certain if I knew a six-foot-eight man I would remember why.
“Hey, don’t I know you?” he asked not me but Dakota.
“What?” She looked up from her bargain hunting. Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, you’re Dante Marksman! You have two championship rings.”
He nodded and smiled at her. “That’s right. And you’re on the dance team.”
I hung back, blatantly eavesdropping.
Dakota smiled back. “Holy crap, how did you know that?”
He gestured to her. “I’d recognize those legs anywhere.”
Well, okay then. I wasn’t sure if that was a charming compliment or mildly creepy. Dakota had no such reservations.
She giggled like a middle school girl. “Why, thank you.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Dakota.”
“Want to hang out sometime?” he asked, pulling his phone out. “Can I get your number?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, that would be cool.” Dakota’s cheeks were slightly pink but she sounded the appropriate amount of interested-meets-nonchalant.
I wandered away, figuring I owed them a couple of minutes of privacy. I was eyeing a floral dress that had a nineties grunge vibe to it when Dakota came over to me. “Can you believe that?” she said, in a stage whisper. “I’m dead. I’m dying. Dante Marksman asked me to hang out. He likes my legs.”
“That’s awesome. He’s seriously the definition of tall, dark, and handsome.”
“A baller. Damn.” Dakota fanned herself. “Good thing I’m in this short dress because I need some air down there.”
That made me laugh. “Stop!” I looked around. “He did leave, didn’t he? You cannot be talking about your overheated vagina with him three feet away.”
“He left.” She sighed and leaned against a rack. She propped her head up with her hand. “But he’s my future husband, just so you know.”
That made me roll my eyes. “No impulse marriage, please. We’ve had enough of that in our group lately. Just have fun with him.”
“Oh, I plan on doing that.” She gave me a wicked grin. “So what is going on with you and Chef Dickhead?”
“Nothing. We start work together Monday and I have to be super nice to him, which makes me want to gag. But it’s either that or I lose my job.” I shoved the T-shirt back onto the rack. I didn’t need it, especially if I might get fired. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Can you get him fired?”
“How would I get him fired?” That would be satisfying, but very wrong.
“Sabotage his food. Poison people.” She tugged on the hem of the shirt again, sounding very casual about making diners sick.
“That’s horrible and illegal.”
“I was kidding. But seriously, can you somehow sabotage him? Make him late for work? Distract him
so he screws up?”
“How can I distract him if I’m being nice to him? I need to throw him off his game.” I didn’t usually want someone to get fired, but if it was him or me, I wanted it to be him. Nothing personal. Despite the fact that I hated him just a fraction less now that I knew he babysat little girls for friends.
Dakota snapped her fingers. “I know. Be sexy at work. Be all flirty, dropping innuendos. Hell, drop a towel and bend over to pick it up. Classic bend and snap. Plus wear tight clothes. It will confuse him and he’ll oversalt the salad.”
“You don’t salt a salad,” I said automatically.
“Whatever. That’s not the point. Sabotage without actually doing anything wrong or illegal or immoral. It’s brilliant.”
It had merit. I wasn’t sure I was capable of being sexy at work. I take my work in the kitchen seriously. But I did not want to lose my job because I lost my cool and snapped at Sean. Besides, Sean did not seem rattled by the kiss we had shared. Unlike me, who had given it way too much air time in my own head. My ego was dented just enough that I wanted to see if I could get a reaction from him.
Dakota handed me a pair of jeans that were at least one size too small for me. “Try these on.”
“I can’t work if I can’t move,” I grumbled, but I dutifully took them.
A few minutes later she was modeling her revised outfit with pants while I came out in the jeans. “You look so hot,” she said. “Isla, oh my God. Those jeans were made for you.”
They were surprisingly comfortable. They must have been made of something stretchy like Lycra. I wasn’t used to working in clothes that tight, but I didn’t wear baggy stuff normally either. This wouldn’t be a huge adjustment to make. I was willing to try it. I’d rather distract Sean with flirtation than do something shady like tossing salt in his dish.
I wanted to compete with him on a level playing field when it came to cuisine. I was convinced I was just as good of a chef as he was and someday Nico and Sid would recognize that. I didn’t want to win by ruining his food. Being cute wasn’t cheating, was it?
Who’s The Boss? Page 6