Just One Taste

by Louisa Edwards

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” He ducked his head guiltily. “I thought I’d have a breather between lunch and dinner. Then this Eva Jansen thing came up, and … crap. But hey!” He brightened. “Tomorrow’s my day off, so we’ll have plenty of time to work things out.”

  Rosemary looked away. She was no fool—pretty far from it, in fact. She could read between the lines here. Something else came up, namely, something to do with his job at Market, and Wes immediately gave it priority.

  Disappointment dragged at her chest. She wasn’t even sure if she was disappointed in him for behaving true to form, or in herself for failing to anticipate it.

  But her own pitiful imaginings and expectations weren’t the point. It was fruitless to get upset over something Wes couldn’t change. He cared more about his job than he did about her. End of story. And no amount of mysterious strawberry protein or serotonin surge was going to make him put her first.

  Ignoring the persistent small voice in her head that said maybe she just wasn’t good enough, interesting enough, lovable enough to be anyone’s top priority, Rosemary dredged up a smile and said, “I look forward to tomorrow, then.”

  The smile must have been less than convincing because Wes’s eyes narrowed, his bright grin fading. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said firmly. Nothing except that I’ve suddenly developed a learning disability when it comes to you, and no matter how many times you make it clear that I don’t matter to you in the slightest, I keep hoping you’ll magically wake up one day and realize you can’t live without me. “I’m just annoyed about the delay in moving forward. I got started on some of the groundwork today, and I was hoping to fill you in, but I guess I’ll do that tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” he said, still searching her face. She made it as blank as two and a half years as the youngest, nerdiest undergrad at Yale had taught her.

  “Really,” Wes insisted. “I’m sorry about this. I’ll meet you at your hotel then, around ten? I swear I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Sure,” she said, suddenly desperate to be elsewhere. “Fine, see you then.”

  Before he could ask the question she could see forming on his face, Rosemary hitched her laptop bag higher on her shoulder and whirled, all but racing from the kitchen. There was a strange, hot prickling behind her eyes and an itch in her throat that forced her to swallow over and over, trying to push it down.

  As she stepped out into the crisp September air, Rosemary thought, not for the first time, that she’d happily trade a few IQ points for a little extra in the emotional intelligence department.

  Maybe then she’d be smart enough to avoid feeling like this. Or at least, she’d be better able to deal with it.

  Although, really, she ought to be an expert at coping with second-place status. After all, growing up the child of a constantly touring bestselling author and a sought-after academic lecturer was perfect training for accustoming oneself to making do with whatever scraps of affection were carelessly tossed one’s way.

  What would it take, she wondered a little despairingly, to condition herself to stop looking for more?

  She thrust her hand out for a cab, flagging one down almost immediately. Clambering into the back, she gave the address for Peaceful Paws Doggie Day Spa and perched uncomfortably on the cracked vinyl seat, which was no doubt crawling with the germs of the many passengers before her. The cab smelled like sauerkraut and shoes. She cracked a window and tried to breathe as shallowly as possible.

  Focusing on the way Lucille’s whole body would wag when she caught sight of Rosemary after even five minutes apart, she searched through her bag for antibacterial wipes and tried to be grateful to have even one creature in her life who offered unstinting and unconditional affection—while also remembering that Lucille was only hers because Wes Murphy was a faithless, selfish deserter.

  Maybe instead of researching chemicals to help humans achieve momentary closeness, she ought to be looking into what it was in the canine brain that prompted unswerving devotion, so she could duplicate it in handy pill form.

  Wes frowned after Rosemary, his knifework slowing to a halt. “What the hell was that about?” he wondered under his breath.

  Unluckily for him, Frankie happened to be reaching for one of the stockpots stored on the shelving above Wes’s station, so he was close enough to hear. The sous chef snorted and said something that sounded like, “You berk.”

  Knowing he shouldn’t start anything up and actually being mature enough not to do it were two very different things, Wes found. “What was that?”

  Frankie hoisted the heavy pot down, his wiry muscles standing out in sharp relief under the ripped sleeves of his black CBGB T-shirt. Wes was definitely digging on not having to conform to the ACA uniform standard, but Frankie took it to a whole other level, almost never bothering with a chef’s jacket. He had a long butcher’s apron on today, already smeared with blood from the rib eyes he’d been portioning.

  Giving Wes his patented lip curl, Frankie said, “I called you a berk. Which you are, if you can’t comprehend why your bird might be ticked off.”

  Wes scowled and concentrated on making his knife cuts absolutely perfect, each baton of carrot exactly the same length as the others. “Look, I don’t speak Brit punk, so if you want me to understand you when you mock me, you’ll have to translate.”

  “A berk is … well. Fuck me. You know, I’m not sure exactly what it means, but come on, mate. You see what ’m getting at. You’re a shite, a loser, a pathetic knob, a hopeless, helpless, dickless moron. Better?”

  Wes’s shoulders wanted to hunch, so he straightened them instead. “Tell me how you really feel, Chef.”

  Frankie leaned on the edge of the stockpot and regarded Wes with obvious dislike. “You truly don’t get why your girl was upset, do you?”

  Rosemary’s face in the instant before she ran away flashed in front of his mind’s eye, pale and a little pinched around the mouth. Wes’s stomach dropped, but he shot

  Frankie a skeptical look. “No offense or anything, but I’m not about to take relationship advice from you.”

  Frankie’s face darkened at the jab, and he sneered. “No, ’course not. Why would Wonder Wes want advice, even when he’s clearly cocking things up with the woman of his dreams?”

  Wes couldn’t help his start of surprise, the knife slipping sideways and catching the tip of his finger. “Fuck,” he muttered, dropping the blade and putting pressure on the welling cut. Slices on the hand tended to bleed like whoa, and this one was no exception.

  “Yeah, Jess let slip in the middle of an argument about your infatuation with one of your ACA professors,” Frankie said, stretching up to be able to slide a hand into the pocket of his skintight jeans. Wes stared, incredulously sure the dude was about to pull out his ubiquitous pack of Dunhills and light up in the middle of the kitchen, but instead, Frankie produced a Band-Aid.

  Tossing the bandage to Wes, he went on, voice dropping to a low, insinuating whisper. “She’s a looker, too. Can see why you’re interested. Not to mention the lure of the forbidden. Strict teacher, naughty student—loads of wank material there.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Wes ground out as he wrapped the bandage around his bleeding finger and picked the knife back up. It stung like a bitch, but he welcomed the pain. It focused him on the job at hand rather than the appealing fantasy of smashing his fist into Frankie’s smug, sneering mouth.

  “What, you’re going to tell me it’s not like that?” Frankie said. “Because that’s not how it looked from the outside, mate.”

  “I’m not your mate,” Wes pointed out. “You’ve made that crystal clear. So why are you talking to me, man? Just leave it alone.”

  Instead of the instant smirk and snappy comeback he was expecting, Wes was surprised to see Frankie glance to the side, a solemn twist to the mouth that Wes was more accustomed to seeing in a sneer.

  “I may not like you,” Frankie said slowly, as if he were forcing the
words out with great difficulty. “But Jess does. And, leaving aside that mad stunt you pulled locking us in the changing room, you’ve been a good friend to him. So maybe I don’t hate you with the fiery heat of a thousand suns anymore.”

  Wes felt like he ought to run out to the back alley and make sure the sky was still up where it belonged, not in pieces all over the pavement.

  “Well, shit,” he said stupidly. “Thanks. I’m game for a little friendly advice, if you are.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I wouldn’t bank on me being friendly,” Frankie told him, sounding grouchy. “I’m still, more likely than not, going to need to phrase any advice in such a way as to make it clear that you’re an idiot.”

  Wes suppressed a smile. “I’d be hugely disappointed, and a little frightened, if you didn’t. Fire away.”

  Turning to heave the stockpot onto an open burner at his own station, Frankie reached back above Wes’s head for a long wooden spoon, which he then pointed at Wes. “You made that girl sit around all morning, dancing attendance on your whims, just waiting for you to deign to glance her way. And when you do, what is it you say? Is it ‘Oh my, how lovely you look today!’ or ‘Light of my life, how you complete me!’? No. It’s ‘Do me this favor, there’s a good girl. Thanks ever so, now naff off and let me get back to this here man’s work.’ ”

  Frankie affected a strange, flatly nasal accent for Wes’s lines, which Wes eventually realized was meant to sound American. Even the urge to laugh at Frankie’s ridiculous John Wayne parody faded, though, under the crushing realization that the guy was actually right.

  “Damn it.” Wes groaned, dropping his knife and putting his head in his hands. “I’m such a shit.”

  Frankie clapped him on the back hard enough to nearly buckle Wes’s knees. “Finally, we agree on something!”

  “The first woman who matters to me, and I’m a complete disaster. I keep messing things up with her—it’s as if the more I want it to work, the more it all falls apart.”

  Frankie went back to his station and started heaping chunks of butternut squash into the stockpot for tonight’s soup special. “Don’t be a ponce. From what I saw, all is not lost—the girl fancies you. God knows why. So what are you going to do about it?”

  Wes grabbed his knife back up and attacked his carrots. “You’re right,” he said, mind racing ahead to the next day. “There’s got to be something I can do to let her know how I feel. Or wait. I’m thinking about it the wrong way. It’s not about how I feel. It’s about showing her how much she matters.”

  This was it. Fate had pushed Rosemary back into Wes’s life, and he was taking his shot. Maybe he couldn’t convince her he’d been attempting to do the noble thing by leaving her for his job at Market—it didn’t sound believable, even in Wes’s head. But, with a little effort, he might be able to get her to see that he’d changed. Maybe they could just leave the past where it belonged.

  “Now you’re getting somewhere, mate,” Frankie crowed. “There, you see? Knew you couldn’t be as dumb as you look.”

  “I’m smart enough to do whatever it takes to keep Rosemary, now that I’ve got a second chance with her,” Wes said, an idea forming.

  It would mean a long night of very little sleep after a full day’s work, but if it made Rosemary smile in that shocked, delighted way of hers, it would be so completely worth it.

  And if it worked, he was going to owe Frankie Boyd. Big time. The biggest. Luckily, Wes mused as a group of servers, Jess Wake among them, clattered up the stairs from the locker rooms, dressed and ready to set the dining room for dinner service, I know exactly how to repay him.

  Chapter 18

  Rosemary dressed for her day of work with Wes as if she were putting on a suit of armor rather than a pair of brown corduroys and her favorite tan sweater with the suede elbow patches.

  She’d stolen the sweater from her father’s open suitcase years ago, while he was unpacking after getting home from one of his lecture tours. It had been quite a while since it actually smelled like her father’s signature sandalwood and pine cologne, but even without the scent, the sense memory of sitting on her parents’ bed, so happy to be with her dad again, lingered in the fabric as if imprinted on the wool.

  Pulling that sweater over her head and feeling the static electricity lift every stray hair until she must look like Drew Barrymore on the Firestarter posters—it was like girding her loins for battle.

  Well. Not technically. That would be more like putting on her underwear, since the term “girding one’s loins” came from the Roman era, when soldiers would pull up and secure their lower garments in order to increase maneuverability during the heat of battle.

  “And now I’m babbling nervously inside my own head,” she said to Lucille, who cocked her ears curiously from her position ensconced like a queen between the pillows mounded on the hotel bed.

  “At least I’ve gotten used to talking to an animal who won’t speak back to me. Well, not in my vernacular. You respond in other ways, though, don’t you?”

  Lucille’s fuzzy white tail thumped twice against the bedding.

  Rosemary would never have believed how much company one small, mostly silent dog could be.

  “Come on, Lucille,” she said, jingling the new, pink leash with the rhinestone studs. There was a boutique attached to the Peaceful Paws Doggie Day Spa that carried, of course, the most ludicrously overpriced, overdesigned dog accessories—and to anyone who believed dogs were merely dumb animals, Rosemary would submit the evidence of Lucille’s purposeful and deliberate panting after this silly sparkly princess leash. Lucille had her new mistress wrapped around her little paw, and she clearly knew it. One blink of those liquid black eyes, and Rosemary whipped out her credit card.

  Stretching indolently, Lucille stood and did a full-body shake before ambling to the foot of the bed and allowing Rosemary to clip the leash to her collar. Which was old and worn, Rosemary noticed with a frown. She’d have to see what else the boutique had today, she decided as they left their room and headed for the elevators, Lucille prancing happily at her side as if she’d been born to lushly carpeted halls and Art Deco décor.

  The elevator doors swished closed behind them, enclosing them in a jewel box that descended toward the lobby in a swift, silent rush. Rosemary checked her watch. Nine o’clock. That should give her plenty of time, she thought as the doors opened.

  Lucille’s head jerked up the instant they set foot in the lobby. With a tremendous tug that nearly pulled the leash from Rosemary’s hand, the tiny dog leaped and cavorted at the very end of her tether, tongue lolling and toes clacking brightly on the marble floor.

  “Lucille!” Rosemary tightened her grip on the leash.

  “There’s my girls.” The smooth, velvety voice came from the seating area beside the concierge desk and sent a shiver down the back of her neck.

  Wait, I’m not ready! My loins are so not girded for this!

  That was all the internal panic she had time for before Wes Murphy was right there in front her, in all his leather-jacketed, windswept hotness, kneeling down to let Lucille lick, sniff, rub against, and generally debase herself shamefully all over his hands.

  “Whaddya smell, L-dawg? Huh? Hey, what a pretty leash for my pretty girl!”

  Seeing the two of them together gave Rosemary a pang. She felt absurdly like a third wheel.

  “If you’d like to get a room, so you can carry out this reunion in private, the reservation desk is right over there,” she said.

  The tart tone brought Wes’s head up, his ridiculously beautiful hair flopping onto his forehead and tangling in his long eyelashes. There were dark smudges under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept well. He blinked, and Rosemary had to close her hand into a fist to keep from reaching out and smoothing back the chestnut locks.

  “I missed her,” he explained, standing up. “Almost as much as I missed you.”

  Rosemary froze, feeling cornered. It was exactly what she’d wan
ted to hear that first day she saw Wes again at the restaurant, but now that he was saying it, she had no idea how to feel about it, much less how to respond.

  Five minutes, she mused despairingly. That’s all it took for him to start chipping away at the foundation of the barriers she’d hastily erected around her heart.

  Pathetic.

  He was still gazing at her with those green-gold cat eyes, waiting for her response. Flustered, Rosemary lifted her chin and said, “You’re early. I was just about to drop Lucille off at doggie day care before meeting you.”

  “Aw, she doesn’t need day care. Let’s take her with us! I thought we could go to the park, it’s such a gorgeous day.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess that would be all right.” It was as if he delighted in throwing her off balance, she sulked as he went to grab an old leather knapsack from the couch he’d been sitting on.

  Rosemary compensated for the derailment of her careful plans by being extra terse on the walk to the park. Not that it was a long hike—one block west, a quick Fifth Avenue crossing, and Wes led them to an entrance in the low stone wall surrounding the park.

  Dancing and pulling on the pink leash, Lucille was clearly in heaven. Her two favorite humans, the bracing cool of early fall weather, and the myriad fascinating smells associated with Central Park—all of it combined to put her into transports of ecstasy, as evidenced by the high carriage of her fluffy tail and the perk of her pointed, white-tufted ears.

  Crossing into Central Park from the frenetic bustle and noise of Fifth Avenue was like entering another world. They set off down the curved pathway, the sounds of the city fading behind them almost at once. Against her will, Rosemary found herself enchanted by the lush, deliberately cultivated wilderness of the park.

  As if echoing her thoughts, Wes said, “God, I love the park on a day like this. All these paths winding around through the trees changing color, over bridges and through tunnels—the city is such a grid, and the park is nothing like that. It’s wild.”