Just One Taste

by Louisa Edwards

  “Hey,” he said, standing up and holding out his hand. “Do you want to dance?”

  She looked at him, eyes wide at the sudden shift. “I don’t know how.”

  “Not one of the things you’re an expert on, huh? Don’t worry, we won’t be crunking or whatever. Over here in our little corner? No one’s going to mind if we just put our arms around each other and sway.”

  Mouth twisting into a shy smile, she stood, too. “I can do that.”

  Relief scoured through Wes’s insides the moment she stepped into the circle of his body. He needed to get his hands on her, the warmth of her against him, sheltered in the curve of his body—anything to ease the persistent, throbbing ache of sadness in his gut for the solitary, overlooked girl she used to be.

  “Hey,” she said into his shoulder, her breath hot through the thin material of his T-shirt. “Don’t think this gets you off the hook, buddy. Quid pro quo—I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

  “Later,” he said, unable to even imagine what he could tell her that wouldn’t be a lie, but also wouldn’t minimize the exquisite, delicate pain of her memory. Wes actually remembered his childhood fondly, for the most part. It had its ups and downs, and looking back, he knew there were incidents that would raise the hair and blood pressure of any competent social worker, but he’d loved his dad unconditionally. Every day with Pops was an adventure.

  But he couldn’t tell her about that.

  “Later, I will. I promise,” he forestalled her when she raised her head, a protest clear on her face.

  He pulled her farther into the shadows, bent his head to hers, and kissed her. She came alive under his mouth, lips parting on a sigh, her whole body lifting into him as if she were levitating.

  You’re not alone anymore, he tried to tell her with every slide of his tongue against hers, every clasp of his hands around her narrow, slender back.

  Even if Wes was nowhere near good enough for her, at least he knew what she was worth. At least he understood how precious she was, how unique and perfect in all her many weirdnesses and eccentricities.

  Maybe he wasn’t perfect, or anything like it, and he sure as hell wasn’t a genius—but at least he knew that much.

  He thought about his father’s demands, and what he’d have to do to meet them, and hardened his resolve. It was all worth it. Anything was worth it, to keep the woman in his arms safe.

  Chapter 26

  Over the next few days, Rosemary did her best to ignore the last, persistent niggling doubts about what she’d seen at Chapel.

  She wanted to believe Wes’s easy explanation; she’d remind herself that she’d misread the situation before, and she really couldn’t trust herself not to be overreacting to something completely innocent.

  And yet … and yet. She couldn’t help feeling that things changed after that night.

  Rosemary knew she wasn’t the most perceptive or sensitive to emotional shifts—generally, it took a seismic quake on par with plate tectonics to alert her to someone’s altered emotional state, including her own.

  None of which made it easier to ignore the fact that after that night at the seedy, Lower East Side bar, Wes began to pull away from her.

  It was subtle at first. A lot of working late at the restaurant, promises to come over to her hotel later that ended with him stealing into bed with her sometime after she’d finally given up and gone to sleep. He began to look worn and drawn, his boyishly handsome face creased with lines of exhaustion.

  She tried to ask him about it, but he put her off with excuses about work and how much the job at Market meant to him. In the few minutes they had together, if she happened to wake up when he came in, he talked about his dreams for the future, a restaurant of his own, and she read the truth of that goal in the way his head would lift and his eyes would shine in the filtered blue light from beyond her drapes.

  They made love in the dark, his body hard and demanding against her sleep-softened muscles. He came to her desperate and aching, and within seconds, he’d have her aching, too, her confused body caught between somnolence and arousal. When they slept, after, he curled around her and held her so tightly her ribs nearly creaked with the strain, but she never complained.

  In the mornings, he’d get up early and play with Lucille, brew coffee in the little hotel pot, and bitch about the lack of a kitchen. Without fail, he asked her about the aphrodisiac research and how things were going. He’d nod and smile, and kiss her good-bye, and that was it.

  Rosemary did not like it.

  What she hated most was that she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what was bothering her. And in the absence of a concrete enemy, her hyperactive brain did what it did best—it began to come up with different scenarios to explain the inconsistency.

  Or, as she imagined Wes might put it, she spun into a paranoid freak-out.

  The fact that she was aware that her increasingly upsetting conjectures were mostly coming straight out of her own fears and insecurities did nothing to calm her nerves.

  Currently winning the pool was her very real and quite justified, she thought, assumption that Wes had pulled away because of something about what she’d shared with him that night regarding her family situation.

  Somehow, it was easier to believe he was tired of dealing with someone as emotionally stunted and underdeveloped as Rosemary than it was to consider, for the nine hundredth time, exactly who that sprightly, gray-haired man had been. Not to mention why they were really fighting, or why the dapper stranger winked at her before he left.

  After the third day in a row of getting a text from Wes saying service had run long and it would be a while before he made it across town, so she shouldn’t wait up, Rosemary closed her laptop with a click and got her jacket.

  Lucille, ever alert to the possibility of walkies, popped up off the damask sofa in the sitting area of the suite like a spring-loaded toy.

  “No,” Rosemary told her. “I already got in trouble once for bringing you to the restaurant. Forget it.”

  The wagging of Lucille’s entire body slowed but didn’t stop. The bright canine grin of anticipation was replaced by Lucille’s patented Puppy Dog Eyes of Death, and Rosemary felt herself go all gooey.

  It was sort of disgusting, but she couldn’t seem to control herself. She checked her watch: eleven o’clock. The last customers should be leaving the restaurant by now, surely.

  “Okay, we’ll go in the back way. Remember Wes showed us the alley behind the restaurant? Yes. I said ‘Wes.’ If you could stop wriggling so I can put your leash on, I’d be very pleased. I’m serious. Lucille! Okay.”

  Finally they were ready to go. Rosemary looked down at her best friend, trotting happily along by her right ankle, and smiled. It felt good to get out of her head and back into the world, taking action and making things happen.

  “If Wes can’t come to us,” she said to Lucille, “then we’ll just have to go to him. And drag him home kicking and screaming if we have to.”

  Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

  “Move your skinny arse. Think you own this alley?”

  Wes straightened from his slump against the wall as the low, drawling Cockney voice jolted him out of his stupor. He’d ducked out the back kitchen door for a breath of cool air after the inferno of dinner service, but even one minute alone was enough to get him thinking about the fucked-up mess he was currently trying to claw his way out of, courtesy of dear old dad.

  He didn’t need Frankie riding his ass, too.

  Stuffing his fists in his pockets, he gritted his teeth and said, “It’s all yours. I just came out to clear my head.”

  Wes headed for the door, but Frankie caught him by the arm with a quick grimace. “Look, mate. You don’t have to go. I was being a prat. You earned a second or two of breathing in air that doesn’t smell of sweat, grilled meat, and sizzling oil. You look like pounded crap.” He held out his battered pack of Dunhills, eyebrows raised.

  Waving away the proffer
ed cigarette, Wes resumed his lean against the brick wall—cautiously, this time. He never knew what to expect with Frankie; the guy hated his guts because he was friends with Jess. Which was more than a little fucked, in Wes’s opinion, but no one asked him.

  And it sucked extra, because for all Frankie’s totally nonacademy-approved insubordination and occasional dickheadedness, he was an amazing chef. Wes had spent hours when he first got to Market just watching the guy’s moves at the giant wood-fired grill, of which Frankie was the undisputed king.

  But whatever. Frankie was never going to accept Wes, much less respect him. He’d stopped expecting Frankie to get the hell over himself a long time ago.

  What Wes didn’t expect was for Frankie to prop himself against the opposite wall, one booted heel kicked up against the bricks, look at him from under those hooded eyes and say, “You made your bones tonight, Wes.”

  “What?” Wes blinked stupidly. The smoke from those obnoxiously expensive cigarettes had to be affecting his hearing.

  Frankie’s thin lips tightened around his cigarette. “You heard me. I said you were a stud on the line tonight. We could’ve been weeded right from the start, with that table of ten coming in early, and adding two punters to make an even dozen. And from the minute you showed up tonight, arse dragging and looking like you ain’t slept in weeks, I was sure you’d let the side down. But you rocked it out.”

  There was a very real possibility that Wes might keel over and die. He knew he’d done well during service, held it together when the tickets started spinning out of control and a lot of guys would’ve crumbled—but he hadn’t thought anyone else noticed. Although if anyone would, it’d be Frankie; partly because the guy loved to go all Big Bad Sous Chef and ream Wes a new one for any mistakes, and partly because his beloved grill station was right next to sauté, where Wes had been banging out order after order.

  “Holy shitballs,” he said stupidly, insane pride making his chest expand like a hot air balloon. “Did you seriously call me a stud?”

  “Don’t get excited. You’re not my type.” Frankie smirked. His black eyes flashed gratitude for lightening the heavy atmosphere in the alleyway.

  “Nah, I know,” Wes replied, relaxing back into his slouch and enjoying the way the rush of endorphins from Frankie’s out-of-the-blue praise made his feet and back quit throbbing with pain for a few seconds. “You don’t like ’em tall, dark, and handsome—you prefer short, ginger, and adorkable.”

  And then he froze. Fuck. He absolutely, positively, under no circumstances should’ve mentioned Jess! The first time ever that Frankie had something nice to say to Wes, and he brought up the guy’s ex? Talk about ruining a perfect moment. “The endorphins,” Wes yelped. “They made me say it! Shit, dude, I’m sorry.”

  He squeezed one eye shut, waiting for the explosion, but all that happened was a long exhale of smoke from Frankie’s nostrils, like a man-eating dragon too tired from battling knights and hoarding treasure to bother breathing actual fire.

  “Nah, s’awright,” Frankie muttered. The guy didn’t actually blush and duck his head like a bashful schoolboy, but Wes could tell it was a close call. “Guess there ain’t too much use pretending I don’t have it bad for Jess, right? Everyone knows. Including him.”

  “Yeah,” Wes agreed, cocking his head. “So what’s the problem, again?”

  Frankie examined the end of the cigarette he held in the first three fingers of his left hand, then pointed it at Wes. The smoldering cherry winked at him. “The problem is sussing out what the hell to do about it.”

  Sometimes Wes wondered how he came to be in a position to give out relationship advice to a couple of dudes in love with each other. And as weird as it maybe was, the gay thing was not the part that messed with Wes’s head. It was the idea of anyone thinking he knew what he was talking about when it came to matters of the heart.

  “Look, man,” Wes said, aware that he was taking his life in his hands. “I’m still not seeing the bad here. I mean, what’s to suss? You’re nuts about him, and he’s sure as shit all cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs about you. Quit messing around and close the deal.”

  “I’m not messing him about,” Frankie protested. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid.”

  Wes was willing to bet Jess would disagree. Attempting to be tactful, for once, he said, “What’s stopping you from making him happy? I’m sure as shit not in love with the kid, we’re just pals. But even I’d like to see him ditch the sourpuss every now and then, maybe smile a little. You know you can make it happen, and I know you want to. So what’s holding you back?”

  Frankie flinched as if Wes had backhanded him with a wet soup ladle, then scowled. “No need to act like Jess’s been pining away without me. I know he’s been … dating.”

  The misery in Frankie’s voice made Wes want to give the guy a hug. Or maybe a punch in the face, because seriously. He bought that shit?

  “If anything, he’s been screwing,” Wes said bluntly. This time, the flinch was more of a full-on wince. The guy actually curled over slightly, as if to shield himself from a body blow. “I wouldn’t call it dating. And I don’t think there’s been a lot of that—our boy has a highly developed sense of right and wrong, and he knows damn well it’d be wrong to get involved with anyone when he’s still hung up on you.”

  “Fucking hell,” Frankie breathed. “Don’t mince words, do you? I think I see why Jess likes you. He hates when people try to manage him.”

  “Which is exactly what you’re doing,” Wes had to point out.

  “Bloody buggering fuck,” Frankie yelled, knocking his head back into the wall with a fierce, shocking slam. “I know it,” he whispered. “Fuck me, I’m doing that to him. It’d be no wonder if he hated my bleeding guts.”

  “But he doesn’t.” Wes was watching his companion closely, and he saw the lightning strike of incomprehension and bewilderment that turned angry punk-rock Frankie into a scared little boy for a full second.

  “That’s it,” Wes realized, feeling a chill of recognition. “Jess loves you—and you have no idea why.”

  Frankie stiffened all over, like an affronted flamingo; Wes was half afraid the guy’d end up toppling over, what with the way he still had one foot casually propped on the wall behind him.

  But Wes knew he was onto something, and he was still riding those superfly endorphins from Frankie calling him a line stud, so he wasn’t about to back down. “Don’t even try to deny it, man. Believe me, I recognize the signs.”

  Subsiding into a slumped sulk, Frankie cast him a disgruntled look over the end of his cigarette. “Sod off.”

  “No,” Wes said, flooded with the heady power of being one hundred percent right. “You followed me out here, you didn’t let me go back inside when I tried to give you some space—dude, from you, that’s as good as a cry for help. So you’re gonna stand there and let me help you and Jess, because I am sick to freaking death of watching you two dance around each other like a pair of demented pigeons.”

  What was with all the bird imagery? Wes shook it off. Not important.

  “Look at you,” Frankie said with a ghost of his usual sneer. “One good service and you think you’re cock of the walk.”

  “I’ve had lots of good services,” Wes said firmly. “And you know it. Besides, the only one acting like a cock here is you.”

  That startled a laugh out of the Brit. “Fine! I surrender. I’m at your mercy, O wise one. Fill me up with your psychobabble insights, Dr. Wes.”

  Refusing to be baited, Wes began ticking things off on his fingers. “One. You think you’re making things better for Jess by cutting him loose, but you’re wrong. He’s fucking despondent, man.”

  Frankie didn’t like that, Wes could tell. He held up his second finger firmly. “Two! You were surprised, just for an instant, when I told you what anybody with a pair of working eyes could see, which is that Jess loves you. I’m reasonably sure he’s already spilled the beans about that one, actually, so why th
e surprise? Unless … Three. You think you’re not good enough for him.”

  Resounding silence filled the alley. Frankie’s spine was tense where it pressed against the brick, as if he were braced for a kick in the nuts. Wes steeled himself to continue. This next part was where it got rough.

  Feeling his way, he said, “I don’t know what your deal is. Not pretending to be psychic, man, or your best friend, or some shit like that. I don’t know why you feel this way, but I know that look. That oh-my-sweet-Jesus-fuck expression in your eyes that says you’re in way over your head and you don’t know how the hell to get yourself back up to solid ground.”

  Frankie still refused to look at him, his black gaze trained solidly on the toes of his own combat boots, but his whole attitude suggested that he was listening with every fiber of his being.

  So Wes went for it. Gulping in a breath, he said, “I know that look, because I see it in the mirror every day.”

  That got Frankie to glance up, surprise and pain written on his angular features. “Yeah?” he said hoarsely.

  “Yeah.” Wes shrugged. Casual was the last thing he felt, but pride—his besetting sin, according to Pops— wouldn’t let him shuffle his feet or look away. He faced Frankie dead on, head high, and said, “I know I’m way out of my league with Rosemary. Part of that’s her—she’s unbelievable, I mean, there’s not many guys in her league, and most of them are, like, eighty-year-old Nobel laureates. But most of it is me. I put myself square out of her league by lying to her. And it eats at me every day, but there’s shit I haven’t told her. In our case, it’s shit that would break us. I don’t know if that’s what’s up with you and Jess, but I’m going to give you some advice I’m too much of a pussy to follow myself.”

  A drop of water landed on Wes’s forehead, then another on the top of his nose. He looked up at the sliver of sky visible between the buildings. It was starting to rain. He pushed away from the wall and walked up to the kitchen door, aware of Frankie’s intent gaze tracking every movement. When his hand was on the door handle, he said, “Tell him, man. Grow a pair and tell Jess whatever you’ve got going on, because living a lie with the person you love? It sucks ass.”