Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Hazel Parker

  The next thing I know, it’s seven o’clock and time to close. I’m tired, but I don’t mind. I don’t mind much of anything at the moment.

  When I get back to my apartment building, I wonder at the events of the last twenty-four hours. A couple of weeks ago, I had had an excellent case of tunnel vision, thinking only of work. Now—

  I get off the elevator on the third floor and my eyes are immediately drawn to the flowers.

  There must be a dozen vases of a dozen sunflowers each left by my door. They blaze with the warmest yellows and browns, lighting up the otherwise drab hallway like one of Vincent van Gogh’s wildest fever dreams.

  There’s no note with the flowers, but I don’t have much doubt as to whom they are from.

  My elderly neighbor, Mrs. McKinney, comes out into the hallway, walking her Pomeranian, Charlie, who sniffs the nearest blue vase of flowers curiously.

  “Hello, Stephanie,” Mrs. McKinney greets me. She tips me a wink. “It looks like someone’s got a secret admirer.”

  I would have thought I was blushed out, but apparently, I’m not. I can feel my cheeks getting hot again.

  “It’s all right,” she says kindly, patting my arm. “You’re a lovely girl. You deserve an admirer or two.” She glances at the flowers. “Or three or four, by the look of things.”

  “No,” I answer. “Just one.”

  “Really?” she says in surprise. “Pretty grand gesture from one person. He must be someone special.”

  I pick up a vase and cradle it in the crook of my arm.

  “He might be,” I tell her. “He might be.”

  Chapter 14 - Trent

  I grasp my handholds a little tighter and begin pulling myself up the face of the cliff.

  Beside me, Scott is doing the same, albeit more slowly. I keep having to slow the pace of my ascent so that he can catch up, and also so that we can continue with the thread of our conversation. At least there’s no wind to compete with either our words or our movements.

  “So if we shift our focus to the import side of things for at least a short time,” he says, “I think we could see an even bigger spike in profits for this quarter.”

  “I don’t like the idea of leaning too heavily on foreign imports,” I tell him. “No matter what the bottom line might say.”

  “Well, you have to take into account—” he starts, then breaks off as he misses his footing and tumbles from the rock face. I put out a hand to catch him, but he’s already dropped like a stone.

  His safety line whizzes out behind him, slowing his descent until he touches down lightly on the gymnasium floor.

  We are, or should I say, I am, scaling the three-story high indoor rock wall at the most exclusive gym in the city. It’s one of the few activities I can think of where you can get a good workout and still talk business at the same time.

  Beats golf, I think, moving higher.

  Down on the ground, Scott’s shoulders rise as he heaves a sigh and begins climbing again. He knows that I won’t come down before I reach the top, and if he wants to talk, he’ll have to double-time it to come up even with me again.

  I’m halfway up the wall, so I have time to let my mind wander—as much as you can let your mind wander in a situation like this, anyway.

  We don’t have to content ourselves with a fake wall and pre-established hand- and footholds. There are perfectly good climbable cliffs a not unreasonable distance from the city. Less than an hour by plane, one of which I happen to own.

  But that would be an hour to load up and get there, an hour to make the climb, and an hour to get back and debark. I can’t spare three hours. I can’t even completely spare one, which is why Scott has to share the time with the wall for my attention.

  Scott, who, besides being my go-to contact man, is also the closest friend I have. He’s the one who knows my inner tickings, which is why he had been against my disastrously bland dates with Jamie Wells from the beginning.

  “You two go together like coffee and onions,” he’d said. “I can’t believe you let yourself get roped into this.”

  “I’m giving her a chance,” I’d replied. “There might be a lot more to her than meets the eye.” This had been after our second date, when in reality, I had started believing more and more in the old adage: what you see is what you get.

  I had wanted to give Jamie a chance, too. I had discovered that I didn’t like being single. I don’t mind being alone, but being single is really unappealing to me. There is actually a difference between the two conditions. When you’re alone, there’s a chance that you have someone in your life that you might come into contact with again at some point. When you’re single, though, it’s pretty much a given that you will always wake up to find the other side of the bed empty, the chair across from you at dinner vacant.

  I know other wealthy people who seem to have no trouble balancing their work lives and their social lives. They never seem to lack for company, either genuine or rented in one fashion or another. I’m near the top of the stack, and yet still single a year after Sharon quit on me.

  “So tell me about this mystery woman,” Scott puffs. He’s caught up to me at last. “The one that’s got you taking off early on Wednesday this week. Well, early for you, anyway.”

  “No mystery,” I reply. “Stephanie White, the chef.”

  Scott goggles at me and nearly loses his balance again. “Wait a minute…you mean, the chef who torched your kitchen last week?”

  “You make it sound like she showed up with Molotov cocktails instead of her knives.”

  “Really, though, Trent. This is the same White we’re talking about?”

  “The very same.”

  “You two must have really mended fences if you’re going out now.”

  “Wasn’t much to mend. Accidents happen.”

  Scott rolls his eyes. “Trent, dropping your doughnut on the floor is an accident. Leaving the refrigerator door open, that’s an accident. The woman nearly burned down your whole house!”

  “From our conversation about Tomasso,” I say, “I would have thought you were on her side.”

  “There’s a difference between not wanting her needlessly dragged through the mud and you seeing her!”

  “Why are you so against this? I would have thought you’d be happy for me.”

  “I’m not against it,” he says. “What surprises me is that you’re not against it. You seemed pretty furious with her when the fire happened, or at least that’s how you made it out to me. And you definitely weren’t picking daisies for her when you had me sic Tomasso on her. This just seems so out of character for you, doing a complete one-eighty like this.”

  “The stunt with Tomasso was a mistake,” I murmur, more to myself than to Scott. “I know that now.”

  “I know it was a mistake,” Scott rails. “I knew it was a mistake even as you were making it. I just never thought I’d hear you admit to it!”

  “What can I say? I’m growing as a person.”

  “You’re going contrary to my dyed-in-the-wool expectations of you based on fooling around with this woman?” he asks.

  I say nothing, only concentrate on scaling higher up the wall.

  “Wait,” Scott says. “You’re doing more than just fooling around with her, aren’t you? You slept with her!”

  “A little louder, Scott—I don’t think they heard you down on the ground.”

  “But that’s great!” he insisted, not dropping his voice at all. “I am happy for you, man! This is a good thing, isn’t it?”

  I say nothing again, thinking.

  Scott scrutinizes my face. “I mean, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what kind of ‘thing’ it is,” I say at last. “This is different than anything I’ve been through before.”

  “Even different from Sharon?”

  “Oh, god, yes, especially Sharon. Steph doesn’t begrudge me working long hours. Sharon never stopped harping on it there at the end.”

  “I remember. No
offense, but seeing her leave was like, ‘good riddance.’”

  I shake my head. “That’s the thing, Scott. She was right, at least a little bit. Maybe more than that. Maybe a lot. She wanted to spend more time with me, and I just kept giving her less and less until she was getting nothing at all.”

  “Don’t try to play pin-the-blame on Trent Stone,” he retorts. “She knew what kind of person you were going into it. She knew the life she was getting into.”

  “Did she? I’m not so sure. When she and I first met, I was still only working five days a week, coming home at normal human hours. That changed after we were married.”

  “All right, I see what you’re getting at. You’re gun-shy about making the same mistake with White.”

  “Yes, I am, not to put too fine a point on it. She knows the life, too. Hell, she lives it, but I wonder how much she’d put up with.”

  We have reached the top of the climbing wall. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city stretches out before us in all directions. People coming, people going. No one is still, except for Scott and me.

  “Don’t second-guess yourself too much,” he cautioned. “There’s only one way to find out what’s going to happen.”

  “And that is?”

  He laughs. “You jump,” he says, and pushes off from the wall while opening up the descent clip on his climbing rope.

  As Scott rappels away below me, I wonder what kind of safety rope Steph is using when it comes to us, or if she even has one at all.

  I don’t want either one of us to get hurt, her especially. I can already tell that she has a large heart, and while she doesn’t necessarily wear it on her sleeve, it’s still pretty exposed.

  And what about my own heart? It has been a year since my divorce from Sharon. I have made only a few half-hearted attempts at dating since then. Could I really hope to be on the cusp of something as good as this seems?

  Scott’s right about one thing, though. There’s only one way to know the future.

  But am I ready to jump?

  After I get home from the gym, I spend an hour on the computer, looking for the best restaurants in town that aren’t overseen by a certain knockout chef. It’s surprisingly difficult. The ratings system always seems to point back to Steph’s establishments.

  She’s the best in the business. How do you give the best to someone who’s already at the top of their game?

  Curtis notices my plight. “May I make a suggestion, sir?”

  “Please. If you know of a restaurant with a rating higher than five stars, let’s have it.”

  “Not exactly, sir. If I may say so, your handling of the flowers delivered to Ms. White’s home was excellent because it had your personal touch to it. It would have been easy enough to arrange, but you took care of it yourself. Effort like that shows through in the end. You’d do well to follow your own example for this upcoming outing.”

  “I hope you don’t mean I should cook for her, Curtis, because that’s the worst possible thing I could do.”

  “Not at all, sir. I’m only saying that Ms. White will likely have a greater impression made upon her if you have a more direct hand in the evening’s events.”

  “That still sounds like you want me to cook for her.”

  “Surely there must be a happy medium between doing everything on your own and having others do it for you, sir?”

  I mull this over for a few moments, then a flash of insight hits me.

  “Curtis, you are a genius.”

  “Hardly, sir.”

  “I insist, you’re a genius.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  I shut down my computer and push back my chair. “Come on. We have work to do.”

  “I take it you’ve had an idea for the evening, then?”

  “Oh, yes…and it requires us to scout locations.”

  Curtis brings the car around, and I outline my plan for him as we head into the city’s business district.

  “A wonderful idea,” he approves as we drive along.

  “It’s a wonderful concept,” I say. “It’ll only be a wonderful idea if I can actually pull it off.”

  I take out my phone and call Tomasso.

  He’s at home, recovering from his surgery, but he accepts my call, sounding only moderately grouchy.

  “Stone?” he wheezes into the receiver. “I’m not up to any more surprise missions right now. Frankly, I feel like hell.”

  “I wouldn’t ask that of you,” I assure him. “I do need something equally valuable from you, though.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Your opinion.” I pause to let the flattery sink in, then tell him of my plans. Then I ask him for his recommendation on the outlets that would best suit my needs. He is able to give them without hesitation, because after all, who in the city would know better than him?

  “Since I’m giving my opinion here, you mind if I keep going?” he asks.

  “Go right ahead.”

  “I think it’s a hell of an idea. Good for you.”

  Chapter 15 - Steph

  As if to compensate for what almost feels like playing hooky tonight, I go in all the earlier this morning. After all, we put the “-aholic” in workaholic.

  Today, I’m putting in time at my first restaurant, which has in my mind begun to feel like a neglected child in the shadow of my third. I have to give equal love to all of them if I expect them to grow.

  When restaurant number three earned its Michelin stars, an interviewer from a food magazine had asked me if I was interested in opening up a fourth establishment. I had hinted that anything was possible, but in reality, I don’t know how I could do that and not burst into flames.

  I’m already stretched as thin as I can possibly go. The thought of delegating head chef duties freezes my blood, even though I have to do it every week anyway. Perhaps it’s the thought of having to rely on yet more people that makes me balk at the idea of opening restaurant number four.

  I have good people working at all three restaurants, the best. It’s just that I have this compulsion to be there, right in the middle of it, overseeing things and driving them forwards.

  So, for the time being at least, three seems to be the magic number.

  Strangely, I don’t second guess the wisdom of this situation with Trent. Before him, the idea of seeing someone had been laughable, the notion of juggling my career with a “steady” boyfriend a joke. But here I am, going in at four o’clock in the morning so that I can leave early tonight.

  “Girl,” Tira had teased me during one of our phone conversations, “you have got it bad.”

  Do I? I’m so rusty at the dating game that I can’t even tell where my joints begin and end. Part of me is feeling swept along by all of this, and it is a scary feeling. Another part of me feels that things are going amazingly well.

  The largest part of me, though, is looking forward to tonight.

  Trent has been coy about what we will be doing, responding to my texts with a vague “you’ll see.” He’s not much of a phone talker or lengthy texter, which is fine with me. I suspect he has a well-defined sense of the value of time and respects mine, which I appreciate to no end.

  The day passes in a blur of activity, and the next thing I know, it’s going on five o’clock. Andy, my number-one assistant at my first restaurant, practically shoos me out the door.

  “Go on,” he urges. “Don’t make me get the broom.”

  “I’m going, I’m going,” I say, checking things as I make my exit path through the kitchen to the back door. “I just want to see if—”

  “I’m telling you, go, boss,” Andy insists, making flapping motions with his hands. “We’re good! Go and have a good time!”

  Professional kitchens may be busy places, but they’re also like little communities. A lot of gossip can be exchanged on the small, infrequent breaks that come up during the course of the day, and I suppose the lion’s share lately has been about me.

  My staff has
been smiling at me a lot, especially the other women. I realize that I have been doing a lot of smiling myself, which is uncommon for me. It’s not that I’m usually unhappy or grim or anything; it’s just that I’m always so focused, I stay pretty straight-faced.

  The atmosphere in my kitchens has always been dedicated, almost to the point of being over-serious, but in the past couple of days, it has seemed lighter, approaching positively cheerful. When the boss is happy, I suppose everyone’s happy.

  As Andy closes the door on my triple-checking with the insistence that everything is under control, I realize that that is just the thing—I am happy. Recent circumstances have filled in a part of my life that I hadn’t been aware was missing. I have been driven, challenged, and fulfilled, all things I have wanted my whole life, but happy? Looking at the years in retrospect, I have to wonder.

  Is it right to sink all of your time, attention, and affection into one source? In my case, this basket into which I’ve been piling all my eggs is my career. It’s paid off on some levels—success, expansion, critical acclaim. On other levels, though, I’ve been living an impoverished life and haven’t even been aware of it.

  I’m aware of it now, though. A month ago, Andy would never have been able to usher me out the door the way he had just now. If the doors were going to be open—and they were, without fail—I would be there. I have never taken so much as a single sick day in years, mostly due to the fact that I don’t take the time to get sick.

  As I make my way home, I get a text from Tira asking for an update on plans for the evening. She is getting way too much vicarious pleasure out of this whole experience. I call her up.

  “Make sure you wear your tearaway underwear,” she answers by way of greeting when she picks up.

  “We’re going out to dinner,” I say, “not to some cheap motel out on the interstate.”

  “Noted. Still, I hope you’re going to put some more work into what you wear this time. No band apparel, in other words.”