“I’m just finishing up,” Brandi, one of our youngest prep cooks, says.
“Looks good, Brandi.” I walk away from the sink, along the prep stations and past the stoves and ovens. Everything gleaming. Everything perfect. “You’ve done great.”
“Thank you, Chef,” Brandi says, tipping all the cutting boards up to balance against the stainless-steel racks.
Everyone else is gone. It’s a little ridiculous that Brandi is still here, but that’s Brandi for you.
A keener.
I’m not a fan of keeners. There is something so desperate about them. Something that screams, “Love me.”
I know this because I used to be the most desperate of the keeners.
“It was a good night, Chef,” she says.
“Yes, it was,” I say with a smile, because I meant what I said to Jeff: we’re family. My staff. This kitchen. The inn. I want this to be the home I never had and in the home I never had, you’re nice to everyone. Even the annoying family members. You don’t punish the keeners for wanting to be liked. To be appreciated. Noticed.
Wanting to be loved is not weak.
Not in the home I’m making now.
“You did a good job. Head on home.”
Brandi nods, her cheeks flushed either from the night or the work or the compliment, hard to say with her. The girl is a blusher.
And then she is gone and the kitchen is dark and still and I try to stop myself, to keep the memories away, to, instead, focus on anything but my body. My to-do list, things that can be improved upon — the fondant potatoes for one. But my whole body buzzes so loud, I can’t hear my thoughts over my body’s instance to be heard.
Between my legs there is an ache and a want.
It’s been years since I’ve let the rush of a good night end in ill-advised hook-up. And I’m a freaking business owner now. But the nameless man at the bar with the dark eyes and the thick, jet-black hair — if a man could have flirtatious hair, he had it. How was a girl supposed to resist that hair?
How seductive was it that he’d known exactly what I’d been feeling? Like he knew intimately the high-octane emotions after service, after a night like that, after breaking a man’s nose, after Jeff called me a bad lay.
Like the only thing for that awful intersection of events is orgasms.
My body is lush with the memory.
And I should be celebrating everything that happened tonight, but I’m stupidly hung up on this.
Someone pushes open the service entrance to the kitchen and light floods the shadowed room. I jump away from the counter feeling like I’ve been caught with my hand down my pants.
“What. A. Fucking. Night,” a voice cries out and I smile.
It’s Megan. My business partner. My truly better half.
My better half who would flip her lid if she knew that I had fooled around with a patron. Not just because it puts the reputation of the business in jeopardy, but because she loves me.
And she knows I have a thing for self-sabotage.
I won’t tell her and I’ll just add it to the pile of things I’m not telling her. One more lie won’t matter.
He’s gone, I tell myself. He is just a thing that happened and now he’s gone and life goes on the way it should.
“Back here,” I say, pulling my jacket straight. Megan says I don’t have to wear the jacket, I don’t have to cover up the ink. She says this place is the place where we should be entirely ourselves.
But I’ve been entirely myself most of my life and failed, fucked up, ruined things. So, we’re going to go with the opposite for a while. Just to see if it works better than being me.
Megan appears in the prep area and I feel better just seeing her.
“I told you,” she says with a wry smile. A twinkle in her eye.
“You told me,” I concede with a laugh. I knew this was coming. And I’ve actually been looking forward to it. My words that I am about to eat, they are going to be delicious.
“Say it.”
“Megan —”
“Say it, Pen. For real.”
“I am not cursed.”
“And?”
“I do not have to self-sabotage.” I say the words but I’m lying. Because what was irresistible hair guy if not a little self-sabotage?
“And?”
“I deserve nice things.” This is a lie, too, but Megan doesn’t know me as anyone but Penny. The kid who grew up poor in Iowa. She doesn’t know that I’ve had nice things all my life, and it isn’t the nice things I don’t deserve.
It’s the happiness the nice things bring.
That is the shit that is out of my reach.
But it makes Megan happy to hear me say it.
And it is probably good for me to say it, but I just don’t believe it. You grow up like I did and it is going to take more than a good soft-opening to change my mind.
Megan’s red dress still looks flawless, so does her hair, but she is barefoot and in one hand she has a bottle of Maker’s Mark and in the other she has two glasses.
It’s celebration time.
My friend puts everything on the stainless-steel counter and faces me with her hands on her hips. A stance that makes me nervous. Last time she stood like that in her bare feet in my kitchen with a bottle of the good stuff beside her, she said, “My family has this old farm…”
And now look at us.
“I know you’re not a hugger,” Megan says and I nod, my eyes narrowed. “But I am. And after a night like tonight —”
Before she can finish, I put my arms around her, pulling her close. And Megan collapses into me and we’re not hugging so much as holding each other up.
“We did it,” I breathe, the words still not real. The night still feels like a box of out-of-control puppies.
“We totally did it.”
“Pour us a drink.”
Megan leans back, wiping under her eyes.
I don’t give her a hard time for being such a crier. But I still can’t quite understand how I ended up in business with a hugger AND a crier. It’s my worst nightmare…kind of.
Though, I realize with a start, tonight I was a hugger and a crier.
Honestly, what is going on?
“Dinner was exquisite,” Megan says.
“Thank you. Service was impeccable. Those tables, Meg. It was beautiful.”
“Thank you. I wish you would have taken more credit. Everyone is asking about the chef —”
I lift my hands. “Not interested,” I say and take a long drink of the bourbon that goes down like burning honey. “And you know that.”
“But celebrity chefs —”
“It’s a team back here,” I say. “Just like it is up front. One of us gets a compliment, we all do. I’m not interested in being a celebrity chef. I’m interested in running a high-end farm-to-table restaurant and inn.”
Megan opens her eyes, drops her jaw. “Oh, my God,” she says. “We’re doing it. We’re actually…that’s what we’re doing!”
I understand her wonder. Sometimes it catches me off guard, too. That the last two years of ridiculous work has actually paid off.
I tap my glass against Megan’s and we both drink.
“I fired Jeff,” I say. “And before you get wound up, it wasn’t sabotage. I had to.”
“What? Why?” Megan gasped.
“He showed up high.”
“No!”
I rotate the glass against the stainless-steel counter in quarter turns. Like a screw I am turning tighter and tighter.
“I broke his nose.”
Megan blinks. “You punched him?”
I start to laugh. Because it is ridiculous. Any night it would be ridiculous. But on this night? It is surreal. “There was blood. Like, a lot of it.”
“Did anyone see?”
Just the stranger, but we are not talking about him. I shake my head no.
“Oh, my God!” Megan howls and suddenly it’s the funniest, craziest thing in the world and we
’re both laughing. The pressure of the night making this funnier than it really is.
“He deserved it.”
“He totally deserved it.”
“I would have fired him ages ago,” Megan says. “Sometimes I wonder why you’re so loyal to people.”
“Why are we loyal to anyone?” I ask and take another sip.
“Oh, listen, Freud.” Megan scowls. “I’m not going to let you get all existential on me. Tonight is a night for celebrating. We did it.”
“We did it,” I say and it’s another cheers, and another swallow.
“Excuse me?” a voice says from the doorway. A very familiar masculine voice and my stomach drops just as my skin ignites.
It’s him. My stranger. He’s supposed to be gone.
“Hello?”
Megan leans down slightly to glimpse under a shelf at the doorway. She’s going to get rid of him, I know it. And I’m ready to let her handle this. I’ll hide in the kitchen.
It’s what I’m good at.
“Mr. Quadir,” she says. “We’re back here.”
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“He’s nice,” she whispers back. “And very pretty to look at.”
I know. I know all of this. But that doesn’t explain why Megan is bringing him in here.
“You’re cut off,” I breathe and pull the bottle away from her, which only makes her roll her eyes.
I can hear Mr. Quadir making his way toward us and I run my hand down my coat, making sure every button is done up. Alarmed all over again that he managed, in such little time, to undo me so completely.
Mystery man with the hair steps around the stainless-steel counter and if he was handsome in a tux, he is devastating with the jacket gone and the shirt unbuttoned, the tie hanging loose around his neck.
He is utterly and completely masculine. Beautiful to look at and I’m suddenly aware of how I must look. Skin flushed, hair sweaty and messy. No makeup. No…beauty. Megan, beside me, shines like a diamond.
He must look at me and wonder what the hell he was thinking. He must look at me and be…embarrassed.
I am.
“Here’s the party,” he says with that utterly charming half-smile.
“Not much of a party,” Megan answers. “But we do what we can.”
I lift my glass to take a sip, to keep my body busy, but my glass is empty and so I am, somehow, left watching him. Staring really.
Those hands, they touched me.
Those lips, they kissed me.
And his grin, the ease of it, the…charm of it makes my whole body clench like it wishes it could hold onto him.
Charming men are not my style. They don’t like women like me, rough and blunt. We don’t fit.
Though we did fit pretty well tonight.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, I was just…well, I was looking for a drink.” He gestures aimlessly at the bottle on the counter between us. “I thought the bar might still be open.”
“Bar closes at midnight,” Megan says. A time we’d argued over at some length.
“I didn’t realize it is so late.”
I don’t even know what time it is and the sight of 12:30 on my watch makes me start. I need to go home and get some sleep if I’m going to be back in time for the breakfast service. I’ve been up since before dawn for what seems like years. And dawn comes earlier every day.
But somehow…I don’t leave.
“You’re celebrating a successful night,” he says, his hands in his pockets. His hair flopped over his forehead.
So flirty that hair. It’s like he’s teasing me with it.
“We are,” Megan says and I expect her to say something polite but firm, sending Mr. Quadir, with the hands and the mouth and the knowledge of my clit and just how it likes to be touched, on his way.
But instead, to my shock, Megan says; “Join us.”
TEN
Penny
I’M NOT sure who is more surprised, Mr. Quadir or me.
“I don’t mean to intrude,” he says.
“No intrusion at all. Consider it a nightcap service,” Megan says and I know that if I’d told Megan about what happened between me and Mr. Quadir, there’d be no friendly nightcap service. It would be cold and it would be business then there would be a lecture on how not everything good in my life needs to be rolled in ruin. Topped with disaster.
But Megan doesn’t know. And I can leave.
But I don’t. I’m held in this spot by a magnet.
Megan grabs one of the plastic cups off the high stainless-steel shelf that the kitchen staff keep around for water while they’re on the line and suddenly he is drinking Maker’s Mark out of an old Dallas Cowboys cup.
“That’s sacrilege,” I say, wrinkling my nose.
“It’s fine. I’ve had far worse out of far worse.” He smiles at me over the edge of the cup. And not just any smile, either. But a knowing smile. A little bit of an I’ve-had-my-hands-down-your-pants smile. An I-remember-how-you-felt-against-my-fingers smile.
An intimate smile and I suddenly feel, clear as day, the calloused edges of his fingertips as they scraped over my belly on their way down to my clit.
I can’t hide my blush. And he can’t hide the slight widening of his eyes. And just like that, it’s like Megan isn’t even here. Like the kitchen isn’t here. I can smell lavender in the night air, and taste the honey on his tongue.
And nothing else matters but getting more of him.
“What shall we toast to?” Megan splashes a little more booze in everyone’s glass then lifts hers into the air.
I follow suit and so does Mr. Quadir.
“To a job well done,” Megan says.
“Very well done,” Mr. Quadir says in empathic agreement and I am so tongue-tied, so strangely embarrassed I do nothing.
“Penny?” Megan asks. “Want to add anything?”
I shake my head no.
“To silent partners, then. Silent partners who cook,” Megan says and puts her cup to her lips.
“To amazing partners,” I say at the last moment, because Megan deserves so much better than me. “Who did 90 percent of the work tonight and got none of the credit.”
“Pen…” Megan says on a sigh, reaching for me as if there would be another hug tonight.
“Stop. No crying. And seriously, no more hugging.”
“Fine.” Megan lifts her glass. “To me.”
“To you,” Mr. Quadir says and I can feel his eyes on me. The heat and scrape of them like fingers against my skin. Beneath my chef jacket, my nipples are hard and my body is burning.
“So, Mr. Quadir —” Megan says.
“Please call me Simon.”
Simon.
Mystery man is Simon. And it’s so him. So perfectly the right name for this tall, intelligent, magnetic man.
I couldn’t have picked a better one for him.
And I know a little something about picking names.
“Simon,” Megan says. “Have you met our chef, Penny McConnell?
“Not officially, no. And it’s a pleasure.” And the irony of him reaching out to shake my hand is not lost on me, neither is his touch. Like something familiar and exciting all at once.
“Nice to meet you, Simon,” I manage to say, my eyes touching his then glancing away.
“From where I sat in the middle of that stunning table, your night was a total success. I hope it felt that way where you two stood,” he says, settling his hip against the metal counter and I think we all look so cozy and sophisticated at the same time. Like we should be an ad for Maker’s Mark.
“We had some problems in the kitchen, but Penny handled them,” Megan says.
“It was a team effort,” I say, deflecting the attention.
“I know what you’re doing,” Simon says, pointing a finger at both of us. “I’ve done it a million times.’
“Done what?” Megan asks.
“Been humble when I want to be ecstatic. Pretended like ages of hard wo
rk and tons of sweat were nothing. Or worse, luck.”
Megan and I just blink at him.
“I’m just saying,” he says. “You don’t have to hide your pride. No one can see you.”
Megan and I look at each other for one slack-jawed second then Megan lifts her hand for a high five and I am giving her one, which is so unlike us we actually kind of botch it up then we’re all laughing.
“There you go.” Simon picks up the bottle and gives us all another round. This is getting dangerous.
And fun.
“I thought you weren’t spending the night, Simon,” Megan says. “Your reservation —”
“I changed my mind,” he says. “I just can’t get enough.”
It is dirty the way he says it. But Megan doesn’t seem to notice and I think maybe it’s me with a dirty mind and he’s just making conversation.
But then he winks at me.
The guy is shameless. A shameless, terrible flirt and I love it. Because it feels like I am holding onto a stick of dynamite that could blow up in my face at any moment.
And that is kind of my happy place.
“That’s good to hear,” Megan says as she begins to screw the lid on the bottle of bourbon, a signal that this impromptu nightcap service is at an end.
But I don’t want it to end.
“So the property belonged to your family?” Simon asks, not catching Megan’s slight signal.
“It did,” Megan answers, telling a story she’s told probably a dozen times to various magazine and papers and blogs. To Megan’s credit she makes it sound new. Conversational. “No one has lived here. Not for years. So, two years ago, Penny and I were working together at The Oakhouse and I approached her and we decided to make the Paintbrush a reality.”
What she doesn’t say was that I had just been fired. Again. And I was sleeping on her couch. Again.
“How did you get the money?” Simon asks and while it isn’t the question exactly, we’ve had this question plenty of times before. But perhaps it is the bluntness of it. The nakedness of it in the dark kitchen and Megan blinks, as if she’d never been asked that.
“I’m sorry,” Simon says, holding up his hand again, as if he truly doesn’t want to offend. “I’m just…this is such an elaborate operation and it must have cost a lot. Old farmhouses are not easy to renovate.”
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