Yes, Chef

by Linda Verji

  “Tell Neil that the program needs to be more interactive.” Worth flipped the document closed. “I don’t want a repeat of January. Instead of spoon-feeding the staff, get them to suggest ways to improve their interaction with customers.”

  “Okay.” Sin jotted down his suggestions quickly before looking up. “What about…”

  Her words drifted off when she realized how close they were, and how intently he was watching her.

  “What about what?” he asked, his dark eyes on her.

  “Um…” She licked her suddenly dried lips. “What about…”

  Damn it! She couldn’t remember what she was about to ask him. Her confusion caught Worth’s attention. He watched her for a long while before his eyes darkened as if he’d just realized what was going on.

  “Sin,” he murmured huskily right before his face came closer. He was going to kiss her.

  Sin was tempted to let him. Oh, how tempted she was. But she knew she couldn’t. She set her palm on his chest and pushed him away. “No.”

  However, just as she was about to stand, he grabbed her wrist, keeping her hand locked to his chest. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean what’s going on?” Sin countered breathlessly as she tried to free her hand from his. But his grip was too strong. “Let go.”

  Instead of following her command, he asked, “Are you mad at me?”

  “Why would I be mad at you?” she asked even as she gave up the fight. Sensing her surrender, Worth lowered her hand from his chest to the couch but he didn’t let go.

  “You seem mad at me,” he insisted. “Is it because I took you to Claire’s thing?”

  “Why would I be mad at you for that? It was just work.” She worried her bottom lip as she tried to think of a viable excuse for why she was refusing his advances. “I’m not mad at you. I just… just… I just don’t want any more stuff between us.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Stuff?”

  “You know what I mean.” She waved her free hand nervously. It felt like something was pressing down on her chest as she tried to clarify, “I just… I just don’t want us getting intimate anymore.”

  “Why?” He watched her keenly.

  “Because it was a mistake.” Her tongue darted out to swipe against her lower lip and her gaze lowered to their still intertwined hands. “You’re my boss and I’m your assistant. Nothing more.”

  He squeezed her hand. “You know damn well that you’re more.”

  “Am I?” She met his eyes. “What more am I? Girlfriend?”

  She knew damn well that he didn’t think of her as his girlfriend, not with the shoddy way he always treated her after their ‘encounters’. Still, a part of her wanted him to lie to her, tell her that she meant more to him than she assumed.

  But lying wasn’t Worth’s style. Though he frowned, he didn’t say a word. And that was answer enough.

  It sent an unexpected pang of hurt through Sin. Forcing words through the painful lump that had suddenly lodged itself in her throat, she said, “And that’s why we need to go back to having a professional relationship. I know that you’re not interested in having a real relationship with me, but I’m not willing to be your sex-slave in-waiting.”

  “Sex-slave in-waiting?” Worth’s frown deepened. “That’s a little harsh.”

  “Is it? It seems like the perfect description for what’s been happening between us.” This time when she pulled her hand away, he let her go. She stood then. Forcing a smile, she added, “Don’t worry. I’m not saying this is your fault. It’s mine. I’m the one who put myself in this situation and now I’m getting myself out. I hope you understand.”

  Before Worth could interrogate her any further, she headed for the door.

  IT WAS ONLY once Sin got back to her desk that she took an easy breath.

  Good girl. She dragged in another long breath. You did good.

  But even those peppy words weren’t enough to fill the cavity where her heart was supposed to do. Even though cutting off Worth was the right thing to do, her feelings for him were still there, throbbing and generally being a nuisance. But what could she do? It would never work for them.

  She forced her thoughts away from Worth, but inevitably, they headed straight to her dilemma with Claire. How would she get rid of the woman without causing harm to either Ten or Worth? But even as she racked her brain for a way of the mess she’d landed in, Sin wondered how Claire had found out about Ten. Also, why did it seem like she was reading Sin’s mind when they’d had their confrontation? Either the woman was psychic or…

  Sin’s eyes suddenly widened and her jaw dropped as the answer hit her like a ton of bricks. Oh. Hell. No.

  Her first move was to text Ten. Are you still at the house?

  Ten’s answer took quite a while to come. Nervousness nipping at her, Sin stood and grabbed her purse. At the back of her mind, she knew that Worth would be livid if she walked out without even letting him know, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. All that mattered was Ten.

  Sin had just gotten into the elevator when Ten’s answer beeped in.

  Why do you ask? That was her passive aggressive way of saying she was still in town. If it were normal circumstances, Sin would’ve been happy to find out that her friend hadn’t ditched her. But these were special circumstances.

  Her whole body tense with nervousness, Sin texted, Meet me at the café next to our building.

  TEN: Why?

  SIN: It’s urgent. Just meet me…. And don’t talk or use your phone in the apartment.

  TEN: Why?

  But before Sin could even finish writing her message Ten figured it out for herself.

  TEN: No way. That bitch!

  Even though it was just a text message, Sin could’ve sworn that she felt her friend’s outrage in her reply. She texted back, I’ll be waiting. Be careful.

  But Sin didn’t have to wait because when she got to the café, her friend was already waiting for her at one of the tables. Ten’s expression was a mask of furious disbelief.

  As soon as Sin got to the table, Ten announced, “I found some of them. They were in the smoke detectors.”

  “Damn, we would never have found those.” Sin settled in the seat opposite her friend.

  “I should’ve found them,” Ten said as she pushed a virgin margarita towards Sin. “That was my job.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Sin reached to pat her friend’s hand. “I’m the one who trusted that heifer.”

  “Well, I didn’t trust her, and I still wasn’t careful.” Ten kissed her teeth and shook her head. “Damn! She got us.”

  Sin was about to agree but an alarming thought struck her. “Please tell me you didn’t get rid of them yet.”

  “Not yet,” her friend reassured. “But why shouldn’t I have?”

  “I’ll need them later.”

  “Later?” Ten leaned forward, curiosity dancing in her eyes. “For what?”

  Sin was about to reveal her plan then she remembered that it would put Ten into more danger than she was already in. She changed the subject. “When are you leaving?”

  “Ha ha…” Ten laughed. “You didn’t think that would work, did you?”

  “I thought you didn’t like the decisions I was making.” Sin reminded her, “I thought you wanted us to run.”

  “That was an hour ago. I’ve changed my mind.” Though Ten’s tone was flippant, the rage glittering in her eyes was scary. “Now I just want to get back at the bitch! No one bugs me.”

  “No, I don’t want you involved in this,” Sin insisted. “You’ve already done enough. Just go home.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen!” Ten retorted sarcastically before waggling her eyebrows. “So what’s the new plan?”

  “Ten!” Sin protested, exasperation in her tone. “Just go home. If you stay here any longer, you’ll get hurt. She’s already after you… you can’t give her more to use against you.”

  “What does that mean?” Ten frow
ned. “She’s already after me?”

  “Nothing… nothing…” Sin quickly backtracked, wishing that she could take back that slip of her tongue. “I’m just saying that I can handle this situation on my own.”

  “What. Does. That. Mean?” Ten enunciated each word clearly, leaving no doubt that she wouldn’t let that slip go.

  Before Sin knew it, she was reluctantly narrating the morning’s conversation with Claire. Ten was understandably furious, but instead of running scared like Sin hoped, she seemed set on revenge.

  “Oh, she’s going down!” Ten banged the table so hard, their glasses shook and the sound attracted curious glances from other patrons in the café.

  Lowering her voice and leaning forward, Sin warned her, “Ten, don’t get involved in this. You could go to jail.”

  “And I’ll consider it a badge of honor as long as I take that thug with me,” Ten countered, an unholy light glittering in her eyes.

  “Only for a moment,” Sin said, frustrated that her friend didn’t realize the gravity of their situation. “But once you’ve been in there for about a month, you’ll realize that honor isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “I don’t care.” Ten shrugged. But before Sin could call her out on her flippant attitude, she said, “Come on, Sin, don’t you know what’s happening here? The woman’s just trying to scare you. She’ll never out us… not while she’s got more to lose than we do.”

  Ten leaned forward. “Think about it! What do we have to lose? We’re already criminals so if we go to prison, it’s just business as usual. What about her? She’s this pillar of society, soccer mom, gallery owner, wife of a big-shot, daughter of a big-shot… if we out her, she loses all that. Her reputation, her family, her suburban life.” Ten guffawed. “Psh! She won’t out us.”

  “We can’t be sure of that,” Sin insisted. “And with lawyers and connections like hers, she might be able to spin the story so she looks good.”

  “So we need to make sure she can’t spin the story,” Ten suggested.

  That was what Sin planned to do. She’d find irrefutable proof that she and Claire were partners then use it to threaten her to leave both Worth and Ten alone. However, Sin wasn’t about to tell Ten that because the lady would insist on getting involved.

  Unfortunately, Ten was pretty smart. She suddenly smiled. “That was your plan, wasn’t it?”

  “What? What?” Sin blustered. “I don’t have a plan.”

  “You’re an awful liar,” her friend teased. “How did you ever make it as a con-artist?”

  Sin sighed. “Come on, Ten. You can’t get involved in this.”

  “Sorry, babe. I’m already invested.” Sitting back in her seat, the other woman sipped on her drink then asked, “So what’s the plan?”

  Sin didn’t want to involve her friend, but it was obvious from Ten’s obstinate demeanor that she wasn’t going anywhere. Sin had no choice but to surrender.

  “I’m thinking of using the same plan we were going to use on Worth,” Sin revealed. “Let’s investigate her first; find out if this is really the first time she’s getting her hands dirty.”

  Ten snorted. “I bet it’s not.”

  “That’s what I’m betting on.” Sin said. “And those bugs she planted on us can help us buy time while we look for something to use against her.”

  “Poor thing! She’ll think we’re following her orders while in reality we’re looking for a way to screw her over.” The glee in Ten’s voice left no doubt that she felt zero sympathy for Claire.

  “Exactly!” Sin smiled. “We should start with her gallery. If she has any skeletons, I have a feeling that’s where she’ll be keeping them.”

  “Good idea.” Ten nodded.

  Even as the two women discussed their plan further, worry still held Sin hostage. What if they were both biting off more than they could chew? Just the thought of seeing Ten in handcuffs was enough to make her insides curl. But what could she do? The lady was too loyal for her own good. Still, Sin couldn’t deny that it was good to know that she wasn’t alone.

  CHAPTER 17

  A week later, Worth still couldn’t figure out what game Sin was playing.. In all his imaginings about how their relationship would go, he’d never dreamed that she’d be the one to back out first. He was supposed to walk away from her, not the other way round. Was this a new strategy to reel him in? If it was, then he had no idea how to counter it.

  He’d been in enough relationships to know when a woman was just playing hard to get. This was nothing like that. He’d seen the genuine nervousness that had filled Sin’s expression when he’d accidentally touched her. He’d seen how hard she tried to avoid him and how jittery she was whenever she was around him. It almost seemed like she was afraid of him.

  Why would she be scared of him? Worth frowned, but the action sent a sharp pain shooting through his forehead and straight to the back of his head. With a groan, he turned onto his stomach to bury his head in his pillow.

  Look at what she was doing to him. Even though he was as sick as a dog, she was the only person he could think about. That’s how badly he missed her.

  Oh, the irony. He’d set out to seduce, use then toss her. Though there were a few glitches, part one and part two of the plan were successful. It was part three that was the problem. He couldn’t imagine tossing her now that he’d become addicted to her. The longer he went without any affection from her, the more he wanted her. Now he could understand how all those men had fallen into her traps.

  Sin was an addiction.

  Worth coughed to clear his dry throat, but it didn’t help. When he tried to sit up so he could go to the kitchen and get water, his aching limbs refused to move. God! He felt like crap! He flopped back onto the bed. Unfortunately, he couldn’t sleep either because he was trembling with cold even though his whole body was hot to the touch. Finally, he just gave up and let the sickness have its way.

  Somehow, he managed to fall asleep. It could’ve been a minute or an hour later (it was hard to tell time) but a weird ringing woke him up. His head spinning, he woke up and looked around. The only light in the shadowy room was coming from the phone blinking on his nightstand.

  Worth set his head back down on the pillow, intent on ignoring the phone. However, the ringing was so annoying that he reached for the gadget so he could turn it off. However, when he saw Sin’s name flashing on screen, he swiped his hand over the screen.

  “Hello?” he answered, his voice groggy with sleep and sickness.

  “Mr. Ransom, are you still asleep?” Sin sounded surprised. “It’s ten a.m.”

  “I know what time it is,” he retorted. “What do you want?”

  “You were supposed to have a meeting at Cantana at nine, but you didn’t show up.”

  “Ugh!” He groaned. He’d woken up feeling so awful that that meeting had completely slipped his mind. “What did they say?”

  “I just told them that you had a sudden emergency then rescheduled the meeting for Friday,” Sin said. “Don’t worry. They weren’t angry.”

  “Thank you.” Worth let out a relieved breath.

  “You sound sick,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  The concern in her voice made Worth smile. “It’s just a little flu. But I’ll be okay by tomorrow.”

  “Oh!” Sin didn’t sound convinced. However, she let the subject drop and instead said, “Legal dropped NERD’s new contract. We’re supposed to send it in today otherwise we won’t have enough stock for the marathon.”

  “I guess that means I have to come in, huh? I’ll be in in an hour or so!” Worth knew how urgent that contract was. He sat up but the pain that shot through his skull was enough to make him groan. “Ugh!”

  “Are you okay?” Sin’s panicked voice echoed over the line. Before he could reassure her, she interjected, “Just stay at home. I’ll bring it to you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Obviously, I do.” And before he could protest further
, she hung up.

  Immediately, he got off the phone, Worth forced himself to get out of bed. He opened his drapes and windows to get rid of the smell of sleep then changed into a t-shirt and sweats that were not as wrinkly or sweaty. Slowly, he trod around the house picking up the clothes he’d dumped haphazardly in the hallway and living room when he’d gotten home last night.

  It was only as he carried the dirty clothes into the bathroom that he realized what he was doing. He was cleaning up for Sin, as if she was a woman that he wanted to impress, a woman he wanted to date. What the hell was wrong with him? He dumped the clothes on the bathroom floor and went back to bed.

  When she finally rung his doorbell, he deliberately took his time getting to the door. It wouldn’t do for her to think that he was eager to see her.

  The moment Sin saw him, worry creased her features. “Wow! You look like crap!”

  “Thanks,” he retorted sarcastically. “Where’s the contract?”

  Sin held out the large white envelope she was holding. He took it then shuffled deeper into the house and straight to the couch. Is this how people with arthritis felt? He could’ve sworn that he heard his bones creak and groan as he lowered himself to his seat.

  Though he was incredibly aware of every movement Sin made, how she took the seat adjacent to his and how worried she seemed as she watched him, he ignored her and drew the document out of the envelope.

  Narrowing his eyes in thin slits eased his throbbing headache, but it made it incredibly hard to read. In his situation, any other man would’ve just decided to trust his lawyers and signed the document. However, the one useful lesson Worth had learned from his father was never to trust anyone unconditionally. Humans were just that – human, and humans made mistakes.

  Despite his sickness, Worth read every article in the contract. When he was satisfied that it was as agreed, he held out his hand to Sin. “Pen.”

  She handed him a black one. Once he was done signing the document, he gave it back to her. He expected her to leave immediately afterwards but instead she asked, “Have you seen a doctor?”