by Calista Fox
“I’ll let Jewel field that one. She’s used to house staff seeing her in her pj’s.”
“Whatever,” Jewel chimed in. “How’d this all happen, Bay? A couple of days ago angsty chef guy was tossing you out on your ear. Scarlet and I were just calling to see if you’d turned things around with Davila last night.”
“Things were definitely turned around.” Literally. Bayli was sure her face flushed as she thought of how Christian had fucked her, with her back to him, straddling his lap, gripping the headboard and holding it tight as he took her on the ride of her life.
“So, you clearly got his attention,” Jewel said.
“I did more than that.” Bayli paused to shovel in another bite of eggs Benedict and chewed vigorously. Then added, “Apparently, Christian and Rory had an idea for a cooking show that went nowhere, and they want to launch version 2.0—starring me. Can you fucking believe that? Christian took one look at me and suddenly the new concept hit him like a ton of a bricks. I’m going to be famous. Famous, you guys!”
“Well, we already knew that,” Scarlet said with a sisterly scoff. “But wow … this all came out of left field. I thought you were just trying to land a hostess job at the restaurant. What on earth did you do to get that amazing-looking breakfast and a TV—oh.” Her eyes widened. “I see.”
Bayli groaned. Set aside her fork. “Yes, I slept with Christian Davila. I’m not going to lie. But that’s not exactly what happened between us.… That’s not what this is all about.”
“What is it all about?” Scarlet asked with a glint in her eyes.
Bayli briefly told them about the party and how she and Christian had instantly hit it off. Then the missing-cab debacle—she didn’t bother tempering the panic she’d felt over being stranded in the country, since both Jewel and Scarlet were well aware of her depressing financial state—and the limo ride to her apartment.
“All well and good,” Scarlet mused, “but then what happened?”
Bayli laughed. “Let me just say that the man knows what he’s doing in and out of the bedroom. There are tremors still randomly running through my body. And what’s continuing to happen between my legs … good Lord.” She let out a long breath. “Downright scandalous. He’s incredible.”
“Rave reviews for the restaurateur,” Jewel said with a soft laugh. “So glad to hear you finally got laid, Bay.”
“Yeah,” Scarlet added in a mockingly churlish tone. “So glad. At least the two of you are seeing some action.”
Bayli gave a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, dear friend. I couldn’t help myself even when I tried. I mean, I really did try to resist him. But what can I say? The man is steel and I am but a magnet.”
“And what about the surly chef?” Jewel inquired.
“Oh, well … jury’s still out on him. Christian seems to think I made a better impression than I believe I did. He’s convinced Rory’s going to be as taken by me as Christian claims to be. We shall see about that, and whether this idea of theirs ever gets off the ground. He seemed fairly nonplussed over the first iteration falling apart.”
“What makes him think this next edition will be successful?”
Bayli couldn’t help but beam. “Because of me. That’s his opinion, at any rate.”
“Ah, then I’d concur,” Scarlet said. “You’d be fantastic in front of TV cameras. Extremely charismatic.”
“Apparently, Rory scared the bejesus out of the test audiences,” Bayli admitted. “So chances are we’ll have a more positive encounter with me as a shield.”
“Provided you can put up with him,” Jewel reasoned.
“Yes, there is that,” Bayli said. “Though … really, I just think he’s a bit misunderstood. Like he doesn’t quite know how to channel his passion for cooking when he’s not in front of the stove. Seems like all this creativity builds inside him and then he erupts. I don’t know. I’m totally taking a stab in the dark here. But it makes me more and more curious to dissect him.”
“See how many licks it takes to get to the chewy center?” Scarlet teased.
“Ha-ha.” Bayli smirked at her. “But then again…” Her inner muscles squeezed tight at the naughty suggestion. “Yes.”
Jewel squealed. “Now we’re getting somewhere!”
“No, we’re not,” Bayli was quick to say. “I slept with one boss. Sleeping with the other one would just be … so not right. Right?”
“Don’t knock it till you try it.” Jewel waggled a brow.
Exhilaration trilled down Bayli’s spine. But she wouldn’t go in the direction of a ménage à trois with this conversation. Even if she was dying to pick Jewel’s brain about it. That would be getting way ahead of herself—she didn’t even know if Rory wanted her in the way she was thinking of him. Let alone if both men would be interested in a threesome.
It was just such a decadent, delectable notion that it was damn near impossible to shove it under the rug and pretend she’d never considered getting it on with two men at the same time.
So she changed the topic entirely. Safer that way. “Hey, I’ve got to wrap up now and finish breakfast so I can get to the library.”
“I demand you keep us up-to-date on these latest developments,” Scarlet told her. “I’m currently living vicariously through you both, and the juicier the details the better!”
“So no luck catching up with your Wolf of Wall Street, Mr. Michael Vandenberg?” Bayli asked her.
“Still successfully evading me. Though, come on, ladies,” Scarlet said. “He might be hotter than hell, but don’t get any ideas there.… I’m not looking to hook up with the man in the way you’re thinking. I’m looking to question him about millions of dollars’ worth of artwork that went missing from his estate. The family scored on the insurance policy, but the art collection was never fenced and has never hit the black market. Not one single painting. That leads me to believe someone who likely cashed in on the claim is still secretly enjoying the pieces privately on display somewhere. Such as behind locked doors within their mansion.”
“I’m shocked he’s been able to skirt you,” Bayli said. “I know how tenacious you can be.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, he hasn’t been my sole focus. I had another fraudulent case to chase and some court time on two indictments I helped to bring about. Oh, and here’s a kicker.… Vandenberg has a stepbrother who was living in the Hamptons mansion at the same time the entire collection disappeared. But he’s even harder to track down than Wolfie. So, I’m trying to hunt them both in between all my other cases.”
“Jesus, it’s no wonder you’re not getting laid,” Jewel joked. “When would you ever have the time?”
“Trust me, I am reaching the point where I will make time,” Scarlet assured them. “I’m bordering on full-on torture here.”
“So hit a club in SF,” Jewel recommended. “Find some anonymous hottie for a one-night stand and then get back to stalking your wolf and stepbrother so that you can stop obsessing over this cold case and maybe meet someone you can actually have a meaningful relationship with.”
“’Cuz that’s happened to me before.” Scarlet snickered. “Men who want a ‘meaningful relationship’ have been beating down my door my entire life, just waiting for me to answer. Not.”
“Technically, you don’t know that,” Jewel said. “You’re a workaholic—you can’t deny it any more than you can deny Bay usually has her nose stuck in a book instead of checking out the talent around her.”
“Hey,” she snapped, “I’m on this call, too! And I just had the best sex of my life—off-the-charts sex! So there!”
“Way to rub it in,” Scarlet lamented. Then added, “I’m dropping off before I need professional help for my sexual repression.”
“Bay has to run, too,” Jewel said. “So let’s chat as soon as there’s more to talk about when it comes to angsty-chef guy. Can’t wait to hear how that goes down!”
“Neither can I,” Bayli jested with a hint of lasciviousness in her tone over the double meaning
of Jewel’s goes down comment.
Bayli ended the call with her friends, devoured more of Rory’s sensational breakfast, and then put the rest in her fridge for leftovers and packed everything up after cleaning it, regardless of Denny’s instructions. The OCD in her couldn’t help it. Then she left the box with the super, who’d been awesome from the beginning about storing her deliveries when she wasn’t available to receive them. If she ever did make it big, the sweet older gentleman was at the top of her list for a huge tip.
She phoned the restaurant and connected with Denny to let him know he could pick up all the personal catering items.
Bayli then took a bus, followed by the subway, to Grand Central Station. It was a part of town that she loved, teeming with all sorts of activity. The station itself was like nothing she’d ever expected when she’d first arrived in New York. Sure, San Francisco had some underground transportation and BART, but she’d never come across a station that looked like Grand Central—enormous, packed with people and restaurants, gleaming and pulsating with energy.
Farther south was the small but immaculate former church where she worked.
Bayli’s favorite sanctuary …
* * *
“Mission accomplished?” Christian asked as he sauntered into Rory’s kitchen around noon.
Rory looked up from the perfectly cut filets mignons laid out on large metal trays that he was inspecting for this evening’s dinner crowd. It would include, among others, two movie stars, a rock star, and a famous author, along with a TV producer and a half-dozen politicians. All at separate tables.
“Well, I didn’t exactly serve her breakfast in bed,” Rory told his friend, “but I did send Denny over to cater to her.”
“Excellent.”
“This is the first time you’ve asked me to do this,” Rory casually commented.
“You’ve made breakfast for numerous women the morning after,” Christian reminded him.
“That’s because I’m usually in their apartment and it seems like the polite thing to do after they’ve sucked my dick. So I’ll amend my statement and say this is the first time I’ve made breakfast for a woman I didn’t even get the pleasure of sleeping with.”
With a devilish grin, Christian said, “Trust me, you would have gotten a hell of a lot of pleasure out of sleeping with Bayli Styles.”
“Then you should have invited me over.” Rory moved on to the rib eyes and the strips, ensuring they were trimmed to his specifications.
“The thought certainly crossed my mind.” They were the only ones in the kitchen at present. The prep cook was taking inventory and the chefs would begin trickling in over the next hour or so. Christian added, “She’s phenomenal, Rory. It’s next to impossible not to offer her the hostess job out front, because she’d rock our customers’ worlds when they come through the door. But she’s—”
“Destined for more than that,” Rory finished his sentence.
“Yes, she is. And we need to talk about a reboot of the show. I’m thinking we do a webcast of a half-dozen episodes for a test run. Then we go back to the network with a full season planned out. I’m talking tucked-away gems, undiscovered beaches, Mediterranean seaports—rather than meccas. Asian villages, African safaris, places difficult to find on a map that are brimming with the potential for culinary brilliance.”
“Authentic all the way,” Rory concurred. “Nothing commercialized, no overrun destinations. I like it. But who the hell has time to pick these places and fully research them?”
“That’s where Miss Styles comes in, initially. She’s a book hound. Even works part-time at a library. We’ll start paying her a salary as soon I negotiate with her agent, and she can research her heart out.” Christian flashed his confident grin. The one that had likely scored him an invitation into Bayli’s bed last night.
Rory felt the sting of not having been a part of his friend’s discovery of every erogenous zone the raven-haired beauty possessed. He’d fantasized about her several times since meeting her, and Rory was more than interested in stripping her bare and worshiping her gorgeous body. While Christian did the same. Until they both had her so worked up, she came harder than ever before.
Rory’s groin tightened at the thought. It was all he could do not to grill Christian over how she tasted, how he’d fucked her, what sort of sexy sounds she made when she was aroused. But Rory tamped down the urge, because he wanted to discover all of those things firsthand.
But there was still business to focus on.
He said, “She’s also going to need to spend time with me in the kitchen. So she knows how to work around me, not get in my way. Assimilate to my style. Understand what I’m doing so she can seamlessly interact with both me and the audience.”
“Agreed. How do you think she’ll pull that off?”
“I’ll run her over a few times before she figures out how to move with me.”
Christian smirked. “Try to be gentle.”
“It won’t be intentional, for Christ’s sake. But if I’m not operating in my normal mode, then the show will be stilted and appear scripted. That’s what fucked us last time. We don’t want it technical to the point of being tedious or frustrating, and we sure as hell don’t need it to be a procedural how-to. This show needs to be more cutting-edge. More on the fly and—”
“Sam the Cooking Guy, not Hell’s Kitchen.”
“A combination of both, actually,” Rory said. “But not a bumbling mess because beauty and the beast are tripping all over each other. We need to be in sync and she needs to anticipate my movements and recognize when I begin improvising because a better idea has popped into my head.”
“Rory,” Christian said with exasperation in his tone. “Let’s not set her up for failure by expecting the impossible from her. The two of you barely know each other.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to spend some time together.” He grinned. “Not exactly torture, right?”
SEVEN
The library was meticulously laid out and Bayli spent half of her time shelving books and the other half on a special project for the curator, who was searching for information on an Italian vase presumed to be from the sixteenth century that his husband, the curator of a museum, wanted to get his hands on to display with a similar collection.
Bayli loved searching for lost treasures. She’d spent a couple of weeks scouring books and making phone calls to see what kind of authentic documentation she could unearth related to the missing piece. She’d fallen down a few rabbit holes with misguidance but was quick enough to recover and head in a different direction.
Today, her diligence paid off.
At a little after three, she collected the books she’d checked out earlier and added her pièce de résistance to the pile. She crossed the expanse of the main floor and knocked on Dr. Phillip Holdsworth’s partially opened door.
“Come in!” he called from inside. “I’m at the conference table.”
She bypassed his desk and walked to the back of the large room where the wiry blond was bent over a half-dozen books spread open on the table. Phillip was an interesting character with a slight British accent, though he’d only studied abroad—he’d actually been born in Ohio. He was married to his work as much as he was to his life partner—who followed the same pattern. They were both petite, almost delicate-looking men with contradictory boisterous personalities and a quirky sense of humor.
Bayli had clicked with Phillip instantly, and when he’d invited her to lunch with Colin Holdsworth during Bayli’s first week at the library, she’d felt honored. And had been amused by all their tales of wayward travel where pretty much anything that could possibly go wrong for the couple always did.
Yet they never told their misadventures in a negative light—in fact, it seemed to please them to have such unintentionally eccentric escapades. And their stories captivated Bayli, which might have been the reason why Christian’s new idea of a travel/cooking show got her so jazzed. Because what he was contemplatin
g was off-the-beaten-path journeys meant to be both entertaining and educational. Bayli could draw upon some of the Holdsworths’ reactions to excursions-gone-awry as color commentary.
Not that she should be thinking so far ahead. She knew it wasn’t wise to put all her eggs in one basket. And without the cooking-show basket, she’d be right back to square one. Only she would have lost significant time chasing her tail with that prospect when she could have been looking for another job—since even Christian had confirmed they wouldn’t be offering her the hostess position at Davila’s NYC. Had likely already filled it.
Her optimism didn’t dim, however. Because after this morning she really did believe in Christian’s confidence about the project and his interest in her being his and Rory’s shooting star. Plus, she was with Phillip and that man was nothing but pure sunshine.
He ardently said, “Colin located a much better rendition of the vase than you and I have previously been working with.” Colin was also Dr. Holdsworth. Both PhDs. Phillip explained, “He lost the trail around the early twentieth century, though.” Philip handed over the drawing. It was quite similar to the one he’d provided when Bayli had first joined the staff and he’d singled her out for this special procurement. But the new image was colored in with oil paints. Vibrant splashes of red, orange, gold, green, and purple. A little overwhelming visually, but once she got past that, the vase was quite stunning.
Bayli carefully set her pile of books on the table and snatched the one on top, placing it before Phillip where he was still hunched over his designated space. “I’ve finally found more than a mere mention of the vase. For the past two months, I’ve been digging a deep hole to China with no concrete leads to follow. Then, suddenly, I hit upon this.” She flipped the hardback open to the section she’d flagged with a torn piece of paper and said, “I’m pretty sure this is the same piece.”
She held his rendering to the one in the book. The pattern was identical upon first inspection.
“Unfortunately,” she continued, “with my version being in sepia tones and yours being so vivid…” She frowned. “Does Colin know for sure this is an accurate depiction? I mean, we’ve all only come across a couple of images and they’ve never been in color. So how do we confirm these jewel tones are true to life?”