Kitchen Gods Box Set

by Beth Bolden

  Xander rapped briefly on the glass next to the open door and Chef Aquino looked up, every one of his dark hairs in place, his immaculate white chef’s jacket already buttoned up to the throat. He looked pristine and perfect, and when his dark-eyed gaze hit Kian, it felt like the first time all over again. Like an electric current crossed with a wooden beam hitting him straight in the temple. But a good sort of pain, the kind of pain you craved all the time.

  “Chef,” Xander said, somehow finding his respect, which Kian had a feeling was buried fairly deep, “this is Kian. He said he’s starting today.”

  Kian had had three weeks to contemplate them meeting again, and what his first day might be like. He’d imagined Chef Aquino shaking his hand, leading him on a thorough tour; still contained but going out of his way to show Kian the way the Terroir kitchens worked, exactly.

  What Kian got was that single quick, penetrating glance and then a brusque reply, after Chef had already returned his attention to the paper he was scribbling on. “Get him changed and then take him to the dish room.”

  At first, Kian was sure he’d misunderstood. Xander finally had to grip his shoulder and literally pull him away from the doorway. He knew he should say something, but he didn’t know what that was. Hadn’t Chef Aquino convinced him to come work for him by offering to teach him? Promised him work that wasn’t the dish room? Yet that was exactly where he was telling Xander to send him.

  He couldn’t be as callously crass as Xander when it came to their boss, but he could still, politely, make sure that Chef remembered who he was, right? But Xander didn’t even let him formulate the question, he just dragged him off.

  “Wait, wait,” he muttered as Xander kept his grip firm around his upper arm. “I need to remind Chef Aquino that I’m not here to be a dish washer. I’m supposed to be his new intern.”

  Xander gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Yeah, he knows.” He dropped Kian’s arm, finally, when they were back in the locker room. “Get changed.”

  But Kian was not going to change into anything until he understood exactly what had just happened. “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re like . . . a baby. Or a puppy.”

  Kian bristled. “I’m twenty-one. I’ve just graduated from culinary school. I was the top of our class. Chef Aquino handpicked me to be his intern.”

  Xander just looked bitterly amused. “Like I said. A puppy. For the record, the intern job basically means you’re the Bastard’s bitch, at his beck and call. And what he wants you to do today is work in the dish room. So dish room it is. Do you speak Spanish?”

  Kian had grown up in southern Oregon, which meant that he did, a little. As he slowly stripped down and changed into the whites in the locker, he informed Xander of that fact.

  All Xander said was, “God, where did you learn to change? Your grandmother’s house? Hurry it up. You need to get to the dish room and I have to get back to the fucking soup.”

  Trying to hurry, Kian was surprised to discover that the whites fit perfectly. He’d never sent his sizes to Chef Aquino, but somehow he must have known. He thought about asking Xander if that was normal, but even though he seemed to be a weird guy, probably used to odd questions, his impatience was beginning to show. Kian had begun his first day by seemingly pissing off Chef Aquino just by existing; he couldn’t risk pissing off the one person who’d been relatively helpful.

  When he was done, Xander showed him the dish room, an already bustling space filled with steam and a single man, who seemed to be in a hundred places at once.

  “This is Jorge,” Xander said. “He’s from Honduras, and he doesn’t speak a lot of English. Good luck.”

  Kian looked at Jorge, who didn’t smile back at him. He had a sudden feeling that this was Chef Aquino’s first line of defense at weeding out the self-important and the useless that passed through his kitchen. If that was true, then Kian wasn’t going to fail. Not on his first day, but more importantly, not ever. He straightened his shoulders and held out his hand.

  “I’m Kian. I think we’re going to be working together today.”

  Jorge looked at his outstretched hand like it was an insect. He didn’t make a single move to shake it. Instead, he gestured at the front of the line, where a bunch of dirty pots sat.

  Unfortunately Kian understood all too well. What Jorge wanted was for him to scrape those pots, and then the towering set of plates next to it. How was there already so much to be cleaned? The restaurant wasn’t supposed to open for hours.

  But it didn’t really matter why. All that mattered was that, until told otherwise, Jorge was his boss, and he’d better do what he said, or else he wouldn’t ever see Bastian Aquino again.

  Jorge held out a long, rubberized apron, and a scraping tool. Kian tried not to let his frustration show in his face, but he’d blown way past any neutrality he’d ever acquired, and Jorge just laughed, and it sounded way too much like Xander’s.

  Maybe Kian understood after all why they called him the Bastard behind his back.

  * * *

  Bastian was not used to feeling guilty, but the sickly feeling at the base of his stomach followed him around during the rest of the day. Manipulating employees into becoming the best version of themselves was routine; it was okay that they hated him for it. He got their most exemplary work, and eventually they got sick of him and left. But somehow the thought of Kian hating him filled Bastian with self-loathing.

  It didn’t matter that Bastian knew he was doing the right thing. It didn’t matter that Kian was so green, the last place he needed to be was on the line, fucking everything up during a service. He needed to learn, and he needed to prove he was strong enough to dedicate himself to this emotionally and physically grueling work.

  He still saw Kian’s shocked and disappointed face every time he closed his eyes, and it was annoying. Bastian didn’t like feeling this way; didn’t like feeling responsible for another person. Kian was Kian’s own keeper, and it was up to him to prove himself.

  It was only the force of his convictions that kept Bastian out of the dish room. He got a brief glimpse of him, face already white and exhausted, at the employee meal before dinner service began. Bastian considered sending help to the dish room, but Jorge typically managed on his own, and probably enjoyed having someone to boss around.

  Bastian always kept a very close eye on how things ran during service, and tonight, like every night, clean plates and dishes and bowls and empty sauté pans didn’t seem to ever be in short supply.

  He almost stopped by after the dinner service ended, but that would also be unusual, and he wasn’t willing to single Kian out so quickly. The rest of the staff would figure things out soon enough, if Kian was able to stick it out, and burdening him with additional shit, on top of Bastian’s usual shit, seemed unfair.

  He left in his Mercedes right when the service ended, depending on the other chefs to finish cleaning the kitchen to his exacting standards. The drive was only a few miles, but tonight, that didn’t feel long enough, so he kept driving. It was late, but he still found himself idling in the driveway of a house about ten minutes from Terroir.

  He must have been sitting there long enough, because when he glanced up, a woman bundled in a lilac fuzzy robe, graying hair curling around her shoulders, was standing on the front walk, a small smile on her face.

  “It’s late,” was all she said to him as he got out of the car, approaching her.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?” Bastian asked. He’d somewhat expected to come here and find her asleep.

  Bastian leaned in, giving her a hug, and brushing a quick kiss over each cheek.

  “Because you weren’t sleeping,” his mother replied tartly, leading him around the back of the house to the sunroom that Bastian had had built for her a few years ago. “Is everything alright?”

  “No. Yes.” Bastian couldn’t even make up his own damn mind as he settled down in one of the wide, comfortable chairs. He propped his clog-shod
feet up on the coffee table, and his mother gave him a single, castigating glance, before he moved them.

  “It’s very unlike you to be unsure,” she said.

  She was right.

  “I had a new employee start today,” he said.

  “You are always having new employees start,” she said, her accent still faintly musical after all the time spent in America. “Maybe because you’re an asshole.”

  “Maman!” Bastian exclaimed.

  She just shrugged. “I hear the stories. People love to talk. So what was so special about this new employee? Did you finally decide to hire a sous?”

  “I have a sous,” Bastian argued tiredly.

  “And yet he doesn’t do what a normal sous would do, because you cannot bear to let anything go. So it isn’t a sous. Who is it?”

  “His name is Kian Reynolds. He just graduated from the CIA outpost here, in Napa.”

  “So he is very young,” Celeste Aquino observed.

  “Very young,” Bastian confirmed, and even though his thirty-five years wasn’t old, he felt like a dirty old man, thinking about a twenty-one-year-old this way.

  “And you like him,” she added slyly.

  He shrugged, an echo of her own from a moment ago. “I don’t dislike him.”

  “Ahhhh. Quelle surprise,” Celeste said sagely. “You are human after all.”

  “You birthed me,” Bastian said with annoyance. “I think you’d know whether I was human or not.”

  “Eh,” she said. “I wonder sometimes. You are more machine than man. But this boy, this Kian, he makes you want to be more man than machine. That’s not a bad thing, darling. You can’t stay alone forever.”

  Bastian shot to his feet. It was just like his mother to assume he and Kian would fall in love and spend a happily ever after together after he’d only said that he didn’t dislike him. Such an auspicious start to a romance.

  “He’s my employee. My new intern. And he’s young.” Bastian paced back and forth. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Nothing if I’m to stay his boss, and I want to because I think he could be very good. I want to teach him, more than anything, and it’s hard to be patient enough to do that.”

  Celeste settled back in her chair and her knowing smile drove him wild. It was like she knew he was going to fail, before he even started, and nothing ever set him on a more determined path than people assuming he couldn’t achieve the goals he set for himself.

  “You,” he said to his mother, “are even better at manipulating people than I am.”

  She shrugged, but the twinkle in her dark eyes gave her away completely. “I worry for you, sometimes,” was all she said.

  “Maybe you should worry for him, instead,” he said darkly.

  “Will you be able to sleep now? Should I make you some hot milk?”

  Bastian growled. Hot milk, his ass. But his mother was not only used to his mercurial moods, in the beginning, he’d learned them from her—and maybe a little bit from his hot-tempered Spanish father.

  “No hot milk then. Take your drive home,” she said, getting to her feet and swirling her fuzzy robe around her like it was a Dior or a Gucci. “I need my beauty sleep.”

  He brushed another kiss across her cheek. “You’re beautiful, always, maman.”

  Slapping at his shoulder, she scoffed, but couldn’t hide the pleased gleam in her eyes. “Goodnight, Bastian.”

  * * *

  Despite talking to his mother, Bastian didn’t feel any more settled when he finally reached his own house. Stripping down, he took a hot shower, intending for the water beating on his back to relax that tight muscle throbbing in his neck, but he still felt wound tight.

  Maybe it wouldn’t even be a problem. Maybe Kian, annoyed with the way Bastian had manipulated him into taking the internship, would quit after the first day. Plenty of prospective employees had. He wouldn’t be the first, and Bastian was sure he wouldn’t be the last. Lots of chefs, especially those who weren’t fresh from school, took major offense to being asked to do dishes. But Bastian’s typical trial for new chefs was rather well-known in the industry now, and most brand-new employees expected it.

  But Kian clearly wasn’t hearing industry gossip.

  Maybe tomorrow he wouldn’t show up, Bastian thought as he turned the shower controls off. If he didn’t, and Bastian ever saw him again, maybe at the farmer’s market or giving one of those lame culinary demonstrations at Dean & Deluca, Bastian could get him out of his system with a single night of hot, brainless fucking.

  Rubbing himself down with a towel, he flopped down onto the bed and after switching off the light, attempted to switch off his brain.

  It didn’t work.

  Instead it decided to show him, in graphic detail, what that night of hot, brainless fucking might be like, if Kian didn’t show up for work the next day.

  Kian would be slender but tough, all wrapped up in that milky skin, blue eyes flashing with determination. He’d want everything Bastian was willing to give him, and he’d love every second of it.

  Groaning, Bastian rolled over. He couldn’t jerk off to thoughts of Kian. Not if the possibility existed that he was going to have to stuff all those inconvenient and messy thoughts right back into their boxes. He knew from experience that if he slipped up, there’d be no hiding from his own desires.

  You should have taken the god damned hot milk, Bastian thought, his temper spiking as he fisted his hands in the sheets. Anything not to touch himself.

  What he should do was bring Kian into his office tomorrow and tell him that they’d both made a mistake, and that Terroir was the wrong place for Kian to further his ambition. It would be a lie, because Bastian already knew it was the perfect place, if Kian could be tough enough to stick it out. It wasn’t like he hadn’t lied to employees and suppliers and friends and ex-lovers thousands of times before; as long as he got what he wanted, it didn’t matter. But something about lying to that clearly trusting face was abhorrent. Bastian didn’t think he could do it.

  What could he say instead? I’m sorry, but I want you too badly for you to stay? Yeah, that definitely wasn’t going to work, because he’d seen the worship in Kian’s eyes, and there was only one way that conversation could end.

  There was only one option left, and that was to bury everything so deep, even he forgot he’d felt anything. He’d done it before, he could do it again. It was just a matter of determination over emotion, and despite what everyone believed, Bastian controlled every god damn emotion that escaped him. If he lost his temper, it was because he chose to lose his temper. There were only two emotions he’d always been helpless against: the enduring love for his mother, and its mirror, the hatred he’d always felt for his father.

  Someday, he knew he was going to have to let that go; Celeste always told him that. But he could control what he felt for Kian.

  And he believed that completely, at least until he showed up at Terroir, bone dry cappuccino in his travel mug, at the early hour of seven thirty. Nobody else would be around now, and he could get a head start on his inventory and ordering for the weekend.

  Except that he wasn’t alone after all. A bright cap of blond hair shone in the sun, as Kian tipped his head back, absorbing the early morning rays.

  Bastian flinched, staring at the boy who hadn’t yet seen him. Not only had he come back, but he’d come back early. As Kian’s boss, this filled him with cautious optimism. As someone who was not-so-successfully trying to bury his attraction, it was the shittiest possible outcome.

  “You’re here early,” Bastian said, making sure his voice was devoid of anything. Approval, disapproval, endless, rapacious lust. Anything.

  Kian nearly jumped as his gaze flew to Bastian’s face. “Oh, yeah. I always heard timeliness was important.”

  “Even in the dish room?” Bastian asked, raising an eyebrow. He typed in the code to open the back door and reminded himself to tell Xander or Wyatt to make sure Kian knew it. If he was going to show up earlier
than everyone else, an insane proposition, he might as well know how to get in.

  “Especially in the dish room,” Kian said very seriously as they walked into the locker room. “Jorge and I have some new methods that we’re looking to work into the current practices.”

  Bastian raised an eyebrow. Typically he didn’t like anyone fucking with his restaurant, especially implementing anything new without his permission, but there was something so earnest about Kian, it was difficult to burst his bubble.

  “You’ll like them, I promise,” Kian said, backtracking like he’d thought better of making changes without permission. “Would you like to hear about them?”

  Bastian usually didn’t give two shits what happened in his dish room as long as the dishes got washed. Jorge had worked for him forever and knew how to get things done. Maybe things could be improved, but having to listen to Kian’s ideas was a bad idea when he’d actually slept and wasn’t still fighting that pesky attraction. “Not particularly,” he said casually. “Just don’t fuck anything up.”

  “Of course not, Chef,” Kian said, and goddamnit, those earnestly shining blue eyes just killed him.

  He’d died enough last night, and right now, he couldn’t take another moment, so he gave a sharp nod and departed the locker room, hoping to hole himself up in the office until he could forget everything he wasn’t supposed to be remembering.

  * * *

  During family meal before the dinner service yesterday, one of the other chefs, a nice guy with surfer blond hair and blue eyes, had said to Kian, “Oh, so you’re the new guy. Liking the dish room so far?”

  Kian hadn’t quite understood how he could know he’d been relegated there, but then the blond guy had laughed again. “Killed me too, for a couple of days, but what got me through it was knowing everyone’s had to do it at one time or another.”

  As he’d cleaned up the dishes from the meal, Kian had turned this scrap of information over in his head, until he’d come to what seemed to be the right conclusion. Chef Aquino did this to everyone who started in the Terroir kitchens. Everyone had to put their time in, to prove they were willing to commit. Chef hadn’t singled Kian out; this was the trial by soapsuds that he gave to everyone.