by Beth Bolden
“Because otherwise I won’t know how much fish is enough, and when we need to order more,” Kian said, and Bastian felt the familiar flash of recognition resonate through him. He recognized so much of himself in the younger man in front of him. The eagerness, the barely leashed ego, the willingness to work as hard as it took to achieve goals. Those were familiar enough traits, but when reflected back, were apparently irresistible.
“Precisely,” Bastian said, and followed Kian deeper into the dairy fridge. Cartons upon cartons of butter, stacked. Lesser stacks of gourmet European butters, purchased to finish certain dishes. Huge jugs of milk and cream. Rows upon rows of eggs.
“The sheet is laid out just like the fridge,” Kian observed, his pen making miniscule tick marks alongside each ingredient.
“Did you believe that I’d make my life harder and not easier?” Bastian asked wryly.
Kian glanced up, blue eyes wide even in the dim light. “No, never,” he said, and his voice was worshipful.
He didn’t want to know what falling off that pedestal would feel like, because it was inevitable that it would hurt. A lot.
Other chefs who came to work at Terroir believed Bastian was the best, but nobody held any old-fashioned ideas about him. They called him the Bastard for a reason. The first time he threw plates, a little of the shine in Kian’s eyes would dim. It wasn’t going to stop him from throwing them, but it bolstered his resolve to keep his hands off his intern. Things were going to end up complicated enough without deepening that hero worship into something more intimate.
“I remember, always, that nothing is ever perfect,” Bastian said gruffly. “That’s what we aim for. But the best of us know it’s unattainable.”
But Kian’s attention was already pulled into the inventory, counting wrapped hunks of butter, his fingers quickly flicking away the paper to test their firmness. With anyone else, Bastian might believe his thoroughness was because he was standing in the fridge, observing, but he knew that it wouldn’t matter later. Kian knew the bar, and like Bastian himself, was constantly motivated to exceed it.
It wasn’t a large space, and Bastian, to his own regret because kitchens tended to be cramped and small, was a large man. It was one of the reasons he’d built his kitchens at Terroir to be expansive and his line more spread out than others—too many years of trying to make himself impossibly smaller. But still, the fridges, while large, weren’t designed for two. Even if one was as slender as Kian.
Kian turned to him, pointing to an item on the clipboard, and Bastian realized, a second too late, as he crowded closer, that there was no room behind him to back up. Kian, absorbed in the printout on the clipboard, didn’t look up until it was too late, until they were nearly nestled together, right against the shelf holding about a hundred dozen cartons of eggs.
Kian’s eyes widened in surprise and he fumbled the clipboard, nearly dropping it. He should have just let it fall, but Bastian reached out and his hand grasped Kian’s shoulder.
They froze like that, Kian nearly bent towards him, their gazes locked, and Bastian couldn’t help but think, fuck, hell, shit, this is never going to work. And Bastian, despite his temper, usually considered himself an optimist.
There was the shock reflected in those blue eyes, and then sparks of heat, lighting them both on fire. It would be so easy to just lean down and discover what that mouth tasted like. Like the bitter coffee Kian liked. Maybe a piece of chocolate that Miles, one of the pastry assistants, had slipped him during this morning’s prep. Dark and dangerous, that’s how Kian would taste, even though he looked like sunshine, his hair bright even in the dim light.
“Sorry,” Kian mumbled, flushing, and objectively Bastian knew he should take his hand off his shoulder, and let him move away, to a respectable distance—at least a distance that didn’t have their thighs pressed together, so he couldn’t feel the heat of Kian’s body next to his. He might be slender, but it was clear to him now that it wasn’t just his determination that was strong, he had a body to back that up. His fingers spasmed over a surprisingly firm shoulder, and then slipped down to Kian’s bicep.
Kian’s eyes watched him the whole way, the wonder in that blue gaze leaving him more breathless than he’d ever admit to anyone. Bastian could only imagine what his own dark eyes looked like, pupils dilated, his fingers gripping Kian’s arm like he couldn’t bear to let him go.
It wasn’t impossible—Bastian was renowned in the culinary world for his legendary determination—but it damn near felt like it.
“Don’t be sorry,” Bastian said, and immediately regretted it, because that was admitting something he couldn’t take back.
It was admitting to something that could never, ever happen between them.
Bastian dropped his hand, and thankfully Kian took a step back, and then another.
“I was . . . I was going to ask why the mascarpone is on the shelf, but not listed here,” Kian said, voice high and stunned. Like he couldn’t believe what had just happened.
Bastian, unfortunately, could believe it. There’d been a reason he’d been avoiding being alone with Kian.
Unfortunately there was no way to truly train Kian and not end up alone occasionally. Maybe it was time to address the elephant in the room, make it clear that no matter what anyone’s personal feelings were, this was professional, and this was Kian’s career, which somehow had become more important to Bastian than his own need. And that was so momentous that Bastian refused to look any further into it.
“It would be good, wouldn’t it?” Bastian asked, trying for casual, ending up nowhere near that tone. “Between us?”
Kian nearly dropped the clipboard again. He looked shocked, and Bastian reminded himself of American sensibilities. Maybe he should have framed the conversation in a subtler way—but then there was the risk that Kian wouldn’t understand, and then they’d have to do this again.
“Excuse me?” Kian squeaked.
“It would be good between us,” Bastian repeated, this time making sure it wasn’t a question, but a statement. Of fact. Because it would be. Nobody was denying that. “It would, and it would happen more than once, and we’d enjoy ourselves. But it can’t happen, because we’re doing something more important. We’re preparing you for a career that I know could be spectacular.”
But Kian was still stuck on the first thing Bastian had said. “It would be good if we slept together?”
Bastian shot him a look that was trying very hard to be bored, but sex with Kian wouldn’t ever be boring. He was insatiably curious. He would want to discover. He would turn Bastian’s world upside down during the expedition, and probably ruin his own in the process.
“Don’t you think so?” Bastian asked.
“Uh,” Kian said, sounding truly unsure for the first time since his first day.
“This is . . .” Bastian gestured between them, “just an excess of hormones. It won’t last. We have more important things to do.”
Kian still looked shell-shocked, like Bastian confirming the attraction between them was mutual was enough to blow his mind.
“So you’re saying,” he finally spoke up, “that it might feel good now, but that it would waste this opportunity.”
Bastian nodded sharply. “And be an impossible distraction. You have a future. It would be a crime to waste it.”
“And . . . doing that, would be wasting it?” Kian sounded like he didn’t quite believe Bastian, and that made sense. He was young. Romantic, no doubt. And Bastian was probably a romantic figure to him. All that hero worship.
“Trading a brilliant career for a few fleeting moments of pleasure?” Bastian didn’t bother considering this. “It’s not even a question. I just want to make that clear because this . . . hormone surge is going to happen, occasionally, between us. And I want to make sure that we’re on the same page.”
“Same page,” Kian echoed. “Okay. Yes. Same page. I can do that.”
“Good,” Bastian said, and focused his attention
on the clipboard. “Ah, yes, the mascarpone cheese. It’s because it was a special request from the pastry chef, René. I’ll have to add it to the inventory sheets. Just notate on the side for now.”
Later, Bastian felt guilty for springing such an important conversation on Kian unprepared, but they’d needed to clear away any uncertainty and erase the distraction of maybe, someday, from the conversation completely. It had been the right thing to do, to bring it up and to pack the attraction away in a box with no lid.
Chapter Four
The echo of the conversation with Chef—no, Kian told himself firmly, you want him, you can call him by his name, at least in your own head—Bastian lasted for weeks.
It took Kian a long time to sift through the layers of it, even though Bastian had been very clear and extremely forthright. But first there’d been The Moment, which was how Kian thought of it in his head. The Moment had torn away all pretense, forcing Kian to admit that he wanted it all—he wanted everything Bastian had to teach him, and he wanted his hands and mouth all over him, too. The Moment had made it obvious that Bastian felt the same.
And just when the incredulous delight had filtered through him, shockingly sweet, Bastian had proceeded to explain that moments like The Moment would keep happening, but instead of focusing on them, they needed to focus on Kian’s career.
Kian wasn’t stupid. He didn’t believe that Bastian could be a boss and a mentor and a boyfriend. Or even a friend with benefits.
Even the thought of Bastian as a friend with benefits made him hot and then cold all over. And it wasn’t just the benefits part.
Bastian committed himself in everything he did. He loved and hated passionately, with commitment. They couldn’t just casually fuck and then work together in the restaurant the next day, pretending nothing had ever happened.
As the weeks passed, and then a month, and then two, it wasn’t like Kian disagreed with Bastian’s assessment. It was fundamentally sound.
It still sucked.
It didn’t mean that anything changed either. Most days, in fact, during the majority of them, the relationship between him and Bastian was strictly a professional one. Kian kept close, absorbing everything Bastian taught.
Not just Bastian either—one morning when he reported in, Bastian sent him over to Xander, to learn how to make sauces, and to shadow him on the sauté station during dinner service.
“Must think pretty damn highly of you,” Xander muttered as he meticulously set up his mise en place.
Kian had already whipped out his little notebook and was making notations on how Xander liked things arranged. Every chef liked it slightly different, and while Xander wasn’t quite as particular as Bastian, he still had very definite ideas of how his ingredients should be prepped and set up.
“I’m assuming you know all the mother sauces,” Xander said and Kian nodded. That had been a whole semester’s worth of classes at the culinary institute. He’d aced that particular course, but he’d learned in the few months since he’d graduated and started working at Terroir that anything he’d learned in school was almost completely useless.
In fact, Bastian had told him more than once to forget everything he’d been taught. The first time he’d said that to Kian, it had been a particularly frustrating and difficult day.
He’d gone back to his little studio apartment, beyond discouraged, which hardly set him apart from anyone else who worked at Terroir. Everyone had a bad day once in awhile, and almost always the reason for that was their illustrious head chef. But Kian believed that what set him apart was that he could shed the frustration and show up the next morning even more determined to learn everything he could from Bastian.
Everyone else slowly grew jaded and bitter, until they started using the Bastard nickname on a regular basis.
Xander was the leader of that particular faction at Terroir. Even though it should have made Kian like him less, he surprisingly didn’t.
In spite of the nod, Xander led him through the preparation of each sauce and reduction meticulously, Kian making notes on each one.
When they finished, it was time for family dinner. “Hey,” Xander said, pulling him aside before he could join the others at the long table, “Wyatt and Miles and I are getting a house together. There’s a fourth bedroom. You interested?”
He actually was. He’d been looking around for a new place because his studio was decrepit and depressing, even though he barely spent any time in it. “Sure. Miles is a pastry assistant, right? The only one René likes?”
“Yeah. He’s cool.”
Kian agreed with that assessment. He often brought “experiments” in to family dinner, augmenting dinner with some truly delicious pastries and desserts. For that alone, he seemed like a good choice for a roommate.
“I’ll send you the ad with the rent and info and stuff,” Xander said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “But it’s a good deal and a decent enough house, for the price.”
“I’m in,” Kian said firmly.
For a moment, Xander looked surprised, like he hadn’t really expected Kian to agree. And that, Kian realized as they were getting ready for service, made sense because Xander was sort of prickly at the best of times and could be mean at the worst. He didn’t make friends easily, but it seemed that he and Kian were actually becoming friends.
At least that was what it felt like until service started and Kian discovered just how unprepared he was to work the line at a high-end establishment like Terroir.
“Two duck, three chicken, four scallop,” Bastian called out in a loud voice.
Xander’s hands were moving like quicksilver, everywhere at once, checking all his sauté pans, and somehow, impossibly adding more to the stove, even though it felt like it had been full only a moment ago.
Up until now, Kian had been stuck on the simpler appetizers, assembling the salads, and dishing up the soup. He’d been small time and, tonight, he was getting a taste of the big leagues.
“Yes, Chef,” Xander barked out, then turned to Kian. “Get those scallop pans going and don’t fucking overcook them, not if your life is valuable to you in any way.”
“Yes, Chef,” Kian said, and tried to calm the trembling in his fingers as he set the pans on the stove and dug the ingredients for the scallop dish out of the refrigerated pull-out drawers underneath the gigantic stovetop.
He knew how to cook scallops, but it was incredibly intimidating to cook them for two of the harshest critics on the planet—Xander and then Bastian.
Still, as the routine tasks took over his hands, they helped. His movements became more certain, and he was fairly confident they were perfectly cooked when he carefully started plating them.
“Wait,” Xander said, even though he wasn’t even looking in Kian’s direction. Did he have eyes in the back of his head somehow? “Those aren’t caramelized enough. Chef likes a deep golden brown.”
It was not easy to be told he’d screwed up even though he’d given it his very best attempt. “They’re cooked through,” he insisted stubbornly.
Xander held up his hands. “Your fate.”
He’d been confident before, but now he uncertainly slid the plates to the pass-through, ready for the final garnishes and the inspection, which was Bastian’s domain.
Bastian started to set a spray of pea greens gently on the top of one scallop when his tweezers paused in the middle of his delicate task. His brows slammed together and when he glanced up, his gaze eviscerated Kian.
“Are these done?” he demanded.
“They’re done,” Kian promised. Inside he was quaking.
“Caramelize the next batch a little more.”
Kian wasn’t going to point out that cooking scallops was difficult, but cooking scallops with a gloriously brown sear on them while making sure they were perfectly cooked while cooking about ten other things perfectly simultaneously was not easy to do. But he thought it.
After shift he brought this up to Xander while they were in the locker
room. “How do you do that?” he asked, because he’d long since learned that there were myriad tricks of the trade that he hadn’t learned at the institute, and Xander, if he was in a giving mood, sometimes felt like sharing one or two.
“You think it’s impossible right?” Xander asked with a wry smile.
“I think it’s really fucking hard,” Kian admitted.
Xander’s smile widened and deepened, and for the first time, Kian really believed they were becoming friends. Not just co-workers and potential roommates but friends.
“That’s why they pay us the big bucks,” Xander said, stretching his neck.
Kian frowned. “They don’t pay us big bucks.”
“Yes, well, I guess that’s why the Bastard gets paid the big bucks, then. You’ll figure it out. It’s all about placement of the pan on the stove at different stages of cooking. I’ll show you how I do it tomorrow. Right now if I think about scallops, I might vomit.”
“Yeah, sure,” Kian said. He didn’t love how young and naïve he sounded. But that was the job, he figured. He was still learning. Still evolving. Still growing.
And if luck was on his side, that would keep happening, every night, until finally he woke up one day and he was a fantastic chef, ready to be promoted and ready to run his own kitchen.
A month later, he was actually able to sub for Xander, when he had the flu and could not actually stand, and the sauces Kian prepared, though not as subtly brilliant as Xander’s, didn’t make Chef throw the pans across the kitchen. He cooked pan after pan of scallops flawlessly, leaving Bastian to only raise a single eyebrow as the plates slid over to the pass-through. He took over daily inventory and was meticulous enough that even Bastian couldn’t find a thing to complain about.
Slowly, he began shadowing every part of the restaurant, and after the Xander flu incident, Bastian actually encouraged it. It was good to have someone who could step in on a moment’s notice and not fuck everything up. Kian was proud of that, and proud of the way he was helping Chef not be so overwhelmed with the incredible amount of daily work that just he was responsible for—never mind everyone else who worked at Terroir.