Spicy (Palate #1)

by Octavia Wildwood

  He bristled. “I’m not afraid of change.”

  “No?” I challenged, opening a drawer, pulling out a fork and sticking it right into the spicy shrimp vesuvio. “Then try it,” I ordered, holding the plate out to him.

  Gavin looked at me warily. “Mina…”

  “Just try it,” I insisted. “If you don’t like it then you can lecture me all you want and keep doing things your way. I know this is your restaurant but there’s no harm in trying something new. That’s how all the best recipes were made, right? Everything was new once.”

  Begrudgingly, he took the plate from me and ate a piece of sauce-covered shrimp. He chewed it thoughtfully, his eyes not leaving mine. Some of his annoyance dissipated. I could see the tension in his shoulders melt away as he began to relax.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” I asked knowingly.

  “It could use more heat.”

  “Oh?”

  He skewered a piece of shrimp with the fork and carefully fed it to me to prove his point. His hand shielded my dress from acquiring any additional stains. It was like shutting the barn door after the cattle have already escaped, but I nonetheless appreciated the gesture.

  “You’re right,” I admitted after I’d swallowed. It was delicious but could stand to have more of a kick. “More heat would be good.”

  “I’ll switch my recipe out for yours. But you can’t keep changing my recipes behind my back,” he cautioned sternly as I motioned for him to feed me a second bite.

  It was a fair enough warning. My mouth full, I nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You do have a good instinct,” he said, surprising me with the compliment. “When I first met you on the reality show, I dismissed you as just another pretty face that would be sent home early on. I thought you were only there because of your connection to Hayden Slate. I didn’t think you had what it took to make the cut.”

  My initial response was to be insulted, but then I considered what he was saying. “It’s true that I don’t have as much training as the others on the show,” I relented. Most of them had at least a few years of training at culinary arts colleges under their belts. “But am I really so bad?”

  “No. You’re not bad at all. Everyone has to start somewhere. In the beginning I didn’t have training either – I started out as a dishwasher.”

  “You did?”

  Gavin nodded. “I got caught doing a Dine and Dash when I was a teenager. The restaurant owner could have called the cops and had me slapped with a fine, but he decided to give me a chance to redeem myself. I didn’t have any money so he told me I could wash dishes to work the meal off. And so it began.”

  “So you weren’t a spoiled rich brat after all,” I marvelled.

  Cracking a smile, Gavin didn’t miss a beat. “Nope, I didn’t become the arrogant asshole you know and love until my mid-twenties.” His face was expressionless, but I was coming to know and even enjoy his deadpan and often self-depreciating sense of humor that had once thrown me for a loop.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “But it’s what you think.”

  Hesitating, I finally confessed, “I don’t know what I think anymore.”

  “I see.”

  He got out a cutting board and began to very finely chop onions. Watching him work was almost mesmerizing. His fingers flew deftly, seemingly indifferent to the fact that he was working with a very large and very sharp knife. I had a feeling he could easily do this in his sleep…he was just that good. He didn’t even cry.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened when you were in your mid-twenties to make you change?”

  “My first heartbreak,” he replied, offering no elaboration.

  “Oh.”

  He put the onions into a pan with sliced jalapeno peppers and turned on the heat. Immediately there was a satisfying sizzle and a delicious aroma filled the air. “Why are you asking all the questions?” he asked, skillfully changing the subject. “What about you? I read your application for the show but I don’t know much about you.”

  That caught me off guard. “You read all the applications?” I’d written him off as being far too self-obsessed to bother with that. Maybe I’d been too quick to judge him, incorrectly assuming he was like other guys I’d known and been disappointed by.

  “No, not all of them,” he replied. “But I read yours. It left me with more questions than answers, to tell you the truth. You’re a mysterious woman.”

  “I am not.”

  “You are,” he insisted.

  “Ask me your questions and I’ll prove I’m not,” I shot back.

  “I would love nothing more than to interrogate you.” Gavin thought for a moment and then corrected himself. “I would love few things more than to interrogate you.”

  “Interrogate me? Who are you, the police? You can ask me your questions but for every question I answer, you have to answer one of mine,” I told him. In a way it felt like a grownup version of Truth or Dare – or rather, just Truth. It was kind of fun to act like a kid again.

  “Alright, deal.”

  “What’s your question?” I demanded rather impatiently.

  “On the show, I asked you what made you want to be in the competition. You said you wanted a change. That was a bullshit answer if I’ve ever heard one. What’s the real reason?” he asked, his attention focused solely on me. “What are you running from?”

  Wow…I hadn’t expected his first question to cut so deep. I picked up a wooden spoon and began to slowly stir the spicy broth he was making. I needed something to focus on other than our conversation and tending to the pot on the stove offered a welcome distraction.

  “My life wasn’t so great in Burlington,” I admitted. “I mean, it was at first when I was just a careless college kid, I guess. But it’s a small place. It was impossible to live there without running into my son’s father or members of his family…” I trailed off then, unsure of how much I wanted to divulge.

  “I take it things didn’t end well between you two?”

  That was an understatement. But I didn’t want to get into it…not yet…maybe not ever. It was still far too raw. Struggling to keep my tone light, I answered his question with one of my own. “Does a breakup ever end well?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  Anxious to change the subject, I reminded him, “I get to ask you a question now.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  I thought for a moment. I could ask him to tell me about that first heartbreak. Part of me was curious because the mere notion that he had a heart to be broken made him seem immensely more human to me.

  But to be honest I didn’t want to hear a sad story about love lost. I’d dwelled on my own unhappy ending for far too long and the last thing I wanted was to hear about somebody else’s.

  “Amanda seems sweet.”

  “She is,” Gavin agreed. “She’s like the little sister I never had. But that wasn’t a question.”

  “Touché…but okay, here’s a question for you: why does she think so highly of you?”

  He laughed at that. “Are you implying that no one else does?”

  I scowled at him. “No dodging the question.”

  He grew serious then and sighed, looking pained. “It’s not my place to tell anyone Amanda’s story. If she wants people to know the details, she can tell them herself. But I’m certain she wouldn’t mind me saying she was in a controlling relationship with a real piece of work. I helped her get out and back on her feet.”

  “She says you saved her life.”

  Gavin looked uncomfortable and took the wooden spoon from me, our fingers brushing in the process. I could practically feel the sparks as we touched. He was like a live wire, dangerous and unpredictable.

  “She gives me too much credit,” he said in what was perhaps the first real display of modesty I’d ever seen from him. “I helped her, but I didn’t save her. She saved hersel
f.”

  He held up the wooden spoon and offered me a taste of the sauce before setting it in the sink. It was spicy enough to make my eyes tear up, but the aftertaste was light and satisfyingly sweet. It made my mouth water and my taste buds dance, my body craving more.

  “The trick,” he said softly, “is all in the way you stir the sauce. You can’t be too gentle or too rough. You just have to be firm and unwavering. Think of it as a dance. You want the man to lead with confidence but you also want his body and mind to be in tune with yours. Dance with the sauce,” he instructed, handing a clean spoon to me.

  Something about the way he spoke and the way he touched me brought me to life. Immediately, I felt my heartbeat quicken and my nipples harden. I hadn’t been this attracted to a man in a long time…maybe ever.

  But stubbornly, I tried to shove those feelings aside. It was the only way I knew how to protect the pieces of my heart that had taken so long to reassemble. The repairs were tenuous and the thought that one small blow could make the whole thing crumble scared me to no end.

  “How can you be the same guy I read about in the tabloids?” I wondered aloud as I began to stir the sauce, trying to mimic the movements of his wrist. It was like the two different personas didn’t fit together in any way, shape or form. It didn’t compute.

  “I’m…not?”

  Unsure of what to make of that I turned to look at Gavin. He took a step closer then, standing so near to me that I could almost feel the heat from his body. He looked even more attractive up close, his skin glowing with a healthy sun-kissed tan and his lips so inviting…

  “Like this,” he corrected me, closing his hand lightly on top of mine. He stirred the sauce with me, his body guiding mine. It was a simple thing, cooking together, but it felt so incredibly intimate that my breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. I couldn’t breathe. I could barely even think.

  He lowered his head. I wasn’t sure but I thought he might be moving in for a kiss.

  I cleared my throat and abruptly disentangled my hand from his. Then I moved off to the side, my body accidentally brushing against his in the process. “I should go check on my son.” I told him, no longer trusting myself to be alone with Gavin. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right here.”

  Chapter 07

  “Is everything alright with Joel?” Gavin asked when I returned to the kitchen a few minutes later. I hadn’t realized he knew my son’s name and it momentarily threw me for a loop. So did the way he looked.

  He’d taken off his jacket while I was gone. Now his white shirt was rolled up at the sleeves, giving him a casual, laid back look. I was struck by how at peace he seemed there alone in the kitchen. With no cameras on him and no one but me watching, it was like he could finally relax and be himself.

  “Yes, but it’s getting late. He’s fast asleep on the couch. I should get him home to bed.”

  Gavin didn’t protest. Instead, he shut the stove off and set the food aside. Then he grabbed his jacket, slung it over his shoulder and walked toward me. “I’ll help you get him into your car.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I replied immediately, a kneejerk reaction. But Gavin just ignored me, following me to the VIP room where Amanda was sitting quietly, dutifully standing guard as my son slept like only the young can.

  Carefully, Gavin eased the sleeping two year old off the couch and into his arms. I watched anxiously, not wanting my son to wake up and be alarmed. But Gavin was remarkably gentle and the little guy didn’t even stir.

  “You lift him yourself?” Gavin murmured as we walked out to my car side by side with a sleepy Amanda trailing along behind us.

  I knew what he was thinking. Like most children approaching their third birthday, Joel was heavy. I knew it too; I knew it well. There would come a point where I wouldn’t be physically capable of lifting him, but we weren’t there yet. Like most mothers, I wanted to keep him little for as long as I could…even if it made my back ache.

  I unlocked the car and opened the back passenger side door. Gavin set my sleeping son onto the backseat and draped his jacket over him as a makeshift blanket. “Are you okay getting home?” he asked, his protective nature making yet another appearance.

  “Of course,” I replied as I buckled Joel up. I got into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I shut the door and then manually rolled down the window – sometimes I wondered if I had the only car in the city without automatic windows. “Thanks for your help and for the cooking lesson. I’ll bring your jacket back tomorrow.”

  “Goodnight,” Gavin said, leaning down to the window so he didn’t have to speak loudly.

  For a brief moment I wondered if he’d try to kiss me. Then I told myself I was being stupid. We hadn’t been on a date, even if parts of the evening had felt unexpectedly intimate. My boss had simply given me a cooking lesson. That was all it had been.

  “Goodnight.”

  I rolled the window back up and then turned the key. The engine roared to life…and then it choked, protesting loudly before abruptly dying. Furrowing my brow, I tried again. This time the car didn’t even start and in the glow of the moon I could see black smoke seeping out from beneath the hood.

  Gavin had made no move to go back inside. He’d simply kept standing there in the parking lot, I guess to see me off although that seemed uncharacteristically gentlemanlike of him. He stepped forward then and tapped on the glass of my window. I rolled the window back down.

  “Do you need a ride home?” he asked.

  “I live practically halfway across the city. I can call a taxi,” I told him as I mentally calculated how much the cab fare would set me back. So much for sticking to a budget… For the millionth time, I worried that I’d been reckless and perhaps even selfish in moving to Los Angeles where everything cost so much more.

  “I drive Amanda home every night after her shift,” he insisted. “It’s no trouble. I don’t care how far it is; I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  “Mama…?”

  I turned around to see a sleepy-eyed toddler looking at me inquisitively.

  “Our car is broken, kiddo,” I told him. “Our friend Gavin is going to drive us home, okay?”

  Joel nodded and stuck his thumb in his mouth, accepting the change of events without question. He drifted back to sleep almost at once. To be two years old was to be completely indifferent to inconveniences like broken down vehicles and overdrawn bank accounts. To him, the only things that mattered were freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and fast cars.

  And I was determined to keep it that way for as long as I could.

  When I saw Gavin’s vehicle, I was almost tempted to wake Joel up so he could see it. It was a sleek, sporty red car that must have cost a fortune. It wasn’t the type of car one typically wants to invite a two year old into – there were just too many potential ways to damage the fine black leather interior. But if the thought had occurred to Gavin, he kept his mouth shut.

  The four of us drove through the night in silence. Traffic was lighter now that the rush hour had passed, and there was something almost peaceful about weaving our way in and out of the sparse traffic at a leisurely pace.

  Amanda must have thought so too, because after a few minutes she nodded off behind me in the backseat. Gavin noticed first and, with a grin, pointed to our two sleepers. I smiled back at him as we had our own private, wordless conversation.

  As we made our way through the night, I found myself watching Gavin’s hands. His left hand rested lightly on the steering wheel, expertly maneuvering us from Point A to Point B. The other was draped casually over the back of my seat, almost as though he had his arm around me. Surely it was unintentional, but just feeling him close to me set me abuzz.

  After some time, Gavin spoke.

  “So we’re friends now,” he observed quietly as we pulled off the freeway and into a comfortably middle class residential area
that was lined with tall poplar trees. I didn’t recognize the area but I presumed it must be the neighborhood where Amanda lived.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You told your son I was your friend Gavin,” he reminded me with a smile in his voice.

  For reasons I couldn’t quite identify, I felt my face turning red. Maybe it was because I felt like Gavin was teasing me. I felt like that a lot, come to think of it. At first it had irritated me. Now it just got me flustered like I was a preteen girl with her very first crush. It was ridiculous.

  “I told Joel his pediatrician was our friend too,” I pointed out at once, trying to satisfy the sudden urge to explain myself. “I felt like a dirty liar since we were there to get a flu shot but I told myself the end justified the means. I think the point is I introduce a lot of people to him as our friends. It’s just a thing I do.” I was babbling. I couldn’t help it. I felt flustered.

  Gavin simply grinned and said nothing. I think he was enjoying watching me squirm, the jerk.

  We pulled up in front of a neatly kept three storey apartment building. Gavin hopped out of the car, opened Amanda’s door and gently shook her awake. Bleary-eyed, she sat up, stretched and yawned. “I guess this is me,” she told me, her voice quiet so as to not wake the toddler sleeping next to her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mina.”

  “Goodnight. Thanks for watching Joel tonight.”

  “It was my pleasure,” she replied.

  I watched as Gavin walked Amanda to the front door. He waited for her to get her key out before giving her a friendly hug. The way he affectionately ruffled her hair and she swatted at his hand wasn’t lost on me. He’d said he thought of her as a sister. I’d wondered at first if it was possible for Gavin Rothe to have a platonic female friend, but as I watched them it became clear that Gavin’s body language was that of an older brother, not a lover.

  And I could also see that Amanda absolutely adored him. Maybe she even idolized him.

  He was growing on me, I had to admit. My physical attraction to him was undeniable but it was more than that. When I thought about how careful he was when Joel was in his arms or how protective he was of Amanda, I couldn’t deny that I saw something in him I liked.