Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Still, I worked at plates.
“Impressive.”
The single word had me freezing. For three seconds. Three seconds with my hand hovering over the plate, not doing anything at all.
I’d never frozen for that long in a kitchen.
Not since…
I didn’t think about that.
The deep voice washed those memories away. The tenor of the single word. The way it boomed right through me. It was liquid sex.
Slowly, my eyes moved up.
Kane was standing there, dressed in a black tee and jeans.
The restaurant had a dress code—something I didn’t approve of as it was classist and elitist, but once again, I had to play the game—and it was famous for enforcing it upon even the most powerful of guests.
A football player had thrown a tantrum last year when he wasn’t let in because he was wearing sneakers.
Expensive, designer sneakers that cost more than the host’s monthly take-home, according to him.
He was not only refused a table but banned indefinitely.
People tended to adhere to the dress code.
Not Kane.
And somehow, he’d been let in without incident.
Maybe it was the electric presence, the cheeky smile, the charisma he had about him that was somehow both effortless and powerful. Warm too.
Hot.
Even though I’d spent my adult life in sweltering kitchens and hadn’t broken a sweat, suddenly my upper lip felt moist.
A few seconds. That’s all I paused in shock for. It might as well have been hours in my world.
“Chef?” Ferris prompted, looking uneasy. I’d never spaced out in my kitchen. My chefs knew to rely on me, and I could tell by the concerned tilt of Ferris’s mouth that he was slightly worried.
Regaining my senses, I stepped back so he could plate the scallops I asked for.
Wordlessly, I finished dressing the plate then tinkered with the placement of the scallops, tweezing on a garnish before a final wipe down.
“Away on fifteen!” I yelled, mentally calculating the amount of scallops we’d plated tonight with how many I’d gotten from the docks this morning.
“We’ve got three orders of scallops left,” I told Angela, our head server.
“Heard, Chef,” she replied, expertly balancing plates before floating toward the restaurant at a brisk pace.
I forced myself to keep working despite Kane watching me.
“I don’t want to interrupt … Chef,” Kane drawled.
My toes curled at the title I’d been addressed by for years, by countless people. No one had ever made the deferential term sound sultry, dirty and impossibly sexy.
Kane managed all of those things, said in the same tone he’d murmured naughty things to me last night, with the gaze that communicated he knew what it felt like to be inside me.
The clang of the kitchen brought me back to earth, and I jerked, looking back down at my plates.
“You’re busy,” he continued.
“I’ve got twenty-seven minutes left in service,” I informed him. My voice was crisp, cold, not betraying my simmering insides. I felt panicked at being put off-kilter in a kitchen, my kitchen, by a man. My guard was up. It needed to be up.
“Then I’ll be back in twenty-seven minutes,” was his reply, not obviously perturbed by my icy response.
“I have to close down the kitchen after that,” I said, talking to the plates.
“Behind, Chef,” Ferris announced softly. I knew my second was hovering because he was worried, protective, even though he was younger than me. He’d been in my kitchen the longest. We weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination—by design, I wasn’t friends with any of the staff—but there was mutual respect there.
I stepped aside for him to plate my wagyu.
“Well, I’ll be here until the kitchen is closed, then.” Kane’s response was slightly playful, yet with a sensual edge and an iron foundation. He was making it known that I wasn’t going to be able to dismiss him.
“Fine.” Frustrated and secretly excited, I let out a sigh. I said the word as a dismissal, focused on the plates, refusing to look up.
I held my breath for ten seconds, waiting, stealing myself.
When I looked up, Kane was gone.
I didn’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed.
Luckily, I didn’t have time to examine my feelings as the chaos of the kitchen required my full attention.
Not for the first time, I was infinitely glad about that.
I was on edge the remainder of service.
It didn’t help that I heard the murmurs of my usually professional staff about Kane’s appearance. It seemed even the people who worked long hours in my kitchen and weren’t prone to pandering to celebrity diners somehow not only knew of extreme sports stars but were also impressed by them.
That intrigued me. I hadn’t been aware that ‘extreme sports’—whatever that meant—were popular enough to permeate my kitchen.
Again, I didn’t let myself get intrigued. I couldn’t slip. Wouldn’t. Though none of my staff were brave enough to ask questions, I could tell they were curious.
Like the well-oiled machine we were, my staff made quick work of cleaning the kitchen and completing end of day tasks.