Drake
“What’s up with Chef?” I asked, using the side of my mouth and nodding in Rafael’s direction as I stood next to Beau. We were on the other side of the kitchen, hopefully far enough away that he wouldn’t actually hear us.
Beau glanced over at Rafael, who was silently brooding as he added seasoning to the soup of the day, and shrugged. “If I had to guess, Grey’s horny.”
I frowned, not seeing the connection. “What’s that got to do with anything? Are they sleeping together?”
Beau shook his head. “Nope. And Rafael hates it when Grey flirts with him. That’s why it’s my guess.”
So, they weren’t sleeping together?
Things started to reconfigure themselves in my head. I’d been assuming that Rafael glared at me when I flirted with Grey because he thought Grey was his man. But if that wasn’t the case…
Why did it rile him up so much?
I glanced across surreptitiously at Ainslie, who was a lot closer to us. He looked like he was picturing someone’s head on the board as he furiously chopped spring onions. I nudged Beau with my elbow and nodded in his direction.
Beau shrugged again. “Jealous? I don’t know. I just keep my head down here.”
I nodded silently. It seemed like a good policy.
Only, I couldn’t stop looking over at Rafael, wondering what had him so introspective and moody.
It wasn’t a bad look on him, really. But I’d seen it once or twice in rare moments, and I knew his smile looked a lot better.
I shook my head and tried to concentrate – although my focus was disrupted pretty quickly when Grey appeared back in the kitchen.
“So, ,” he said, smugly curling his mouth around my first name as he leaned against the wall near my station. “You’ve officially got the most pre-orders for your dish tonight.”
I smiled. “It’s all in the name,” I said. “Seared scallops with lemon beurre blanc and vegetable mosaic. It sounds fancy.”
“Are they going to appreciate it enough to consider ordering again if they come back?” Grey asked. There was a sparkle in his eyes as if he was challenging me and getting a great deal of fun out of it.
“Of course,” I snorted. “Even if only for the Instagram appeal alone. They’ll all be taking shots of it and showing off their fine dining experience.”
Grey lowered his voice, cutting his eyes over to the other side of the kitchen. “You don’t think that Rafael’s lobster risotto with truffle butter will win on taste?”
“Risotto?” I snorted. “Please. It’s unoriginal. Besides, it looks like a pile of vomit dumped on the plate. All that beige. No one’s going to be taking pictures and bragging about that.”
Grey made a face. “I wish you hadn’t said that about the vomit.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry,” I said. “You can order mine. Do your orders count, too?”
“I would like to say no, but…” he winked slyly. “After all, I am the contest’s judge.”
“Then maybe the judge would like a plate tonight when I’m serving?” I asked. “I only have a few orders to get through. I can handle one more.”
It was Grey’s turn to laugh at my confidence – and the way I’d described over twenty orders of the scallops, along with all the other orders we had to prepare for other dishes from the menu, as ‘a few’. “Only if you serve it personally, ” Grey said, his eyes raking over me suggestively. “I’d love to see you in my office.”
Holy shit, Beau was right. This is one horny asshole . “To eat, right?” I joked. “I don’t want my beautiful food to go to waste.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m very hungry,” Grey said, making no secret of his long stare towards my groin.
I laughed again. My dick didn’t even twitch at the thought of it. Grey simply wasn’t my type. “I’d better make a move here,” I said, dropping the flirtatious tone for something more casual so he knew I was ending the joke. “We’ve only got a little while left before service, and someone just added an extra plate to my orders.”
Grey chuckled and shook his head in amusement, leaning the other way to look around the kitchen. Seeing that he had accepted the end of the conversation, I quickly ducked past him.
I’d been chopping a lot of vegetables into very precise squares for the mosaic. I needed something to take the edge off.
I walked casually past Grey as if nothing was the matter and headed for the walk-in. I closed the door behind me and quickly cast around for a tray of more veggies – I’d learned from the last time that Nikolai almost caught me. Keeping my attention on the door, I grabbed the bag of pills from my pocket and shuffled one out into my hand.
I thought about it for a millisecond and shook a second one down to join it.
I had the bag back in my pocket when the door opened behind me, and I moved the pills to my mouth fast – hiding the gesture in a reach for the tray. I’d swallowed them dry by the time I turned around.
Grey was standing there with a smirk on his face.
“Here?” he said. “Don’t you think we’d be better off in my office? Or at least somewhere warm?”
I stared at him for a long moment. His words made his intentions obvious, but I was having trouble seeing how he came by them.
“I came in to get some more vegetables for prep,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” Grey sidled closer to me, leaving the door open behind him. “You don’t need to play hard to get, you know. It’s just us now.” His hand drifted up to brush through my hair and I ducked away.
“I’m serious,” I said. “I told you I need to get on with plating. You didn’t think that was a come-on, did you?”
He had thought it was a come-on; I’d already figured that out. The look that passed over his face was just confirmation. “You’re a tease,” he accused. “What, you’re trying to get me all worked up so I can’t resist you? I’m here, already. It’s done. No need to keep playing.”
“I’m not…” I sighed and set the tray down. I had a feeling it could end up being a casualty if Grey continued not to take no for an answer, and I didn’t want to waste food. “The flirting? It’s just flirting. I’m just a flirty kind of guy. That’s it. I don’t mean anything by it.”
“Oh, come on,” Grey said, making an expansive gesture. “It’s just sex . A guy like you enjoys sex – I can tell from the way you are. You enjoy casual fucks, and lots of them. You’re going to turn down one more that could get you the job you’ve been wanting so much?”
I stared at him. He was so open about it. If I slept with him, I got the job?
Fuck that. I wanted to get the job because I was a good chef. No other reason.
At least I knew now, from Beau’s insider information, that Rafael was never going to sleep with Grey, either.
“Mr. Monaghan, let me make myself clear,” I said, deliberately going formal so that he would remember our respective roles here. “I’m not going to sleep with you. You’re my boss, and that would be very inappropriate. Nor would I ever sleep with you if you stopped being my boss just to try and get in my pants. I’m not going to sleep with you. Not even for the job.”
Grey tilted his head. For a man who had just been rejected, he looked strangely calm about it. “How about a blowjob?”
I stared at him with my nostrils flaring until he lifted his hands and backed off.
“Whatever,” he said. “You want to make Head Chef the hard way. Fine by me. Let’s see who wins.”
He walked out of the door and left me standing there in the cold storage, surrounded by only mute food, sighing and rubbing the bridge of my nose. Out in the hall, I heard the back exit open and close: Grey had left the restaurant entirely rather than go back through the kitchen. Maybe he knew that every single person in there seemed to have a reason to be angry at him today.
I sighed again and grabbed the tray. There wasn’t time to stand around thinking about this. I walked out back into the kitchen and returned to work.
It was way too soon before my plating moved into the final stage, leaving me standing next to Rafael at the head of the kitchen, assembling all of the prepared elements for all of the dishes we covered. I glanced sideways to see him scattering a garnish of chives across the top of his risotto so haphazardly that it looked like a mistake. By contrast, my precisely squared vegetable mosaic was beautiful.
“You may want to hurry up,” Rafael said. “They’re all awaiting service out there.”
“I’m perfectly on time, thanks,” I told him mildly.
“It’s not going to look good if all of my dishes are out while the other half of the diners are waiting for all of yours.”
“Then stop rushing and making a mess of your plates just so you can say you’ve beaten me,” I said, looking up and meeting his gaze for the barest second before bending back over the plates. “I know speed is the only category you can win, but that doesn’t mean you should sacrifice everything else.”
Rafael scowled. “ Hijo de puta, ” he muttered under his breath.
“What?” I asked, grinning. I had heard him fully, and I understood the Spanish. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Concentrate on your fancy little squares,” he said, and I shook my head with a laugh.
“That was the most interesting you’ve ever been,” I said. “Shame it only lasted five seconds.”
“I’m sure you hear that a lot, yourself,” Rafael shot back, and this time I caught a sly curve of just the very edge of his mouth.
Then he caught me looking at him, and a scowl dropped over his face again.
I concentrated back on my plating with my heart beating unsteadily. I hadn’t been lying. He’d never been more attractive to me than when he finally let go and called me names and insinuated things at me. But the look on his face now was worrying – almost terrifying.
It was a look of real anger, distaste, disgust. Whatever was driving that look on his face, he really didn’t like it.
Was it possibly just because I had pushed him so far, or was there something more behind it?
I thought about doing something that would get his attention when he wasn’t looking. Moving a spatula to the wrong side of the station or swapping our tongs over so that he had to use the ones with the blue handle. Something that would drive him mad.
Then I’d find out what was really going on – whether he had a problem with me or just a problem in general.
But now was a bad time to try and provoke a reaction from him. I couldn’t manage a service this big with one less chef, and if I pushed him too far, maybe he would fly off the handle.
“Party is seated,” Nikolai announced grandly as he pushed through the doors. “We need to go right now.”
I gestured to the first of my fully finished plates and watched Nikolai and Kit whisk them away, the first of many that were going to pass under our hands today. It was going to be a long evening; all our orders going out at once when normally we would be able to deal with one or two tables at a time.
I looked up at Beau, who was still serving as my line cook, getting the final ingredients that I needed for each of the dishes I was plating tonight. “Keep it coming, chef,” I called out to him. “No delays. It’s going to get wild. Stop thinking and start moving some food.”
“Yes, Chef!” Beau barked back at me, his hands starting to fly as he reached for the next tray, and I braced myself.
Whatever was going on with Rafael could wait – and it would.
But once this service was over, I was going to find out what the fuck had him looking at me like that.