Chapter Three #2
“Kian is worried about you. Worried you’re throwing your career away on someone who can’t properly support you. You know, he isn’t even really a winemaker. He’s not a restauranteur. He’s playing at growing a garden. But he’s not even a Hess—not like you think.”
Xander regarded Bastian steadily. “He’s exactly what I think he is.”
“So there’s nothing I can offer you that might make you change your mind?” Bastian looked sneakier than usual, and considering that Xander had never trusted him on a normal day, this was worrisome. “What if I made you my chef de cuisine?”
“You mean the job I’ve deserved for six months?” Xander demanded. “The one you should already have offered me?”
“I can’t apologize for that, Xander,” Bastian cut in smoothly. And no, he wouldn’t, the bastard. He never apologized for anything.
“I think I’ll take my chances with the ‘not real’ Hess,” Xander said, using finger quotes. Kian, out of his field of vision, gave a stricken gasp. He probably couldn’t imagine anyone turning down Bastian.
But Xander was sick of his shit, sick of the backhanded manipulations, the hissy fits, and was definitely not interested in continuing to work for someone who didn’t feel it was necessary to treat him right until he actually walked out.
“You really mean that.” Bastian sounded like he couldn’t even believe it. “Hess said you’d say that, but I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe you’d turn down chef de cuisine to work for a part-time gardener whose restaurant is currently a ramshackle shed without a real kitchen.”
It had clearly been too long since Aquino had worked in someone else’s kitchen, because the idea of creating his own space, shaping his own legacy, sounded incredibly appealing to Xander. Even if it meant a shit ton of work. Even if it meant working in a ramshackle shed without a real kitchen.
It was only after Xander had worked through that thought that he had another one.
Damon had talked to Aquino? He’d told him that he’d turn down the promotion?
Xander frowned. “You went and talked to Damon?”
Bastian stood and began pacing in the tiny empty space of their living room. Xander could practically feel Kian’s anxiety begin to spike. “He poached you. In my own fucking restaurant! What else was I supposed to do?”
Xander crossed his arms across his chest and gave his ex-boss a glare that sang with finality.
“Fucking ask me if I wanted the job. Not my new partner. Not my friend and my roommate. Me. That’s your whole problem.
That’s why I left. You have to control everything, and it fucking sucks.
” And apparently he really wanted to flush everything down the toilet because the word vomit kept coming.
“And that one,” he said, pointing in Kian’s direction, “is too nice to ever say anything to your face, but you’re a psychotic megalomaniac who desperately needs to be checked. ”
Aquino’s expression shuttered hard and fast. He gave Xander one last bitter, angry look and turned and marched away.
“You’re an idiot,” Kian hissed. “Are you really going to let some guy tell Chef Aquino what you want to do?”
Xander rolled his eyes. “Are we really going to do this? You and me, really?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Kian said stiffly. He was still glancing over at the door every ten seconds, like Aquino was going to march back through it, throw him over his shoulder and take him with him—and Kian was going to let him.
“I mean, are you really going to get bent out of shape over my new partner telling Aquino to take a hike when I was going to do that anyway? When you would follow Aquino to the depths of any hell he concocted, just because he asked you to, just because you’re too in love with him to ever tell him no? ”
Kian opened his mouth and then shut it again. “No,” he finally said shortly. “No, I guess we’re not.”
“Okay then,” Xander retorted, the testy edge to his voice growing sharper. “I’m going to go back to bed, contemplate my brief joblessness, and you can go running after Aquino, because I know you’re dying to.”
Kian looked like he was desperate to argue, but they both knew it would be a lie. Turning, Xander walked back down the hall to his bedroom and tried to ignore it when he heard the door shut behind Kian and the engine turning over on Bastian’s Audi R8.
Picking up his phone from the table, he sent Damon a quick text. The Bastard was just here, I’m assuming you had to deal with him too. We’ll talk later tonight. I’ll be there around five.
He lay back down, stared at the ceiling and tried to banish the thought that he’d just made a life-altering mistake. Things would be different, Xander told himself, but they could be good different. At the very least, he wouldn’t be making the same mistakes over and over again.
Then he remembered how his blood had spiked every single damn time he looked at Damon, and yes, maybe he was about to make a mistake, but at least this was a familiar mistake.
“What’s all this?” Damon asked when he opened the door.
“Dinner,” Xander said, hefting one of the grocery bags a little higher on his hip. “I got the impression last time I was here that you were good with that espresso machine but that you don’t use your stove that much.”
Damon grinned, unexpectedly fierce and bright, and it nearly knocked Xander right back. “Guilty as charged,” he admitted, opening the door wider to let Xander come into the house.
It looked much the same as it had that night, a year ago. A little cleaner, perhaps, like Damon had gotten that text and had decided to neaten up in anticipation of Xander coming over.
This is not a date, Xander reminded himself.
He’d had to remind himself of this more than once when he’d been at the grocery store picking up food for tonight. First he’d agonized at the meat counter. When you brought a filet for dinner, what did it mean? What about salmon? Shrimp?
Love, marriage, or maybe even eternal devotion? A white picket fence?
Xander had to stop himself before he asked the butcher if the different cuts had deep, secret meanings, like flowers. There was no cut of meat that communicated: “this is just a friendly work dinner, but if you wanted it to be more, I could be convinced. And by the way, do you like men?”
“I decided,” Xander told Damon as they walked through the living room toward the kitchen, “that it would be completely stupid for you to hire me if I’d never even cooked for you before.”
Damon shrugged, one side of his mouth quirking up a little. It had the side effect of making his bottom lip look very bitable.
Xander set his groceries on the kitchen counter and began to unpack them like they held the secret to world peace. He was attracted to Damon and it was a problem, but their partnership didn’t have to be defined by his inconvenient attraction.
“I think I’d like to see you explore what you’re interested in,” Damon said quietly as he settled in one of the barstools.
The same one Xander had occupied a year ago.
Xander told himself that meant nothing. After all, there were only three barstools to pick from.
Maybe that one was secretly the most comfortable and Xander had just gotten lucky.
It did something to the base of his stomach to think that Damon didn’t care; that he just wanted to give Xander the freedom and the space to do what he wanted.
It had been a very long time since anyone had thought highly enough of him to do that, and Xander told himself not to be fooled into thinking that’s what this was.
“You really don’t care?” Xander asked in disbelief.
He’d never hired a chef before. Maybe when you hired one, you just naturally assumed you were getting their point of view, not your own.
“My point of view is the garden,” Damon said. “As long as you use as much of it as you can, I’m good.”
And Xander had taken at least that much away from their previous conversations about the restaurant, so he’d bought lots of vegetables, which he spread out across the counter now.
“Someday,” he told Damon, “all this will be from your garden.”
Damon set his elbows on the counter, forearms rippling with muscle, because even though he was wearing another plaid shirt, of course he’d rolled up the sleeves.
But his intent couldn’t be to drive Xander crazy; it was just probably more comfortable.
Maybe those crazy gorgeous forearms didn’t even fit properly into shirts.
Xander swallowed hard and looked away. “I figured I’d make a quick pasta with roasted garlic and sautéed vegetables. I got a nice salmon filet too.”
“Salmon’s good. I like salmon,” Damon said.
It was weird cooking in someone else’s kitchen, and it was even weirder doing it with Damon watching him so intently.
All of Damon’s pans were hung up on a nice suspended rack in front of the front counter.
They weren’t the best pans he’d ever worked with, but they were fine for his purposes tonight.
He picked one and set it on the stove. After breaking down the head of garlic, he set a few cloves in to roast, and cleared the marble counter to make his fresh pasta.
“So Aquino came to see you,” Xander said.
He’d figured out quickly that Damon wasn’t a big talker, unless you asked him a direct question and expected an answer.
And not only was the purpose of tonight’s dinner to make sure his cooking didn’t disgust his new partner, it was also important to get to know each other better.
After all, Xander had come here with every intention of signing the contract, and he knew there was due diligence he needed to exercise first.
“Yeah, this morning. I knew he was a jerk, but wow,” Damon muttered darkly.
“And he told you about the job he wanted to offer me,” Xander said. He wasn’t mad exactly . . . but maybe he was. Maybe he would have taken the chef de cuisine position—Damon didn’t know him well enough to know either way.