Chapter Two #3
Bastian growled. Hot milk, his ass. But his mother was not only used to his mercurial moods, in the beginning, he’d learned them from her—and maybe a little bit from his hot-tempered Spanish father.
“No hot milk then. Take your drive home,” she said, getting to her feet and swirling her fuzzy robe around her like it was a Dior or a Gucci. “I need my beauty sleep.”
He brushed another kiss across her cheek. “You’re beautiful, always, maman.”
Slapping at his shoulder, she scoffed, but couldn’t hide the pleased gleam in her eyes. “Goodnight, Bastian.”
Despite talking to his mother, Bastian didn’t feel any more settled when he finally reached his own house. Stripping down, he took a hot shower, intending for the water beating on his back to relax that tight muscle throbbing in his neck, but he still felt wound tight.
Maybe it wouldn’t even be a problem. Maybe Kian, annoyed with the way Bastian had manipulated him into taking the internship, would quit after the first day.
Plenty of prospective employees had. He wouldn’t be the first, and Bastian was sure he wouldn’t be the last. Lots of chefs, especially those who weren’t fresh from school, took major offense to being asked to do dishes.
But Bastian’s typical trial for new chefs was rather well-known in the industry now, and most brand-new employees expected it.
But Kian clearly wasn’t hearing industry gossip.
Maybe tomorrow he wouldn’t show up, Bastian thought as he turned the shower controls off.
If he didn’t, and Bastian ever saw him again, maybe at the farmer’s market or giving one of those lame culinary demonstrations at Dean as long as he got what he wanted, it didn’t matter.
But something about lying to that clearly trusting face was abhorrent. Bastian didn’t think he could do it.
What could he say instead? I’m sorry, but I want you too badly for you to stay? Yeah, that definitely wasn’t going to work, because he’d seen the worship in Kian’s eyes, and there was only one way that conversation could end.
There was only one option left, and that was to bury everything so deep, even he forgot he’d felt anything.
He’d done it before, he could do it again.
It was just a matter of determination over emotion, and despite what everyone believed, Bastian controlled every god damn emotion that escaped him.
If he lost his temper, it was because he chose to lose his temper.
There were only two emotions he’d always been helpless against: the enduring love for his mother, and its mirror, the hatred he’d always felt for his father.
Someday, he knew he was going to have to let that go; Celeste always told him that. But he could control what he felt for Kian.
And he believed that completely, at least until he showed up at Terroir, bone dry cappuccino in his travel mug, at the early hour of seven thirty. Nobody else would be around now, and he could get a head start on his inventory and ordering for the weekend.
Except that he wasn’t alone after all. A bright cap of blond hair shone in the sun, as Kian tipped his head back, absorbing the early morning rays.
Bastian flinched, staring at the boy who hadn’t yet seen him. Not only had he come back, but he’d come back early. As Kian’s boss, this filled him with cautious optimism. As someone who was not-so-successfully trying to bury his attraction, it was the shittiest possible outcome.
“You’re here early,” Bastian said, making sure his voice was devoid of anything. Approval, disapproval, endless, rapacious lust. Anything.
Kian nearly jumped as his gaze flew to Bastian’s face. “Oh, yeah. I always heard timeliness was important.”
“Even in the dish room?” Bastian asked, raising an eyebrow. He typed in the code to open the back door and reminded himself to tell Xander or Wyatt to make sure Kian knew it. If he was going to show up earlier than everyone else, an insane proposition, he might as well know how to get in.
“Especially in the dish room,” Kian said very seriously as they walked into the locker room. “Jorge and I have some new methods that we’re looking to work into the current practices.”
Bastian raised an eyebrow. Typically he didn’t like anyone fucking with his restaurant, especially implementing anything new without his permission, but there was something so earnest about Kian, it was difficult to burst his bubble.
“You’ll like them, I promise,” Kian said, backtracking like he’d thought better of making changes without permission. “Would you like to hear about them?”
Bastian usually didn’t give two shits what happened in his dish room as long as the dishes got washed.
Jorge had worked for him forever and knew how to get things done.
Maybe things could be improved, but having to listen to Kian’s ideas was a bad idea when he’d actually slept and wasn’t still fighting that pesky attraction.
“Not particularly,” he said casually. “Just don’t fuck anything up. ”
“Of course not, Chef,” Kian said, and goddamnit, those earnestly shining blue eyes just killed him.
He’d died enough last night, and right now, he couldn’t take another moment, so he gave a sharp nod and departed the locker room, hoping to hole himself up in the office until he could forget everything he wasn’t supposed to be remembering.
During family meal before the dinner service yesterday, one of the other chefs, a nice guy with surfer blond hair and blue eyes, had said to Kian, “Oh, so you’re the new guy. Liking the dish room so far?”
Kian hadn’t quite understood how he could know he’d been relegated there, but then the blond guy had laughed again. “Killed me too, for a couple of days, but what got me through it was knowing everyone’s had to do it at one time or another.”
As he’d cleaned up the dishes from the meal, Kian had turned this scrap of information over in his head, until he’d come to what seemed to be the right conclusion.
Chef Aquino did this to everyone who started in the Terroir kitchens.
Everyone had to put their time in, to prove they were willing to commit.
Chef hadn’t singled Kian out; this was the trial by soapsuds that he gave to everyone.
It sure made it a lot easier to trudge back to the dirty work he and Jorge had for the evening. It was hot, back-breaking work, but as they scraped, Kian began to think of some ways it could be less hot and maybe even less back-breaking.
At the end of the service, Xander had come in personally to check on him, which Kian felt sort of went against all that world-weary bitterness he carried with him all the time.
And Kian, who didn’t speak enough Spanish to communicate to Jorge what they could change to make the work easier on both of them, employed Xander as a temporary go-between slash translator.
Jorge—and Xander, as well—were skeptical of Kian’s ideas. It seemed the way things had always been done at Terroir was the way things always had to be done at Terroir.
“My advice,” Xander had said, when they were on their way out an hour later, “is if you really think this will work, just do it. Don’t ask for permission. Ask for forgiveness later.”
Wyatt, the blond chef, had frowned at his friend. “Aquino is going to chew him up and spit him out, once he discovers what he’s done.”
“Maybe,” Xander said. “But maybe not.”
It was a risk Kian felt he needed to take. He had to show Chef Aquino that he was different, that he was better. And Jorge, who had been employed at Terroir for years, seemed willing to go along with Kian’s ideas, as long as they stayed Kian’s ideas.
Kian had stayed up too late finalizing the plans, and then was up even earlier than the day before, determined to get a head start before the dishes began in earnest.
Of course, that was when he was dumb enough to not only run into Chef Aquino himself, squinting and vibrant in the early morning sun, smelling of freshly roasted espresso, but to accidentally confess his entire plan.
Still, Chef Aquino hadn’t said not to do it. That was practically permission, right? Kian thought Xander might have agreed with him, if he’d been here already. But he wasn’t, so he was on his own.
Sink or swim, Kian told himself, and he knew which one he needed to do. He rolled up the sleeves of his chef’s jacket and got to work.