Chapter Twenty-Five
Isla
I didn’t make it to my cabin.
Ten minutes after my nineteen-minute warning, I was still frantically trying to put away all the ingredients where I’d found them, but it was useless.
I hadn’t paid attention to where I’d grabbed everything from, and I stupidly wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings past this maddeningly designed kitchen.
It was like someone had specially designed drawers and shelves by actually measuring the height of spice jars and the width of food containers.
Trying to cram a bottle of wine into a produce drawer—because reasons—I missed the other asshole entering the kitchen. Except he wasn’t really an asshole. He was just incredibly quiet, and I didn’t see him until I kicked the fridge-door-slash-drawer thingy closed, stood up, and he was right there.
My heart exploded, and my hand almost went to my chest. I stopped myself from physically reacting, but my mouth took a walk. “Do any of you use manners around here? Warn a girl before you sneak up on her.” I opened the dishwasher.
“Cioppino.”
Question, statement, I didn’t know what he was getting at, and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be in this kitchen when the lights went out. “Help yourself.”
Already ladling himself a serving, he glanced at the bread. “Why trapezoids?”
Pulling out the top rack of the dishwasher, no longer giving a damn, I used my arm to swipe across the counter. “What?” All the dishes and utensils I’d liberally taken advantage of in my mission to make as big a mess as possible—one that I’d never intended to clean up—fell into the dishwasher.
“The shapes you cut the bread into are trapezoids.”
I didn’t give a damn about shapes right now. And I’d only cut it that way because it’d seemed like a good idea at the time. Like it’d piss off Nix if I served him a piece like that, or better yet, left it out all night on the counter of his perfect kitchen.
“And?” I looked back at the giant pot of stew. I hated wasting food. Seriously hated it. “What’s the biggest Tupperware container this boat has?”
If I’d had time, if I wasn’t being told to get back to my cabin, if the lights weren’t going out on me, I could’ve made a sizeable dent in the amount of stew.
I was hungry as hell, and I’d planned on lounging on the main deck, staring at the stars and enjoying all the expensive seafood I’d put in that pot.
Instead, I was freaking out about the dark.
I wasn’t afraid of it.
I basically lived in the dark.
But having light taken away from you versus voluntarily watching the constellations were two different things, and the increasingly rough seas I’d been trying to ignore for the past couple hours was another. Putting the two elements together—that was a perfect storm I didn’t think about.
Shivering at a coldness that threatened to turn into a memory, I flinched as a tall, muscular, blue-eyed blond who was almost a carbon copy of Helios reached around me to an upper cabinet.
Silently coming away with a lid for the pot I’d used, Ares slowly placed it on the stove.
Pretending I hadn’t flinched and he hadn’t noticed, I glanced up at him. “Who puts lids in an upper cabinet and pots in a lower cupboard?”
“Tauk.”
“Who?”
“The chef.”
“You have a chef?” Where the hell was he?
“Not me. The Paragon.” Ares picked up a piece of bread and started to walk out the same way Nix and Helio had.
“Where am I supposed to put this giant pot of stew now that I have a lid?”
“Additional refrigeration is in the service pantry.”
Before I could ask him where that was, he was gone.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Close to my time limit, I walked out of the kitchen area in the opposite direction from Ares and started opening doors. On my third try, down a short hall, I found the pantry. Sure enough, there were more refrigerators, but these had larger shelf spaces.
Rushing back, I slapped the lid on the pot, grabbed the still-hot stew with both hands, and practically ran back to the pantry because I did not want to get stuck in any interior corridors with no lights.
Using my foot to open the closest fridge, I nearly fell on my ass when I had to use more toe grip than expected, and the door swung open hard. Righting myself, almost spilling the stew, I set the pot inside and slammed the door shut.
With my heart pounding as hard as if I’d just jogged a mile, I dashed back to the kitchen and surveyed the space like I was looking at a crime scene.
Drips of stew and bits of herbs and jarred spices decorated the counters and floor.
My bread was on the cutting board. The one bowl with a ladle full of cioppino that I hadn’t shoved into the dishwasher sat near the stove, and the drawer Helios had taken a utensil from was still half open, mocking me as his voice played in my head.
Nix hates seafood.
The same man who made me fish this afternoon hated seafood?
He owned a damn boat.
A big, giant, stupid boat that was about to be shrouded in darkness on the open ocean while a storm was brewing.
Awesome.
I picked up the bowl, grabbed a hunk of bread, started the dishwasher without any soap, and reached for a spoon.
The lights went out.