CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Yael
The sharp clatter of dishes breaking in the dining room drew my attention, and I walked over to the double doors as a male voice beyond them cried out in pain.
I stepped out into the bar to find the raven-haired beauty hovering over a middle-aged male whose hand was pinned to the table with a steak knife.
“I told you if you touched me one more time, I’d cut your hand off,” she snapped at him as he worked to release the blade.
“Be grateful I was in a good mood today and only took a finger.” With a quick flip of her wrist, she upended his plate into his lap to punctuate her attack before storming toward the kitchen, muttering under her breath—and nearly running right into me.
“Are you going to move, or do you need a stabbing too?” she asked, sea-blue eyes full of rage.
“Because I’ve got at least three more in me at the moment, and I’d be happy to take them out on you. ”
I couldn’t suppress my amusement, so I let the smile I’d tried to withhold stretch wide. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
“It won’t be. I’ll make sure it hurts.”
My smile widened. “Maybe that’s exactly what I want.”
Her angry stare raked me up and down, and I wondered just how close with disaster I was flirting, then realized I didn’t care.
There was something so intoxicating about her rawness—her utter disregard for her safety—that I would have gladly stood there and weathered her storm if it got me one step closer to cracking even an inch of her armored exterior.
I wanted to know more about the being locked up inside of it.
“Ravi!” she yelled into the kitchen behind me, though her eyes never left mine. “How badly do you need the new line cook?”
The boss merely shouted back, “you kill him, you replace him,” over the clanging pots and pans.
She eyed me for a moment as though weighing her options. “Like literally replace him, or figuratively?”
“Both… while still waiting tables.”
Her expression soured. “You’re not worth it,” she said as she pushed past me into the kitchen.
“Don’t underestimate me, because I might be.”
She walked over to the warming shelf where her orders waited. “Definitely not.”
“Do I need to go clean up out there?” Ravi asked her as she approached.
“No, Sasha’s got it this time.”
“Good. Just make sure your victim pays before she kicks him out.”
“I always do.” She loaded up an arm with four plates and turned to leave while I watched.
“Tell your boy here to stop looking at me like that. It’s hard to cook with missing fingers…
” Without so much as a backward glance, she disappeared into the dining room as I resumed my spot on the line.
I pulled the next ticket to see what I needed to do while Ravi diced the tomatoes on the cutting board before him, not sparing me a look.
“Not that one,” he said as I pulled some beef from the cooler.
“But the order is for—”
“I know what the order is for. I’m not talking about that.” He pointed at the double doors with his knife, then resumed his chopping. “I’m talking about that one.”
“You mean the bitter mermaid?”
“Yes.”
“What about her?”
“She’s not for you.”
Interesting… “Why not?”
His knife went still as his knuckles whitened around it.
“Because you might think it’s fun to slum it down here in the Playground because you know that you’ll eventually be allowed to return to a better life with your kind, but some of us will live and die here with no other options.
I don’t want you coming into my home and disrespecting it by leaving a trail of carnage in your wake, if you understand what I’m saying, so do us both a favor and leave her alone. ”
“Fair enough, old man, but why just her? Why not warn me off the other girls too?”
Sharpened eyes slowly turned to me. “Because Myra is like a daughter to me,” he said as he leaned in closer, knife still in hand, “and you are her worst nightmare.” He stared me down with a surprisingly menacing gaze to drive his point home.
“I will be yours if you do anything to hurt her. Understood?” Arms raised in surrender, I nodded.
“Good. Now, keep your head down, do your job, and braise that meat before she comes back here to yell about how slow these orders are coming out.”
I put my head down and did as he’d asked, if for no other reason than I didn’t want to leave work that night with more holes than I started with.
Ravi was right—I was her worst nightmare—but not for whatever reasons he thought.
At best, I was no good for her; at worst, I was a danger, one I didn’t want to unleash on her.
But as I worked, I couldn’t seem to get the mermaid out of my mind.
And her forbidden status made her all the more tempting.