Chapter 20
TWENTY
The next week is a slog, and I’m still living with Luke.
The problem is I can’t afford anything else.
Prices everywhere are way above my budget.
Still, I keep looking. My mornings are filled with work, and the evenings are filled with apartment-hunting and secretly checking in on Mr. Albo, Mrs. Milla, and Ms. Baghdadi without Janice knowing to make sure they are okay.
The chores still haven’t started up again.
If nothing else, Luke’s threats have worked, even if it came at the cost of my losing my apartment.
Not that he hasn’t helped by letting me live with him. For that reason, and for making sure I didn’t die from my fever, and for the CUM help, and the whiteboard?—
As a way of saying thank you to Luke, I’ve started including small treats in his lunch. I know he doesn’t like sugar, but I want to find the perfect dessert for him that doesn’t remind him of his childhood.
Everything is naturally sweetened and subtle in flavor. I ask him to try them out and give me his honest feedback because “it will help me with the meal kit competition to get to know customers with the same tastes as you.”
It’s an outright lie, I know.
But I don’t know what else to give the man who already has everything.
So far, he has rated the following:
A scone as being inferior to a muffin.
A baked apple as resembling baby food.
(An ironic opinion, considering his love of liquid food in the form of smoothies but being as magnanimous as I am, I point out nothing).
Chocolate-covered strawberries are indecent, and that fruit and chocolate don’t belong together.
The popularity of many snacks would disagree with that one, but okay.
In a desperate attempt to find whether he was suited to the more sour end of the spectrum, I packed him a slice of key-lime pie from a local bakery because I didn’t have time to make it myself.
To which he texted me directly.
LUKE
Helping you is torture.
Perhaps thinking I’m taking it too far, I don’t pack him anything sweet the next day. But then, he texts me again.
LUKE
Have you given up? I thought this competition was important to you.
That encourages me further, and after more brainstorming, I’m about to make him what I think is the least offensive and most refreshing dessert (Sour Cream Bavarian) when I am interrupted in the kitchen by a shriek.
The woman yelling at me is young, maybe a teenager or in her early twenties.
Blonde hair halos her shoulders, and is the second most captivating thing about her.
The first being her outfit, a black-studded dress that is vaguely punk and largely haute couture as if worn right off the runway.
It clings to her gorgeous, pale, tall body.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Before I can introduce myself, she runs to the kitchen drawer, pulls out a knife, and waves it at me.
My hands go up. “Hey! I work here.”
“Right.” Her voice drips sarcasm. “Answer me this. Who is staying in the east-wing guest room upstairs?”
“Also…me.”
“ Seriously ? What the fuck is going on? He’s fucking his employee?”
“No! Who are you? Are you his--” My voice stalls. Barely I can force out the word. “Together?”
“ Ew . I’m his sister.”
The similarities strike me. They’ve got the same mouths and limitless blue-gray eyes.
“Okay, great.” I try for a non-threatening smile.
“And I’m his meal prep chef, recently evicted from her apartment with nowhere else to go.
Though, partly his fault, because he showed up after I got sick because I wouldn’t pick up his calls, even though he kind of fired me before that. Or I walked out. Both.”
She barks out a laugh. “Now I know you’re lying. Tell the truth. What are you? Some love-sick stalker? Broken in, have we? Pretending to be his girlfriend by—” She points at the plate of cupcakes on the table with her knife. “—baking for him. You don’t know my brother at all.”
“Because he hates sweets?”
Her eyes widen. She didn’t expect me to know that.
“Do you want to try one? They are really good.” I push the plate closer and then leap back again.
Her stomach audibly grumbles. She stares at me. Then the cupcakes. Me again.
With a bold, fearless kind of curiosity, she swipes a cupcake and takes a small nibble. “Sweet hell, this is good. Fuck me.”
Deciding it’s safe enough, I sit down.
“Yeah.” She glares at me, though it’s less menacing when you have frosting on your chin. “Stay there. I’m calling him.”
When Luke picks up the phone, his voice carries enough for me to hear. “Sistine.”
“I’m here in your apartment,” she tells him. “There’s an intruder.”
“It’s me,” I yell out. “Rita. The intruder.”
I don’t hear the rest of the conversation. Sistine has turned around and is whispering into the phone. Terse words. An intense back-and-forth at low volume.
Once the call finishes, she turns to me. “What have you done to my brother?”
“Nothing. Why?”
I’m examined as if on the other end of a microscope, and found to carry evidence of a rare and virulent strain of sickness. “He’s on his way, even though he never leaves work early.”
She proceeds to eat another cupcake. I make some tea. We don’t have to wait long. Luke strides into the kitchen and looks straight at me. The sight of him gives me a quick inner jolt. Concerned blues travel down the line of my body. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“Why is your meal-prep chef living with you?” demands Sistine.
“Let’s go talk privately. I’ll explain how I got her kicked out of her apartment.”
“When has anything like that ever mattered to you?”
“What are you doing in Barcelona, Sistine?”
She scowls. “I’m here on my own business.”
Luke rubs his forehead with his fingers as if warding off a headache. “Don’t do anything you shouldn’t be.”
“Stop worrying about me. I can take care of myself.”
“Unfortunately, I’m always going to have to worry.”
She rolls her eyes very dramatically. “Piss off.”
“I detest you.”
It appears no matter how wealthy you get, some sibling bonds can be universal. It’s clear they aggravate each other, though I didn’t miss the flash of relief that crossed Luke’s face when he walked in and saw Sistine.
“You don’t have to do whatever you are here for,” says Luke, apparently having forgotten this conversation was going to be private. “Work with me instead.”
In what way does he mean? At Abbot Industries?
Sistine goes up to Luke and pokes him in the chest. “Don’t try to convince me. I don’t even care anymore.”
He shakes off her finger. “Liar.”
Sistine steps back and plugs her ears with her hands. “La-la-la-la-la.”
I’ve lost the chance to glean real information from their interaction since Sistine is a picture of grace and maturity.
Luke crosses his arms and waits her out. When she finally drops her hands, he continues. “Stay as long as you need, but don’t threaten Rita again. Be nice.”
His sister looks at me like I’m an alley cat brought in from the dump.
My back instinctively straightens. The expression behind her blue eyes is pointed.
Will I be stabbed in the middle of the night?
Gutted and left to bleed out in the middle of my— the kitchen?
Should I demonstrate my own knife skills as a deterrent to my own violent and gruesome death?
“How long,” asks Sistine again, “is she here for?”
My tea cup clatters on the table, and I almost let it drop completely. Luke doesn’t turn to the noise or look at me.
“I told you, she lives with me now.”
He can’t mean…with no end in sight…with no deadline…?
People don’t do that. This doesn’t happen to me. I’m a self-trained cook who hails from a poor-ish neighborhood in Mumbai, still figuring out my career, flailing at what I really want to do.
He’s—he’s Luke Abbot.
Filthy rich. Aggressively hot. Recognized, detested, and applauded in the business world.
We are not supposed to live together as roommates. Actually, that’s not even accurate. I haven’t been paying any rent.
Is it—maybe—his plan is not to say anything until the conference is over? That’s a good strategy. Understandable even. In his place, I might be using it, too. Don’t stress the person you need a favor from.
I chug down my tea, as Sistine and Luke talk some more about things I don’t understand.
I tell myself if the conference is my obvious deadline, that means I have this window where he lets me use his kitchen whenever, and live here with no rules or regulations or expectations.
And alongside this window, is the competition that can change my life.
Luke finally looks at me. His eyebrow raises in confusion when I smile sweetly.
Got to be polite to the keeper of your shelter.
At least, until I make something of myself within these next few months.
No pressure. My deadline is the conference.
And by my estimation, the contest will be close to wrapping up by then too.
I just have to make it all the way, then I’ll be free.
Sistine swipes another cupcake from the island counter. She eats it slowly in front of me.
Right. I have to make sure we also get along because I don’t want to give Luke any reason to kick me out.
Especially since later that night I find out I’ve made it to the next round of the CUM competition!
My solution to keep practicing in this kitchen? I must bribe Sistine with sweets.