Chapter Fourteen
Jase
We looped around a few blocks toward the Italian Market until we reached a quaint restaurant on the corner of two side streets. It had a white brick exterior and green awnings over the windows. Josie’s was sprawled in black letters on the sign hanging over the entrance.
“Have you been here before?” Dani asked as she walked ahead of me up the three steps to the door. I tried not to stare at her ass as she reached for the handle and failed miserably.
Her outfit was driving me insane. I’d kept my hands in my pockets most of the night just to stop myself from touching her. Her belt emphasized the delicate curve of her waist that my palm would tuck perfectly into, and her top cupped her small breasts, which swelled against the fabric with every breath she took. I wanted to run my tongue along the edge like an ice cream cone. My cock throbbed in my jeans.
“No,” I said, forcing the gravel from my voice as I followed her inside.
It looked like the quintessential Italian family restaurant. Tables draped with red-and-white checkered cloths were scattered throughout the narrow space, topped with shakers of grated cheese and chili flakes. The lighting was low, made homey by string lights hung across the ceiling, and framed photos and old movie posters covered the walls.
It was busy for a Wednesday night. The kind of busy that came from regular customers rather than college kids going out for the weekend or tourists visiting from out of town. The server, a teenager in a black T-shirt and apron, waved Dani over and pointed at an empty table in the corner. Dani waved back, then nodded for me to follow.
We weaved our way through the tables, so tightly spaced I could hardly move without bumping into someone’s chair. It gave me the opportunity to check out the food on everyone’s plates.
Hints of nutty parmesan and cracked pepper caught my nose from what appeared to be cacio e pepe. The salty scent of guanciale hit me from another table’s pasta all’Amatriciana. The sautéed chicory greens I spotted really caught my attention. I hadn’t had a plate of those since leaving Italy. A spark of nostalgia flared in my chest that had me moving quicker for the table.
Dani slid into the chair against the wall, giving me the seat with a little more legroom. The server came by to drop off menus and water glasses.
“You need some time?” she asked Dani, eyeing me. I was clearly the new one here.
“Yeah, but put in an order of the eggplant to start,” Dani said. She lowered her voice. “Did he make it?”
The server flashed her brows. “Only three slices left.”
“Can I call dibs on one?” Dani asked.
“You got it. I’ll be back with your eggplant in a little bit.”
The server left, and I raised a brow at Dani.
“The owner makes the best tiramisu in the state,” she explained. “But he doesn’t make it every day, so you have to jump on it when you can.”
“How’d you find this place?” I asked. Philly’s food scene was impossible to keep up with for even the most diehard, and this seemed like the kind of gem you had to stumble upon. The regulars probably hurled empty wine bottles at reviewers to prevent word from getting out.
“The owner’s my landlord,” she said as she played with a corner of the paper menu. “I live a block away, and this is pretty much the only place I’ve eaten at since moving here.” She shot me a small grin. “He doesn’t give me a discount or anything, so don’t think that’s it. It’s just really good. Plus, his family runs it—his daughter’s our server tonight—and they take good care of me. They’re the only people besides Robin I really know here so far.”
I knew what that was like, being alone in a new city. Sometimes one where English wasn’t the native language and the only familiar thing to cling to was food. Even when the dishes were different from back home, at the core, food carried the same meaning no matter where you went. It was about community and connections, culture and customs. To feed others was to nurture them, and that was a very personal thing.
I lifted my menu. “Then as someone with the inside scoop, what do you recommend?”
She met my gaze over the papers. “What do you like?”
“Whatever’s good.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It’s all good.”
“So let’s get it all.”
“What?” She gave a surprised laugh.
I flipped over the menu. The back side was all drinks and desserts. There weren’t that many entrées. “One of everything. We’ll share, and anything we don’t finish, you can take home.”
“Their servings aren’t small,” she warned.
“Then I guess you’ll have dinners for the week.”
She looked unconvinced.
“Come on,” I urged. “It’s been way too long since I had good Italian food.”
“Was that when you lived in Italy?”
“That’s definitely where I had the best. There have been a few good places since. Nowhere that boasted the best tiramisu in the state, though.”
She glanced to the side and bit her lip, a little color rising in her cheeks. My pulse kicked up.
The server returned and placed a plate of eggplant slices rolled with ricotta cheese in front of us, along with two smaller plates and rolls of silverware.
“You ready to order?”
I looked at Dani.
She held my gaze, sucking me in to where nothing else existed. Just the sea-green swirls of her eyes and the hint of a smirk pulling at her lips. Then she peered up at the server and said, “We’ll have one of everything.”
“So what made you want to become a chef?” Dani asked. She scooped some pasta puttanesca onto her plate, one of the six dishes currently covering our table. We’d rotated through the appetizers already, the servings we’d decided to save compiled onto a single plate to make room for the entrées.
She’d set about the meal with the kind of organized approach I’d come to expect from her, taking a single spoonful of each dish to start so she could sample a little of everything before returning to the ones she enjoyed most.
I respected it. Even more, I appreciated the way she embraced the experience. Whether she’d initially done it to humor me or not, she’d fully committed, and every time she leaned forward to breathe in the aroma of a dish before tasting it, I was hit with the urge to reach across the table and kiss her.
Not that I would. This wasn’t that kind of meal. The kind that two people who were into each other shared as a lead-in to something more.
I wasn’t even sure it qualified as a meal between friends. More like a celebration between colleagues. Temporary colleagues at that. Who knew what would happen after the symposium was over? She might not step foot in Ardena again.
I pushed aside the sinking feeling in my stomach and scraped a pile of gnocchi onto my plate. My method was to go for whichever dish had my mouth watering the most.
“It mostly happened on accident,” I said in answer to her question. “After high school, the only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to go to college, so I got a job at a pizza place in my hometown.”
My parents had loved that. Their problem child throwing away his future to be a dishwasher. They took my not wanting to go to college as a personal affront to them, one I still didn’t think they’d gotten over. In their world, a Michelin star would never be worth more than a college degree.
“I started off washing dishes and helping with food prep. The owner was this older guy with the patience of a saint who showed me how to hold a knife and julienne a pepper. And doing it, something just clicked. I think I liked the structure of it, having a clear objective I could accomplish each day.”
It didn’t matter if the objective was only to chop a box of onions. Knowing I’d completed it to the standard set out and that I’d contributed in some way to the result going out to customers gave me a satisfaction I’d never found anywhere else.
“Eventually, I started cooking on the line,” I continued. “I still remember the first time I saw someone enjoying a dish I made. It’s all I’ve wanted to do since.”
Maybe it was because I’d spent most of my childhood feeling like a fuckup. Like I’d gotten so used to expecting anything I did to be met with disappointment that realizing I could do something others might not only appreciate but actually admire was this seismic shift. One I was probably still coming to terms with. All I knew for sure was how grateful I was that Frank had hired and mentored me the way he did. I owed all of my accomplishments to him.
“And then you traveled the world, cooking as you went?” Dani asked.
I shrugged. “Basically. I was hungry to learn and willing to work for it. After I’d saved up a bit working for Frank, I moved to New York for a few years to get fine dining experience, and that took me to London and wherever else I heard about an opportunity after that.”
“What made you come back?”
I took a bite of gnocchi and thought about how to answer. The creamy dumplings practically melted on my tongue.
“I reached the point where I wanted something more permanent,” I ended up saying. “Something I could really build and shape. It was easier to get an executive chef job in the States, so it made sense to come back. I hadn’t planned on Philly, but it’s where an opportunity came up, and then Jillian offered me an even better one.”
She’d attended business lunches at my old restaurant for years before I took over as head chef. Three months after I’d started, she’d gone back to the kitchen to pay her compliments to the new chef. She’d noticed the change in the food, enough that she popped in to say hello every time she dined there after that. A year and a half later, she came in with the offer to run her new restaurant. I’d known her well enough by then to trust her when she said my talent was wasted on a small man pretending to do big things, and that if I had the guts to take a chance on her, she’d repay the offer tenfold. So far, she’d been true to her word.
“I like what I have at Ardena with Jillian,” I continued. “I like it here in general. It feels the most like home than anything else I’ve had.”
“It’s not an easy thing to find,” she said.
“What, home?”
She nodded, and a hint of the somberness I’d caught in her eyes at the gallery returned.
“What about you?” I asked. “Why Philly?”
She twirled a long strand of spaghetti onto her fork. “Sort of the same as you. My last job was in Wilmington doing marketing and event planning for a company down there, and neither the job nor the city felt like a great fit.” She let out a humorless laugh. “Neither had the four other jobs in the four other cities I’d lived before it. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, but I knew I needed a change, and when I found the position at HBC, it seemed like maybe that could be it.”
“Has it been?” I asked.
She glanced up.
“The change you needed?”
Her mouth curved, too softly to be a smile, but it lit up her face all the same. “Yeah. I think maybe it has.” Her lips stretched wider, humor filling her eyes. “Although now I’m thinking I should have traveled the world first. I’ll have to try that someday.”
I swallowed the offer to take her myself. Colleagues didn’t show each other their favorite parts of the world. The reminder formed an ache in my chest I was quick to rub away.
We finished a couple of the entrées before calling it, and Dani assured me I wasn’t sticking her with her least favorite dishes for leftovers.
“I liked it all. Promise.” The gleam in her eye had me shifting in my seat.
Once the server, Isabelle, boxed up our stuff and cleared the dishes, she brought out a slice of tiramisu as wide as my face. Dani straightened in her seat as Isabelle lowered the plate to the table, and as soon as Isabelle’s back was turned, Dani snatched up one of the forks and slowly sank it into the corner of the slice. Her mouth closed over the bite, and her eyes fell shut as the faintest moan escaped her lips.
My hands squeezed into fists, stare glued to her face as she slid the fork from her mouth and flicked her tongue over her bottom lip. Her eyes opened slowly, as if coming out of a dream—a really fucking good one, apparently—and her gaze dropped to the dessert, then up to me and back again. She spun the fork restlessly between her fingertips.
Jeans now tight, I reached for the second fork.
“Be honest,” I said, leaning my forearms on the table. I pointed my fork at the tiramisu. “If I wasn’t here, you’d be halfway done with this by now, wouldn’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I was giving you a chance to try it.”
Fighting a smile, I grabbed a bite with my fork. She pinned her blue-green stare on me as flavor exploded on my tongue, the bitter notes of coffee and cocoa cutting through the richness of the cream and the sweetness of the sponge.
It was good.
Watching her eat it was better.
Almost as good as watching her eat my food. The way her head dropped forward on the first bite as she surrendered to the flavors. Seeing the pleasure sink into her whole body, her shoulders falling, breath sighing out, eyes fluttering closed. Knowing I was responsible.
It made me want to give her pleasure in other ways. See how her body would react to my fingers along her skin, my lips on her pulse, my tongue on her clit.
I’d never get to find out.
Not with her.
This at least I could have.
I took a few more bites of the dessert, leaving most of it for her, and by the time it was gone, so were the rest of the customers. Isabelle came over with the check, and I grabbed it off the table before Dani could reach it.
“Let me pay half,” she insisted, palm open on the table for me to hand her the bill.
“No,” I said simply.
“I owe you for the paintings.”
I fished out my card and placed it in the folder. “It’s not like I bought and donated them myself. Plus, it was my idea to order the whole menu.” And as far as I was concerned, she’d never pay for another meal in my presence.
She studied me for a moment before leaning back in defeat. “Fine. I’ll just find another way to repay you.”
More than one idea flashed through my mind, and I reminded myself for the dozenth time since we sat down that no version of tonight ended with her bare skin against mine.
Isabelle came to grab my card. I left her a big tip, and we headed out, reemerging onto the sidewalk. The air had cooled a little, still warmer than the AC inside the restaurant, but no longer muggy.
“Let me walk you home,” I said. I didn’t like the idea of her being out here alone at night, no matter how safe the area was. Plus, I wasn’t ready for the night to end just yet.
She nodded with a soft smile, and we started down the empty sidewalk. We took several steps in comfortable silence, just the dull clacking of her shoes on the concrete.
I glanced her way. “Can I ask you something?”
Her arms swung easily at her sides, her body seeming more relaxed than earlier in the night. I shoved my hands in my pockets to stop from clasping her hand in mine.
“Shoot,” she said.
“It’s about something you said at the gallery, about your dad missing things outside the lens.” She’d said it quietly, almost like she hadn’t realized she was saying it out loud. Like she normally wouldn’t have, bottling it up instead behind the composed mask she showed the world. But the mask had slipped, and I’d seen it. “What did you mean by that?”
She took a deep breath. “That was…maybe not fair of me to say. His job wasn’t the only reason he was distant.” She looked up and explained, “My parents are divorced. I was thirteen, and it was both of them putting their jobs before their marriage that caused it to fail.”
It sounded like maybe they had both put their jobs before their daughter too, but I stayed quiet.
“Because my dad travels so much for work, it made sense for me to live with my mom full time, and it got to the point where I only really saw him once or twice a year. Mostly at Christmas. If he had a show in the area.”
She let out a chuckle, but disappointment weighed it down.
“The few times we’d talk on the phone, it was usually about his next project or the one he’d just finished, and it began to feel like the only way he’d ever see me was if I was in front of his camera.” She shrugged a shoulder. “And I didn’t tend to be his subject of choice.”
Irritation flared in my chest, along with an ache of recognition I’d buried long ago.
I knew that feeling.
Of not being seen by your parents. Of feeling like the only way they’d ever relate to you was if you were something or someone different.
“What about your mom? Are you close with her?”
She let out a hard sigh. The same one I’d used a hundred times in the context of my own mother.
“She’s not exactly a gentle personality. It’s served her well in her career, running board rooms and landing executive positions. But the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve come to accept that we just don’t have much in common.”
I tried to swallow against the knot of longing in my throat that still hoped the same wasn’t true for my family, despite the part of me that had decided a long time ago it was. A more stubborn part of me was determined to keep trying. “Do you still see them for Christmas?”
She shook her head. “I stopped going home to Pittsburgh for the holidays during college. It was a long way to travel from Connecticut, and it was easier to just stay at school for breaks or go home with friends.” She shot me a glance. “That was actually how we first met.”
I gave a blank stare.
She grinned. “Don’t worry, I don’t think we were actually introduced. But it was the first time I saw you. I went home with Alec for winter break my junior year, and you were back home for a few weeks before going abroad again. To Italy, maybe?”
That was right. I’d only gone home because my parents had been on my case about it and offered to pay for the flight. The whole two weeks I’d spent texting Colin about our plans for Italy and counting down the days until I left.
“You weren’t around the house much, but your parents had this holiday party, and I remember seeing you there.”
I remembered that party. A bunch of my parents’ friends and colleagues drank mulled wine and champagne, laughing over white elephant gifts and showing each other pictures of their kids and grandkids. I’d watched from the corner as my dad’s work buddies patted Alec on the shoulder and asked him about his job plans once he graduated. I saw the way my dad’s chest puffed up each time at Alec’s response.
I’d felt like an outsider. The same way I’d felt most of my life. And the closer I tried to get to that inner circle, the more suffocated I felt.
What I didn’t remember was her. How that was possible, I had no fucking clue, seeing as anytime I walked into the same room as her now, the whole thing seemed to reorient until she was at its center.
Honestly, it was probably a good thing I hadn’t noticed her then. It would have been one more thing I ended up resenting Alec over. One more thing he didn’t deserve to be resented for.
Not that it stopped me from resenting him for it now anyway.
“And?” I asked lightly, trying to ease the bitter taste in my mouth. Her steps slowed as we reached the stairs to a brick apartment building. “Has your impression of me gotten better or worse since then?”
She held my gaze as she grasped the railing and placed one foot behind her on the lowest step. She climbed slowly backward, studying me as she went.
I followed, one step behind, our eyes level the whole way until we reached the top. Her back hit the door as I rose above her, and I stepped in close, drawn to her by some gravitational force.
“Better,” she said, head tipped back to hold my gaze, the curve of her cheek illuminated by the streetlights. The corners of her mouth lifted, and I shifted closer, less than a foot of space between us. “Definitely better.”
Her impression of me before could have been trash enough that better didn’t mean much. But from the way her gaze burned into mine, I didn’t think that was the case. The way she’d said it made my chest expand with warmth I never wanted to fade.
She tilted her head at the building behind her and whispered, “This is me.”
It was. Not the building but the breathtaking woman in front of me. Her wide-open gaze was a beacon into her soul, inviting me to look at her. To see her.
All of her.
In a way I doubted even my brother had seen. Because if he had, he never would have let her walk away.
My gaze dropped to her mouth, and I swayed closer, her lips parting on an inhale, chest rising and falling with rapid breaths, nearly brushing mine.
Words fell from her lips, breathy and low. “You want to?—”
My phone buzzed against my leg, jerking me back.
“Sorry,” I said as I reached into my pocket.
Dani straightened away from the door, tucking her hair behind her ears, her cheeks turning pink.
I looked at my phone, and my stomach clenched. Of course, my mom was calling me right now. It went through to voicemail, but knowing my mom, she wouldn’t just leave a message and wait for me to call back.
I shoved my hand through my hair and forced myself to meet Dani’s gaze. “It’s my mom. I’d ignore it, but she’ll just keep calling.”
Sure enough, the phone buzzed again in my hand as “Mom” lit up the screen.
“It’s okay,” Dani assured me with a soft smile. “It’s getting late, anyway. I should probably call it a night.” She turned for the door, then paused, casting her warm gaze back at me, rooting me in place. “Thank you,” she said again. “For everything.”
She rose onto her toes and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. An electric charge ricocheted from her lips through my body, pulling my muscles taut and stealing my breath.
Before I could find it again, she was gone, the latch clicking shut behind her as she disappeared inside.
I listened to her footsteps climb the stairs on the other side of the door as I hung on to the moment a second longer. Then I blew out a breath and answered the phone.
“Hey, Mom.” I descended the stairs to the sidewalk.
“There you are. I didn’t think you were going to answer.”
Then why did you call twice in a row?
I bit down my irritation. “What’s up?”
“I need a final head count for the baby shower. Did you decide if you’re bringing anyone?”
I peered up at Dani’s building, the whisper of her lips lingering on my cheek.
There was no way. And not just because she was Alec’s ex and that would be awkward as hell. But because as soon as she encountered the two of us side by side, she’d realize the same thing everyone else did: that I was nothing but a poor substitute for the person she really wanted.
The faulty brother, always on the outside. Someone who could be a colleague, maybe even friend, but one she’d always want to split the check with.
“Just me,” I told my mom.
Why did it feel like that wouldn’t be enough?