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Tonight, it’s my greek inspired chicken with homemade flatbread and tzatziki sauce. It has been marinating for about an hour and I’m heating the cast-iron when I text Andi and Caroline to go ahead and come over. I planned to cook for them yesterday, but the night got away from me so I promised I’d do it today.
I told them they had forty minutes in the text, which should give them plenty of time to make it from Jesse’s cabin outside town.
I called Andi after landing the job at Taste this morning and learned a few interesting bits of information. One was that Nolan apparently showed up shortly after my interview, clearly fuming and mad. It sounded like he rushed off from the cabin just a few minutes after arriving.
I also learned that all the starters aside from Nolan are actually staying with Jesse at his cabin. So Nolan was clearly full of shit when he told me I couldn’t leave last night to go stay with Andi because Jesse would want privacy with his wife. I should’ve guessed it.
Any other day, I would probably be pissed right now. I can’t seem to stay mad, though. I got the job. I got the freaking job. I can be mad later.
I’m chopping vegetables and humming along with a little sway in my hips to the music playing from my phone when the door opens.
Nolan steps inside, pauses at the sight of me, then kicks the door shut behind him. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“Making dinner,” I said. “Are you going to eat with us?”
“Us?” he asks. A flash of rage touches his expression as he approaches me, eyes flicking between mine like he’s searching for something. “Do not tell me Zander fucking Russo is coming over for dinner.”
I can’t help laughing a little. Is that what he thinks? Maybe he deserves to be pissed if he’s going to be so immature about this. “I guess you’ll find out when our company arrives. Won’t you?”
Nolan’s jaw ticks. His sandy blonde hair has fallen in front of his eyes and he pushes it back angrily with one hand, nostrils flaring. “I don’t want you seeing him.”
“You just hired me,” I say sweetly. “I think I’m going to be seeing him a lot, thanks to you.”
Yes. I’m toying with him. Yes. He deserves every bit of it right now. If he stopped speaking to me like he owns me, maybe I would have told him I made zero plans with Zander and it’s just Andi and Caroline coming. But he didn’t, so he gets to keep on simmering.
“I mean personally,” he snaps. “I don’t want you seeing him on your personal time.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I’m your boss and I forbid it,” Nolan says. “It’s unprofessional. My employees can’t date. It’s a company rule.”
I snort, because his response has the distinct flavor of something he just made up on the spot. “Is that why you told him to hire me? You worried we were flirting and thought you could forbid us from taking it anywhere if we were your employees?”
“I don’t trust him around you.”
“Good thing it’s not your place to worry about, then.”
He folds his arms. He’s clearly furious, but he at least has the sense to know he can’t argue with that.
“This job is everything to me,” I say. “Maybe you don’t like how things ended between us, but that doesn’t mean you get to stomp around my life and take out your anger on me now. Get over it, Nolan. It didn’t work between us. So freaking what?”
His jaw muscles go tight. “That’s how you feel?”
I frown. “Why wouldn’t it be? Did you expect me to be moping around all this time? Wishing we had worked out?”
“No.” Some of the steam seems to drain from his voice. There’s an emotion behind his eyes I can’t place. Hurt? Betrayal? “You can feel however you want. But you are my employee now, Calloway. That means ghosting me isn’t an option anymore. You’r going to have to deal with me, whether you like it or not.”
I feel a small pang of regret when he talks about how I ghosted him. All this time, I’ve thought about my end of the break up. Nolan seemed to move on just fun. But maybe his attitude toward me makes just a touch more sense if I imagine how it must have seemed. He talked about commitment and I couldn’t have run faster. “Nolan,” I say softly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His eyebrows twitch together and something plays across his face I can’t read. A split-second later, it’s gone. “You didn’t,” he says, voice hard. “You did me a favor.”
I open my mouth to say something, but I’m not even sure the two of us are talking about the same thing. I sigh. “Look. I want this job more than anything. I spent two years in culinary school for a chance like this. And Taste is opening in my home town. I never wanted to live anywhere else, but I thought I’d have to for the kind of cooking opportunities I wanted. And now there’s this here. So… please,” I say.
He lifts one hand as if he’s about to touch my face, then lets it fall back beside me again, nodding slightly. I’m bracing for him to say something obnoxious or mean, but he steps back and folds his arms. “You can fuck whoever you want.” His voice is pure, cold iron. “But Taste is my dream, too. I’m not going to let you or your infatuations with my staff compromise it.”
I make a sound of annoyed disgust. “I’m not infatuated with anyone, Nolan. Not that it’s any of your business.”
He holds my eyes a moment, then nods. He moves over to where I have the chicken in the marinade and leans down, sniffing the sauce.
