She falls in line with me. I slow my steps so we can walk side by side. My arm brushes hers. She shivers.
When I walk past her to my workstation, I make sure my upper arm catches her shoulder.
She gasps, looks at me with wide eyes. Then scans the kitchen to make sure no one saw us.
I don’t care if they did. Frankly, I needed her scent to get me through the rest of the service.
I set down the filets on the counter and give her the full benefit of my gaze. I don’t hold back how much I want her.
Her lips part. A pretty blush steals over her face. Then she lowers her chin, pretending to look at the fish in front of her and inches closer.
“Thanks for the nice things you said about me to Angelina. I know it was all fake but?—”
“It was all true.”
She whips her head around and looks at me with her big green eyes. The ones I drown in. The ones which haunt my dreams. The ones which show me what my future holds.
“But… You…” She shakes her head. “You…mean?—”
I nod toward the clock on the wall, allowing myself a small smile. “Time for dinner service.”
It’slike being back on a mission with the Marines. The kitchen is my war zone.
Orders fly from the ticket machine. Rit-rit-rit. It’s a relentless rhythm I've turned into muscle memory. Twelve tables firing. Four VIPs in the corner. A food critic seated at table seven.
"Fire two duck, one beef, three halibut." My voice cuts through the chaos like a blade. "Table nine, you’re four minutes behind. Tighten it up."
"Yes, Chef!"
The brigade moves as one organism. Pans hiss. Flames leap. The air is thick with the smell of rendered fat, woodsmoke, and that particular electricity of a kitchen running at full capacity.
Harper's at the meat station again tonight. I watch her work. Efficient, precise, no wasted movement. She flips a ribeye with the edge of her spatula, checks the color, and adjusts the heat without looking. She's that good.
My pulse kicks up, and it has nothing to do with the service.
I force my gaze back to the pass. Focus. There's no room for distraction when you're orchestrating seventy covers in a three-hour window.
"Sauce on the halibut is breaking," I bark toward the fish station. "Fix it. Now."
"Yes, Chef!"
The rhythm holds. The chaos is controlled. This is what I do. This is what I'm good at.
And then?—
CRASH.
A sauté pan hits the tile. It’s not a gentle clatter, but a massive, metallic BANG that echoes off the stainless-steel walls like a gunshot. The sound detonates through the kitchen.
The world tilts.
My vision tunnels. The edges of the kitchen blur into static, gray and colorless. The smell of seared meat becomes the acrid scent of burning flesh. The heat from the line transforms into the suffocating, bone-dry scorch of the desert sun.
My hands are shaking.
Trembling. The kind of involuntary tremor I haven't felt since?—
Sand. Blood. The weight of my teammate’s body, going slack in my arms.
