His watch glints off the overhead lights as he folds his hands together in front of him. “I have a proposition for you.”
I lift my brows. “Excuse me?”
His lips turn up just the slightest. “Not a sexual one, though I find it interesting that’s where your mind went.”
I roll my eyes. “I wasn’t thinking pervy things, for your information.”I totally was.“I was just surprised you think we can mutually benefit one another.”
Nowhe’sthe one who raises his brows, and my cheeks heat when I realize just how suggestive that sounded.
“I—I didn’t ... I meant ... I—” I huff. “Can you please throw me a lifeline?”
He chuckles lightly, then clears his throat, and something tells me that whatever he’s about to say, he’s serious about it. My heart rate picks up, my blood pounding in my ears. What is this? What’s about to happen? Is ... is he about to fire me because of the almost kiss?
“We’re remodeling the kitchen.”
My senses go on high alert immediately.
“Good. It needs it,” I say. When I was in there the other night, I spent a good portion of the time mentally rearranging everything and planning how I would do it if it were my kitchen. I quickly squashed those thoughts, though, because it’snotmy kitchen and never will be.
“It does. You made me realize that, actually. You also made me realize we’re wasting a ton of space by not using it to our fullest potential.”
“You are.” They could be doing so much more with it and their menu, like taking off all that frozen crap and replacing it withrealfood. Something like—no.
There I go again, acting like it’s mine.
“Right,” Ezra says, pulling my attention back to him. “So, we’re remodeling it. Before Noah’s wedding, actually.”
“That’s brave of you.”
He sighs. “I’m asking you to be our chef, Summer.”
I blink once. Then twice. Then a third time, because there is no way he said what I think he said.
“What?”
“Be our chef. I spoke with Noah about this earlier, and he’s on board as well. He—”
“No.”
He whips his head back like I’ve just struck him. “What?”
“No.”
His face hardens. “Why not?”
Because if I do, I’ll fall in love with running a kitchen, and I can’t risk losing it again.
“Because I don’t want to,” I say instead.
I grab the cup I used, then set it in the dirty dish bucket. That’s a problem for tomorrow. I take another glass from the clean rack and begin polishing it, and it takes me right back to my first year in a real kitchen and just how much even doing mundane tasks like this made me fall in love with being in a restaurant.
“Bullshit.”
I drag myself out of the past and turn back to Ezra. “Pardon?”
“You heard me. You’re being bullshit right now.”
“I amnotbeing bullshit. I don’t want to be in the kitchen. I—”
