Knife didn’t get customers who asked to see the rail, nor did he get customers who could pick the best hanging tenderloin just by walking down the row.
People came in, told him what they wanted, and trusted him to carve it up and hand it over. Which was fine. That was his job.
But this was something else.
He’d clocked her the moment she came through the door, and his first read had beenpack wolf, which her card had verified. His second read, overlapping almost immediately with the first, had been something he hadn’t expected and didn’t entirely have a name for.
For the most part, dire wolves don’t have much interest in modern wolves. Knife mostly fucked the shifter sweetbutts at the clubhouse, avoiding the humans, but the flavor of shifter didn’t matter. He hadn’t been in a serious relationship since high school, and he’d left home in part to avoid the pressure of dating the dire wolf that his pack, his alpha, had decided he’d marry.
But this wolf spoke to his soul the instant their gazes met.
He’d filed that away and focused on the fact she was saying something completely interesting.Center-cut whole roast tenderloin, even taper, Beef Wellington, sear and sliceboth matter.She knew exactly what she was asking for and why. That was rarer than it should have been, even from people who cook professionally.
Now he was breaking down the tenderloin she’d selected, and she was watching his hands with full attention.
He found himself slowing down slightly. Not performing, the way he sometimes did with the pig at parties. Just taking the time to make the cuts so she could follow.
“You’d want to take the chain off first,” he said, his knife finding the seam instinctively. “Most restaurants leave too much of it. It’s good meat but it cooks different, and on a Wellington it’ll throw off your crust.” He set the chain aside. “Your restaurant is going to want to source consistently. You want the same grade, same age, same handling every week, or the cook times will drift.”
“That’s what I’m trying to build into the protocol. It’s too bad they’re in New York, or I’d recommend you to source for them.”
He started trimming the silverskin with long clean strokes, nothing wasted, and thought it interesting that she was helping out a New York establishment.
“You spend a lot of time in New York?”
“Only for consulting jobs, and I do the work as fast as I can.”
He nodded. “My wolf isn’t happy with big cities, either. He deals with it because we’re both a fan of the Jersey Devil coaster. Also, the Soaring Eagle and the Thunderbolt.”
She frowned at him, and he smiled. “I can tell you every detail of all the greatest rollercoasters, and a lot of the not-so-great ones. Kind of my thing.”
“Really? My wolf doesn’t like being strapped into them. I enjoy them, but I have to promise my wolf extra time in the woods. She doesn’t like the loss of control.”
He glanced at her. “That important to you? Being in control?”
Her scent gave him tons of conflict, but he didn’t smile at what that might tell him.
“I usually prefer driving to riding,” she said, “and I tend to like my own cooking more than other people’s.”
A half-truth. Or rather, the words were true, but the point she conveyed was not completely true.
And he sensed her wolf, like a shift in the air pressure. Whatever her wolf was picking up from him, it wasn’t making her nervous.
He finished the trim and set the tenderloin on the scale, then wrapped it in butcher paper with the efficiency of someone who’d done it ten thousand times. His nimble fingers folded the ends, taped it, and finally marked the weight and cut in black marker.
He walked her back out front, and she told him a dozen other things she’d need on the way. He got it all for her, gave his hands a quick mist of hypochlorous acid before touching the cash register, and she had her card out before he could tell her the amount.
“Thank you for letting me in the back,” she said, handing it to him without blinking at the final tally.
“You knew what you were looking for.” He said it simply, because it was the simple truth. “Not a lot of people do.”
She nodded, accepted her card back, the bag with all her purchases, and turned away from him to leave… and he heard himself ask, “You got plans tonight?”
She turned back to him, her expression carefully neutral. “I’d planned to read, but there’s no reason that has to happen tonight.”
“I can take some prime ribeyes home.” He kept his voice even. “You could come over, and we could pretend it isn’t the day before Valentine’s Day. Just two people who understand meat, eating a proper meal.”
She smiled. “You’re the manager of a vertical meat operation, and you’re asking me over to look at your ribeyes.”
