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But he was already heading to the door.
She sighed and sat down on the stool he’d exited. “That was not what I was expecting.”
“Would you like to quit too?” I asked. “Might as well tell me now.”
I was pissed off. On the one hand, it meant I could choose a chef I wanted to work with. But it wasn’t a good look.
“I thought seriously about it,” she admitted. “All of yesterday.”
That was honest, at least. “What stopped you?”
“My rent and the fact that I don’t want you to win.”
I laughed. She killed me. She had the most serious and sour look on her beautiful face. She was wearing overalls rolled at the ankles with combat boots. When she took her coat off, I got a great view of her toned arms and her full breasts. She had a fantastic body and I realized I shouldn’t be thinking about that, but hell, she was right there. I couldn’t help myself. She had that strong personality, the attitude, the ballbuster vibe that I didn’t usually go for. But with Isla, it was fun to spar with her. It turned me on.
“So your plan is to stay at Bone and torture me?”
“Pretty much.” She nodded to the bartender. “Can I get a vodka on the rocks, please?”
She liked her drinks strong, like her attitude.
“I’m going to tell you what I told Martin before he quit. I didn’t know that you two didn’t know I had been hired. I can’t imagine what the fuck Nico and Sid were thinking, announcing it like that. I would have never been on board with that if I had known. I just assumed that they’d told the two of you first, privately, and that this was an announcement to the rest of the staff.”
I sipped my beer, waiting for her reaction.
Isla tucked her hair behind her ear. She had earrings that were little sushi rolls. It was a whimsy I wouldn’t have expected from someone as no-nonsense as she was.
“That does make you suck less,” she said. “I can admit that.”
“Wow, thanks,” I said dryly. “Don’t pump up my ego.”
“Your ego is just fine,” she said, eyeing me.
I wondered if she was remembering that kiss we’d shared. Or if she was just picturing ways she could kill me and take my job.
“Why did Martin call you Chef Eight Dates?” Isla asked me, raising her eyebrows.
I grimaced. I would have preferred she had been contemplating either sex or murder over that. “That’s a stupid nickname that should have been retired years ago.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Was there a way to make this sound better than it was? Or to lie? No, because I was sure Martin would tell her the truth if she asked. That guy had it out for me for whatever reason. Back in the day, I had gotten along with him, so the animosity was new. I had to assume it had nothing to do with me but just his own frustration, but I didn’t know how tight he and Isla were in real life. If he was going to tell her, I’d like to beat him to the punch.
“When Martin and I worked in a kitchen together about six or seven years ago, I was working my ass off at the restaurant and in my free time I was dating.” That was a polite way to put it. I couldn’t exactly say I’d been fucking my way across Brooklyn.
She eyed me. “And?”
“I was, well, stacking my dates because I was working so many hours. You know how it is in the restaurant business. It’s all-consuming and hell on the personal life. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. One week I had eight dates. The guys in the kitchen thought that was hilarious. They came up with that nickname. I can’t believe it’s followed me for this long.”
Though I had to say it probably wasn’t totally inaccurate at this point in my life either. Maybe not eight, but I wasn’t opposed to meeting up with a couple of different women in one week.
I liked women. Not one w
oman. But women. There was something so amazing about meeting someone for the first time and feeling that instant connection, that sexual chemistry. Meeting a stranger and having sex required no investment of time. It wasn’t hard work. I worked so hard in my career that I wanted dating to be easy, which meant I wasn’t actually dating. I was just having sex with random women who wanted the same thing. A quick, sexually satisfying night together and then move on to the next one.
Were there times when I wanted more? Of course. More often the older I got. But that was a huge commitment of time and emotion, to massage a relationship forward into something special.
“Wait, was it eight dates with the same woman or dates with eight different women?” Isla asked.
