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“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s just you sound upset. Is everything okay?” she asked.
Upset? Upset? No. Upset was for wimps. I was frustrated. Sexually and otherwise. I kind of wanted to tell Nico to go fuck himself. That he couldn’t hold Isla’s employment status over me. I was also obsessing about how Isla had responded to me in the hallway. Four months ago. Four fucking months ago and I was obsessing about that kiss.
And I couldn’t even just have sex with her and get over it, because I was her boss.
“Everything is fine. I’m just trying to be professional.” I tossed garlic into a metal bowl and accidentally hit it with the side of my hands. It skittered across the table. I reached out and grabbed it and slammed it back where it belonged.
Isla picked the station across from me to work. She started gathering her spices. “Okay. How was your weekend?”
I was supposed to stand there and watch her work three feet away from me? It was a big kitchen with multiple prep stations. She could have worked anywhere on the line. “My weekend was fine, thank you.”
“Kennedy seemed cute.” Isla gave me a smile.
This didn’t feel right. She’d been so surly with me Friday. She’d either realized her future at Bone was at stake or I was right. She’d gotten laid. Or wait. Maybe it was a trap.
“Yep. She’s very cute.”
“A man babysitting is very sexy,” she commented.
Shit. I slammed my knife down onto the counter. There was no way she could say something like that, in those jeans, and I couldn’t flirt back. It was cruel.
The corner of her mouth turned up in a sly smile.
My eyes narrowed. She was doing it on purpose. She was trying to get under my skin.
“A woman in heels is very sexy. Because then she can look me in the eye when she’s kissing me.” I shouldn’t have said it, but the words were out before I could stop them.
Isla visibly swallowed.
Then she said lightly, “I’ll show you how we usually rub the meat here at Bone, then you can tell me if you’d like me to do anything differently.”
Oh, that wasn’t fucking fair. She wasn’t even trying to be subtle.
My cock didn’t care. I got hard as I stared back at her. Her expression was challenging, her eyes bright with competitiveness. And arousal. She was as attracted to me as I was to her. Obviously, my first reaction was as a man. It was a “fuck yeah, I want to see how the meat rubbing goes.” But that was a dangerous, dark path when we were at work and not alone. Employees milled around, coming in and out of the kitchen. My second response was that as her boss and head chef, I absolutely did need to see how the rub was done, because now it was my name on that spice combination, and the sear.
Both reactions meant I wanted her to show me how she rubbed, but for very different reasons.
“I trust you to rub the meat,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. “But yes, I would love to see how you do it.” She could take that however she wanted to take it.
But then Sara, who worked on the line, came into the kitchen and offered to take Isla’s place, which she readily agreed to. Which should have helped, except then I heard her over there laughing with the male servers.
“Taste this,” she said, lifting a piece of ribeye marinated in bourbon to the lips of a server who looked like he was an aspiring underwear model. “It’s as tender as a mother’s love,” she said, giving him a smile.
“That’s so good,” he said, licking his lips. “Juicy.”
Was this the guy who had put that smile on her face today?
“Can the two of you stop flirting and get back to work?” I demanded.
Everything about their exchange annoyed me but I focused entirely on the food in front of me. I wanted to get to know the rest of the staff, while ignoring Isla’s movements. Ignoring the way she laughed, deep and throaty. Ignoring the way she gave encouragement to the staff. Ignoring the way she constantly kept bending over to get a mixing bowl, her curves deliciously outlined in those jeans. Ignoring the desire to kiss her again and take it even further this time.
“Sorry, Chef,” the server said, his face turning red
By the time dinner service was over, I was exhausted from being polite and professional. Not that I usually struggled with those, but with Isla, I wanted something different. I wanted to flirt with her, I wanted to give her a hard time, I wanted to know what the hell she had d
one all weekend long. It was tempting to sit down at the bar after the customers left and have a drink, but I couldn’t do that to the staff. They wanted to go home and relax.
