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I didn’t necessarily want to go home and be alone, but that’s what I did. I’d been living in my apartment by McCarren Park in Williamsburg for just under a year. I’d decided it was time to upgrade from the rough-around-the-edges place I’d been in for the previous six years. This apartment had very modern finishes, smartphone technology integrated, and amazing amenities, like a rooftop deck, a pool table, and lounge areas if you were entertaining a large group.
Like my brother, I had a large inheritance from our grandmother, but I never touched it. I was saving that for the day I could open my own restaurant. But I had worked hard and gotten to the point where I could indulge in a decent place to lay my head. Plus, the biggest asset the apartment had was a gorgeous modern kitchen. The appliances were standard, but the space was more than adequate.
I went home to my apartment and poured myself a bourbon. Kicking off my shoes, I sat down heavily on my sofa and stared at Isla’s photo on the dating app. I would have expected her to make some kind of snarky comment and not much more. Instead, what she had written was a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read it once, then again out loud.
“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be.”
Sipping my bourbon, I let it warm me from the inside out. Isla the Intimidator had given a roadmap on how to understand her. The way I interpreted it was that the world might judge her, but that she liked herself. And if a man couldn’t deal with that, he should scroll on past.
It made her dangerously, highly sexy.
Damn it.
The plan had been to concentrate on my new position, not picturing Isla in all the positions I could have her naked body in.
She. Was. Killing. Me.
“What is going on here?” Juan asked, looking back and forth between me and Isla two days later, pausing as he moved past the line. “You guys are being really weird.”
We were on day three of working in the kitchen together and weird didn’t even begin to describe it. We were being unfailingly polite to each other. We were all “Yes, Chef,” “Behind you,” and “That tastes fantastic,” to the point that everyone in the kitchen was eyeing each other with concern. I also had a headache from the tension of trying to be so fucking nice for hours and days on end. It wasn’t like I was a total prick in the kitchen normally but I gave orders and staff followed them. Having to walk on eggshells around Isla was exhausting.
Especially since she seemed to be on this campaign to destroy my peace of mind by showing up for work in a variety of very sexy outfits. Yesterday she had worn a dress that, while loose, was very short, showing off toned thighs that were made for wrapping around a man. A man like me, who was preoccupied as hell with the very idea. Today she was wearing loose pants but with boots that had a hell of a heel and a shirt that had plunging cleavage. Thankfully the view of her firm and high tits had disappeared beneath her chef coat within a few minutes, but I’d seen enough to have the visual stuck in my head all damn night.
No one dressed like that to work in a kitchen. Not in my experience. Given the staff had catcalled her and made comments good-naturedly, it was clear this wasn’t standard dress for her. It was also incredibly dangerous to wear such impractical shoes.
I couldn’t figure out the end game, which was also contributing to my tension. Was she trying to distract me so I’d cut a finger off? It just might work, which was why I had shifted my plating area so that I wasn’t facing her anymore.
She had commented on it but I’d given her some bullshit about not liking the lighting where I had been before.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Juan,” Isla said, voice breezy and unconcerned as she pulled a tenderloin from the oven.
It was a hell of a feat in those heels and caused the fabric of her pants to draw tight across her ass. I looked up at the ceiling and wondered who I could call to meet up with and have sex because I was losing my mind around Isla. I needed a release and fast. Yet, even as I mentally went through my phone for a viable candidate, I wasn’t sure that was the answer. That was just avoiding the real problem, which was that Isla drove me fucking crazy. In every single possible way, she drove me insane.
To the point that everything I did was a challenge. My focus was shit, my blood pressure high, my dick hard.
But I wasn’t about to let her either inadvertently or on purpose destroy this opportunity for me. Hence the painful politeness.
“You both sound like you’re being paid to be nice to each other,” Juan said.
“We are,” I told him dryly.
Isla laughed. She picked up a carving knife. The sight both terrified and turned me on. “That’s very dramatic. Juan, I just think it’s important to start a new working relationship with someone the way you want to continue.” She deftly sliced the sharp knife through the meat.
“So you want it to be weird forever?” he asked, rubbing his hands on a towel tucked into his apron. “Because you’re being totally different.”
The kid was probably twenty at the most, a hard worker, but not a quick thinker. Though obviously observant. “How is Isla being different?” I asked, curious. Aside from not snapping at me constantly, which was what she’d done the first two times she’d met me. But I didn’t know how she had been in the kitchen before I had entered the picture.
“I don’t know,” he said, defaulting to self-preservation.
She shot him a look. “Go ahead. Say what you’re thinking. I won’t be upset.”
That sounded like a trap. But Juan walked right into it.
“You’re usually more, like, efficient. You just do stuff and you’re not like always saying please and whatever like you are now.”
“Maybe I’m trying to ensure positive karma.”
Maybe that was the biggest crock of shit I’d ever heard. Maybe I didn’t know Isla well, but that did not seem like her style.
