AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t have time for your jokes, Jillian,” he said, not believing her. “Some of us have to work.”
“Cool. I no longer have time for you, Clark. You insufferable a-hole,” she said. “Mrs. Cress just fired me, so you need to find a replacement ASAP. That two-week window just closed.”
She ended the call and touched her champagne glass to Nicolette’s.
Ding.
“Thanks so much for ending that even sooner than I thought,” Jillian said with a bright smile.
Cole eyed his mother’s face and was afraid she was going to have a stroke as her left eye seemed to blink uncontrollably.
“First Gabe and now you with this crap,” Phillip Senior snapped.
“Exactly,” Nicolette agreed with coldness.
And that pushed him to the limit. Seeing his parents judge and find Jillian unsuitable with such callousness was disturbing. So swiftly, he was reminded of the same disdain his father had expressed to Gabe when he’d first revealed that he was dating Monica.
There are women you wed and those you bed. Know the difference. And that goes for all of you.The anger Cole had felt back then was twofold now because it was Jillian his father was insulting.
“Jillian is the type of woman I can cherish and respect and be loyal to,” he said, his eyes daring his father to say more. “A woman worthy of nothing but good, just like any other woman...including my mother.”
His father’s lips thinned to a line.
Cole was thankful for Jillian’s tight grip on his hand as he was taken back to that moment the light he’d felt for his father dimmed all those years ago...
Cole hitched his book bag up higher on his thin shoulders as he climbed from the back of the family’s limousine in the uniform of his private school. “Thanks, Franco,” he said to their driver, who gave him a two-finger salute as he was surrounded by the loud and echoing sounds of Midtown Manhattan. Cole had boldly sneaked from home and left his brothers behind to finish their afterschool studies while he hoped to help out in the kitchen in any way during busy dinner service.
His older brother, Phillip, was the sous chef. Sean had just finished his studies in culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu that summer in Paris and worked there, as well. Gabe, at seventeen, had just begun culinary school and assisted in the bustling kitchen whenever he was home. Cole, at fifteen, wanted in on the action. Since they were young, their famous parents had taught them how to cook and praised them often for their skills.
This was a bold move but anything worth savoring was worth the risk.
Cole jogged up the concrete steps to the wide double-glass doors. He entered, barely paying attention to the towering adorned ceilings and elaborate Art Deco décor as he made his way to the kitchen.
“Hey, Chef, it’s one of your boys,” the burly pastry chef, Victor, yelled out. “Which one are you?”
“Coleman,” he offered as his mother walked out of her office to give him a curious blue-eyed stare.
“I completed my homework during school so that I could help out today,” he offered, his words rushed ashe walked over to her, already towering over her by a couple of inches.
Nicolette gave him a chastising look even as she pressed a kiss to his already chiseled cheek. “Mon beau fils rebelle,” she said.My handsome and rebellious son.
He gave her a smile that already had girls sending him longing looks.
“Ask your father,” she said with one last soft pat to his cheek before using the back of her hand to brush her blond bangs from her face.
He knew his mother would be easy. Up until she’d had Lucas, his little brother, he had been her undoubted favorite.
Cole moved to the sink to wash his hands, knowing his father would check because his rule was to wash hands as soon as any kitchen was entered. He felt nervous as he made his way through the large, bustling kitchen to the rear hall leading upstairs to a small apartment above the restaurant that his parents used as their joint office and storage.
He had already practiced his speech. “Dad, I finished my homework. Can I help out in the kitchen? Mom said it was up to you,” he said, coming to a stop before the closed door.
Taking a breath and feeling confident, he reached for the knob and turned it before pushing the door open. His grip on the knob tightened as he eyed his father with his pants down around his ankles, rutting away between the open legs of some woman atop the desk.
It was more of his father than he needed or wanted to see.
Fueled by anger and bitter disappointment in a man who could do no wrong in his eyes, Cole rushed across the room and used both his hands to shove against his father’s side with a savage grunt that only hinted at his hurt. He backed away as they cried out and rushed apart. The expressions on the faces of his father and on whom he now saw to be one of the restaurant’s long-time waitresses were of shock.
As they struggled to correct their clothing, Cole turned and raced down the hall, then the steps, wishing he had never dared to come to work. Or gone up the stairs. Or opened the door.
