AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Just for you to mingle honestly, Mr. Gideon. I know your name is known far and wide, but I just thought it might be nice for people to be able to talk to one of the elusive Gideon eight. But don’t get me wrong, if I for one second thought I had a chance with you, I would one hundred percent take you up on that, but I know when a man is interested and when he is not,” she says matter of factly and I can see how she became friends with Carla. They both tell you how it is straight up with no chaser.
“Yes, I brought a suit with me, and if there is time, I would love to come mingle for a bit,” I tell her now that we have gotten that straight.
She smiles at me, “Great! Well, I won’t keep you, besides I have some last-minute things I need to do before people begin to show up.” With that, she walks off, barking orders at the decorators placing the flowers.
I do a final walk-through making sure everything is ready to go. The tables are set, and I inspect every plate, glass, and piece of silverware, making sure it’s perfect.
“Kate,” I call to the young woman setting the table.
“Yes, Mr. Gideon,” she says slightly breathlessly. She’s cute but definitely jailbait, I have tried to discourage her crush, but I guess it’s something she just has to get out of her system.
“Jaasiel, please. I need you to replace the silverware at table three, place setting five,” I tell her. She is great at her job. She wants to get into culinary arts, but she let Asher know she wanted to learn all aspects of the business, not just the cooking.
She interned at the restaurant through a program at her high school, and she is in her senior year and will be joining my school of cooking this August. I say it’s my cooking school because Asher gave me total control of the school, but I only teach or cook about once or twice a month. I hired some of the best chefs who were tired of the grind of running a kitchen to come cook and teach. I love cooking, but my reasons for cooking are not the same as anyone else I have ever heard of.
A few minutes later, I hear the bell ring, and I head back to the kitchen to get this show on the road. For dinner, I made macaroni and brie with crab, seared scallops and baby spinach with spiced pomegranate glaze, and seared scallops with brown butter and lemon pan sauce. Gado Gado or mixed vegetable salad with Indonesian peanut sauce, baby beet and salmon salad with Dijon, and wilted spinach salad with hot bacon dressing. Pot lamb Haleem, French onion soup, potato leek soup, and watermelon gazpacho. Lamb chops with blackberry chutney, lemon garlic butter lamb chops, grilled balsamic flank steak with chimichurri, blackened chicken, and cilantro lime quinoa, with butternut squash gnocchi with herbed brown butter, cheesy garlic zucchini rice, balsamic roasted potatoes with asparagus. And finally, tortine di riso agli agrume, tiramisu spheres, and Chocolat au Crumble de Fraises. Noelani has a sommelier here to pair the wine with each meal course perfectly. And a regular and non-alcoholic mixologist for anything else the guests may desire; she spared no expense.
It is a full house. The meal went off without a hitch, and the servers took out the last dessert, so now it’s time for the final clean-up. A service will pick up all the dishes to wash and sanitize them; all we have to do is scrape and rinse them. I roll my sleeves up and get to work with everyone else. It’s not much to do since I had a team to scrape and rinse after each course. We stack the dishes, wipe down the kitchen, bag the garbage, and pack up all the leftover food to go to homeless shelters. I wash my chef kit; I don’t trust that to anyone else ever.
The last dish is prepped and packed for pick-up. I paid everyone who came tonight to help with cash. It was a lot of work, and I want to ensure they are adequately compensated for their efforts. One thousand dollars for a day’s work is not a bad deal. After they were all gone, I headed to the bedroom to change out of my chef uniform into my suit. I take a quick shower to wash the food and smell off me, partially dry my hair and leave it down to air dry after I run some Melanique through my hair, lotion, deodorant, and cologne, and finally get dressed. The suit is a beautiful chocolate brown three-piece bespoke suit with a double chain pocket watch, gold lapel pin, and handkerchief, and my chocolateFerragamo’sand I ready to mingle.
“You clean up very nicely, Mr. Gideon,” Noelani says once I join her in the main room.
“Thank you. I take it the dinner was a success?”
“Of course, it was you who cooked it. I had literally everyone ask me who was tonight’s chef,” she says as she loops her arm through mine and begins to usher me around the room. As we walk around, I notice quite a few men in attendance; some are with the women, and some are there with the men. They scream escorts, and I am instantly curious about the party I cooked for. Basically, it was supposed to be a networking sort of deal, and I can see how that would make sense with the people in attendance. There are CEOs and COOs here, politicians, athletes, and some extremely wealthy members of society too.
Even though they are the same money-wise, they could not be a more eclectic group of people in one room. Noelani parades me around the room like a prize bull, she who managed to get the elusive Jaasiel Gideon to play chef for her party, her words, not mine. There are plenty of chefs out there that are infinitely more talented than me. The hype behind me being constantly asked to cook or have a restaurant of my own is my refusal to do it. People always seem to want what they cannot have.
We walk away from the owner of a ranch that owns some of the most sought-after horses in the world as one of the men walks up to Noelani and whispers something in her ear. She nods as she pulls out her phone and sends what I am assuming is a text to someone before turning back to me with a too-bright smile on her face.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
“Yes, but Parker will be here to handle it, I am sure,” she says as she moves us to the next group of people conversing. She does it so quickly it makes me feel like it was done on purpose to avoid any further conversation about who this Parker person is. But if my guess is right and these men are escorts, Parker must be the guy they belong to. I am curious about the man who runs these men, but I focus back on the conversation around me.
I finally managed to break away from Noelani for a few minutes. It is something about being in a house with seven other brothers that makes you crave time alone. My brothers and I are always all up in each other’s business, and it has always been that way even now that more than half of my brothers are married or in a relationship. As a matter of fact, I think I am the last man standing on that note because that “we’re just friends” bullshit Aryan and Brooklyn keep trying to convince us of isn’t convincing at all. And Jabarri is in a relationship with Natalie and seems content with it, so yeah, I am the only single Gideon man over the age of twelve. Leaning against the rail of the Juliet balcony off from the living room, a flash of white catches my attention, beckoning me to turn and follow it. When I do, my eyes are happy that I do.
Who is that?As I watch this vision glide across the floor in a head-to-foot white suit, I am immediately mesmerized. White wide-leg dress pants, white jacket with no shirt or hell, not even a bra on, a wide-brim white fedora, her hair hanging down her back to an ass so fat she could bless every woman in this room and still have more than enough left over, and white high heel Red Bottom sandals. She is a vision. She looks like a bronzed goddess, the hat hides a lot of her face, but those thick lips can’t be hidden, and my eyes refuse to stop looking at her. Savvy has completely corrupted me with her love ofMichael Jackson,and I can hearThe Way You Make Me Feelplaying in my head in stereo, and my feet are in motion before my mind can comprehend that we are moving. My angel makes a beeline to Noelani, and just as I am in ear range, I hear Noelani call her Parker.
Two
PARKER
Inoticed him as soon as I walked into the room, over in the cut, looking better than any man has a right to. The man is a work of art. My mind immediately thought about him being a price bull on my cattle ranch, but then my commonsense kicks in;girl, please, you know that man ain’t about to be on nobody’s ranch.But I know the women, shit, the men too, would break the bank for one evening with him. I see Noelani on the other side of the room and head for her. I can’t believe I had to come out here to get one of these idiots back in line. This party was a cash cow, and this newbie I took in is here acting like he needs his ass kicked. All they have to do is dress up, smile, and not act like a fucking neanderthal.
“Noelani, where is he?” I asked without preamble, irritated down to my soul.
“Parker, let me introduce you to Jaasiel Gideon,” she says without answering my question, and I turn, startled because I did not hear him coming up behind me, nor did I notice when he moved. I have made it necessary to always be aware of my surroundings, but Jaasiel managed to do something no one else has been able to do in many years.
“Ms. Parker, I can finally put a face with the name,” he says, holding his hand out for me to shake.
“Mr. Gideon,” I say as I take the proffered hand, immediately inhaling sharply from the feel of electricity that I feel when I grasp his hand. My eyes flash up to him to see if he was as affected as I am, and he doesn’t look fazed at all.
“Please, call me Jaasiel,” he says, showing all thirty-two of his beautiful straight teeth and making me grit mine.
“Hmm, Gideon, where have I heard that name before?” I ask him, genuinely curious, squinting my eyes at him as I flip through my memories. “Aww, now I remember,” I say before he can respond. “I read an article about Asher Gideon. He’s the architect that just had a castle disassembled, brought to the US, and reassembled to use as a hotel, right?”
“Yes, I have heard of him,” he says amusedly.
