This can’t be …
The blond countered, “I’ll do better?—”
“Do better now. I needed that sauce twenty fuckingminutes ago.” As the demand left the dark-haired man’s mouth, he turned his neck, as if he sensed I was staring at him.
Inches before his eyes landed on mine, I threw myself down on the ground.
The reaction was far more dramatic than I’d intended, and when my knees hit the hard tiles, I yelped, “Ouch,” and I knew I was going to be covered in bruises.
“Are you okay?”
When I glanced up, one of the waitresses was kneeling beside me.
“Yeah … I …” What could I even say? What was even happening? Was she the only one who had seen me fall? Or was everyone staring at me? A quick peek around told me it was only her. But I still had to come up with a reason why I was on the ground and why I wasn’t standing back up. “I … lost my contact.” I tapped my hands on the floor as I pretended to look for it, all the while staying low and out of sight. I had perfect vision; I hated that I even had to fib.
“I’ll help you find it. Hang on. Let me grab my phone and use the flashlight. That’ll make things easier.”
“You don’t have to do that.” I kept one eye closed as I looked at her to make it seem even more believable, feeling worse by the second from everything that was developing. “I’m sure it’ll pop up. If not, I have extras with me.”
Was that even how it worked with contacts? I knew nothing about what I was talking about.
“It could have fallen under the prep station.” She was crouched down, shining her phone under the metal base.
I can’t believe this.
I can’t even process it.
I …
“Can I ask you something?” I had stopped pretending to look but kept my body down.
“Of course.”
I drew in some air, trying to calm my heart so she wouldn’t hear the trembling in my voice. “The guy who’s yelling—who is that?”
An expression of shock came across her face. “That’s our executive chef. How do you not know that?”
I shook my head as her words hit me like baseballs from a pitching machine. “Yesterday was my first day here, and … he wasn’t working.”
“Oh yeah, he was on a staycation. That’s the rumor anyway.” She slid one of her bracelets further up her arm. “He got called in for tonight because it’s going to be buck-wild busy. His name is Walker Weston.”
Walker Weston …
The executive chef of Charred, where I’d just taken on a second job, working a minimum of five nights a week as a water girl and food runner, combined with my job at the assisted living facility, giving me the most packed schedule ever.
He was Walker Weston to them.
But he was Whiskey35 to me.
The man I’d just spent two nights with at a hotel.
Who had looked familiar. I just couldn’t place him because I’d never seen photos of him where he wasn’t in chef’s whites and deeply involved in some type of cooking.
Whose mouth had been on every inch of my body.
Who was now … my boss.
ELEVEN
