I’ve spent the last few months figuring out my next steps. I know I want to cook, but I want to cook real family meals. The kind you drop in the middle of a table and watch people lean into it. Meals that you’d serve your friends and loved ones. Not some stuck-up, pretentious recipes created by equally pretentious men.
My grandma’s recipe book is a map of everything I love—grease-spotted pages, handwritten notes, little burns where she set it too close to the burner. This one time, she set her dishtowel nextto a boiling pot of potatoes. Almost burned the place down. The book is filled with dishes that hug you from the inside out. I had a plan in California: a cookbook that told our family’s story, bite by bite.
Until that dream too came tumbling down.
Turns out I trusted the wrong person in a world where people will do anything to run the hottest restaurant kitchens in the world. I let myself be used and taken advantage of.
The lure of a beautiful man did me in. What can I say?
The problem with most sexy and powerful men is that the word “powerful” never seems to go hand in hand with kind, or good, or genuine. No, the wordassholeis what usually comes to mind. Recipe-book-stealing asshole.
Dom is the only person who’s ever come off as sexy and powerful but not an asshole. Well, if he doesn’t stop stalking me, he’ll be an asshole. He exudes sex and power, but in a “messes me up and makes me dirty” kinda way. Unfortunately, he has no faith in me or my ability to fix my own damn problems, which he shows with his constant hovering.
I startle at the harsh knock on my door. Jaxon was stopping by today, but that’s definitely not a Jaxon kind of knock.
I swing the door open and forget how to breathe. “Dom?”
Speak of the devil.
“What… what are you doing here?” I crane my neck to look around him like Jaxon might be hiding behind his biceps.
Dom steps past me with a muttered, “Nice to see you too.”
“By all means, come right in,” I deadpan, shutting the door.
“Jaxon got pulled into a last-minute birthday thing at Matthew House,” he says, already scanning the room. “Asked if I could check your washer.”
“And break a couple of doors?” I ask with a smirk.
He winces. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve always wondered what kind of power is behind those muscles of yours,” I flirt.
He stops and stares. And…I’m pretty sure he flexes a little.
“Anyway,” I add quickly, trailing him like a totally normal person and not a lovesick puppy praying for a plumber-bends-over situation. “You didn’t have to rush. It could’ve waited.”
“Jaxon doesn’t want you hauling clothes to the laundromat.” His gaze flicks over me, quick and assessing. “Also, you smell fine.”
I stop smelling my shirt.
“Oh? Justfine?” I tease.
“Sandalwood and… lavender,” he says too casually.
My eyebrows climb. “Do you make a habit of smelling people, Dom?”
A flush climbs his neck. “Shut it.”
I chuckle a little smugly. Hewasblushing.
He heads for the stacked washer-dryer and pauses at my kitchen table, eyes lingering on the chaos of drafts and recipes. He looks at me for a moment, then back at the stack, but doesn’t comment, just files it away, because of course he does.
“Need help?” I ask as he braces and slides the unit from the wall like it’s on wheels.
“No, keep working.” He nods at the table. “I’ll shout if I need you.”
I nod my head and make my way back over to the kitchen table. I try, I really do, to focus on my recipes. It lasts seven seconds. His shirt pulls across his back, forearms flexing, jeans riding low. My brain supplies a cinematic cut of Dom as a very unserious plumber, mustache and all. My body votes yes with enthusiasm.
