Left side: reasons this is a bad idea.
She works for me. Power imbalance. Luca will kill me or worse if I drag chaos into his kitchen. Enemies look for leverage. She becomes leverage. My reputation. Her reputation. Her mother. Francesca would burn my car. If it goes bad, I lose a chef I actually like.
Right side: reasons to do it again.
I want to. She wants to. She kissed me back. That little gasping breath against my mouth. The way I wanted to pull her closer. Lift her to the counter and plunder her.
Food like that doesn’t happen from nothing. It comes from the same passion as the kiss. If she cooks that well and kisses that well…
Jump rope. Fast. Feet barely touch. Rope snaps the air, ticks the floor. I count to a hundred, twice, then dump it and hit the heavy bag. It’s not enough. I need to work this off somehow.
Her lips. Warm. No perfume, just skin and the ghost of tomato and butter on her tongue. The small shiver when my thumb skimmed her cheek. The self-control it took for her to keep both hands on the table, towel clenched instead of grabbing me.
I shouldn’t have gone in there. I did anyway. I fed her. I put my thumb on her face, knowing damn well there was no more flour.
Hook, hook, cross. I breathe through my teeth until the noise in my head drops a notch.
Sweat runs into my eyes and burns.
Five minutes in, my ribs ache in a good way. I keep going.
She’s there anyway. Black tee under a coat, hair up with those pieces that don’t listen.
That look she gave me at the table at Regalia when I told her to sit.
The way she moved around the kitchen last night. She did the work and let her food do the talking. Everyone ate and bonded over it for a while because of her. That’s worth more than a kiss.
Slowly, I lower my arms. Hands on my knees, head down. Breathe in, breathe out.
I stand and walk to the fridge in the corner, pull out a water bottle, and chug.
The city outside the window still sleeps in the gray morning light. I hear her voice say, “Don’t play with me.”
I don’t. I won’t.
I’m good at discipline. I’ve built a life on it.
I also know what happens when I let desire make decisions. People bleed. Not this time.
I set the bottle down and wipe my face with a towel. The room smells like iron. Dawn just peeks over the skyline of Atlantic City.
Shower. Hot, then cold. I put my forehead to the tile and tell myself again: no touching. Her job is her job. Mine is mine.
Towel. Razor. Suit. The ritual pulls me back into my lane. I look more like the man who walked into Regalia last week. Before I saw her for the first time. Before I couldn’t go two minutes without thinking of her again.
I walk out of my room and down the steps of my penthouse, into the kitchen that will soon be her domain.
I pour coffee black and take it to the window that looks over the water. Wind ruffles the surface, a smear of silver moving east. My hands are steady again.
I think about the moment in the kitchen when I told her to say no and I’d walk. I meant it. I still do.
She didn’t say no.
Which is its own problem.
I finish the coffee and dump the cup in the sink. No more thinking. Work.
Hand on the door, I stop and add one more line to the left column, the only one that matters right now:
