I lathered up and started to scrub. My father had drilled into me that preparing food wasn’t always the most pleasant of jobs. I’d wanted to be like Mary Berry or Nigella, making cakes and puddings and looking glamorous in the process, but I’d ended up as a fine dining chef instead of a TV celebrity, and getting to see how the other half lived had made me glad I’d taken the former option. Both Blue and Mount Street were regularly stalked by paparazzi looking for their next fatty end of gossip. Mount Street was designed to be dark and hazy, the use of plants and walls creating natural boundaries and giving at least the illusion of privacy.
Right now though, I wasn’t thinking too much about work. I’d done seven days straight between the two restaurants, sorting menus and dealing with an implosion of staff and somewhere within all of that, I’d forgotten who I was, and that I wasn’t just a robot.
I rinsed off, slightly disturbed by the fact I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d washed my hair. Turning the shower off, I heard a knock at the door, a fairly insistent banging that suggested the person outside had heard most of me singing at the top of my voice.
The towel wrapped around me was short and my hair was dripping. The thought that it was a little too indecent didn’t particularly bother me: whoever it was was from the restaurant and if they were interrupting my shower, they could take me as they found me.
Jack stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, his grey t-shirt tight enough across his chest to be obscene, not that I was looking. It was that long since I’d last had sex that I was pretty convinced my vagina had healed over and was about to start eating grass. In fact, I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d seen a real life penis. I also had no idea why Jack standing outside my bathroom was making me think about the last time I’d had sex.
Oh wait, could be something to do with the fact that his eyes were dropping down every few seconds to where my boobs were attempting to escape the towel.
And he wasn’t unattractive.
There were a few women, and the odd man, who came into Mount Street purely to see Jack at work. The restaurant had been tagged a few times on social media with him in photo, usually looking studiously at a pan or as he was carving meat. The rest of the team teased him about it, all of which he took in his stride. Jack wasn’t a drama queen; he was anything but.
“Is the kitchen on fire?” My favourite language was snark.
He shook his head. “I tried your mobile but you were obviously rinsing off the smell of rotten fish. We’ve a request for a closed restaurant three weeks on Saturday. Booking for twenty but they want the whole place.”
That meant royalty, either the crown type or Hollywood. “Who is it?”
He shrugged. “It’s PA to a PA, probably to another PA. If we accept the booking and cancel other reservations then we’ll get more details, but they’re prepared to pay a huge deposit.”
These things had happened before. Just not when I was wearing only a towel.
Jack’s blue eyes bored into me. “We have a full restaurant that night.”
I shook my head. It didn’t do us any favours to cancel for a celebrity who would no doubt be in the press the following day. “Offer them a date when we’re not booked and see what they say. You want me to do it?” I was a shit delegator.
He smiled at me. “I think I can handle it. I do have some people skills. Not ones that extend to not staring at a semi-naked woman. Sorry.” He pushed a hand through his hair and I realised that this was the first time I’d see Jack look anything other than perfectly managed.
I shrugged, holding the towel at the sides. Working in a kitchen meant that you were close. In the heat of a Saturday night when the restaurant was packed and you were chasing your tail, you banged into each other. Body parts would be nudged, touched by accident, brushed against and you barely noticed. It wasn’t about the touch, it was about the food and that was far more important.
The kitchen in Mount Street was in the restaurant. Diners could watch us cook, see their meal prepared. You were the entertainment. There had been occasions when both my boobs had ended up briefly in someone’s hands and no mention of it was made. We were a performance, unscripted, but polished.
“I’ll let you off. I figured you’d help it if you could.”
He laughed and turned away. “I’ll get back on the phone to the PA. My bet is that they’ll reschedule. You should check out the review from last Thursday’s critic. It fucking glows.”
If the review didn’t, something else was currently glowing. My cheeks. For some reason, Jack had made feel hotter than the shower.
Chapter 2
Jack
“When I turn this way, he should step there and every time he gets it wrong. It’s really irritating.”
I shifted to the left instead of right, throwing my daughter off her steps and causing her to make the same frustrated growl that her mother made whenever an experiment didn’t go the way she’d predicted.
“Try it like this then.” We picked the beat back up and instead she worked with the move I’d thrown. I understood how her very competent partner was getting it wrong and thus her world was imploding. Lauren was a perfectionist trapped in a fifteen-year-old body that only wanted to dance. Somewhere along the line I’d created a monster.
She shifted, all nimble feet and long limbs, her smile genuinely wide and radiant rather than fixed. Latin and ballroom were her least favourites, she much preferred ballet, but her talent was for modern.
My daughter had caught the dancing bug around the age of three when her mother and I had finally called it a day trying to pretend we were any sort of compatible and Lauren had needed something to distract her on a Saturday.
“That’s so much better. Why didn’t you do this professionally?” It was a question she’d asked multiple times.
“Because I loved cooking.” It was the truth. Dancing was something I’d done by accident when I was about fourteen. We’d been on holiday in Cuba and I’d seen the dancers there. For some reason, I’d ended up joining in and found I could move. Then I’d also found out that being able to dance was a really great way to attract girls.
