“How are we going on the entrée prep?” he asked, calling my attention. He said it so diffidently like he didn’t want to make too much of a big deal out of the fact that we were talking. It was only ever about work, now. I couldn’t even flirt with him properly anymore, not now we both knew there could be more behind it.
I looked at his mouth.
“I’m on time,” I told him, wrenching my eyes away and up to his. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t watching me, anyway.
My gaze dropped to his mouth again. His lips parted. He took a breath but seemed to hesitate. I was fascinated, watching the movement, waiting for him to speak or close his lips or doanythingto dispel the image that was currently forming in my head of him on his knees in front of me, his lips parted just like that.
“Um,” he said.
I looked up.
He was staring right at me with a puzzled look on his face.
I cleared my throat. “You have something caught in your teeth,” I said and walked away from the station even though I wasn’t done with prepping and didn’t need anything from the walk-in.
I pretended to oversee what Beau was doing for a few minutes, fussing with his chopped vegetables and examining the cuts until Rafael finished whatever he had been doing and moved on to another station. Only then could I breathe enough to go back to work.
It was a quiet night. We didn’t have a lot of covers in the restaurant, to begin with, and by halfway through service, most of us were standing around aimlessly, with only a couple of chefs required to work through orders at any one time. There was some big event happening at the other end of town, so I figured most of our regulars or the casual diners we might usually attract were all over there.
“We’re down to two tables,” Nikolai announced as he came through the swinging doors to pick up the latest set of prepared dishes. “And both of them are on their mains.”
I blew out a heavy breath. “It’s going to be a long night.”
“Not for all of us,” Rafael said. “We only need two chefs. Ainslie, you stay with me; Beau and Drake, you can go home. We can cover it with just two of us.”
I saw Luca popping his head out around the corner hopefully, as if he was thinking that he might be sent home as well, but there was no such luck for him. The dishes still needed washing, and it was better to have them taken care of now than to put extra work on his load in the morning. Even when the customers were doneand stopped ordering, there were a lot of tools in the kitchen that needed cleaning ready for tomorrow.
“I’ll stay,” I said. I didn’t have any particular reason to go home early. There was no one waiting for me back there, after all. I’d moved into an apartment with a couple of roommates while I was waiting to find out if I would be settling here permanently to take the job, and I didn’t know or particularly like them. The kitchen was where I belonged and where I wanted to be, wrist problems or no wrist problems.
Rafael shot me a look. His eyes were unreadable behind his glasses. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll stay, too,” Beau said, answering the unasked question of whether to split up our usual teams or not. “I’m meeting Grey tonight after service, anyway.”
Ainslie barely held back a scoff and turned to grab his stuff without arguing. It was the mention of Grey that did it. He wasn’t shy about how much he disapproved of the relationship.
“Beau,” Rafael said softly. I followed his gaze and realized that Beau had shrunk in on himself, staring at the floor. “He’s just trying to look out for you.”
Ainslie was gone already, slinking out down the hall to the door. “It doesn’t feel like it,” Beau muttered, hugging his arms across his own chest.
Rafael sighed and wiped a hand across his forehead. He was tired, I could see that. An urge to go over there and put my arms around him and let him rest his head on my shoulder shook me to the core and I had to look away.
“He doesn’t want you to get hurt,” Rafael said. “We all love you, Beau. Ainslie can’t bear to watch because he knows it isn’t going to end well.”
“He doesn’t know that,” Beau shot back. “None of you do. None of you know what Grey’s like when it’s just the two of us.”
“Okay,” Rafael said, holding up his hands in defeat. He opened up his mouth – that sinful, tempting mouth – as if he was going to say something else, but then just nodded and repeated it. “Okay.”
He walked away, leaving Beau and I alone in the kitchen.
I hadn’t really noticed it before, but the kitchen was kind of cold. And despite the bright white overhead lights, certain corners were pretty dark, too. Like even the walls couldn’t hold out the fact that it was night out there.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and leaned against the wall, wondering how to pass the time if not by stealing glances at Rafael and imagining what I would do to him if he was into it.
“I’m going to go see if Grey’s in his office,” Beau said after maybe ten or fifteen minutes. No further orders had come in. “You can ask Nik to come and get me if you need me, right?”
I nodded. “Sure,” I said, shifting my weight to the other foot. Why prolong the misery by making two of us stand here alone and pointless instead of just one? Luca was still at his sink, but he had a habit of putting headphones in, and he was still working on the dishes. The only sound that filled the space was the clinking of plates under the water and the rattle as he put them onto drying racks.
I’d resorted to taking out my phone and playing stupid, mindless games on it when Kit poked his head through the swinging door, searching around and honing in when he found me. “Hey. Nik wanted me to tell you that the last customer just left.”
