But he just sat down.
“Are those your cupcakes on the counter?” he asked when we’d all served ourselves and begun to eat.
“Yes.” It was a simple word spoken with confidence. Drake wasn’t questioning him or challenging him. Just waiting to hear the verdict. They met eyes for a cool moment.
“They look good,” Grey offered. “Better than I was expecting when Rafael told me about your…”
“You can say wrist,” Drake said. He cracked a small smile. “I won’t lose my shit.”
“Wrist,” Grey said, slow and careful and with narrowed eyes.
Drake lifted his hands to either side and sprayed his fingers out. “Ta-da,” he intoned flatly. Then he winced, and I made a mental note that maybe he needed his arm strapped up when he wasn’t cooking, too.
Everyone around the table chuckled, and the atmosphere relaxed; they must all have been holding their breath, waiting for someone else to be the first one to bring it up.
The day went by fast. Drake and I worked as a team: he ladled, poured, placed, and dropped food onto the plates to form the basis of each dish, and I finished them off with garnishes and elements that needed to be added more precisely. He began to instruct me, at first in clipped tones and then more easily, about how to improve my plating technique. I could already see myself coming out of this year with a new level of skill, and I was glad I would get it by helping Drake out.
Still, we worked hard and fast – we had to – all evening long, until the very last person left the dining room and we finally sagged onto the bench in the kitchen. The others left before we had a chance to gather ourselves, and I noticed that all of them simply assumed that Drake would be back tomorrow.
“Well, that didn’t go too badly,” I said.
“Mm.” Drake’s answer was probably as much of an agreement as I was going to get, given the circumstances. It wasn’t easy to please a perfectionist. Then again, it wasn’t easy to please an OCD-driven chef when you were constantly moving things around in his kitchen, either, but we would manage.
I leaned my head back against the cold brickwork, mirroring him, and turned my face in his direction. “Do it again tomorrow?” I asked softly.
He looked at me. We were, I now realized, impossibly close. And Drake’s eyes were impossibly golden-brown.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d like to do it again.”
Were we still talking about work?
Because by the way the air suddenly felt charged around us, it didn’t feel like it.
My gaze dropped to his mouth.
“Tomorrow…” I asked, barely believing how bold I was being. “Or right now?”
Drake’s eyes blazed with a golden flame. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought I was about to be in a lot of trouble.
“How about right now?” he said, leaning forward and cupping my chin with his good hand, drawing me closer and engulfing my mouth in his kiss.
I melted against him as he kissed me long and slow, stoking the fire at the base of my spine over and over until I could barely take it anymore.
We both got to our feet at the same time, driven by a need that was too strong to be ignored.
“Take this off,” Drake commanded, pushing me back against the plating station and fumbling at the drawstring of my uniform pants.
“This is a kitchen,” I squeaked, distressed by how high my voice had risen but even more distressed by the thought of soiling the beautiful counters.
“Okay, fine,” Drake said, backing out through the swinging doors and dragging me with him. I glanced over his shoulder and saw the place empty, the lights all but extinguished; Nik and Kit had gone. “We have other spaces to work with. Here – tables.”
I looked at the places where our customers sat with horror. “People eat on those!”
“Fine, fine,” Drake said. He glanced around in increasingly desperate movements. “The bar.”
“People –”
“Drink there,” Drake muttered. “Got it.”
