Chapter 1
Tuesday stepped through the Rolling Thunder Meat Company’s front door and smiled at the man behind the counter. She usually dealt with Shaggy, but she usually came on Thursdays.
His nametag said he was the manager, though, so she figured it couldn’t hurt to just tell him what she wanted. If he looked confused, she could explain it.
But the second she had the thought, she realized he was going to know exactly what she needed. There was something about the way he stood behind the counter — not leaning on it, not scrolling his phone, but completelypresent.Tall, broad through the shoulders, with the kind of forearms that came from actual work rather than a gym. His eyes tracked her from the door with calm, unhurried assessment, and she felt it the way she sometimes sensed a shift in barometric pressure.
And her inner wolf perked up and took him in almost disconcertingly. Generally, the bitch only took the time to decide if someone was a threat or not, but she waswaymore interested in this man than Tuesday was comfortable with.
Dating a biker would be a bad idea all around, and Tuesday had the idea Rolling Thunder only put members into management positions.
She told her wolf to settle down, and she stepped to the counter with a friendly smile. “Good morning. I need a center-cut whole roast tenderloin, as even as you can get it. No big taper, no thin tail. It’s for a Wellington, so the sear and the slice both matter. Any chance I can look over what you’ve got on the rail first?”
He lifted a brow. Not the ‘oh honey’brow she got from suppliers who heard a pretty woman use technical language and assumed she’d read it somewhere. This was the brow of a man recalibrating. Reassessing. She felt the difference in how he was looking at her and liked it more than she should have.
“Normally, we don’t let customers in the back,” he said, “but since you seem to know what you’re talking about, I suppose I can make an exception. I’m Knife, and since I haven’t seen you come in before, can I see your card?”
She pulled her wallet from her small purse, fished the card out, and showed it to him.
Something moved across his face when he read it. Not quite a smile, but close. “Tuesday? Interesting name.”
“I usually come on Thursdays and deal with Shaggy,” she said, “andTuesdayis downright normal compared toKnife.”
He chuckled, low and unhurried, and the vibrations arrowed straight to her clit. She shut that down fast before he scented arousal on her, and she paid attention to what he was saying.
“Which is about as odd as the name my parents gave me, believe it or not.” He opened a door behind him and motioned for her to come around the counter. “C’mon, let’s make it fast so I don’t have to pull someone from the back to fill in up front.”
When she neared him, she revised her earlier estimate of his size upward. He was compact, but at least six foot three, and he moved with an economy of motion despite his size. He held the door for her without making a production of it. “I assume the Wellington means you have big Valentine’s plans?”
“Oh, no. I’m making this for my brother, who has super-special plans that involve staying in, but it’s kind of doing double duty, since I’m looking specifically for how to help a restaurant put it on the menu as a daily special, meaning they’ll need to make a dozen or more at a time. So, I’m looking for ways to train them in how to mass-produce them one day a week to the restaurant’s standards.”
The smell hit her immediately, cold air saturated with iron, but clean and wholesome. Her wolf found it grounding while Tuesday found it reassuring.
He glanced back at her over his shoulder as they moved through the processing area, and she caught something in his expression that might have been approval. “Smart. You test the method on one before you scale it.”
“Exactly.” She looked around the space with genuine interest, noting the organization, the cleanliness, the way the workflow was laid out. It was a serious operation. She’d been in enough professional kitchens to recognize when someone had thought hard about how a space should function. “Did you design this layout?”
“Inherited most of it. Modified it.” He said it without false modesty, just information. “Here we are.”
She moved along the rail, judging the tenderloins on the hanging carcasses with focused attention. She was halfway down the row before she found the one she wanted and pointed to it.
“This one.”
That lifted brow again. “Good eye.”
“You hung them evenly. Made it easier.”
“Most people don’t notice that.”
“Most people think meat comes from a grocery store and don’t understand why we need cows.”
She turned to find him watching her with that same calm, unhurried attention he’d had from the moment she walked in, and her wolf perked up with the sameawarenessshe wanted to shut down, but she ignored it. “Can you break it down for me? I want to see how you’d trim it for the Wellington prep, and whether your approach matches what I’m going to recommend to the restaurant.”
As they’d done when she’d first told him what she wanted, his eyes lit up. Not the polite interest of a man humoring a customer. Actual engagement.
“Yeah,” he said with a smile she didn’t think a whole lot of people saw. “I can do that.”
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