Au-dessus must be busy—what was it, eight p.m.?—because scents and sounds filled the kitchen, heady and clashing and warm. Color splashed across plates in ardent drama. There was motion everywhere and Vi was in full swing, precise and graceful like a whip cracking, pivoting between one station and another, checking food, confirming orders were coming up, calling for waiters.
Aww, look at her in her white coat and with her hair piled up on the back of her head and her skin glowing with perspiration, making everybody do what she wanted. She moved as if this whole kitchen was her orchestra, only they didn’t line up in front of her where she could see them, they were all around her, and her whole body was the conductor’s wand, jabbing, dancing, lifting, guiding, making sure everyone’s note came in at just the right moment, just the right way. Hell, she was hot.
As soon as he saw her, all that energy in him figured out exactly what it wanted to do with itself.
He sprang across the kitchens, so happy to see her and so full of himself he could barely stand it, caught her by the waist just as she pivoted toward him, lifted her up, and swung her around.
All around them, every single motion stopped for five full seconds. Any threat making the gazelles here freeze? No. They were just staring at him and Vi. So he dismissed them from his attention.
“Miss me?” He grinned up at her, set her down, swept her into his arms to squeeze her, and kissed her hard.
Damn that felt good.
He tried to do it again, and Vi shoved him, ducked, squirmed and…wait, what? He loosened his arms, staring at her in confused hurt.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked between her teeth.
Returning as a conquering hero? Ready to celebrate? Happy to see her? Okay, she didn’t know about the conquering hero part because it was really better she not, but…wasn’t the rest obvious? “Damn, I missed you,” he said, and started to reach for her again.
She shoved him back from her. “I’m working.”
Well…yeah, but…he’d been gone for more than a week. And he had ten stitches up his shoulder from a shrapnel wound for his job, and he and his team had just taken out one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
A little kiss might be nice.
“I just got in,” he said. “Didn’t you miss me?”
Vi stared at him, and a muscle in her jaw flexed. She spun suddenly toward her staff. “Get back to work. I don’t need to remind you how perfect everything needs to be today. Adrien.” She jerked her chin at a young man and then jerked her chin at Chase in a very similar way but with more disfavor and strode into her office.
He followed after her, starting to get a little indignant, and let the door close behind them. The office was glass-walled. Vi reached up and closed the blinds, then spun on him.
Chase folded his arms. “What a warm welcome.”
He’d heard about these kinds of things. You just shot Bin Laden or something, and you come home and your wife puts your kid in your arms and says his diaper needs changing and it’s about time you started pitching in.
But he’d never actually had to deal with it, that disconnect between his job and the life that went on without him, not on such an intimate scale as the one created by a couple. He didn’t like it, he could flat out say that.
“You’ve been gone for over a week,” Vi said, tight and hard. “Without a word. And now you waltz back in during the service? And kiss me and manhandle me in front of my whole team? The second day we’re back open when I’ve got everything to prove to recover my reputation and the reputation of this restaurant from the depths to which you knocked it?”
“I didn’t—it—” It was for a good cause, he wanted to say. The salmonella thing. We caught Al-Mofti. Didn’t you hear it on the news this morning?
Probably this wasn’t a good place for that revelation. Probably she needed a security clearance. Probably no one was going to give him the okay to tell a hot blonde Frenchwoman in leather anything about anything at all. They’d all seen James Bond, too.
He focused on the one thing he could solve. “Didn’t you get my message?”
“Oh, I think I got it.” Vi folded her arms. “The one where you’re full of shit? Where you say all kinds of things when you’re horny and then you forget them entirely and go off to live your own life until you’re horny again?”
A muscle started to tick in his own jaw. “The one where I told you I was going to be gone for a while. The one where I asked you to get a new phone and give me the number in case I got a chance to call.”
Her eyes blazed. “I don’t sit by the phone and wait for anyone to call.”
“Vi.” He shoved his hand through his hair, hurt and anger twining inextricably. “Not even for me?”
It was a freaking cell phone, it wasn’t as if he was asking her to shut herself into her apartment and not go out with her friends. And even if he was…people had to time calls like that all the time, when they were deployed. Their one chance to Skype with each other that week, to say hi, to touch home. It was important when you were deployed. It was important to the people at home, too, right? Important enough for them to sit at home one night if they had to, to catch that call?
Right?