“I never said I think it’s that easy,” I reply. “But I know that I’m that good.”
He doesn’t say anything after that. The silence is long enough for anxiety to set in, an awkward realization that I might have just fucked everything up—again. I sip my drink, looking around the restaurant to avoid Cole’s calculating stare.
“Prove it,” he says, eventually.
“What?”
“Prove it,” he repeats. “You think you’re so good, that you’ve got it all figured out, that I’m wrong—then show me.”
I put my drink down slowly.
“How?”
Cole shrugs.
“Cook for me. Something great. Something you think is ‘unpretentious’ and ‘real.’”
I shake my head. “You’re hardly the best judge. My point is what would work in a restaurant.”
Cole smiles, as if I’m balking at the challenge. I think hard, and eventually figure something out.
“Actually, you know what? I’ll do it. But if you like it, you let me put it on the menu at Knife. It could be a special—just for a week. See what your customers think. Then we’ll really see who’s right.”
Cole looks off into the distance for a second to consider it.
“Ok. Deal.” He offers his hand across the table and I take it slowly, waiting for him to laugh and tell me this is a joke. “But I have to try your dish first. I’m not just going to let you put anything on the menu. You’ll make it for me, and if I think it’s acceptable, we’ll add it to the specials menu and see if the customers agree.”
“Sure. Just tell me when.”
Cole throws me a look of confusion.
“Not when. Now.” He extends his arm to reveal his designer watch and checks it. “Knife’s been closed a couple of hours now. So we’ll have the kitchen to ourselves.”
I down my drink like I’m heading to war.
“You’re on,” I say, already sliding out of the booth. “Let’s go.”
But as I march confidently toward the exit, I can’t help wondering if this is the chance of a lifetime or the worst mistake I’ve ever made.
5
Cole
In the back of the cab I manage to pull my attention away from the golden skin of Willow’s legs just long enough to call ahead to the restaurant. It’s late enough that the dish washers should be just about done, but I need to make sure. When they answer, I tell them to take an early night, that I’m bringing private guests. It’s not an unusual request, so I know they’ll be gone soon.
Willow stares out of the window intently, tapping her fingers against her lush mouth. She’s probably thinking of what to cook. I don’t mind her silence, since it gives me a chance to gorge on the sight of her body, to drink her curves in, get drunk on them. By the time the car pulls up outside Knife I’m woozy with lust. Irrational, alcohol-infused imagination doing all kinds of things with that taut body beside me.
“You figured out what you’re gonna cook yet?” I tease, as the cab speeds away leaving empty air between us.
She gives only a tight, mystic smile as response. There’s too much solid determination about her now to entertain me. The laid back, graceful elegance she’s had up to this point now replaced by a directed poise, as much precise strength as it is focused determination. She turns and walks up to the restaurant with catwalk straightness, so fast that I almost have to quicken my gait to catch up to her.
“Are you going to be able to give me a hand?” she asks as I unlock the door.
I push it open for her.
“I’m not good at taking orders.”
“That’s ok,” Willow smiles as she steps through. “I’m good at giving them.”
Before I can even close the door behind me she’s making a beeline for the kitchen, tying an apron on around that tight dress and somehow still managing to look just as hot. I watch her pulling pans from the rack, firing up the stove, moving around the kitchen like a whirling dervish. She rushes past me at pace, ferrying a few bottles to the counter.
“Grab me a couple pounds of mince,” she calls out, her voice projected and sharp now, the kind of voice you develop working in a loud environment. “Red peppers—long enough to have some spice—and start chopping a sweet onion. Chopped, not diced.”
I get an adrenaline rush at her words, pulse racing at being ordered about by someone so purposeful, hot, and focused. It’s been too long since I actually cooked so hands-on, and even longer since someone told me what to do in a kitchen, or anyplace else.
I watch her, smiling a little as she chops a few cloves of garlic as fine as powder in a matter of seconds, only half-hearing. She stops a second to look at me sternly.
“If you’re not helping, you’re getting in my way.”
There she goes again with that mouth. You don’t spend your entire life fighting your way to the top, then fighting everybody who tries to knock you off, to be spoken to like that. But I somehow find myself grinning, wondering if this girl knows how hot she sounds, how badly I’d like to rip that apron off her and give her my own set of orders, orders that have nothing to do with food.
“Yes ma’am,” I drawl agreeably, pulling off my suit jacket and rolling up my shirt sleeves to get to work.
For the next fifteen minutes she works the kitchen up into a storm of aromas. Grilling Mexican chorizo with the beef patties, baking rolls that smell as sweet as cake, flash-frying herbed potatoes. My mouth waters as plumes of spicy smoke rise and unfurl around us—so admittedly, she may have had a point about the tiny portion sizes. I tune into her working rhythm, watching her move from task to task amid a cacophony of sizzles, slammed oven doors, the rhythmic beat of knife on wood to the low rumbling of boiling water.
“Where is this chorizo from?” she asks, as she chops it carefully.
I stop mixing the minced meat with my hands—as per her instructions—to smile at her.
“A little place down in the Argentinian pampas. Beautiful place,” I say, then lean in to her and lower my voice. “You’d love it.”
She stops cutting for a second, looking up at me and noticing how close I am. For a second that professional demeanor breaks, a little smile, a slight blush, a little flick of the hair before she’s back to business again.
“I’m sure I would, if I ever get the chance to go.”
I think about telling her I’d take her, half consider my schedule and wonder if I can drop everything right now to charter a plane there for both of us. But before my mind wanders too far off-course, Willow pulls me back into the cooking with another command.