Spicy (Palate #1) (5 page)

“Come on, big guy,” Amanda said, hoisting my son onto her hip and carrying him
away.

Bitchy looked me up and down, her nose wrinkled in disgust
as she took in my soiled dress.  Her forehead remained unnaturally smooth, a sure sign she’d had some facial cosmetic work done not long ago.  But lack of forehead wrinkles aside, her opinion of me and my stained dress was quite clear.

“Ew!” she
hissed before flouncing away, her stilettos clicking on the floor with every step.

Wearily
, I made my way to the washroom to clean myself up as best I could. 

Of course, I managed to cross paths with Gavin on my way to the washroom.  Why was it that I always ran into him at the most inopportune times?  Even though I knew nothing could ever come of my
infuriating little crush on him, I was still a woman and wanted to look good when he was around. 

And yet here I was, covered in
sticky brown sauce that vaguely resembled diarrhea.  How lovely.

Though I tried to duck my head and rush past him, it didn’t work. 
When he saw me, he stopped and announced, “I realized you’ll want to get your kid home to bed at a decent hour.  I’m closing Palate early tonight because I’m the boss and I can do whatever the hell I want.  You’re getting a cooking lesson.”

“Like…now?”

“Yes.”  Then Gavin got a better look at me and raised an eyebrow.  “That must be a new record,” he observed wryly.  “Two dresses ruined in two nights.  You’re an expensive woman to keep clothed, Mina Sinclair.”

“It’s not ruined,” I told him quickly.  “I just need to clean up…”

He chuckled.  “Come find me when you’re done,” he instructed.  “I have lots to teach you.”

“Mina, do you know anything about this?”

Before I’d even had a chance to fully enter the kitchen, Gavin was questioning me.  Immediately, I noticed the kitchen was empty but for us.  He must have asked everyone else to leave.  I swallowed hard. 

“Do I know anything about what?”

He gestured to a plate of spicy shrimp vesuvio and looked at me accusingly.  I could see in his eyes he already knew I was guilty.  I was the one who’d instructed his assistant chefs to change the way they prepared the meal.  The changes were miniscule.  In fact, I was surprised Gavin had even noticed given how busy he was.

Then again, he
was
a perfectionist when it came to the restaurant.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.  Maybe I should have expected him to hone in on the modifications immediately.  After all, no one messes with Gavin Rothe’s restaurant.

“Yes,” I told him immediately owning up to my actions.  “It was me.”

“Why?”

“Hayden Slate used to make the same dish and sometimes we’d experiment with the flavors.  We found that his customers preferred when he added some freshly squeezed lime juice and organic honey to the sauce.  It isn’t the conventional way to make it, but the way the flavors intermingle with the heat is pretty amazing.”

“You see these?” he asked, pointing to a large bulletin board
on the wall that was full of his recipes.  “There are step-by-step instructions here for my assistant chefs to follow.  These are
my
recipes.  You’re not working for Hayden Slate anymore.”

“I’m well aware of that,” I replied as I started
wiping down an already immaculate countertop.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I looked up at Gavin then.  Fearlessly, I told him, “Hayden wasn’t afraid of change.” 

The observation was designed to touch a nerve.  Maybe that wasn’t nice of me but I didn’t care for Gavin’s tone.  Yes, I was his employee…but it wasn’t like I’d tried to burn the place to the ground.  I’d only been trying to help.

He bristled.  “I’m not afraid of change.”

“No?” I challenged, opening a dr
awer, pulling out a fork and sticking it right into the spicy shrimp vesuvio.  “Then try it,” I ordered, holding the plate out to him.

Gavin looked at me warily. 
“Mina…”

“Just try it,” I insisted.  “If you don’t like it then you can lecture me all you want and keep doing things your way.  I know this is your restaurant but there’s no harm in trying something new.  That’s how all the best recipes were made, right?  Everything was new
once.”

Begrudgingly, he took the plate from me and
ate a piece of sauce-covered shrimp.  He chewed it thoughtfully, his eyes not leaving mine.  Some of his annoyance dissipated.  I could see the tension in his shoulders melt away as he began to relax.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” I asked knowingly.

“It could use more heat.”

“Oh?”

He skewered a piece of shrimp with the fork and carefully fed it to me to prove his point.  His hand shielded my dress from acquiring any additional stains.  It was like shutting the barn door after the cattle have already escaped, but I nonetheless appreciated the gesture.

“You’re right,” I
admitted after I’d swallowed.  It was delicious but could stand to have more of a kick.  “More heat would be good.”

“
I’ll switch my recipe out for yours.  But you can’t keep changing my recipes behind my back,” he cautioned sternly as I motioned for him to feed me a second bite.

It was a fair enough warning. 
My mouth full, I nodded.  “I know.  I’m sorry.”

“
You do have a good instinct,” he said, surprising me with the compliment.  “When I first met you on the reality show, I dismissed you as just another pretty face that would be sent home early on.  I thought you were only there because of your connection to Hayden Slate.  I didn’t think you had what it took to make the cut.”

My
initial response was to be insulted, but then I considered what he was saying.  “It’s true that I don’t have as much training as the others on the show,” I relented.  Most of them had at least a few years of training at culinary arts colleges under their belts.  “But am I really so bad?”

“No.  You’re not bad at all.  Everyone has to start somewhere.  In the beginning I didn’t have training either – I started out as a dishwasher.” 

“You did?”

Gavin nodded.  “I got caught doing a Dine and Dash when I was a teenager.  The restaurant owner could have called the cops and had me slapped with a fine, but he decided to give me a chance
to redeem myself.  I didn’t have any money so he told me I could wash dishes to work the meal off.  And so it began.”

“So you weren’t a spoiled rich brat after all,” I marvelled. 

Cracking a smile, Gavin didn’t miss a beat.  “Nope, I didn’t become the arrogant asshole you know and love until my mid-twenties.”  His face was expressionless, but I was coming to know and even enjoy his deadpan and often self-depreciating sense of humor that had once thrown me for a loop. 

“That’s not what I meant.”

“But it’s what you think.”

Hesitating, I finally confessed, “I don’t know what I think anymore.” 

“I see.” 

He got out a cutting board and began to very finely chop onions.  Watching him work was almost mesmerizing.  His fingers flew deftly, seemingly indifferent to the fact that he was working with a very large and very sharp knife.  I had a feeling he could easily do this in his sleep…he was just that good.  He didn’t even cry.

“What happened?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened when you were in your mid-twenties to make you change?”

“My first heartbreak,” he replied, offering no elaboration. 

“Oh.”

He put the onions into a pan with sliced jalapeno peppers and turned on the heat.  Immediately there was a satisfying sizzle and a delicious aroma filled the air.  “Why are you asking all the questions?” he asked, skillfully changing the subject.  “What about you?  I read your application for the show but I don’t know much about you.”

That caught me off guard.  “You read all the applications?”
I’d written him off as being far too self-obsessed to bother with that.  Maybe I’d been too quick to judge him, incorrectly assuming he was like other guys I’d known and been disappointed by.

“No, not all of them,” he replied
.  “But I read yours.  It left me with more questions than answers, to tell you the truth.  You’re a mysterious woman.”

“I am not.”

“You are,” he insisted.

“
Ask me your questions and I’ll prove I’m not,” I shot back.

“I would love nothing more than to interrogate you.”  Gavin thought for a moment and then corrected himself.  “I would love few things more than to interrogate you.”

“Interrogate me?  Who are you, the police?  You can ask me your questions but for every question I answer, you have to answer one of mine,” I told him.  In a way it felt like a grownup version of Truth or Dare – or rather, just Truth.  It was kind of fun to act like a kid again.

“
Alright, deal.”

“What’s your question?” I demanded rather impatiently.

“On the show, I asked you what made you want to be in the competition.  You said you wanted a change.  That was a bullshit answer if I’ve ever heard one.  What’s the real reason?” he asked, his attention focused solely on me.  “What are you running from?”

Wow…I hadn’t expected his first question to cut so deep. 
I picked up a wooden spoon and began to slowly stir the spicy broth he was making.  I needed something to focus on other than our conversation and tending to the pot on the stove offered a welcome distraction. 

“My life wasn’t so great in Burlington,” I admitted.  “
I mean, it was at first when I was just a careless college kid, I guess.  But it’s a small place.  It was impossible to live there without running into my son’s father or members of his family…”  I trailed off then, unsure of how much I wanted to divulge.

“I take it things didn’t end well between you two?”

That was an understatement.  But I didn’t want to get into it…not yet…maybe not ever.  It was still far too raw.  Struggling to keep my tone light, I answered his question with one of my own.  “Does a breakup ever end well?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Anxious to change the subject, I reminded him, “I get to ask you a question now.”

“What do you want to know?”

I thought for a moment.  I could ask him to tell me about that first heartbreak.  Part of me was curious because the mere notion that he had a heart to be broken made him seem immensely more human to me. 

But to be honest I didn’t want to hea
r a sad story about love lost.  I’d dwelled on my own unhappy ending for far too long and the last thing I wanted was to hear about somebody else’s.

“
Amanda seems sweet.”

“
She is,” Gavin agreed.  “She’s like the little sister I never had.  But that wasn’t a question.”

“
Touché…but okay, here’s a question for you:  why does she think so highly of you?”

He laughed at that.  “
Are you implying that no one else does?”

I scowled at him.  “No dodging the question.”

He grew serious then and sighed, looking pained.  “It’s not my place to tell anyone Amanda’s story.  If she wants people to know the details, she can tell them herself.  But I’m certain she wouldn’t mind me saying she was in a controlling relationship with a real piece of work.  I helped her get out and back on her feet.”

“She says you saved her life.”

Gavin looked uncomfortable and took the wooden spoon from me, our fingers brushing in the process.  I could practically feel the sparks as we touched.  He was like a live wire, dangerous and unpredictable.

“She gives me too much credit,” he said in what was perhaps the first real
display of modesty I’d ever seen from him.  “I helped her, but I didn’t save her.  She saved herself.”

He held up the wooden spoon and offered me a taste of the sauce
before setting it in the sink.  It was spicy enough to make my eyes tear up, but the aftertaste was light and satisfyingly sweet.  It made my mouth water and my taste buds dance, my body craving more. 

“The trick,” he said softly, “is all in the way you stir the sauce.  You can’t be too gentle or too rough.  You just have to be firm and unwavering.  Think of it
as a dance.  You want the man to lead with confidence but you also want his body and mind to be in tune with yours.  Dance with the sauce,” he instructed, handing a clean spoon to me.

Something about the way he spoke and the way he touched me brought me to life.  Immediately, I felt my heartbeat quicken and my nipples harden.  I hadn’t been this attracted to a man in a long time…maybe ever. 

But stubbornly, I tried to shove those feelings aside.  It was the only way I knew how to protect the pieces of my heart that had taken so long to reassemble.  The repairs were tenuous and the thought that one small blow could make the whole thing crumble scared me to no end.

“How can you be the same guy I read about in the tabloids?” I wondered aloud
as I began to stir the sauce, trying to mimic the movements of his wrist.  It was like the two different personas didn’t fit together in any way, shape or form.  It didn’t compute.

“I’m…not?”

Unsure of what to make of that I turned to look at Gavin.  He took a step closer then, standing so near to me that I could almost feel the heat from his body.  He looked even more attractive up close, his skin glowing with a healthy sun-kissed tan and his lips so inviting…

“Like this,” he corrected me, closing his hand lightly on top of mine.  He stirred the sauce with me, his body guiding mine.  It was a simple thing,
cooking together, but it felt so incredibly intimate that my breath caught in my throat.  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.  I couldn’t breathe.  I could barely even think.

He
lowered his head.  I wasn’t sure but I thought he might be moving in for a kiss.

I cleared my throat
and abruptly disentangled my hand from his.  Then I moved off to the side, my body accidentally brushing against his in the process.  “I should go check on my son.”  I told him, no longer trusting myself to be alone with Gavin.  “I’ll be right back.” 

“Okay.
  I’ll be right here.”