Spicy (Palate #1) (6 page)

“Is everything alright with
Joel?” Gavin asked when I returned to the kitchen a few minutes later.  I hadn’t realized he knew my son’s name and it momentarily threw me for a loop.  So did the way he looked.

He’d taken off his jacket
while I was gone.  Now his white shirt was rolled up at the sleeves, giving him a casual, laid back look.  I was struck by how at peace he seemed there alone in the kitchen.  With no cameras on him and no one but me watching, it was like he could finally relax and be himself.

“Yes, but it’s getting late.  He’s fast asleep on the couch.  I should get him home to bed.”

Gavin didn’t protest.  Instead, he shut the stove off and set the food aside.  Then he grabbed his jacket, slung it over his shoulder and walked toward me.  “I’ll help you get him into your car.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I replied immediately, a kneejerk reaction.  But Gavin just ignored me, following me to the VIP room where Amanda was sitting quietly,
dutifully standing guard as my son slept like only the young can.

Carefully, Gavin eased the sleeping two year old off the couch and into his arms.  I watched anxiously, not wanting my son to wake up and be alarmed.  But Gavin was
remarkably gentle and the little guy didn’t even stir. 

“You lift him yourself?” Gavin murmured as we walked out to my car
side by side with a sleepy Amanda trailing along behind us. 

I knew what he was thinking. 
Like most children approaching their third birthday, Joel was heavy.  I knew it too; I knew it well.  There would come a point where I wouldn’t be physically capable of lifting him, but we weren’t there yet.  Like most mothers, I wanted to keep him little for as long as I could…even if it made my back ache.

I unlocked the car and opened the back passenger side doo
r.  Gavin set my sleeping son onto the backseat and draped his jacket over him as a makeshift blanket.  “Are you okay getting home?” he asked, his protective nature making yet another appearance.

“Of course,” I replied as
I buckled Joel up.  I got into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition.  “Why wouldn’t I be?”  I shut the door and then manually rolled down the window – sometimes I wondered if I had the only car in the city without automatic windows.  “Thanks for your help and for the cooking lesson.  I’ll bring your jacket back tomorrow.”

“Goodnight,” Gavin said, leaning down to the window so he didn’t have to speak loudly. 

For a brief moment I wondered if he’d try to kiss me.  Then I told myself I was being stupid.  We hadn’t been on a date, even if parts of the evening had felt unexpectedly intimate.  My boss had simply given me a cooking lesson.  That was all it had been.

“Goodnight.”

I rolled the window back up and then turned the key.  The engine roared to life…and then it choked, protesting loudly before abruptly dying.  Furrowing my brow, I tried again.  This time the car didn’t even start and in the glow of the moon I could see black smoke seeping out from beneath the hood.

Gavin had made no move to go back inside. 
He’d simply kept standing there in the parking lot, I guess to see me off although that seemed uncharacteristically gentlemanlike of him.  He stepped forward then and tapped on the glass of my window.  I rolled the window back down.

“Do you need a ride home?” he asked.

“I live practically halfway across the city.  I can call a taxi,” I told him as I mentally calculated how much the cab fare would set me back.  So much for sticking to a budget…  For the millionth time, I worried that I’d been reckless and perhaps even selfish in moving to Los Angeles where everything cost so much more. 

“
I drive Amanda home every night after her shift,” he insisted.  “It’s no trouble.  I don’t care how far it is; I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

“Mama…?”

I turned around to see a sleepy-eyed toddler looking at me inquisitively.

“Our car is broken, kiddo,” I told him.  “Our friend Gavin is going to drive us home, okay?”

Joel nodded and stuck his thumb in his mouth, accepting the change of events without question.  He drifted back to sleep almost at once.  To be two years old was to be completely indifferent to inconveniences like broken down vehicles and overdrawn bank accounts.  To him, the only things that mattered were freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and fast cars.

And I was determined to keep it that way for as long as I could.

When I saw Gavin’s vehicle, I was almost tempted to wake Joel up so he could see it.  It was a sleek, sporty red car that must have cost a fortune.  It wasn’t the type of car one typically wants to invite a two year old into – there were just too many potential ways to damage the fine black leather interior.  But if the thought had occurred to Gavin, he kept his mouth shut.

The four of us
drove through the night in silence.  Traffic was lighter now that the rush hour had passed, and there was something almost peaceful about weaving our way in and out of the sparse traffic at a leisurely pace. 

Amanda must have thought so too, because after a few minutes she nodded off behind me in the backseat.  Gavin noticed first and, with a grin, pointed to our two sleepers.  I smiled back at him as we had our own private, wordless conversation.
 

As we made our way through the night, I found myself watching Gavin’s hands.  His left hand rested lightly on the steering wheel, expertly maneuvering us from Point A to Point B.  The other was draped casually over the back of my seat, almost as though he had his arm around me.  Surely it was unintentional, but just feeling him close to me set me abuzz.

After some time, Gavin spoke.

“So we’re friends now,” he observed quietly as we pulled off the freeway and into a comfortably middle class residential area
that was lined with tall poplar trees.  I didn’t recognize the area but I presumed it must be the neighborhood where Amanda lived.

“Excuse me?”

“You told your son I was your
friend
Gavin,” he reminded me with a smile in his voice. 

For reasons I couldn’t quite identify, I felt my face turning red. 
Maybe it was because I felt like Gavin was teasing me.  I felt like that a lot, come to think of it.  At first it had irritated me.  Now it just got me flustered like I was a preteen girl with her very first crush.  It was ridiculous.

“I told
Joel his pediatrician was our friend too,” I pointed out at once, trying to satisfy the sudden urge to explain myself.  “I felt like a dirty liar since we were there to get a flu shot but I told myself the end justified the means.  I think the point is I introduce a lot of people to him as our friends.  It’s just a thing I do.”  I was babbling.  I couldn’t help it.  I felt flustered.

Gavin simply grinned and said nothing.  I think he was enjoying watching me squirm, the jerk.

We pulled up in front of a neatly kept three storey apartment building.  Gavin hopped out of the car, opened Amanda’s door and gently shook her awake.  Bleary-eyed, she sat up, stretched and yawned.  “I guess this is me,” she told me, her voice quiet so as to not wake the toddler sleeping next to her.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mina.”

“Goodnight.  Thanks for watching
Joel tonight.”

“It was my pleasure,” she replied.

I watched as Gavin walked Amanda to the front door.  He waited for her to get her key out before giving her a friendly hug.  The way he affectionately ruffled her hair and she swatted at his hand wasn’t lost on me.  He’d said he thought of her as a sister.  I’d wondered at first if it was possible for Gavin Rothe to have a platonic female friend, but as I watched them it became clear that Gavin’s body language was that of an older brother, not a lover.

And I could also see that Amanda
absolutely adored him.  Maybe she even idolized him.

He was growing on me, I had to admit. 
My physical attraction to him was undeniable but it was more than that.  When I thought about how careful he was when Joel was in his arms or how protective he was of Amanda, I couldn’t deny that I saw something in him I liked. 

Those good qualities that had finally made an appearance almost compensated for all the things about him that made me nuts…almost.

When he returned to the car he must have seen something on my face.

“What?” he asked as our eyes met.

“Nothing,” I replied.  “Just drive.”

“You’re so bossy.”

With a smile, I pointed out, “I don’t hear you complaining.”

“What do you think this is?”

“Adoration,” I told him immediately, just to get on his nerves.  Yes, it was immature of me, but so what?  He’d gotten under my skin quite a lot since I’d met him, so it was only fair that I repay the favor.

He rolled his eyes.  “Normally at this point I’d turn the radio on to drown out the sound of your voice, but we can’t wake him up,” he said with a nod in Joel’s direction.

“You mean to tell me you’ll spare me all your on-air lecturing if I bring him along to the show?” I teased.  “I wish I’d known that sooner!”  Then, lowering my voice to sound like Gavin’s, I began to imitate him.  “I tell you to make truffles and you bring me…this?  It looks like animal droppings!  That’s right,
it looks like shit
!”

Gavin chuckled.  “To be fair, I didn’t say that to you.  I said it to the last guy
I sent home, whatever his name was.  And the only reason I prattle on and on is because the network makes me.  It’s in my contract.”

“To be fair,” I pointed out, “truffles kind of
do
look like animal droppings.”

He shrugged.  “So what you’re saying is I was right.”

“No, what I’m saying is –”

“Shh,” Gavin shushed me with a devilish grin.  “You’
ll wake Joel.”

“I will not,” I retorted.  “You just want the last word.”

“Shh!” Gavin insisted, laughing quietly as I scowled at him.

“This is me up here,” I told Gavin
when we turned onto my street.

The apartment I’d rented wasn’t anything glamorous.  In fact, it was quite old and somewhat run down.  But it was in a safe neighborhood – something that had been non-negotiable as far as I was concerned – and for that, I paid a small fortune.

He came to a stop outside and turned the engine off.  Then he held out his hand.  “Give me your car keys.  I’ll make arrangements to have a mechanic take a look at that engine first thing tomorrow.  I know a guy.”

“
I’ll look after it myself, thanks.”

“You’re filming all day tomorrow,” Gavin pointed out.  “When will you have time to take care of it?  I don’t need to be on set until
late afternoon.  Let me take care of it for you.”

I hesitated.  I knew he was just trying to help, but I couldn’t let him.  Telling him the truth was a little embarrassing but what other choice did I have?  He was relentless in his quest to help me.  If I didn’t set him straight he’d just keep pushing.  I took a deep breath.  “The truth is I don’t have the funds to get my car fixed right now,” I told him.  “I guess I’ll be buying a bus pass.”

He looked at me knowingly.  “Can you afford that?”

I peeked into the backseat to make sure Joel was still fast asleep before answering.  He was almost certainly too young to understand even if he did overhear, but I was determined to protect him from grownup worries at all costs. 
“Not really, but I’ll figure something out.” 

The stress of trying to stretch my budget
to impossible lengths and the pressure of competing on the reality TV show was starting to get to me.  I willed myself not to break down.  There would be time for that later, when Joel was tucked into bed.  Then I could lock myself in the bathroom, run the shower and cry all I wanted.

But I wouldn’t do that here…not in front of Gavin.

His hand closed around mine and he squeezed it reassuringly.  “I’ll foot the bill for your car.”

“You don’t give handouts,” I reminded him
, my breath catching in my throat as I pulled my hand away from a touch that had immediately ignited sparks within me.  “And besides, I don’t want a handout.”  I didn’t want to be his – or anyone’s – charity case.

“It isn’t a handout,” he told me as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.  “You work for me.  How are you going to get to
Palate without transportation?  If I didn’t have your car fixed it would be my loss considering you’re the best employee I have.”

“
Oh don’t exaggerate.  I’ve only just started working for you.”  Maybe that wasn’t the most articulate or appropriate response to what he’d just offered to do, but the words just tumbled out. 

“You have,” Gavin agreed.  “And yet you’ve already changed my recipes, called me out
on being unwilling to change and put a rude customer in his place.  Hell, you’ve put
me
in my place.  Most of my employees are good at taking orders.  You’re not.”

“Is
that a compliment?” I asked, genuinely confused.