Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (64 page)

“I wouldn’t say that I’m
drunk
,” I tell him.

“You know, if we don’t
get that guy out of there, I’m going to have to start taking you to meetings.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say,
stumbling down the final two steps to the ground floor.

“You okay?” Mike asks.

“I’m fine,” I answer.
“Why?”

The knock on the glass
door of the building answers the question for me.

“Are you going to let me
in or what?”

I hang up and open the
door.

“Are you all right?” he
asks. “It looked like you rolled your ankle or something.”

“I’m fine, but we need to
find the super. I forgot my keys.”

The quest takes a while
as we chase Mr. Traven from floor to floor, the people in each apartment we
stop at saying that he just left. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear
that he’s avoiding me for some reason.

We finally catch up to
him on the fourth floor and little droplets of spit fly out as he chastises me
for making such a ridiculous mistake.

Grudgingly, he walks with
Mike and I back into that hallway, still filled with the fragrance of confit de
canard.

“I’ll let you in,” Mr.
Traven says at the door, “but you’re going to have to figure something else out
next time. I’ve got two broken radiators, a refrigerator that stopped working
around three o’clock yesterday afternoon, and six or seven toilets to unclog. I
really don’t have time to save you every time you—”

“I really appreciate it,
Mr. Traven,” I interrupt. “You’re an absolute lifesaver.”

The gambit works and he
opens the door without showering me or my companion with any more spittle.

As soon as the door is
open, I’m struck by the smell wafting from inside.

“Smells like your
roommate is quite the chef,” Mike says, stopping to sniff the air. “What is
that, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I lie.

My mind is elsewhere.

Sitting on the kitchen
table is a plate of confit de canard with a note off to one side.

I walk toward it and
breathe deep the succulent aroma while Mike makes his way to my side and picks
up the note.

“I wanted to serve this
hot, but didn’t know when you were going to get back,” Mike reads. “Thank you
for renting me the room. I look forward to living here—Dane.” He looks up at
me. “Well, that was nice of him.”

In my mind, I’m back in
my father’s restaurant, taking no small amount of joy in the fact that I’m the
only one in the whole place who doesn’t have to dress up to get a seat. Without
knowing it, Dane has given me the perfect gift.

“This sucks,” I say, finally
opening my eyes again.

“What sucks?” Mike asks.

“I can’t kick him out
now
,” I whine.

Mike shrugs, but doesn’t
say anything.

I don’t know what to say
either, so I settle on the obvious question: “Are you hungry?”

Chapter Four

Tension

Dane

As fun as last night was
in the beginning, the feud between Breann (apparently, she’s the one I was
calling Buzzed Girl) and Yoga Chick only intensified after our exploits. Once
the enmity stopped translating itself into physical contact for me, I lost my
tolerance for it.

Getting out was no small
feat, though, as both Breann and Yoga Chick were constantly looking to me to
resolve individual, and increasingly odd, disputes.

“I think the
ficus
looks better by the sofa, but Breann thinks it looks
better by the window. She’s crazy, right?”

I wouldn’t have gotten
out of there at all if I hadn’t directed them toward the bathroom, saying some
bullshit about how I thought the bra hanging over the shower rod was sexy. It
was about the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, but it worked well enough. They
both went in there to argue over whose it originally was.

Today’s been great,
though.

Not only did I move into
my new place, but I nailed my friend’s secretary while my roommate was passed
out with a hangover.

This is why I love my
job.

Okay, so I lied to
Roommate Chick about what I do. Yeah, I play guitar and I sing, but I’ve never
played a show.

“What the fuck happened
to this foie
gras
?” I ask my sous chef.

Yeah, I lied about my
job, but I’m sick of people asking me to get them reservations or teach them my
favorite recipes. It’s a nightmare.

Telling a woman that
you’re an executive chef at one of the better French restaurants in the city is
great if you’re looking for a quick lay, but living with someone who knows
you’re a chef—it’s just not worth the hassle.

That is one of the better
things about this job, though; it has been years since I’ve had to use a pickup
line to get a date. Women love chefs. Tell them about something sizzling in a
pan and you can almost feel the change in humidity.

It worked wonders on
Secretary Chick.

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t feel like
taking it off the stove before you burnt it to shit?” I interrupt.

Yeah, Ramsay’s got
nothing on me. Well, nothing but the TV shows, cookbooks, multiple restaurants
of his own, fame and fortune.

Still, I’m pretty sure I
get more play than he does.

I’m calling that a
victory.

“What are you waiting
for?” I ask. “Do it again!”

“You’d think with tattoos
like that, the health department would be more worried about hepatitis,” someone
behind me says.

I turn around.

“Jim, you old fuck, get
the hell out of the kitchen before my restaurant loses a star,” I jab back.

“You are an ungrateful
little shit, aren’t you?” he asks.

“What’s up?”

“I need to borrow you for
a minute. Is there someone that can take over for you?”

“Nobody worth a damn, but
hey, it’s your restaurant. Why should I care that your customers are about to
eat burnt shit?”

Jim and I have a strange
relationship. As the owner of
l’Iris
, he’s my boss.
On the other hand, he’s about the only person I’ve ever met with a filthier
mouth than mine. That’s just his way of connecting with me, though, and I can
appreciate the effort.

I think it’s hilarious.

“All right, sit down,
fuck face,” he tells me. “We’ve got a bit of a problem.”

“Did Wilks jerk off in
someone’s French onion soup again?”

“No,” Jim says. “Wait,
what?”

“I’m just fucking with
you,” I tell him. “Calm down.”

“It’s our covers,” he
says. “Business is down—”

“It was Cannon,” I
interrupt.

“What?”

“The French onion soup thing—I’m
sorry, you were trying to tell me something.”

“Dane, I’ve got to level
with you. We’re pretty fucked right now, and I don’t know how long I’m going to
be able to keep you on. Short of adding pussy to the menu, I’ve been trying
everything to keep people coming in, but with this fucking economy—”

“You’re closing down?” I
ask.

I had no idea he actually
wanted to talk to me about something. Usually when he calls me into his office,
we end up taking a couple of shots and bragging about our exploits. Although,
come to think of it, his tales bear a striking resemblance to some of the
stories in Penthouse Forum.

I wonder if there’s a
connection.

“I’m trying not to,” he
says and sighs. “Look, I’ll keep you on as long as I can, but you’re going to
want to start looking for more work. I just can’t swing an executive chef right
now. I’m thinking of having your sous chef run the day-to-day—”

“Cannon?” I blurt. “I
wasn’t joking about that French onion thing. The guy actually sent that out. I
didn’t even find out about it until—”

“Yeah,” Jim says, “that
was actually a special request from a VIP—it doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to
tell you—”

“Don’t tell me it was
that chick who wrote those perverted fantasy-romance novels for teenagers,” I
interrupt again, trying to lighten the mood.

It doesn’t work.

“Dane, I can give you a
recommendation, but I just can’t afford to pay you anymore.”

“I just moved into a new
fucking place, Jim,” I snap. “How am I supposed to pay for shit if I don’t have
a job?”

“You’re a great chef,”
Jim says, “but I’m out of options.”

“What if I stay on at a
lower salary?” I ask. “Come on, man, I just need enough to pay rent and all
that. People are going to start coming back as soon as—”

“What?” Jim asks. “People
are going to start coming back as soon as the economy recovers? The people who
have the most money aren’t fucking spending it, Dane. That’s
why
the economy’s in the goddamned tank.
That’s why
l’Iris
is circling the drain.” He puts his
hands together and leans forward. “Look, I’ve put in too much time, money, and
energy to let this place go under without a fight, but I’m getting my ass
handed to me, here. Trust me, letting you go isn’t an easy—”

“So that’s it, then?” I
ask. “You’re firing me? I put this place on the fucking map, Jim. I’ve got just
as much blood and sweat in this hole as you do and you’re just going to throw
me overboard?”

Jim takes a moment.

“You’re not the only one
I have to let go, Dane, but you’re the one with the biggest salary. When things
get back on track—”

“What?” I ask. “You’ll
condescend to offer me the same job that I’ve been doing six years in this
clusterfuck
of a city? You can shove that up your fucking
dick hole.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, will
you grow up?” Jim yells. “Six years I’ve been listening to you screaming that
bullshit in the kitchen like you’re Gordon Fucking Ramsay and I’m sick of it.
If you were him, this place wouldn’t be falling apart, I’d have money in the
till, and we wouldn’t have to keep moving the tables farther from the kitchen.”

“You know I—”

“Will you just listen to
me?” he interrupts. “In spite of all your bullshit, I like you, Dane. You’re a
foul-mouthed asshole, but you
are
a
good chef. This isn’t personal, got it? I would have offered you sous chef just
to keep you on if I didn’t think—”

“That it would be a slap
in the face and the kitchen staff would never respect me again?” I ask.

“This is your problem,
Dane; you’re too fucking arrogant. If I thought you could work under anyone
other than me, I wouldn’t have to let you go, but you can’t,” Jim says, leaning
back in his chair. “I looked at the books, and I can keep you on for another
month or so, but that’s it. You’ve got to find something else.”

“This is such—”

“I don’t have a choice,
Dane,” Jim says. “I’ll give you a good recommendation. I’ll help you get set up
somewhere else, but I can’t keep you here.”

“Yeah, don’t do me any
favors,” I say, getting up from my chair. “I’ll stay on for a while, but don’t
expect Cannon to amount to shit. He needs someone to breathe down his neck and
berate him or he falls apart like a little bitch that couldn’t make himself a
bowl of cereal.”

“I’ll take that under
advisement,” Jim says. “Hey, I’m sorry it has to be this—”

“Oh, fuck yourself, Jim,”
I tell him and am back in the kitchen a minute later.

On the upside, that’s
nowhere near the first time I’ve told my boss to fuck himself. On the downside,
I think that’s the first time he really knew that I meant it.

I’ll be lucky if he keeps
me on until the end of my shift.

Somehow, he resists the
temptation to fire me straight away, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell
Roommate Chick. Although I’m fairly certain that learning her name would be a
positive step before I tell her I just lost my job. First, though, I’ll have to
tell her what it is that I actually do. That’ll be a great conversation.

When I get home, Roommate
Chick is sitting on the couch, reading.

She’s obviously busy, so
I decide not to disturb her.

“Hey,” she says, not
looking up from her book.

Shit.

“Hey,” I answer. “How’s
it going?”

“Fine,” she says, turning
the page. “Where’d you get the confit de canard?”

“I didn’t
get
it,” I tell her.

“Whatever. I’ve been
looking for a place that serves a decent version of it. Where’d you pick it
up?”

Right now, I’m fighting
two urges: My chef’s pride wants me to tell her that I made it. On the other
hand, if I tell her, she’s going to want me to cook for her all the time. Worse
than that, the conversation will inevitably lead to the one topic I’m trying to
avoid.

“I picked it up at some
French place a few blocks from here.”

It’s not a complete
falsehood.
L’Iris
is
only a few blocks from the apartment, and I do work there, for now, anyway.

“Does this place have a
name?”

“Yeah, but I can’t
pronounce it,” I lie. Day one on the job was learning the proper French
pronunciation of everything in the restaurant, and I do mean everything.

Jim insists that we call
the spoons “
Cuillère
.”

She scoffs and returns
the modicum of focus she was expending on me back to her book. Or, at least
that’s what I was hoping she was doing.

“Do you remember the
address?” she asks, her eyes moving side to side as she reads.

“Not remotely.”

That one’s not a lie.

“Do you know the name of
the chef?” she asks. “I could probably look it up from that.”

“You really liked it,
huh?” I ask, secretly patting myself on the back.

“Yeah,” she says. “Oh
well. If you can’t remember, you can’t remember.”

“All right,” I say and
start to walk back toward my room.

“Only…”

I stop.

“I don’t know. I’d love
to find out where you got it. It’s the best confit de canard I’ve had
since—well, it’s the best I’ve had in years.” She finally looks up from her
book. “Maybe some time when you’re free we could walk through the area. I’m
sure we could find it.”

I have to give her
something; otherwise every conversation is going to end up here. We really
don’t have anything else to talk about.

“It has a flower on the
sign,” I tell her. “Other than that, I’m not sure that—”

“
L’Iris
?”
she asks, her breath bated.

“I don’t know,” I say.
“Maybe.”

When I’m free and clear
of the restaurant, I’ll tell her where to go. Not that Cannon could even dream
of making confit de canard without me holding his hand and slapping him in the
face with it.

“I bet that’s it,” she
says. “I’ve wanted to try it out, but I hear the chef is a real jerk.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yeah,” she says. “If the
food’s that good, though, maybe it’s time to drop in and see what happens.”

“Nah,” I tell her. “I
could hear that guy from the kitchen. Everything was ‘fuck this,’ and ‘fuck
that.’ It kind of kills the mood.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Maybe
you’re right. Maybe I’ll just have Mike go in there for me. People who curse
all the time get on my last nerve. I mean, what kind of idiot—”

She pauses a moment and
looks up, but she doesn’t look at me.

“Thanks for picking that
up for me anyway,” she says and goes back to her book.

I smile, but don’t pursue
the insult.

It’s already
twelve-thirty, and if I’m going to find any wet comfort, I’d better get
showered, changed and on my way. Otherwise, I’m going to end up booty-calling
one of last month’s rejects, and that’s really not worth the drama if I can
avoid it.