Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (77 page)

The statement probably
wouldn’t have been near as amusing if I hadn’t just taken a sip of my drink. I
cover my mouth and do my best to control my laughter long enough to swallow the
liquid.

“Oh,” he says
skeptically, “don’t tell me…”

“I’ve been an intern at a
brokerage in town for a while now, and I just got hired on fulltime at Claypool
and Lee in Jersey.”

“Oh god,” he says. “Not
only do you work for those greed mongers, you’re actually moving to New Jersey?
The humanity!”

“Sad to say we can’t all
cook for a living,” I rejoin.

“I know, but can you
imagine what a wonderful world that would be? Everyone makes a living making
delicious food?”

“That would be insanely
boring,” I tease.

I’m about to relent and
agree to dinner, but he just keeps going.

“Oh well, I guess you all
know what the pinch was like during the recession—oh wait, you’re the only
people in the country that profited from it. Isn’t it weird how big businesses
tell us that any kind of government aid is socialism, but those same companies
are so quick to snatch any bailout money or tax breaks that come their way?”

“Yeah, we should probably
stay away from politics,” I tell him.

His face goes a little
red, and I can only hope it’s from the realization that he just equated what I
do with organized crime. I might just end up going home alone tonight.

“I’m very sorry,” he
says. “I was only joking.”

“Right,” I say and turn
back toward the bartender. “Could I get another tequila sunrise?”

I turn back toward this
handsome, if a bit precocious rogue, wondering if he’s going to pick up the tab
for that one as well.

He doesn’t.

“You know,” he says, “I
had a roommate once who loved tequila sunrises, too.”

Oh, watch your step.

“Yeah?” I ask. “She
sounds utterly delightful.”

“Oh, she is,” he says. “I
mean, she was.” He leans in close to me and says, “Do I go present or
past-tense there?”

“I really don’t care,” I
whisper back.

For a man so evidently
skilled at picking up women, he’s really putting on a lackluster performance.
And I was so hoping to find out exactly what it is that he said to those women
to get them to go home with him so quickly.

Then again, I don’t
really want to be just another pickup to him.

I may have unwittingly
placed us both in a quagmire.

We sit awkwardly a
moment.

“You know,” he says, “I
think I’m doing you a disservice here.”

“Are you, now?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I came
over here trying to be Mr. Polite while trying to spare you some of my more
potent charms.”

I can’t not laugh.

“Oh really?” I ask. “So,
you’re telling me that if you were to
really
turn it on, I’d be sexual putty in your hands. Is that about right?”

“No about,” he says.
“That’s exactly right.”

“Now this, I have to
hear.”

“All right,” he says,
“but it’s probably going to take another approach. If I just keep sitting here
and turn it on, it’s going to make this whole conversation lopsided.
Therefore—”

“Therefore, you want to
start an entirely new conversation?” I ask.

“Yep,” he says, getting
up from his bar stool. “We’ll give it, say, five minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

Either he’s really this
clumsy or this is just another part of his play. It doesn’t really matter to
me; I’m finding this rather amusing.

Dane is barely out of my
sight when I feel someone tapping me on the shoulder. I turn around, ready to ask
how he made it so quickly to the other side of me, but it’s not him standing
there.

“You’re Leila, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, using
nearly all of my focus and willpower to prevent my eyes from rolling. “And
you’re Wrigley.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I
didn’t know if you’d remember me.”

“Well, seeing a person’s
vag
before seeing her face has a way of leaving an
impression,” I answer.

She smiles.

“I just wanted to let you
know that I know you and Dane are having a thing right now, but he really
dropped the ball with me,” she says. “I’d really prefer to leave you out of it,
but I’d keep my head down if I were you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Whatever happens, just
stay out of my way: that’s all I wanted to tell you.”

“Listen, razor burn,” I
start, “I don’t know who you think you are, but you don’t get to tell me
anything about anything. I get that you and Dane used to be fuck buddies or
whatever, but maybe it’s time to open your legs for someone else.”

I don’t usually talk that
way, but I can’t help but feel a bit proud of myself.

Then it occurs to me that
I’d probably lose and lose terribly in a fight with this chick.

Now, I’m not feeling so
well.

It takes her that long
before she reacts. “You’ve got quite the mouth on you for a virgin,” she says.
“Anyway, I didn’t come over here to threaten you. I just wanted to let you know
that, whatever happens to Dane, you might want to keep your distance for a
while.”

“In what way is that not
a threat?” I ask. “Just what exactly are you planning to do to him?”

“Nothing he doesn’t
deserve,” she says. “I
told
him to
find out whether his feelings for you meant anything or if he was just hard for
the roommate experience. I
didn’t
tell him to fall in whatever and stop attending his responsibilities.”

“His responsibilities?” I
ask. “And just what in the hell might those be?”

I’m starting to wonder
where Dane is.

He’d better have a really
solid excuse for leaving me to deal with this skank bag.

“It doesn’t matter,” she
says. “He may not take me very seriously, but he will. You should probably
start taking me seriously, yourself.”

“How exactly am I
supposed to do that?” I ask. “You were classier when you weren’t wearing
pants.”

She smiles at me again,
and I’m thinking seriously about smashing my glass over her stupid head.

“I think we’re getting
off to the wrong foot here,” she says. “After all, I was rooting for you. I
just don’t like that Dane thinks he just gets to up and abandon me in the
process.”

“What did you expect?” I
ask. “Did you think he’d just start seeing me and not bother breaking up with you?”

“Oh, we weren’t in a
relationship,” she says. “Not really. It doesn’t matter. What we
did
have was the kind of thing a person
only finds a few times in a lifetime if they’re lucky.”

“And what was that?” I
ask.

“A sexual relationship
that didn’t bore me after a couple of weeks,” she answers. “I get that you two
are all googly-eyed or whatever, but that’s not what makes a relationship
last.”

“Oh? And what, oh great
love guru,
does
make a relationship
last?” I mock.

“Fucking sexual
compatibility,” she says. “Finding someone that knows exactly how to get you
off—that’s what makes a relationship last. It’s not something that a person
just has with everyone. It’s like emotional compatibility, only less full of
the lies and nonsense and all the bullshit expectations. Sex is honest.
Emotions are the fucking lies.”

“I’ll take that under
consideration,” I tell her, “but for now, I’d appreciate it if you’d get the
hell away from me.”

She holds up her hands,
palms toward me.

“Calm down,” she says.
“I’m not here to ruin your evening.”

“Bye.”

She finally stops trying
to teach me what’s really important in life and walks away.

As for me, I’m fuming as
I down the rest of my drink. I think about ordering another, but really can’t
see the point. Knowing me, I’ll just end up doing something embarrassing and
tomorrow I’ll be twice as upset about everything as I am now.

When Dane walks over, I
try to be attentive, to seem interested, but that redheaded idiot has succeeded
in ruining my mood.

He asks me what’s wrong,
but I’d just as soon forget that beast ever walked in here. I just tell him
that I’m not feeling so well and ask if we can do this another time.

I’m not mad at him,
though, even though that would make my life a little easier in the extreme
short-term. Wrigley made it pretty clear that the two of them are no longer
seeing one another and that’s really all I need to know about it.

Still, I’m not about to
forgive her for ruining what was supposed to be a fantastic evening.

He takes me home, and I
tell him that I just need some sleep.

I don’t close my eyes
longer than a blink all night.

Chapter Eighteen

Borders

Dane

So, last night was a
bust.

I don’t know what
happened, but I’m pretty confident it didn’t have anything to do with Leila
suddenly becoming ill. For now, though, I’ll just let it slide.

She’s already off to work
by the time I come out of my room—I should really ask her whether she thinks we
really need to sleep in separate rooms. With as close as we’ve been over the
last few days, it doesn’t make much sense to create that artificial barrier.

C’est
la vie.

I shower and shave and
perform the rest of my morning ablutions. I’ve been doing the purchasing, but
today Wilks loses his training wheels.

I’ve done my best to get
him good and nervous for haggling with suppliers, but in reality, so long as he
can put on a smile and chat without making a total ass of himself, there’s
really nothing to worry about. I’ve already put in a good word with some of my
favored suppliers, so today should go pretty smoothly.

I give Wilks a quick call
to make sure he’s up, moving, and ready to pee his pants when I tell him that
he’ll be taking the lead negotiating prices today. It’s nothing personal; I
just love fucking with the guy.

He’s suitably tense by
the time I hang up the phone and I smile my way to the apartment door.

When I open it, a small
envelope falls to the ground. Curious, I bend down and pick it up.

The front of the envelope
has my first name on it, but no postage. I open it up and find a Polaroid
inside with a very familiar redhead, legs-spread with the caption “Wish you
were here” written on the bottom.

This might be funny or
arousing if it weren’t so sad.

The idealist in me wants
to figure out a way to help her realize there are other things in life worth
exploring, but the pragmatist in me realizes that I’m not fucking Superman.
She’s been a coitus aficionado long before I ever met her, and while I would
love to think that I’m capable of bending women’s wills with my mind, I’m not
stupid enough to believe it.

I didn’t ask for the
picture, and I certainly didn’t take it myself, but I’m not about to just toss
it on the kitchen counter for Leila to find either, so I put it in my pocket
and lock the door as I leave.

Wilks is waiting outside
his building when I come around the corner. He sees me from a distance but
still doesn’t have the confidence to just walk up to me.

This has to be stopped.

While I am effectively
useless at influencing women’s actions, I am a savant when it comes to molding
people in a kitchen. Wilks is technically my boss now, although I have a
feeling that particular fact might slip my mind while I’m trying to build the
guy’s confidence.

I get within ten yards of
Wilks and stop.

I know he sees me. After
all, the guy’s waving.

Our destinations lie in
the opposite direction, and this is the perfect time to impart lesson number
one of having your own staff:

If you can’t
approach

Someone, you can’t
possibly

Utilize their
gifts.

Yes, lesson one is a
haiku.

Yes, all of the lessons
are haikus.

When I got my first head
chef job a few years back, I had to learn all of these lessons the hard way.
The haikus just help me remember them and, I feel, give me the air of a guru
whose every word must be followed.

Okay, that and I find the
practice hilarious.

Wilks isn’t coming, so I
turn around and start walking toward the first stop on our itinerary.

He catches up in a matter
of seconds.

“Where are we going?” he
asks.

“Lesson #2,” I tell him
with no explanation whatsoever. “Questions whose answers you know are a
complete waste of my fucking time.”

That one was particularly
helpful in building staff resilience or, occasionally, weeding out people who
can’t bear hearing one of my very favorite words on a frequent and often
hostile basis. This was a must for my kitchen.

“Lesson number two?” he
asks. “What are you talking about? What was lesson number one?”

“We’ll cover the lessons
as the need arises,” I tell him. “Didn’t you write down our shopping list?”

“Yeah,” he says, pulling
a notepad out of his breast pocket.

I tell him, “We’re going
to start at the top and make our way down to the bottom: simple.”

“All right,” he says. “I
just didn’t know if you had a particular order in which you liked to make your
stops.”

“I do,” I tell him,
laughing. “It’s the order I gave you. But hey, lesson number eight: It's your
restaurant. Do things the way they work best for you. Screw the staff.”

He chuckles, and I know
exactly what he’s thinking. Sadly, he’s still too anxious to ask the question.

This should be a fun
morning.

As we’re walking, I
remember the contraband in my pocket and I deposit it in the next trashcan we
pass.

“What was that?” he asks.

I take a moment to count
the syllables before I answer.

“New lesson: If it's
coming out of my pocket, it's none of your damn business, Wilks.”

“Oh,” he says, “okay.”

“Wilks, for god’s sake,
loosen up, will you? You’re the fucking executive here. I’m just the washed up
bastard who’s filling in the gaps for you,” I tell him. The glory of always
being that unassailable character starts losing its luster. “If you’re going to
run a kitchen and keep it running, you’re going to need to work on your
confidence.”

He lifts his head a
little as he walks, but just as quickly lowers it again.

“All right,” he says.

“Okay, we’re coming up to
our first stop,” I tell him. “Now, we’re going to go in there and get some
fresh monkfish, and whatever he quotes you on price, I want you to talk him
down by at least ten percent. I’ll help you a little on this first one, but
you’re taking the lead.”

What he doesn’t know is that
I’ve done almost all of the shopping for the next day or so, only leaving the
items which absolutely must be same-day fresh for him to find his sea legs.

A lot of chefs nowadays
like to set up contracts with suppliers that will ship wholesale ingredients
right to the restaurant, but it’s a lot better for everyone if you take the
time to give a shit what you feed people. Fortunately, Wilks already knows that
much.

“Shit,” he says just
loudly enough for me to hear. “All right.”

We walk to the
fishmonger’s shop and walk up to the counter.

“Ah, Mr. Paulson,”
Martin, the sixty-something, perpetually scale-flecked proprietor says. “Come
in for to teach the new chef today, huh?”

“You know it,” I tell
him. “Don’t go easy on him, Marty. He’s got to learn how to deal with crooks
and swindlers like you.”

“With all the fish I give
you so cheap, you should be nicer to me, Daniel.”

No, Daniel’s not my name,
but for the finest fishmonger in the city, I’m willing to suffer a few small
indignities.

Wilks, naturally, is unaware
of this.

“I thought your name was
Dane,” he says.

Now, Wilks has gone and
pissed Martin off.

This was expected.

Most of the time, these
people are really easy to work with, once you get to know them. Everyone has
bad days, though. In order for those bad days to not transform into
profit-margin-killing price hikes, one must learn how to negotiate a sour mood.

“You let him talk this
way to me, Daniel?” Martin asks. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

The only difficulty I’m
having in this moment is keeping a straight face.

“Don’t piss off the
seller,” I tell Wilks, “or
it’s
caveat emptor to a
degree which I seriously doubt you can even imagine.”

“Isn’t it always caveat
emptor?” Wilks asks.

“Make the buy,” I mutter
and nudge him.

“Why doesn’t he answer?”
Martin demands.

I just shrug my
shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Wilks says.
“I must have been mistaken.”

Martin eyes him, but
slowly unclenches his fists.

If Wilks knew exactly how
ferocious Martin can get, and how close he came to getting his ass kicked by a
senior citizen, he probably would have run out of the store screaming.

Never—and I mean
never
—mess with a fishmonger.

“Eh,” Martin says, “it’s
all right. What do you need?”

“What do I need?” Wilks
asks me and I’m about ready to kick his ass myself.

“Monkfish,” I tell him.

“Monkfish,” Wilks
repeats. “Fresh monkfish.”

“Now you’ve done it,” I
mutter in Wilks’s ear as I walk past him for a better view of the action.

“You think I sell
anything that’s not fresh?” Martin snaps. “You think I sell garbage?”

“That’s not what I—”

“I build this business
from nothing. Everyone who comes in knows I sell the freshest fish in the city.
This is why I’ve been here thirty-five years. Why are you so stupid?”

I can’t contain my
amusement completely, but I try to keep my snickering at least somewhat quiet.

Wilks hears me well
enough, and it’s not doing his confidence any favors. He’s got to come to some
sort of détente with Martin, though; otherwise the old fuck won’t sell to him.

This is one of those
baby-bird-out-of-the-nest moments. I’ll step in if Martin starts swinging.
Other than that, Wilks is very much on his own.

“That’s not what I
meant,” Wilks says.

He’s getting frustrated,
but he’s not mad yet. The key is in finding just that right dose of anger. It
has to be enough to convince Martin to chill the fuck out, but it can’t be so
much that it just escalates the situation.

Let’s watch.

“You come in here and
tell me that I call my customer the wrong name and you tell me that you want
fresh
monkfish when there is no other
monkfish that I sell!”

Martin’s screaming now,
and I’m laughing my balls off.

Wilks tries to reason
with him, but he’s not getting through.

And then, like a miracle,
it happens.

“Listen, you ornery old
prick,” Wilks starts, “you know very well that I wasn’t saying your fish wasn’t
fresh, I was just repeating what
Dane
told me to get when we came in here! Now, you can put it back in your pants and
make a sale or you can keep screaming and lose a solid customer! Now, what’s it
going to be?”

He hit all the relevant
points and, with the exception of insisting the proper form of my name, he
didn’t go overboard.

You can’t teach that.

Martin’s face grows a few
shades redder, but in the next moment, he’s got Wilks in a bear hug that’s sure
to ruin the latter’s nice, clean shirt.

When Martin finally drops
the new executive, he turns to me, exclaiming, “This one’s got the eggs! Ha!
Reminds me of when you first started coming in here.”

Now, let me make
something clear: we are not the only people in the fish market, not by a long
shot. Martin’s been in business this long by being the best and every chef who
even thinks of working with sea food in this town knows it.

Wilks is going to be
fine, although he’s again becoming aware of just how many people have been
watching the scene. I can’t be sure, but I could swear I saw some money change
hands between customers when Martin picked the poor bastard off his feet.

Martin gives a decent
starting price and, like a trooper, Wilks starts talking him down.

My attention is
elsewhere, though.

I could swear that I just
saw something on the far corner of the market. It was a flash of red hair
ducking behind a display.

When nobody comes out, I
tell myself I must be imagining things. Why would Wrigley follow me to a fish
market?

“Does that sound about
right, Paulson?” Wilks asks, apparently not for the first time.

Pulled back from my
ginger hallucination, I turn to look at my new boss.

“It’s your deal,” I tell
him. “Does it sound about right to you?”

He turns back to Martin
and extends his hand. It’s a rookie mistake.

We leave Martin’s shop
and I could swear I see that red hair again before we come to our next stop.

It wouldn’t surprise me
in the least to discover that Wrigley’s stalking me. What I don’t understand,
though, is why she’d choose to do it here. Why now?

It occurs to me that I’m
trying to assign rationality to someone who may or may not be stalking me, and
I give up the futile chore.