The very thought made my blood pressure increase.
Not even the sight of Sully stumble-walking could improve my mood.
“You can’t quit,” Savannah said as she hovered behind her son, arms out to catch him if he fell. “You love working at Bone.”
“How hilarious is it that your restaurant is named Bone?” Dakota asked.
She said that about once every six months, straight out of nowhere. She should no longer find it funny, but that was Dakota. She was easily amused. Right now she was lying on her stomach on the floor, making faces at Sully as he walked toward her.
“Seriously,” Leah said, sitting on the couch next to me. “What would quitting accomplish other than potentially ruining your career?”
“Sean isn’t that bad once you get to know him,” Felicia said, lounging in a chair, her hand over her tiny baby bump. “He’s just…” She tossed her dark hair back, clearly searching for the right words.
“See?” I said, pointing at her. “You don’t even know what to say and he’s your brother-in-law.”
“He isn’t really like Michael at all,” she admitted. “For brothers they’re very different. But Sean isn’t a bad guy. He’s a hard worker, he is nice to his mother even though she constantly picks at him, and he brings lovely gifts.”
“He’s arrogant.”
“Confident,” she corrected. “There’s a big difference.”
“Some people might call you arrogant, Isla,” Dakota said. “It’s a tough city and you’ve worked hard to get where you are. You deserve to feel proud of yourself. Maybe that’s how Sean feels. He’s worked hard and earned the right to be a little impressed with himself.”
I had no answer for that and that also annoyed me.
“We’re supposed to be entering a Best of Brooklyn cook-off over Memorial Day weekend. That means we have to plan a whole special barbeque-inspired summer menu, which means I have to sit there and keep my mouth shut and do whatever Sean wants to do. I’m not sure I can handle that. I’ve had ideas for this cook-off for months.”
“How do you know he won’t listen to you? Run your ideas past him,” Savannah suggested. “He can’t act like a dictator.”
“You haven’t worked in the food industry,” I told her dryly. “It’s full of dictators.”
“Then you should be able to handle Sean.”
“At least he’s hot,” Dakota said, rolling onto her back so Sully could climb on her stomach. She made faces at him.
He was. Which was not a positive. It was hell. Because he was hot and my body knew it. I hated that he turned me on, just a little. Not a lot, but a little. Okay, I was lying. A lot. I wanted to climb him like a tree.
“How is that relevant?” I asked.
“Having a hot boss is never a bad thing.”
“You have a hot boss,” Leah said. “The coach is a seriously attractive man.”
“He’s not my boss,” Dakota said. “And he’s grumpy. Like, seriously grumpy. That is so not attractive to me.”
“And arrogance isn’t attractive to me,” I said. “See how that works? It doesn’t matter if someone is hot if you don’t like them as a person.”
I pulled Nico up in my contacts and typed out a text that I was quitting. I deleted it. I typed it again. There was no way I was sending it. I couldn’t quit. I groaned. “This sucks so much.”
“Are we ordering food now?” Felicia said.
Obviously my crisis wasn’t hers. “I’m having a meltdown and all you care about is eating?” I asked.
“I’m pregnant and starving!” she protested. “You have to feed and water an expectant mother.”
Food was my passion, my love. I had always enjoyed helping my mom in the kitchen as a kid, and then during my middle school years I had become obsessed with cooking shows, to the point my parents had sent me to a junior chef summer camp. But then in high school, after both my mom and my dad passed away, I had thought I wanted to be an actress. It had seemed like a great outlet for my overabundance of emotions. I was a girl who bottled up her negative feelings and then exploded for the dumbest reason ever.
Acting had given me a voice. Along with a way to avoid the memories of cooking with my parents.
But trying to succeed in the entertainment business had meant nothing but rejection and poverty. There are only so many auditions you can go on before you start to think the universe is telling you something. When my grandmother had passed away when I was twenty-two after a brief fight with ovarian cancer, I’d lost my desire to be front and center on stage. I wanted all my memories back, to when life was easy and good and my parents were around to love me. So I’d returned to my first love– cooking.
It had taken me years to get to the position of respect and responsibility I had and I would be an idiot to walk away from Bone. It had become a place of stability and happiness for me, with people I really cared about and I wasn’t going to lose that.
But I wasn’t sure I had it in me to take orders from a guy who drove me that insane. I would need all my zen and then some.
My phone notification dinged. I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced down at it.
It was a text from Sean. We’d been given his number by management and likewise he had gotten mine.
We should get together. We need to work out a few things. Drinks tonight?
I made a face. That was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
“Sean wants to meet for drinks,” I announced.
“Like a date?” Dakota asked, sounding gleeful.
“No! To talk about our work environment.” Which was going to suck. There was no way around it. I knew I couldn’t look for another job without Nico and Sid finding out about it. That was the way it was in the industry– everyone knew everyone on some level and people talked. I’d have to quit first before I started shopping around for a new position.
I didn’t want to leave the restaurant that I felt at home in. I had worked with the previous chef to get Bone on the map. The staff were my friends and I didn’t want to be pushed out of my turf.
My rent had just been raised eight percent. Which doesn’t sound like much but trust me, in Brooklyn that’s a substantial chunk of change when your rent is already stupid high. I had a studio because I didn’t want roommates anymore (I’m not easy to live with, I can admit to that), so I was on the hook for a hefty rent. I can’t say that I had exactly prepared for a period of unemployment. My savings account wasn’t well padded. Quitting my job would be a financial disaster as well as emotionally difficult.
One I was almost willing to take because… Sean Kincaid and his smug face. Ugh.
“Sean does grow on you,” Felicia said, trying to be encouraging.
“Like mold?” I asked dryly as I stared at his text message.
Damn it. I was going to have to say yes. I needed to establish that he wasn’t going to be the big man in the kitchen with me. I was his peer, no matter what title he had been given.
“Don’t do something impulsive,” Savannah said. “You’re always telling me not to be impulsive. You need to take your own advice.”