Page 27

It Wasn’t Even Good

R afferty looked at her side eyed. “I…” Then he grunted a sigh. “I am in the kitchen,” he said.

“You’re sleeping in the kitchen?!” she said, s urprised.

“Not exactly in the way you are thinking,” he said cry ptically.

“I guess I’m picturing you laying on the tiled floor,” she said.

“What else is in the kitchen?” Rafferty asked. “On your til ed floor?”

It took a second, then she remembered, though for some reason it was difficult. The circle, she thought but didn’t dare say out loud.

“Right,” was all she did dare, and they both nodded in their mutual under standing.

But she still had more questions. “So why are you resting in there?”

“It is decreasing the imposition of having me in your house,” he said.

“Okay, I can’t tell how you m ean that.”

“Shh,” he hissed just as an older man approached the ir table.

The older man was dressed like everyone else in the room, in white chef’s clothes with a small toque over his head that fit close to his head. Yet despite his lack of an ostentatious toque, he wore a pin over his chest that read “Executive Chef . ” He had his knobby hands clasped in front of his body as he approached the table and smiled a grin that lacked enou gh teeth.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said warmly. “You are Scarlet Kovacs, I presume?” he said in a thick Polish accent that almost was uninte lligible.

“Oh, no, I am Helena Rhodes. I am representing Scarlet’s firm for this tasting for the Winter Rose Ball,” Helena said, standing up to take his hands. To her surprise, he stood a foot shorter than her, but she wasn’t quite sure if that was because he was so short or because of how badly he was bent over. At her declaration, the Executive Chef’s f ace fell.

“You are not Scarlet?” he asked, sound ing hurt.

Helena felt awful at his distress. “I represent Scarlet,” she said, desperate to clarify. “I am her deputy for organizing the Winter Rose Ball. Scarlet couldn’t co me today.”

It was a kind of truth.

The Executive Chef took his hands back from her a little too sharply, still looking like a hurt child. “I do not understand. What is this woman saying to me?” he demanded, looking around at the nearby workers who frankly hadn’t been paying attention and so had no idea what was going on.

Helena tried not to be offended. “I’m sorry for the confusion,” she said and gestured for Rafferty to stand up. “If you would like, w e can go?”

Please let us leave, please let us leave, please let us leave, she thought over and over.

The Executive Chef, who still hadn’t introduced himself by his name, crossed and uncrossed his arms in a petulant huff. “No, you will stay. I already cooked.” Then he seemed to think of something, and he pointed his finger to the ceiling to shake it at her. “You will tell Scarlet how good it is and she will come,” he declared as if by doing so it made it true.

Helena had half a thought to argue about it but decided against it. This man clearly wasn’t used to being countermande d at all.

She turned back to Rafferty, who stood at his seat waiting for her to make a decision.

She shrugged. “We might as well stay and have dinner,” she said.

He grunted and nodded, then stepped over to pull out her seat again while the Executive Chef walked off m uttering.

“Well, this is definitely not going well,” she w hispered.

Rafferty grunted a nod. All the grunting was getting annoying.

“Okay, why aren’t you talking to me?” s he asked.

He flinched and she realized that he was deliberately doing that and hadn’t expected to be called out on it. To her surprise, knowing that hurt a li ttle bit.

“You’ve been giving me grunts and minimal answers all day. The most interesting thing you’ve said so far has been about the Opera Cake, and now you’re stonewalling me. Why are you playing games with me?”

He didn’t answer that, only loo ked away.

Realizing that wasn’t the right answer to the situation, Helena resettled in her seat and decided to start trying out the different butters until she thought of what the next right move might be.

Then Rafferty said, “I thought you were going to send me back.”

Hand paused on the breadbasket, Helena looked up at hi m. “What?”

“After last night, I have been waiting for you to send me back.”

“I’m not going to send you back,” she assured.

“Why?” he demanded.

Helena huffed and then stabbed at one of the pink scoops to smear across the crackly roll she opened. “I don’t have to answer why,” she said when she couldn’t come up with a good why in words. At least not one that involved diving into some dark places in her own history in order to explain.

Rafferty shook his head. “I do not underst and you.”

“What’s not to understand?” She took a bite of the pink smeared roll and creamy strawberries burst over her tongue. “Oh my gosh,” she said looking down at it as she chewed. “Oh damn that’s heavenly.”

She held some out to him to bite, which he did after only a half second’s hesitation. Laying her hand on his, the strawberry flavor bumped up to eleven, as well as the delightful taste of the butter. Her demon had to close his eyes as he sa vored it.

“You haven’t eaten all day, have you?” she asked. They hadn’t shared tastes at her breakfast. He had just served her and gone back into the kitchen, which she had been grateful for at the time. And then she had lunch out…

“No,” he admitte d softly.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sorry, too. For last night. I got greedy and wanted too much,” he said and Helena’s heart started beating double time at the imp lication.

“What did you want, exactly?” she finally asked, daring him to meet her eyes and b e honest.

“There isn’t a word to sum up what I want—what I have no right to have. You give me so much freely: your time, your companionship, the tastes, God, the tastes.” He touched his lips as if his tongue was an organ he had only just discovered. “And you don’t want anything in exchang e for it.”

“Yeah, but what more did you want?” she asked, willing him to say it, the thing she was afraid of giving voice to.

He drew himself up as if fortifying himself for her rejection. “I wanted to feel your touch,” he c onfessed.

It wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear, but it was so close. So very close to the right thing, the thing she couldn’t define but had absolute faith that she would when she heard it. It wasn’t something as simple as saying “I love you”; it was something m ore true.

“You mean, you did want … that , last night.” She waggled her eyebrows as if making a joke, but it felt so very wrong in comparison to the soft, gentle words he was saying. Yet he blushed all the same.

“I have no right.”

“Damn right, you don’t,” Helena confirmed softly, then caressed her hand over his larger one, up the bareness of his wrist to brush back the hairs of his forearm. “But you could have pri vileges.”

He stared at her for a long moment, unbelieving, his gaze so intense, the black stars in his eyes smoldered and burst. She should have been intimidated by their unearthliness, but now, she just knew they were his eyes.

And if anyone else saw them doing that, they would be in trouble. Quickly, Helena covered his eyes with her hand, glancing around to see if anyone else there had noticed. No one seemed alarmed or panicked.

“I think we need to stop flirting now, or we are both going to be in big trouble. And we need to get you some sunglasses,” she w hispered.

The long fingers on his hand lifted to touch the back of hers as if he were only just realizing what had happened. “Agreed. Speak of someth ing else.”

Helena’s mind raced for a new topic, but the only things going on in her life at the moment outside of Rafferty was Yosef driving her crazy and what to do ab out Chris—

“Oh damn,” Helena cursed, suddenly remembering. “I forgot to get some advice from Cindy about Chris and Charlie.”

Rafferty pulled down her hand to look at her, and to her relief, his eyes had returned to a more human-like black or what people thought of as dark, d ark brown.

“What about them?” he asked, sitting back as another person dressed like everyone else in the room approached and set two salads before them, along with two dishes of some sort of dressing.

Blowing out a breath, Helena looked down at what was frankly a disappointing salad, iceberg lettuce broken up rather than shredded with bits of carrot sprinkled over it and two radishes halved each. That was about it. “I just need to decide if I should tell Charlie or not about Chris’s alleged infidelity. It seems if I do either, I’m screwed.”

“Yes, you are,” he sai d simply.

“Oh. Well, I’m glad we sorted that out,” Helena said dryly. Served her right for asking a demon.

“Did he bring us the meal for the horse?” Rafferty asked, poking at h is salad.

“I don’t know, but if you don’t want to taste it, I’d understand,” she said, using what little detective skills she had to determine what kind of dressing was in the dishes before them. She decided to go with the one that looked like a vinaigrette and ladled it over her portion of iceberg.

“No, I will taste it,” he said, choosing the same dressing.

As soon as they took a bite, Rafferty let go of her hand and took the fork out of her mouth, then slid the plate away from her. “Do not eat that. The dressing is rancid,” he reported. Helena was already grabbing her napkin to deposit what food remained in h er mouth.

“I didn’t think we upset him that badly by not being Scarlet,” sh e coughed.

“If your boss had been here, she would have been poisoned already,” Rafferty sai d direly.