Page 58 of Delicious (Delicious #1)

Chapter Five

Nate

T he way he said Mr. Buxton before storming out of the dining room had an embarrassingly strong effect on my body. I pretended to scroll on my phone for a few minutes until my reaction calmed down and then finished helping Lilah reset for the morning.

“So you want to sell?” Lilah asks as we close the doors to the dining room and make our way down the hall.

“You heard that?”

“It helps that I was trying extremely hard to eavesdrop. So yeah.”

I laugh at her easy honesty.

“I have no idea how to run a hotel, and this place needs so much work. It would be better off in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing.”

“You could learn, like Rémy said.”

Okay, so she really did hear all our conversation.

“That would take forever.”

“So it’s not that you wouldn’t want to, it’s that you think it would take too long to learn?”

“No. Well, in some parts, yes. But…”

“Do you have another job to get back to?”

“No.”

“A house, wife, husband, kids?”

“No. I sort of moved back with my mom.”

“Sooo, what’s stopping you from giving this a go, then?”

“Crippling fear that I’ll fuck it up,” I reply with a laugh, as if I’m joking. But in truth, that is the only reason I can think of right now.

“You should always do what you’re afraid to do,” she says, and I stop walking. “It means you care enough to succeed.”

“Did you just come up with that?”

She laughs. “Nope, it’s an Emerson quote. Or the first part is, the second bit is just something Rémy throws in whenever he says it, but in his French accent, it sounds way smoother.”

I bet it does. I could listen to him talk for hours. I don’t tell her that, though.

She turns toward the front door where the moonlight is sending soft streams of colored light through the stained glass into the hallway. “I better be going. It’s getting late and I’m back here for breakfast.”

“Sorry to keep you.”

“No, it’s fine. You helped me reset the dining room, so I’m getting out of here a bit earlier tonight. Besides, I only live fifteen minutes down the road. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah, see you then.”

She leaves, and I head back to my room, sleep coming easier than it has in a year.

The old estate feels even emptier in the early hours of the morning. Rémy said he’d be in the kitchen by five. It’s ten minutes to five, and I’m trying to look busy flipping through the bookings in the old leather diary. The reception desk is just inside the main doors and to the left. It’s got only what it needs, I guess, with the diary, a landline phone, and a cabinet attached to the wall with the room keys on display. There’s a hook for sixteen in total, and only six are missing. The books show another five guests are checking in today, and two on Sunday. The dining room was pretty packed last night as it was with people coming in from other places nearby, so I guess this place is doing better than I thought.

I hear a noise down the hall and follow the sound through the dining room, pushing open the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen to find Rémy standing on the other side of a long stainless steel bench, wearing a black tank top that shows off his toned arms perfectly.

“Sorry, I didn’t—” I begin as I start backing out of the room.

“It’s fine, I was just about to get started,” he replies, pulling on a chef’s jacket, and I pause halfway through the doorway, watching as he buttons it all the way to the top.

“Do you want coffee?” he asks, and I nod.

“That would be great. Milk, two sugars, please.”

As much as I hate to see him cover up any part of that gorgeous body, Rémy somehow looks even hotter in his chef’s jacket. His hair is a mess of blond curls, just like I remember them being as a child. Not like the perfectly tamed ones I saw last night. He’s mumbling something under his breath as he pours the coffee that I can’t make out.

“Sorry, what?” I ask, and he spills some coffee over his hand. He puts down the pot and blurts something in French as he moves to run his hand under cold water.

I jump up from the stool and meet him at the sink.

“Is it bad?” I ask, leaning in and reaching for his hand. His skin is warm and soft, and as the cold water slips through our fingers, his hand rests heavy in my palm. “I’m sorry.”

He turns to look at me, piercing blue eyes shining bright in the morning light. “Why are you sorry? I was the fool with the pot.”

“I distracted you. I…”

“You are a distraction, oui, but it was not your words.” He looks away. “Do you truly not remember me?”

My memories of Rémy were in a part of my mind that I pushed way down, and only after coming back here, seeing this place, seeing him, have they started to somewhat surface. I remember running with him through the grounds, tormenting his aunt, and swimming in the river that cut through the Peterson’s place down the road. My stomach stirs at the thought of them, in the same way it flipped seeing him half-naked in the kitchen. Did I have a thing for Rémy back then? I thought I only figured out I was gay in high school, but maybe it was sooner. Maybe Rémy was where it all started.

I study his profile, sharp jaw, clean-shaven, he must have done that this morning, and big pink lips, slightly parted, like he’s trying to control his breathing. I know I am. I know that my heart doubled its pace when I took his hand and that the warmth that started where we touched has now spread through my whole arm and settled like a balloon around my heart.

“I’m starting to remember bits and pieces, but it was a long time ago. Maybe you can help me remember?”

He meets my gaze again, his stare moves to my mouth for a moment, and fuck me, but I lick my lips. Don’t Nate. You can’t flirt with the sexy chef, no matter how good he smells or looks or sounds. Just no.

“Maybe it’s me who’s forgetting. Maybe I made up the memories in my mind,” he continues, looking back at his hand still under the running water.

“Why would you do that?”

“Back then, I might have had a little crush, small. Hardly worth mentioning. But maybe my memories can’t be trusted.”

“I’d still like to know what you remember, even if they’re… what do you call a memory that isn’t a real memory?”

“A fantasy.”

My cock twitches, and I let go of his hand.

“Right, yeah. Umm. I guess you could call them that. So, your hand, is it okay now?”

He shrugs. “Probably. I’ve been burnt plenty of times in the kitchen. It’s no big deal,” he says, shutting off the tap and grabbing a towel from a stack beside it to dry his hand. “Let’s try this coffee thing again.”

Watching Rémy in the kitchen reminds me of what I used to be like when I was training with the team. The baseball field was my happy place, and this is very clearly his. I sit on a stool he’s pulled over for me and eat the omelet he’s made me while we talk, and he prepares the orders coming in hard and fast from the dining room.

“So you handle the breakfast and the desserts?” I ask as he cracks another two eggs into the frying pan.

“I love the idea that my food is the first thing a guest will eat when they wake and the last thing they do before they sleep. It has a nice completeness to it. They start and end their days with me.”

“That’s cool. This,” I say, pointing down to my mostly eaten breakfast. “Is the best omelet I’ve ever had. How did you know I like mushrooms?”

“We used to pick them, remember?”

I shake my head.

“Where?”

“At the Morris farm, down the road. You’d always be eating more than you picked for Chef Henry.”

Vague memories of wooden logs covered in the large fungi start to emerge, then comes a memory of Rémy, with his golden hair shining in the light through the trees, standing so close beside me as we pick mushrooms from the same log. I remember teasing him with one, holding it up to his face, daring him to take a bite and him scrunching up his nose at it, shaking his head before I bite off the top, and he laughs.

“I remember now. I was allowed to eat as many as I wanted if I picked them, but you don’t even like mushrooms. What did you get out of going all those times?”

A flutter of something sweeps across me as he flashes me the same youthful smile I now remember so well.

“Time with you.”

A flash of heat rises to my face.

“I can’t believe I forgot so much of this place,” I say, turning my attention to the plate.

“It’s been a long time between visits.”

Lilah joins us, tapping her wrist where a watch might normally sit.

“Have you got table seven’s order up yet?” she asks.

“Just finishing off the eggs,” he says, and she starts collecting the plates that make up the rest of the table’s breakfast from beside us.

“Do you want help?” I ask, but she shakes her head.

“It’s nice seeing you sit there. Jack used to spend his time in the kitchen, too. That was his stool, and he was the only person allowed to sit in here.”

Rémy flips the eggs, then turns back to me.

“You still don’t remember why you stopped coming?”

“No, not really. I mean, Mom and Jack had a fight, but that’s all I remember. Then there was college and baseball.”

“Your uncle loved watching you play,” he says, passing the finished plate over to Lilah, who has three balanced on one arm. Impressive.

“He loved the dancing, too,” Lilah says, leaving us to deliver her order.

My shoulder throbs, and I roll it back a couple of times to try to ebb the ache.

“It was so much fun, the best job in the world.”

“Maybe that’s why your uncle left this place to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“So that you would have to come back and remember you had fun before there was baseball, so maybe you can have fun again.”

I reach over and pick up a slice of mushroom.

“I’ll tell you what, you eat this, and I’ll agree to think about not selling my half.”

He scrunches up his nose just like he did in my memory of him, and it’s just as adorable now. How did I ever forget him? He takes the slice from me between two fingers and holds it up.

“You promise?”

“Yep. All you have to do is eat it. Oh, and chew and swallow it, no spitting it out.”

His disgusted look gives way to a smug smile, and he pops the thing in his mouth, chews with a devilish grin, then swallows without even the slightest pause.

“What the fuck?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you think I still hated these little things?”

He’s laughing, and I can’t even be mad because the way his face lights up when he does brings a warmth to my chest I don’t want to let go of.

“I learned to love them, just as you will learn to love this place. Just you wait and see.”