All The Way (The Sarah Kinsely Story - Book #1) (5 page)

I stopped chewing. I set my fork down. I looked to the girls. I looked to Peyton. She was smiling from ear to ear like a little child that just did something naughty and was about to reveal her secrets.

"What the hell are we doing here." I said as sternly as I could looking in Peyton's direction while trying to keep my eyes off the chef.

"You didn't think that I was about to let this guy get away from you did you? Listen Sarah, if you are gonna work with me you got understand that I'm the boss and I take care of my people. Even if it means I have to help them get laid." She smiled even larger than before.

I tried to give my best impression of an angry scowl, but I was greeted only with giggles from all three of the girls.

The chef made his way smoothly over to the table where we were sitting. He was even more masculine than I had remembered. He moved gracefully and powerfully. He leaned onto the table, putting his hands on the table and leaning forward said,

"I'm so glad that you ladies were able to make it this evening."

He was looking at me directly. I felt embarrassment well up inside of me.
Damn him and his smooth ass ways
. I tried to ignore his stare but he lingered. I felt his eyes wander over my body. He was trying to break my will.

It was working.

Chapter 6

The dinner proceeded a lot more smoothly than my anxious self had anticipated. The chef, just like the night before, was in and out busy attending to other guests as well as overseeing the preparation of our food.

By the time he sat down for a bite to eat himself he looked exhausted.

“Kissing ass wears me out.” He said as he tucked into a plate full of the same food we had been eating for the past half hour.

“Chef, you don’t have to kiss our asses.” Angela said. He laughed a little then almost choked on his food.

“As enticing as that visual image is,” he said smirking, “I wasn’t referring to you fine ladies.”

“Oh?” Peyton asked.

“The tent outside, I am sure you all saw it,” he motioned towards the front door, “That was the annual ass kissing dinner I hold every year. It was a tradition of my father and I simply carry it on.”

Peyton’s eyes seemed to grow wider. She loved ass kissing as long as she got something out of it and by the looks of the chef’s house his ass kissing was handsomely rewarded.

“It can’t be that bad.” Peyton said taking a sip of her wine.

“It is, I can assure you. Imagine walking into a room of plastic mannequins, add a double dose of bitchiness because you are trying to please their snobby pallets and you might just start to get the right idea.” He stood up and walked to his fridge. He grabbed a soda and sat down.

I was curious as to why he didn’t pour himself a glass of wine. The bottle was sitting right in front of him and he poured his dark cola directly into the wine glass that had been placed for him. Here was the man of the hour, the host of the party and he was spending it dry. I had to know why.

“You don’t drink?” I asked.

Angela elbowed me under the table. It probably wasn’t the most appropriate question to ask but he hadn’t made last night very easy for me either.

“Forward aren’t we?” He said, then took a deep drink of his soda.

“Just seems strange when the host isn’t as drunk as his guests. Especially if his guests are a bunch of single ladies.” I said smugly.

He picked up the wine bottle and looked at the label long and hard. He reached over the table and poured me some more. His solid hand held the bottle carefully. He spun the bottle at the last so that not a single drip of wine was lost to the table cloth. He had done this a thousand times before and it showed. I found myself imagining being poured by his experienced hand. I wondered what else he might have experience in that would impress me.

“I haven’t had a drop to drink in almost 10 years.” He said as he sat back in his chair. “I was an alcoholic for almost four years. My dad was partial to the drink but then again so are most cooks. It’s a tough life sometimes and not everyone can handle it sober.”

“I apologize for bringing it up.” I said embarrassed.

“Don’t be. I try and tell everyone I meet. It helps to keep me honest. You were going to find out soon enough. Anyways, who wants the grand tour?”

Lizzy, Angela and Peyton raised their hands at the same time and shouted “me”. I laughed and raised mine as well.

We followed the chef as he took us through his house.

“This was the house that my father bought for my mother before she died. He started as a dishwasher, hardly knowing a single word of English and worked his way up to head chef by the time he was 22. He never cooked in the fancy restaurants, but he made a decent living for my mother and I. It was because of him that I got into cooking. I started out washing dishes too you know.”

I considered the prospect of rising from dishwasher to owner of the biggest house on the hill and thought that I should reconsider my career moves when I got home that night.

We continued our tour through his home, he told us about the furniture he had purchased from his travels overseas. Each piece of furniture had some special connection between him and his mother. He showed us pictures of his mother spread throughout the house.

"She's beautiful." Angela had said almost each and every time she saw a picture of her.

By the time we came to the end of the tour it was late in the evening. My stomach was full, my heart was full and I felt very attracted to this man whose name I still didn't know. I knew I would regret it tomorrow, but anxiety started to well up in my chest again and I suggested to Peyton that we should probably start heading home.
Maybe I wasn’t ready for rebound sex quite yet.

She agreed. Then said, “May I use your restroom?”

The chef pointed off into a hall and Peyton headed in that direction. Lizzy, Angela, the chef and I made our way into the house library. The walls were stacked with books. Books about cooking yes, but there were also books on foreign languages, history, literature and even an entire shelf of erotic “how to” books. Naturally, Lizzy migrated there first. She pulled one out.
Secrets Of The Supersexpert
. She opened it up and slowly a grin spread across her face.

“That’s a good book, but you should check out the one right next to it. Has better pictures.” He said.

I was surprised he wasn’t embarrassed. I felt myself blushing a little at his brazen openness.

Before Lizzy could open her mouth to respond Angela asked where the bathroom was. She had forgotten. The chef pointed again down the hall and she left. The chef mentioned that he needed to check on the clean up crew outside and that he would be back in a few minutes.

When he left Lizzy went back to the miniature sex education class that lay in between the great books of culture and literature in the chef’s library.

“This guy is pretty great huh?” She asked slash told me.

“Yea, he is something else.” I didn’t want to let on that I was beginning to soften to him. I still valued the friendship of my coworkers over some guy - no matter how smooth of an operator he may have been.

Lizzy looked at me, smiled and put the book back into its place.

“I am going to go find out where Peyton went. Why don’t you stay here for when the man of the house gets back?” She said it like a question but was out of the room and down the hall before I could respond.

My insides wanted to scream for her to come back, but I did think it extremely rude if the chef were to come back and find that his invited dinner guests had all disappeared. Besides, it wouldn’t be long before Lizzy would return with Peyton in tow. She was probably just snooping where she shouldn’t anyways. I stayed put.

Maybe 10 minutes passed before I started to worry that I had been forgotten. I imagined the girls all gathering somewhere in the hall, getting distracted and then going outside to find Mr. Chef Suave to flirt it up. For all I knew they could have all gone to a club somewhere downtown and left me here forgotten.

I ventured a little way down each hallway, timidly calling for the girls. If I was wrong and they hadn’t forgotten me, I didn’t want to look like a total idiot walking around a random guy’s house calling the names of a bunch of women at full volume. What was left of my dignity I wanted desperately to try and keep intact.

I started down the hall towards the kitchen when I heard the front door shut. I quickly ran back into the library just before he returned.

“All alone?” The chef said.

The way he said it made it sound naughty like we had just snuck out the back of a chaperoned dance and he wanted to check to make sure the grown ups were gone.

“I think they are all having an after party in your bathroom.” I said still trying to catch my breath from the short sprint back into the library.

The chef opened up a cabinet near the far corner of the wall.

“You want a drink while we wait?” He asked.

“Sure,” I said, “Got any soda?”

He laughed.

“I’ve got plenty. Light or dark?”

“Hmm, dark please and stirred not shaken.” Without warning I felt myself flashing a flirtatious smile his way.
What was I doing?

He laughed even harder at the joke and turned to pour the drinks.

“So, Sarah Kinsely, why don’t you tell me about yourself?” He handed me my drink and we both sat down on a big soft couch looking out a large bay window onto his front yard. The tea lights were still hanging from the white tent.

“First,” I said, “why don’t you tell me why you keep dragging my friends and I into secret dining areas and feeding us like queens.”

He set the glass down.

“Well, that’s easy. My mother is Italian.”

I wasn’t aware of any Italian mother jokes so I said,

“I don’t get it.”

“My mother, she was Italian. She taught me how to cook.”

“I thought your father was the chef.”

“He was. He taught me how to run a restaurant and keep the food coming out fast like the people want it. My mother though, she taught me how to cook. She taught me how intimate it can be to create a good meal for someone. She used to tell me it was better than sex.”

“That cooking was better than sex?” I feigned a gasp.

He laughed again.

“Not the cooking, the sharing of a good meal. When I saw you at my restaurant last night I wanted to share that experience with you.”

And like that I went from lazily splashing in the kiddie pool unsure if I wanted to swim to being thrown head first into the deep end. The glass of soda in my hand suddenly felt very cold. I set it down. He saw this and placed his down as well. He brought his eyes to mine. They locked and I felt something switch inside my head. What I had thought was a rude, overly aggressive gesture the night before now felt like a shared experience. I wanted to share it again.

“I bet you do this for a lot of girls. First you feed them at the restaurant and then bring them back to your palace. There sure are a lot of fluffy beds for a bachelor’s residence.” I said.

He inched closer and rested his arm on the couch around me. I wanted to pull his arm and tuck it around my body to feel him pull me into him. I resisted until I could be sure I wasn’t just another notch on his bedpost.

“Actually, no. The only other time I have invited someone back into the chef’s table was when my mother was alive. She wanted to impress her friends so we put on this whole production where she finally revealed at the end that I was her son. Other than that it costs $500 just to get a seat back there.” He watched my face, running his eyes over every inch, looking for any reaction. It was a cute answer but I wanted more.

“And what about my friends? Why not invite just me back there?”

“Ahh, your friends,” He paused, looked around checking to see if the coast was clear, and began again, “I learned long ago to never stand between a woman and her friends. When I saw that you were with your friends I told the waiter to bring you all back so your friends wouldn’t feel left out. To be honest, It was a lot of fun to have them all there I thought. It isn’t often I get to give group tours of my kitchen. And to be frank, you are here tonight because of Peyton. I owed her one. When you left last night she got my number and promised that you would call. This morning I answered my phone and it was her. She said I could see you if I fed you all again, so here you are.”

My defenses fell. This wasn’t my ex sitting before me. This was someone who
wanted
me -
female anatomy and all
. I felt my insides tear apart as I realized he had broken through and there was little left for me to do but to accept it. I told myself that I deserved a wild fling anyways. Even just for one night. Even just to get revenge. Even just to try and find some healing in the arms of a man who wanted me even though I knew a girl should never do that. I deserved to be showered with affection after what I had been through. I deserved it dammit.

If he wants to give it to me then I better damn well take it.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”