The younger man frowned. “So why is she always asking me what she should wear?”
Dansant grinned. “Because, mon ami, she does not wear for her sake.”
At the restaurant, he found his brigade at work prep-ping their equipment and stations for opening. Lonzo had posted the menu he had left with him last night, and the wait staff were already arriving. The only person he didn’t see in the kitchen was Rowan, although he smelled her scent in several places.
“We got a beautiful shipment of mussels in,” his garde-manger told him as he chopped garlic into impossibly thin slices before scooping them into a bowl of parsley and tarragon. “I thought we’d add moules farcies gratinées to the appetizers tonight.”
Lonzo never altered the menu without speaking to him, but Dansant had learned to trust his choices. The herbed garlic would complement the freshness of the mussels. “Très bien. Where is Rowan?”
“She’s in the storeroom, chopping figs for the duck breast.” Lonzo glanced quickly at Vince, who was giving his roasting racks painstaking attention. “Thought that would keep her outta everyone’s hair while we prep.” He lowered his voice. “She’s still getting her line legs. I figured she could use a break.”
“Merci, Lonzo.” Dansant went on to inspect the other stations and speak with his cooks about the menu. Only after he made his rounds of the brigade did he go back to the storeroom and step inside.
Lonzo had set up one of the rolling chopping blocks, beside which Rowan sat on a high stool. She had a sack of purple-red figs wedged between her thighs and she was chopping them lengthwise with slightly more force than the fruit required while she muttered under her breath.
He caught the words “ass” and “Boston.” “Are you ready to leave me so soon?”
Rowan glanced at him. “That’s not a question you want to ask me right now, Chef.”
“I see.” He thought of how oddly Lonzo and Vince had behaved. “Someone put a move on you.” Then he saw the strip of rag wrapped around her left hand and seized her wrist, neatly avoiding the blade in her other hand as she jerked. “What is this?”
“Nothing. Just a little accident.” She tried to pull her hand back, but he kept a firm hold and untied the make-shift bandage.
Several thin, dark pink burns ran diagonally across her palm. “Who did this?”
“I did.”
She was a very good liar. “How, please?”
“It was an accident. I picked up the wrong roasting rack.” She put down the knife, drew her hand away, and rewrapped the burn. “I’ll be fine.”
Dansant swung around, intent on finding his rôtisseur and introducing Vince’s face to several other wrong racks.
“Oh, no.” Rowan caught his arm. “You go out there and rumble with Vince, and the rest of the crew will serve me for dinner.”
He gripped her wrist. “He did this deliberately.”
“Of course he did. He’s a nasty man with a big ego and a small dick. Unfortunately I brought this to his attention, and I paid for it.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Lonzo already balanced the books. He took care of it,” she added when he frowned over the unfamiliar expression.
“Did he.” Dansant knew his burly garde-manger ruled the kitchen like Napoleon had France, but he had seen Vince looking remarkably well with no burns on any visible part of his body. “Perhaps I do not consider them balanced yet.”
“You will when you see Vince get started on cleaning the new delivery of squid.” She folded her arms. “Something I’m planning on enjoying immensely, so please, don’t fuck that up for me.”
He didn’t want to let it end there, but the satisfaction in her tone told him she considered the matter settled. “You are very forgiving.”
“I’m a woman working with seven men,” she countered. “This is a fraternity, not a sorority. I have to do this their way, or every one of them will shut me out and consider it their God-given duty to make my life hell for the next couple weeks.”
A couple of weeks. She was already thinking of when she would leave him. “I will think of something else for you to do.”
“I suck at waiting tables,” she advised him. “The cleaning crew aren’t going to share their turf. Enrique might let me scrape dishes and scrub pots for him, but he doesn’t even let Lonzo near the washer.”
She had a point. “You can work in the office.”
“The phone rings—maybe—once every four hours. I’ve seen your files. The CIA isn’t that color-coded or organized. Lonzo has to interview all the applicants for Bernard’s job.” She watched his eyes. “I’m not a wimp, Jean-Marc. I didn’t break down and cry over a little burn, and I didn’t say a word to anyone. If Lonzo hadn’t been watching me so close no one would have even known what happened. The guys will remember stuff like that.”
“I didn’t bring you here for you to be hurt,” he muttered.
“You didn’t bring me here,” she said softly. “I crashed the party, remember?”
He put his hand to her cheek. She looked thinner under the harsh fluorescent lights, and there were shadowed crescents under her eyes. “You wouldn’t tell me what you were thinking last night.” He drew her closer, bringing her under his influence as easily as he had unwrapped her hand. “Tell me now.”
“I was thinking about you.”
“You were.” She made a low affirmative sound in reply. “Is it too much for you? Working in the kitchen?”
“No. I’m learning a lot.” She yawned a little. “Just tired. Too much sleep. Didn’t get my coffee. I love watching you work.”
He felt a little better, and bent his head until only a breath separated their mouths. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No.”
He knew better than to ask while she was like this, but he couldn’t resist. “What were you thinking about me last night?”
“I was thinking I wanted to kiss you.” Her expression turned to confusion. “But I can’t do that.”
If only she knew how much she affected him, how delicious the heat of her body was against his, the way her scent intoxicated him. In the state he was in, he feared at any moment he would go down on his knees and beg her to have him. “Why not?”
“Because . . . you don’t want me to.” She exhaled the words.
He couldn’t stop himself then, not with the taste of her breath in his mouth. He kissed first her top lip and then the bottom before coaxing them apart with the tip of his tongue. She must have tasted one of the figs earlier; a faint sweetness of it lingered in her mouth. No, it wasn’t fruit, it was . . . chocolate? He sucked on the tip of her tongue, and she did the same to his. The show of desire loosened something inside him. He slid his hands under her arms and lifted her up onto the chopping block.
Rowan made a low sound in her throat as he stepped between her thighs and wrapped an arm around her hips. He couldn’t get enough of her mouth, and he would have had a lot more of her if the storeroom door had been locked.
“Chef?” he heard Lonzo call.
Dansant wrenched his mouth from Rowan’s to answer, “Just a moment.” Mon Dieu. His hands were shaking; he could hardly speak. “Rowan. You will forget we did this—you will forget everything that has troubled you.”
“Forget.” Her pupils, dilated almost to the rims of her irises, contracted slightly. “Yes.”
“Good.” He closed his eyes and held her head against his for a moment. “Are you afraid of Vince?”
“That scumbag?” She made a contemptuous sound. “No.”
He held her close for another moment. “You will come to me if you are afraid, or if you need anything. Only to me. Do you understand me?”
“I understand.”
He hated to release her, but he couldn’t keep her like this, not when Lonzo or one of the others could walk in at any moment. “You will come back to yourself now.”
She stepped back and blinked several times. “Whoa. Déjà vu.” She looked up at him. “I didn’t faint again, did I?”
“No. You were a little dizzy. You will take the rest of the night off.” She shook her head. “Rowan.” She appeared unmoved. “Tomorrow, then.”
“I work five nights on, and have one night off,” she said. “Just like the rest of the crew.”
Her resistance puzzled him. A moment ago she would have stripped naked and lay at his feet if he had asked it of her. Now she was behaving as if he had. “I want to do something for you. To make up for what Vince did.”
“You’ve already done plenty.” She drew his hand away from her face and sat back on the stool. “But if you want to give me a little bonus, I’d love to watch you make the reduction with these figs for the duck.”
Dansant knew the power of his influence. He could compel others with it, and alter their memories, but he could not plant desires in their minds. She would not have asked for his kiss or responded to it if she had not wanted it. Now she spoke to him as if they were nothing more than pleasant but distant acquaintances.
I felt her need and her delight. She wants me as much as I hunger for her.
She was waiting for him to answer her. “Very well. Finish splitting those figs while I collect the wine and the herbs for the reduction.”
Rowan nodded, but when she tried to sit down on the stool she stood again and groped at the back of her jeans. She produced a squashed fig and frowned at it. “Hmmm. How did that get back there?”
Even after the ugly incident with Vince and the weird moments in the storeroom with Dansant, Rowan decided her new job wasn’t half bad. The second night was just as tough as the first, but her body quickly adjusted to the unfamiliar physical demands, and by the third night she got into the rhythm of the line, trotting back and forth between the stations and carrying out dozens of small tasks for the cooks.