Page 34 of Don't Remind Me
“And then you traveled the world, cooking as you went?” Dani asked.
I shrugged. “Basically. I was hungry to learn and willing to work for it. After I’d saved up a bit working for Frank, I moved to New York for a few years to get fine dining experience, and that took me to London and wherever else I heard about an opportunity after that.”
“What made you come back?”
I took a bite of gnocchi and thought about how to answer. The creamy dumplings practically melted on my tongue.
“I reached the point where I wanted something more permanent,” I ended up saying. “Something I could really build and shape. It was easier to get an executive chef job in the States, so it made sense to come back. I hadn’t planned on Philly, but it’s where an opportunity came up, and then Jillian offered me an even better one.”
She’d attended business lunches at my old restaurant for years before I took over as head chef. Three months after I’d started, she’d gone back to the kitchen to pay her compliments to the new chef. She’d noticed the change in the food, enough that she popped in to say hello every time she dined there after that. A year and a half later, she came in with the offer to run her new restaurant. I’d known her well enough by then to trust her when she said my talent was wasted on a small man pretending to do big things, and that if I had the guts to take a chance on her, she’d repay the offer tenfold. So far, she’d been true to her word.
“I like what I have at Ardena with Jillian,” I continued. “I like it here in general. It feels the most like home than anything else I’ve had.”
“It’s not an easy thing to find,” she said.
“What, home?”
She nodded, and a hint of the somberness I’d caught in her eyes at the gallery returned.
“What about you?” I asked. “Why Philly?”
She twirled a long strand of spaghetti onto her fork. “Sort of the same as you. My last job was in Wilmington doing marketing and event planning for a company down there, and neither the job nor the city felt like a great fit.” She let out a humorless laugh. “Neither had the four other jobs in the four other cities I’d lived before it. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, but I knew I needed a change, and when I found the position at HBC, it seemed like maybe that could be it.”
“Has it been?” I asked.
She glanced up.
“The change you needed?”
Her mouth curved, too softly to be a smile, but it lit up her face all the same. “Yeah. I think maybe it has.” Her lips stretched wider, humor filling her eyes. “Although now I’m thinking I should have traveled the world first. I’ll have to try that someday.”
I swallowed the offer to take her myself. Colleagues didn’t show each other their favorite parts of the world. The reminder formed an ache in my chest I was quick to rub away.
We finished a couple of the entrées before calling it, and Dani assured me I wasn’t sticking her with her least favorite dishes for leftovers.
“I liked it all. Promise.” The gleam in her eye had me shifting in my seat.
Once the server, Isabelle, boxed up our stuff and cleared the dishes, she brought out a slice of tiramisu as wide as my face. Dani straightened in her seat as Isabelle lowered the plate to the table, and as soon as Isabelle’s back was turned, Dani snatched up one of the forks and slowly sank it into the corner of the slice. Her mouth closed over the bite, and her eyes fell shut as the faintest moan escaped her lips.
My hands squeezed into fists, stare glued to her face as she slid the fork from her mouth and flicked her tongue over her bottom lip. Her eyes opened slowly, as if coming out of a dream—a really fucking good one, apparently—and her gaze dropped to the dessert, then up to me and back again. She spun the fork restlessly between her fingertips.
Jeans now tight, I reached for the second fork.
“Be honest,” I said, leaning my forearms on the table. I pointed my fork at the tiramisu. “If I wasn’t here, you’d be halfway done with this by now, wouldn’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I was giving you a chance to try it.”
Fighting a smile, I grabbed a bite with my fork. She pinned her blue-green stare on me as flavor exploded on my tongue, the bitter notes of coffee and cocoa cutting through the richness of the cream and the sweetness of the sponge.
It was good.
Watching her eat it was better.
Almost as good as watching her eat my food. The way her head dropped forward on the first bite as she surrendered to the flavors. Seeing the pleasure sink into her whole body, her shoulders falling, breath sighing out, eyes fluttering closed. Knowing I was responsible.
It made me want to give her pleasure in other ways. See how her body would react to my fingers along her skin, my lips on her pulse, my tongue on her clit.
I’d never get to find out.
