Page 58 of The Promise Of You

Chloe’s voice is barely audible. I can’t make out what she’s saying, and I don’t care. I stomp through the kitchen, the sous-chef, Corine, and the prep cook ogling me like the crazy man I feel like right now.

“I will not compromise my name!”

I push the prep cook aside and rush to the cooler.

“Then do your effing job! All I’m asking is menu costing! I can’t do mine if you don’t do yours. I’m here to save th—”

I swing the walk-in door open, fuming. Samuel has his back to me, hiding Chloe from my sight. His chest is heaving, his knuckles white from holding onto the shelves, boxing Chloe in. Chloe stops talking, but he doesn’t move when I open the door.

“Privacy!” he booms.

Chloe’s sharp intake of breath is what does me in. I grab the collar of his chef shirt and drag him out. He’s about my height, but thicker, heavier. He stumbles back, almost knocking me down, but turns around, enraged, his red, meaty face distorted in anger.

I get a glimpse of Clover, pale, shaking, barely holding it together, and my fist flies automatically into the pig’s face, making contact with his nose in the most satisfactory crunch. Blood spurts as he buckles over.

I lean into the cooler and take Clover’s hand. She follows me out, barely looking at her chef.

I drag her to the dining room. “You okay?” My hands fly to her head, treading her hair, searching for I don’t know what, going down to her shoulders, her elbows, pulling her into me. Her sweet scent wafts in a wave, making me teeter.

She stiffens.

I pull away. “Sorry,” I mumble. “Are you okay?”

She gives me the standard answer of an upset woman. “I’m fine.”

nineteen

Chloe

Icross my arms on my chest to keep myself from jumping Justin after he’s roamed his hands all over me. “I’m fine.” I swallow with difficulty. Why is he here? Not complaining about him saving me from crazy Samuel, though. The guy was scary. He refused to meet in my office, so I brought the topic of menu costing to the kitchen, asking him, kindly I might add, when the eff I was going to get that breakdown?

I didn’t use the eff word. Only in my mind and very quietly.

Before you know it, I was shoved inside the refrigerator, but worse than last time. He didn’t waste time, started yelling in my face right away, cornering me, trying to scare me so that—what? I let him go on without doing his work?

If only I could have had more control over myself. But I got dizzy, I couldn’t breathe, and he took it as a sign of weakness. A sign he won our argument. In one last-ditch effort, I yelled back at him, and that’s when the door flew open, Samuel disappeared from my sight, and Justin finished him with the knockout for the records.

And then he checked me everywhere to make sure I wasn’t hurt.

Oh god.

God!

So good I almost died.

So good I almost forget I hate him now, just like he hates me.

Luckily, I remember before I do something stupid like lace my hands behind his nape and fist his hair and rub my needy body against his muscular body and kiss him thank you.

I tell him I’m fine so he stops touching me, at the same time wishing he would see straight through my lie. Wishing he’d cradle me in his arms. Wishing he’d take care of me like he did in the elevator.

But that will never happen, and not only because he’s a rude asshole who only wants his rent. No, that won’t happen because he said in Boston that he doesn’t want a relationship or a girlfriend. He doesn’t even want the flavor of the night to know his name!

So why is he here?

“There’s a meeting… on The Green,” he says.

I blink outside the window. There’s a group assembled around Cassandra.

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