Page 1 of Whisking It All

Chapter 1

Jameson Chase was in hell.

His risotto was undercooked, the chef at this restaurant had clearly never heard of salt, and his date hadn’t put her phone down once since their food had arrived.

Trisha snapped another picture of her untouched plate and tapped away on her phone. “Hashtag date night,” she said in a sing-song voice as she typed.

When Jamie had agreed to this blind date, he’d been told Trisha was a food blogger. He suspected “Instagram addict” was closer to the truth. This is the last time I let Helen White set me up on a blind date, he thought. This is what happens when you try to humor an old lady.

He took another sip of his wine and waited for Trisha to notice that he hadn’t spoken for the last five minutes. Finally, she set her phone down on the table and turned a wide smile towards him. “So, what were you saying?”

“I wasn’t.”

She giggled—did grown women giggle?—and poked at her food with her fork. “My grandmother said you were funny, Jimmy.”

“It’s Jamie.”

She broke off a piece of the under-seasoned, chewy short rib that sat on top of the undercooked risotto and popped it into her mouth. Her eyes went cartoonishly wide, and she pressed a finger to her lips in surprise. Maybe she knew something about food after all. With a horrified look on her face, she reached for her napkin, spitting the bit of meat into the white fabric.

“Is that beef?” she gasped, pinning the blob in her napkin with a withering glare.

“Yes,” he said, “It’s a short rib.”

“Of beef?!”

“What did you think a short rib was?” Scratch that. She definitely doesn’t know anything about food.

“I don’t know! Other animals have ribs!”

At the bar behind them, a petite, dark-haired woman snorted into her wine. He supposed if he weren’t the one stuck on the blind date from hell then he might also find Trisha’s reactions funny, but as it was, he was having a hard time thinking much of anything aside from all the better ways he could have spent his night.

Trisha took an overly large sip of her wine, gulping it down. “Hashtag gross!” she said with a grimace.

“Why did you order it if you don’t like short ribs?” he asked, trying to remain patient. He may never want to see Trisha again, but her grandmother was unavoidable, and he didn’t want her granddaughter complaining that he was a total ass.

“Because you ordered it! You’re the chef. I assumed you had good taste.”

Every muscle in his body tightened as the insult landed. Her opinion shouldn’t matter; she didn’t know anything about food. He took another sip of his wine, focusing on setting his glass back down without shattering it.

“Look, Jimmy—”

“Jamie.”

“—I think we can both agree this dinner is a whole plate of yikes, so why don’t we skip it and just get to the good part.”

He arched an eyebrow at her, anger still simmering on the edges of his vision. “The good part,” he repeated.

She leaned forward, giving him a clear view down the front of her already low-cut dress. She glanced down, as if to be sure her breasts were on display, then flashed a grin back in his direction. “Your place or mine?”

He barked out a laugh. So much for not being an ass. “That is not happening.”

Her grin disappeared, replaced by a tight purse of her lips that looked way too much like her grandmother. “Fine. We done here, then?”

“Oh, yeah. I’d say we’re done here.”

She grabbed her absurdly tiny handbag from where it hung off the back of her chair, snatched up her phone, and stormed out of the restaurant, her heels clacking along the tile with each furious step and her eyes locked on her phone screen as she, no doubt, blasted him on social media. He didn’t exhale until the door swung shut behind her.

Leaning back in his chair, he scraped a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbled. He was way too old for the revolving door of bad blind dates he’d been on over the last few months. For fuck’s sake, just that morning he’d spotted a new patch of gray coming in.

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