CHAPTER SIX

TROY

CATALINA SENT HER dress and heels so Red could wear them tonight to fuck with my head. It worked. Because when Red wore Cat’s dress, unlike my mistress, she didn’t look like a wrapped candy waiting to be unfolded. She looked like a sweet fucking princess who is about to lose her innocence at the hands of the big bad wolf.

I fed my personal little Red Riding Hood more sweet memories to keep her happy, my words like music to her unsuspecting ears.

Guilt was a thief. It would steal your mind, mess with your priorities and would eventually steer you from your original plan. I couldn’t allow it any room in the life, so I pushed it aside, convincing myself that on some level, these moments we shared weren’t lies. Just half-truths.

We did slow dance at the wedding.

But I never thought she was endearing in any way.

In fact, at nineteen, I already knew that she was destined to be my wife. When I danced with nine-year-old Sparrow, all I’d felt was anger. Mostly for me, a little bit for her.

All that mattered now was that Sparrow bought it, and she was beginning to crack. Rays of light streamed through her walls of defense. Even though I liked their warmth, I was careful not to give her too much hope. We weren’t a real couple, and this wasn’t a love story.

A waiter showed us to the best table in the restaurant. My wife took in the room wide-eyed, and I knew why. Before me, she could hardly afford a Happy Meal. Now, she was gaping at the waterwall dividing the brass bar from the bronze concrete tables. Hell, the lighting here alone cost more than her father’s annual salary.

People swiveled their heads in our directions, gossiping in hushed tones over their overpriced meals, probably wondering how I, of all people, had settled down—and with an average Catholic girl, no less. They were swallowing her whole with their gazes, following her wobbly steps, like there was a secret hiding behind those innocent green eyes and that crimson hair.

I straightened to my full height, towering almost a foot over my wife, my hand guiding her narrow waist as I led her to our seats.

“Everybody’s watching us. People are talking about us,” she said, her voice small.

“Do you care?”

She hesitated, looking down at the high heels she swayed in, before lifting her face up, her expression resolute. “No.”

“Good, because opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one, and they usually stink.”

“Well, that’s just your opinion.” She chewed on a smile, and the cleverness of her comment didn’t escape me.

I bit back a grin, feeling a tad less annoyed with being seen with her. She wasn’t supermodel material, but fuck it, her mouth was good for more than licking and sucking, and that was refreshing, I supposed.

Red spilled the beans about what she wanted from me while we were sipping Kir Royale. I had a feeling if she knew a single cocktail was $125, she wouldn’t have polished off three in a row just to get the liquid courage to ask me if she could work at Rouge Bis.

A part of me liked that about her. She wasn’t particularly interested or impressed by my money, even though she had none. That showed character. Or endless stupidity. I was leaning toward the former, though.

I clenched my drink and pretended ignorance, like I hadn’t already done the math the night before, when I went through her texts. I inspected the room while she rambled on, trying to sell herself as a valuable employee.

She sat across from me, tapping her foot beneath the table and watching me for a reaction. She was so caught up in trying to see what I was thinking she paid little attention to the way people were still staring at us. Sparrow was an observant little thing most of the time, but as opposed to my so-called “string of cookie-cutters,” she seemed to rarely give a damn about what people thought.

It was a liberating quality in a woman.

“So you want to work here?” I folded my arms behind my neck and leaned back when she finally stopped talking to take a quick breath. I didn’t hate the idea. Maybe if she worked here, she wouldn’t be grating on my fucking nerves whenever we were both under the same roof. Getting her out of my hair was an idea I was warming up to.

She nodded. “I’ll do anything. I don’t mind starting from the bottom.” She cleared her throat nervously, but I spared her the sexual innuendo. “I worked at a diner as a cook. It may not sound like much, but I can also wash dishes or work as a waitress or…”

She was rambling again. Lifting one hand, I cut off the stream of words. “Time to be blunt. What the fuck makes you think you’re good enough for the best place in Boston?”

Her face fell. For a second, I almost felt sorry for her for marrying a bastard like me, but then I remembered she was a fucking headache I inherited from my old man, and I stiffened my back in my chair.

She squared her shoulders back, taking a deep breath. “I’m a great cook, Troy. Try me,” she challenged, calling me by my first name. She only did it when she tried to be nice, which wasn’t very often. Her eyes were almost pleading, but her tone let me know she wasn’t going to beg.

I let my mouth curve into a slow smile. That hint of fight gleamed behind her eyes again, dancing like flames. I stood up, offering her my hand.

“What are you doing?” She looked a little confused, but took my hand and followed suit, her chair screeching behind her.

“I’m going to see if you’re as good as your word, Mrs. Brennan.”

I led her to the back of the restaurant, barging through the swinging double-doors in a confident stride. The minute I stepped into the hectic kitchen, the hustle and bustle stopped. Everyone paused shouting over the dishes. Staff who ran from one station to the other halted, staring at me. Mouths fell open, dishes crashed against the floor and eyes widened. Hell, you’d think I walked in there with a loaded Uzi and not a frightened chick.

Guess my staff was surprised to see me. After all, I was notorious for being a short-tempered, snippy asshole. And the fact that I’d never bothered to meet any of my employees didn’t exactly push me up the list as Boss of The Year. They were waiting to see what I’d do. I was a case study. I was the psychopath. That’s the legend I fed, and that’s the legend I had to live up to, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

The place was as hot as a furnace, and I grunted my disapproval, wiping off my forehead. Sparrow was standing behind me, clutching my hand in a death grip. She was scared shitless, and I kind of liked it.

“Who’s the head chef around here?” I asked, and watched as people flinched. No one spoke. No one breathed. No one fucking moved. Their terror echoed and bounced on the walls.

After a few seconds, a large man with a dark porno moustache and stained, white chef’s coat stepped forward, wiping his hands with a kitchen towel before tossing it on a chopping board and offering me his sausage-thick fingers for a handshake.

“That’d be me, sir. Name’s Pierre.”

I didn’t even look at his hand, let alone shake it. “Don’t really care. Now, this girl right here…” I turned around, pointing at Sparrow, whose eyes grew wider by the second. “She wants a job working in this kitchen.”

“We don’t need any new employees, but she can leave her contact number and—”

“I don’t remember assigning you as my HR manager,” I snapped. “Test. Her. Now.”

Hushed gasps filled the room. Some girl shrieked in the far corner of the kitchen. All eyes were on Sparrow, desperately trying to figure out why I wanted to help Plain Jane get a job at one of Boston’s finest. Guess they didn’t get the memo about the wedding of the month. The sound of something sizzling on a frying pan was the only thing audible in the crowded kitchen. Something other than my short fuse was burning.

“For the love of God, drag your asses back to work before you set my place on fire,” I roared.

Everybody jumped back to their stations, other than the head chef. He eyeballed Sparrow like she had just kidnapped his family at gunpoint and thrown them in a cellar full of venomous snakes. I turned around to glance at my wife. Despite her obvious embarrassment, she returned a challenging glare to the chef. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by his stink eye.

Atta girl.

I curled my finger behind my back, signaling her to step deeper into the kitchen. She did. I kept my eyes trained on what’s-his-name, who bit his hairy upper lip in barely contained frustration.

“Go on,” I murmured, my scowl lingering on his face. “Test her.”

He blinked a few times, trying to digest the situation. Then he sighed, looking around him for support. No one even dared to look at us now.

“Come with me,” he instructed her.

I followed them. Pierre—he introduced himself again when I referred to him as “the cook”—plucked one of the menus from beside the stove and shoved it into her hands. He didn’t have a clue that she was my wife, and I wanted to keep it that way. To find out whether she really knew what she was doing.

I wanted her out of the house, but not at the expense of giving my customers food poisoning.

Pierre stabbed at the menu with his oily finger, leaving a stain on the parchment as he pointed at one of the dishes. I couldn’t help but notice it was the most expensive, long-titled entrée on the menu. A fucking trap if I ever saw one. My eyes narrowed in annoyance, but I didn’t move. Just took out a toothpick from my breast pocket and placed it between my lips, rolling it from side to side with my tongue.

“Roasted venison loin, grains, parsnip puree and sauce poivrade.” His smile was triumphant.

Sparrow turned her gaze to him, not a muscle in her round, freckled face flinching. “It takes about three and a half hours to make this dish,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“I have time,” the chef hissed, nostrils flaring.

A sudden, unexpected urge to cut the son of a bitch to tiny pieces washed over me, but I leaned against one of the steel counters instead, looking both bored and content. “So do I.”

She looked between us like this was a conspiracy, but threw her red mane behind her shoulder and shrugged off our attitude. “Better get started, then.”

Sparrow got down to business straightaway. She almost flipped Pierre the finger when he sarcastically offered her an apron. I watched as she filled up the empty station he assigned her with the ingredients she needed. Her movements were swift and confident as she got comfortable and found everything she needed. I knew the chef set her up with an unfair task. He just gave her the name of the dish and hoped she’d fuck up. But by the look on his face every time she ran from side to side, holding carrots, beef stock and bay leaves, I had a feeling this girl knew her way around the kitchen, much to his dismay.

While I watched her cook, I suddenly realized it was her art. The pan was her canvas, the ingredients her paint. She cooked with fire in her eyes, with passion in her soul, with love in her heart.

Occasionally she’d wipe her forehead with her milky-white, freckled arm and smile apologetically, probably thinking she looked like a mess.

But she was wrong. This was a much-needed reminder that Red was kind of hot, in her own quirky way, anyway.

Like the way she curled the tip of her tongue on her upper lip when she concentrated. Something about it made me so hard I almost shoved her against the stove and proved to her just how much we could enjoy each other’s company. Or the way my wallflower suddenly became the center of the room, working the hardest without calling attention to herself or rambling about it. She glowed. Corny as it sounds, she fucking glowed.

“Hey, can you fetch the red wine from over there?” she asked at some point, running between one point of the kitchen to the other. I was so taken aback by her request, I felt almost offended.

“No, I cannot,” I answered evenly. “Can you not overstep your fucking bounds? You’re here auditioning for a job.”

“Someone’s on that special time of the month,” she grinned, grabbing the wine bottle by its neck.

“Just do your thing, Red.”

“O-kaaaay,” she drawled, still wiggling her ass to an inaudible tune in her head. “So just look over the pan and make sure the olive oil’s not overheating while I get the bottle opener.”

She finished making the dish a little after the restaurant closed for the night. Her red hair was everywhere—face, neck, sticking to her forehead—and Cat’s dress looked like she had just lost a food fight. But she looked happy, and that’s a look I’d never seen on her face before.

I ordered Pierre to follow me to one of the black leather banquettes, where he poured us both red wine while she served the food.

“Gentlemen.” She couldn’t contain her wide beam as she presented us with the plates, repeating the name of the dish and finishing off with a little bow. “Enjoy your meal.”

We both picked up our silverware and stabbed into the food. The minute I shoved the fork into my mouth, I was done for.

Yeah, she was that good.

I knew Pierre thought so, too, by the way his mouth hung open halfway through his bite, looking up at her with hate-filled eyes.

“Too salty,” he gritted through his teeth.

“Bullshit,” I sneered. “It’s excellent.”

Her gaze bolted to me, her face opening up with something sincere I probably didn’t deserve. She was just as surprised as I was by my compliment. “You think?”

“Yeah.” I threw my cloth napkin on the table and stood up. “Tell your culinary class friends your evenings are no longer free. You can start a week from Monday. I’ll let Brock know so he can do the paperwork.” I turned to Pierre. “Don’t give her more than five shifts a week. Make sure she’s always stationed doing something meaningful. I don’t want her cutting vegetables or working an intern position. You report back to Brock about the new employee, should any difficulties occur. And you…” I nodded toward her. “Ruined that dress. No surprises there. Let’s go home.”

Pierre jumped to his feet, looking like a heart attack waiting to happen. Judging by his puzzled look, a dozen questions were swimming in his head, but the only thing he seemed to have managed to stutter was, “H-home?”

Her hair smelled of onions and garlic as I dropped my arm around her shoulder, just to see the blood draining from the fat chef’s face. But I was surprised when Sparrow’s reaction was to wrap her hand around my waist like we were an actual couple. We walked out of the restaurant, and she looked up at me, her eyes bright.

“Stop smiling at me,” I said.

She started laughing.

“Cut it,” I groaned. Positive attention is the kiss of death to natural born killers. We just don’t know how to deal with reassuring feedback.

“I can’t!” she giggled. “I can’t. I’m sorry. My friend Lucy is going to piss in her pants when she finds out.”

For the first time since we got married, I didn’t feel the bitterness that accompanied looking at her face. The burden I had to endure when having her around.

We walked into the chilly summer night and I disconnected from her touch. The valet who’d parked my car immediately broke into a run, cutting into the alley where he’d left the Maserati. I gave him a fat tip for the extra hours and for waiting, and ushered Sparrow into the car. She was still laughing like a drunk.

Secretly, I had to admit, her laugh was not that horrible to listen to.

That should have been my first warning that Sparrow wasn’t the only one cracking up. Her laugh was not that horrible to listen to. At all.