Chapter Five

Mitchell unbuttoned his chef’s jacket and stripped it off, the fresh blast of cool air hitting him like a balm after so long in the hot kitchen. Everything was set for tonight, dinner service was well underway, and he could finally head out after being here for—he checked the clock on the wall—ten hours. Not bad, as his days went. He would normally stay later, but his sous chef had pretty much kicked him out of the kitchen. She might only be just a hair over five feet tall, but she had the no-nonsense demeanor it took to boss Mitchell around when necessary. Most of it was good-natured, like how she insisted he have some free time and leave the kitchen at a decent hour now and then.

All right, fine, he’d go. He hadn’t hit the gym yet today, so he could go there, then pull some food together for his own dinner, maybe something for Ben, too, if he was home.

Passing through the dining room, Mitchell stopped abruptly at the sight of a familiar face hanging out near the front of the restaurant. Hannah had one arm slung along the back of the booth, her face turned expectantly toward him. Well, damn, he hadn’t expected to see her the day after she’d gone out with Ben. He hadn’t expected to see her at all, at least not until maybe they talked about Fall Festival together. When she smiled and beckoned, he couldn’t help but slide into the booth across from her.

Hannah leaned closer and breathed in. “You smell delicious.”

“Thanks?” He was never sure how to take that compliment; he tried his hardest not to smell like the Fryolator most of the time. “What brings you in tonight?”

“I was looking for you.”

“Oh?” Well, that was a surprise.

“I asked about you, and the hostess said she thought you were heading out soon.” Hannah nodded to the front of the house, where Opal was organizing the stack of menus.

“And here I am.” Too bad he wasn’t dressed more presentably, instead sitting here in just his white undershirt and chef slacks, jacket tossed on the bench beside him. “So what’s up?”

“I met with Ben last night to talk about some ideas for the Fall Festival.”

He’d heard all about that. “Yeah, he told me.”

Hannah rested her chin on her hand. “I was disappointed you couldn’t join us.”

Knowing what had happened last night, at least from the gist he’d inferred from Ben, this was definitely a flirtation, especially delivered as it was with Hannah looking up through her lashes. Was she rubbing it in, or was she possibly inferring more? “Seems like you two did enough ‘talking’ for the both of us.”

Hannah didn’t look away, smiling instead, her tongue caught between her teeth. “Yeah? You get all the details?”

“A few.” Ben wasn’t the type to brag about sex like it was a conquest, but he’d come home absolutely floating last night. Hannah didn’t look bothered at all, not with that Cheshire cat smile.

“Hmm.” Hannah looked to the sides, making a show of ensuring they were alone. “Disappointed you didn’t get all the details?”

All right, this was definitely flirtation. If she was still going to flirt while sleeping with Ben, then maybe that wasn’t so serious. Maybe he hadn’t given up his only shot. Smirking, he leaned in. “Maybe you should give me all the details so you can make sure he got the story right.”

Hannah chuckled and nodded. “Maybe I’ll have to do that sometime.”

And that was it, just a smile and nothing further, and curiosity pressed at him along with a little annoyance at how obtuse she was being. “But really. Why were you waiting for me?”

Hannah’s expression returned to neutral, drifting away from the sauciness she had been presenting. “I really did want to talk to you about the Fall Festival.”

“Ben went over your proposal with me. I think it sounds fine.” He leaned back again in the booth. “You could have emailed, too.”

Hannah’s plump lips turned down in the barest hint of a frown. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to get rid of me.”

“I’m not trying to get rid of you.” He wasn’t, but it was hard to sit here and ignore the fact that last night he’d jerked off while imagining watching Ben fuck her senseless. “I’m just…confused.” Confused about where he stood with her, about why she was flirting, about the nature of whatever was developing between her and Ben. “But we can talk about the festival if you want to.”

Hannah bit her lower lip. “Okay. I do want to talk about the festival. But also, I want to go out with you. See where things lead.” She dragged out those last few words, making eye contact as she did so. Oh. That was clear enough. He’d wanted Hannah for so long, but he had never taken action, never even been willing to take that kind of risk. And then there were his loyalties to Ben, because didn’t she literally just sleep with him last night?

“What about you and Ben?”

Hannah slung one arm along the back of the booth, angling her head to the side. “Ben didn’t become my boyfriend last night, you know. Any more than he’s become yours.”

“Right.” The idea of Ben as his boyfriend was not an idea he entertained much anymore, except sometimes when he was a little drunk. Afterward, he always blamed the alcohol. He wanted to say yes to Hannah. There was no real reason to say no, other than his own fear about where that path might lead. But she wasn’t asking him for a relationship. She was asking him for a night. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

“You free tonight?”

Damn, if only he could. “Not tonight. I’m headed to the gym, need to make dinner, run through some orders for next week. But, um…” He thought over his schedule, the times his sous chef was scheduled, the hours he had committed to doing dinner service instead of morning prep. “I could do tomorrow, if you want.”

Hannah smiled. “I could make that work. I close at eight. You want to come by my house after that?”

Her house? Fuck yes. “Sure.” He slid out of the booth. “You staying for dinner? Or do you want to walk out with me?”

“I’ll follow you out.”

Hannah tailed Mitchell out to the lobby, where he paused. “I’ve just gotta grab some paperwork.” He gestured to an unmarked door in the foyer.

“The secret lair?” Hannah bobbed up onto the balls of her feet. “Can I see?”

Was she serious? “It’s a storage area. It’s not that exciting.”

“I love behind-the-scenes things.”

“Okay, if you want.” He opened the door and let her inside, flipping on the light. He wove around boxes to get to the desk in the far corner where he kept the weekly and monthly order forms, then started leafing through for the ones he’d need to check.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding about the storage area part.” Hannah’s voice came from the other side of a tower of boxes. “What’s down this staircase? The brew tanks?”

He didn’t need to look up. “Yup. But if you want to see those, you should ask Ben. That’s his domain.”

She picked her way back over to where he was standing, maneuvering around the piles of clutter, and came to stand with her hands on her hips in front of him. “How come you never used this space?”

“What? We do use this space.”

“Yeah, but for storage. This is a good-size area.” She glanced around. “You could expand your foyer, maybe. Or do extended seating.”

This space hadn’t been anything other than storage in a long time. Even thinking of it differently felt weird, like he was back in time when they first bought the place. “We bought a few different parcels of this building side by side in order to convert it into a restaurant. Our original business model included a retail storefront, but we ended up not needing it. We sell all the merch right out of the foyer, and this space was just left over.” He shrugged. “We don’t need the restaurant to be any bigger than it is.”

“So you converted everything else and not this?”

“There were some weird construction issues with knocking out this wall.” He gestured to the wall where they’d come in. Figuring out those plans had been such a pain in the ass. “Plumbing and wiring or something. It was going to raise our reno budget. We decided to put it on hold until we had more capital and eventually decided it wasn’t worthwhile.” He started to leaf through his papers again.

“You own the whole building?” Hannah looked around. “What’s upstairs?”

“Event room.” Mitchell waved his arm vaguely toward the ceiling. “And I already told you we’ve got the brewery setup downstairs.” Finding the last papers he needed, he tucked them into a file folder and slipped it under his arm. When he turned to leave, though, Hannah was blocking his only clear exit. She took a large step closer, and he sat down on the desk in surprise, making her chuckle.

“Did I scare you?” She stepped closer, right up against him, eye to eye. Her expression dared him to make a move. That defiant look on her face triggered a spark inside him. Oh, Hannah. She definitely thought he was shy, didn’t she? She had no idea what he could really be like.

Hannah’s eyes widened as she saw something in his expression that she clearly hadn’t seen before. She took a hasty step back, but Mitchell was faster, reaching out to catch her wrist in his hand. When he pulled her back up to him, he watched her response: her quickening breath, the dilated pupils, the soft openness of her mouth—these were signs of fear…but Hannah definitely wasn’t afraid. He had seen this look on a few people, the ones who liked his dominance and yielded to it gladly. Mitchell didn’t even have to stand up, instead staying where he was, sitting on the edge of the desk. He tugged her closer, leading her to the space in between his legs. When he released her arm, she could have backed away, but instead she remained right where he’d brought her. Moving deliberately, he cupped the side of her face and ran his thumb across the swell of her lower lip. Hannah let out an almost imperceptible sigh, her eyelashes fluttering. He wanted to go further. He wanted to take her just like this, pin her down on this desk and have his way with her. Those noises she would make, hands gripping the edges of the desk, breath coming in gasps as he thrust into her wet heat…his cock throbbed in his pants.

“Interesting,” he murmured and made himself pull his hand away.

Hannah came back to her senses with a start. “What? What’s interesting?”

Mitchell shook his head, because they both knew and he wasn’t going to say it. “Your house tomorrow night?” Watching her respond to his dominance, tomorrow night had suddenly become an even more enticing prospect.

She nodded and took a step backward, her motions unsteady. “Nine o’clock. I’ll send you my address.”

“Sounds good.” He got back to his feet, gathering up his jacket and file folder. “I’ll walk you out.”

…

“What the fuck did you tell Hannah about me last night?” Mitchell was barely in the door of the house that night before he was already lighting into Ben. A full Crossfit workout had left his body sore but still as electrically charged as standing in the storage room with Hannah, none of the tension dissipated in the intervening time. No, his adrenaline had him just as revved up as he had been in that hormonally saturated moment.

Ben looked up from the brewing magazine he was reading. “What?” He frowned. “Nothing weird. I mentioned we were fucking, but I already told you that last night. Why? What did she say to you?”

“She wants me over her house tomorrow night.”

Ben grinned. “Oh yeah? Nice.”

“I don’t get it.” Mitchell looked down at his phone, where a text message was now displaying her address.

Ben rolled his eyes. “She wants to fuck you, Mitchell.”

Clearly. “Yeah, I got that. But…” He couldn’t explain exactly what he was thinking. In the time since his workout, his brain had begun to catalog all the ways in which she shouldn’t want him. “She literally just saw you last night.”

Ben stared at him without commenting for a minute, incredulous. “So?”

“So why didn’t she just call you again? You two already have a thing going.”

“We have a thing going? What is this, high school?” Ben tossed his magazine onto the coffee table and folded a leg beneath him. “Listen. She’s probably wanted to fuck you for a long time. She told me last night that she didn’t think you were the type of guy for casual sex. That’s probably why she never asked.”

“Oh.” He was a pretty serious guy, so that wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion. “And you told her I am?”

Ben gestured between the two of them. “Well, what do you call this?”

Mitchell had avoided defining that for a long time; when he really delved into those thoughts, they led nowhere safe. “You’re my best friend, though. It’s different.”

“If you don’t want to fuck her, tell her.” Ben shrugged. “No harm in that.”

Mitchell laughed. The way she’d looked at him at the end of the night, her eyes filled with that open, haunting vulnerability, there was no way he was turning her down, even if it probably did make more sense for her to stick with Ben. “No, I definitely want to.”

“So why the hesitation?” Ben tilted his head to the side. “Is it because you’re kind of a freak?” He smiled, no harm intended.

Mitchell shook his head and laughed, walking into the kitchen. “Fuck you.”

“I’m pretty sure Hannah’s not gonna be put off by your freakiness. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.” Ben spoke louder to be heard as Mitchell headed for the fridge. “I’ve got leftover pizza in there.”

“Hell yeah.” Mitchell carried the entire pizza box into the living room along with a can of soda.

Ben stretched out his arms along the back of the sofa. “Don’t get too attached, though, right? I don’t want to fuck up the Fall Festival partnership.”

Sure, because obviously that would be Ben’s concern. Can’t mess with business. Can’t let emotions get in the way. Heaven forbid anyone get attached.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, you know.” Mitchell slid a piece of pizza onto his plate.

“What wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world?”

“Getting attached.” At Ben’s raised eyebrow, Mitchell kept talking. “I’m just saying, it’s possible to get close to someone without everything going wrong.” Ben was still looking at him with incredulity, so he shifted his gaze to the pizza and picked off a slice of pepperoni.

After a pause, Ben made a disparaging noise. “Well, not in my experience. Not when there’s so much at stake.”

It was the closest they had come in years to talking about what came before. Neither of them brought up those days out of some tacit agreement, but Mitchell remembered what Ben was like after his marriage ended, when he seemed so broken it was impossible to believe he could ever put himself back together again. But he did, slowly, and somewhere along the way, he added walls to keep it from ever happening again. At least he didn’t seem to find friendship a threat to their business success.

Mitchell cleared his throat in the awkward silence and grabbed the remote. “Come on. Red Sox are on tonight.”