The dinner rush slammed the kitchen. I juggled two orders of the house special, one of which went to a serious food critic and the other to her husband, when one of the servers poked his head into the kitchen with a grin. "Chef?"
I didn't look up from plating the braised lamb. "Yeah?"
"A guest wants to speak with you."
Shit. I wiped my hands off on my apron and gestured for Jake to take over, thinking only of that damn critic. If she didn't like us, we'd be dead in the water for at least a couple of months. Despite Carter saying we made a lot more money than I thought, I didn't trust it. Didn't trust the numbers. We weren't a success yet. At least, we weren't enough of a success.
I chewed my lip and followed him out of the kitchen, noting the smiles on the staff's faces but not registering what they had to be so pleased about — I snapped, "Mind that béarnaise, and if you burn the béchamel, you're washing dishes for a week" over my shoulder as the door swung shut.
The dining room bustled with activity, conversation and laughter and clinking dishes filled it with a happy noise. I remembered what Benedict told me about how special it was to feed people, how intimate a gift. It made me smile as I wiped my hands over and over on my towel, a nervous habit from school I still hadn't broken.
But instead of stopping at the food critic's table, the waiter led me to the round table near the front where three men sat. I folded my arms over my chest and tried to scowl as the server giggled and disappeared, his mission complete, and I whacked Benedict with my towel. "And what the hell do you want?"
"It was him," the lawyer said, laughing, and pointed at Logan.
"I'm too busy for this silliness," I said. I pointed at the kitchen behind me but couldn't hide a stupid smile that seemed to take up permanent residence on my face whenever Logan was around. "I have meals to prepare. There's a very special guest here tonight, and we have to make a good impression."
"I just had a question about my steak," Logan said, low and slow and with his eyes half-closed.
Fuck. That. I leveled a glare at him. "Don't —"
"Come here." He peered at the steak. "I thought I saw something on it."
"You're full of shit." But I edged around the table, within his reach, and gave Edgar a look. "I thought you were supposed to keep him in line?"
The security chief shrugged and threw his hands in the air. "I'm only one man."
The moment I was close enough and distracted by the steak, which really did have something strange next to it, Logan captured me around the waist. Drew me into his lap as I squawked and flailed, and he kissed me to silence. There were a few whistles and claps from our regular clientele, who'd all witnessed similar interactions over the past few weeks. I refused to admit how happy it made me that Logan couldn't keep his hands off me. The moment I got within a few feet of him, he had to touch me — had to hold my hand, or brush my neck, or kiss my cheek. He gave me goosebumps every time.
Logan looped his arms around my waist. "Seriously. There's something on my steak."
Despite that my stomach clenched at the feel of his hard thighs under mine, I frowned at the plate. Then moved the steak with his fork and saw... a ring. A simple platinum band with an enormous diamond. A diamond. An odd sound, maybe a croak, escaped my throat.
Logan kissed my neck, moving me to his chair as he went to one knee, murmuring, "I wonder how that got there."
My vision blurred until I couldn't see anything — and certainly not that gorgeous ring. And Logan held my hand as cheers erupted from the restaurant and the kitchen, and he said beautiful, wonderful things that I only half-heard, too stunned to do or say anything as he held up the ring and asked me to marry him.
I could only nod, crying and laughing as he put the meat-scented ring on my finger and then rose, lifted me up in a tight embrace and spun me around. And kissed me until the world blurred and I didn't give a shit about the dinner rush. He held me up as my knees wobbled and I almost fell, pressing my face against his chest. His head bent so he could whisper through the din of the celebrating restaurant. "You can make my steak any way you want, Natalia, as long as it's forever. Say it's forever."
"Forever," I said, and kissed him back.
Then Benedict and Edgar and Carter and Atticus broke out magnums of champagne for the entire restaurant, announcing the meals were on the house to celebrate, and the toasts went on for what seemed like hours, until I was twirly-headed and dazzled and so in love I almost couldn't stand. And Logan was there to support me when I needed it, and he let me shine when the critic came to congratulate me and offer her compliments on the food. The entire night passed in a blur, and most of the next day passed in a haze of champagne and strawberries and chocolate and sex.
The restaurant got a hell of a write-up in the paper, and not even Logan could get reservations in under a month. Luckily, we kept a table in the kitchen just for family.
