I suppose I should be grateful to Chloe for keeping my mind off Willow. After leaving Knife I take the nine-year-old to a friend’s seafood restaurant a few blocks away where we watch them handle the fish, descaling and gutting, marinating and fileting. I had regretted letting Martin talk me into the Young Chefs program the second after I had dismissively agreed to it; the last thing I needed was a babysitting job, especially with the opening of the second restaurant in Vegas. But after seeing how Willow handled the kid—and perhaps having her show me what not to do as well—I started to figure out how to get a conversation going.

Ice breaks between us as we watch the food prep, and soon, I start to realize that Chloe’s nothing like the thumb-sucking brat I’d expected. She handles the sight of fish guts like it’s nothing, and the smell only seems to intrigue her further. When she asks to try an oyster, and she slurps one down with a giant grin rather than squirming in disgust at the texture, I finally realize that we might just get along after all.

After a while, the shift dies down and the owner lends us a corner of the kitchen so I can work Chloe through different prep techniques. How to chop evenly and efficiently, how to slice and dice so that nothing on a vegetable is wasted. The different flavors from herbs and produce that can emerge even at the prep stage.

“This is boring,” she sighs after I correct her handle on the knife for the fifth time. “Do I have to do it again? I know how to cut things.”

“Sure. And most people know how to cook—but we still get paid for being the best at it,” I reply.

Reluctantly, she draws the knife a couple more times across the onion, then pouts again.

“I don’t know…” she says, musing with all the deepness of thought a philosopher might use. “I kinda like it better when it’s all uneven. It looks less like a robot cut it.”

I open my mouth, milliseconds away from delivering an expletive-ridden rant about the value of precision, about the need for perfection—the kind of rant that earned me a primetime slot on premium cable TV and millions of views online. Chloe’s been a little too professional and mature, and I’m this close to forgetting she’s just a nine year old kid and not a convict who’s used to taking orders.

But then I remember Willow, the soft way she managed to bring Chloe to her way of thinking, how she would use humor and gentleness to teach Chloe about the ingredients we browsed at the market, and instead I suppress the hotness of my blood.

I take a clove of garlic and put it in front of her.

“Chop that just like I told you, as best as you can, and then we can leave.”

Chloe stiffens and looks at the garlic with the determination of purpose.

“Do you want it crushed or sliced?” she says, and I can’t resist smiling. Maybe some of my lecturing stuck.

“What if I said I wanted it as strong as possible, without any bite or tartness?”

Chloe nods.

“Crushed,” she says, already squeezing it under the flat side of the blade.

Maybe the soft way does work sometimes.

Once our time is up and I’ve dropped Chloe back off with her supervisor, I start making a few moves around town, chasing down a few distributors, going to a meeting with my accountant that lasts way beyond the point at which it can be called torture, and then a sit-down with the new Vegas spot’s interior designer to talk color schemes and textures for the fiftieth time.

Unfortunately, none of these activities are as compelling as Chloe’s ideas about loving shellfish because she gets to keep the shells, so my mind ends up slipping back to Willow. Maybe I was a little harsh on her during that hurried conversation at Knife, but I had to put my foot down and reaffirm the boss-employee relationship again, rather than the girl-on-top one we’d established the night before. Not just for her sake, but for mine.

I could run wild with a girl like her. Spend an entire week in bed together and still feel like we’re just getting our appetites wet. Her body like a map that I’ve only just set foot on, that still has so many places to explore, so many secrets to unfold. If she wasn’t one of my chefs I’d already be planning the how, where, and when—but since she is, I still have to ask myself ‘if.’ It’s clearly not a smart move. But then again, I’m not known for my smarts. I’m known for getting exactly what I want, and doing things my way.

Memories of her in that tight dress stick themselves into my mind throughout the day with the incessant force of a catchy song, so that even as I’m listening to my accountant reel off numbers, I close my eyes and try to relive the taste of her lips.

By the time I’m done for the day my suit feels like a straitjacket, muscles tensing and skin hot with the aggression of a caged bull. I make the car roar like a beast through the cool evening, yanking it through the winding roads that lead up to my place in the Hollywood hills. I bring the car to a slide-stop at the front door, too impatient to even park it properly, and step through the long building of glass and white walls as if there’s something waiting for me. Tearing off clothes the way I’d like to do to hers, until I’m down to my boxer briefs, picking out a bottle of Pinot Blanc and opening it roughly. Wine in one hand, phone in the other, I go out to the deck and sit back on a lounger, letting the breeze off the swimming pool take the heat off my body. Slow sips from the bottle as I contemplate the L.A. skyline between my feet.

I’m barely below the neck on the bottle before I start thinking about Willow again, looking over to where Knife might be in the skyline and imagining what she’s doing right now. Working a knife with focused delicacy, sipping soup through those lips, dancing between the other chefs on those long legs, skin alive with the warmth of the grills, eyes narrowed with the determination of purpose.

I’m prickling with lust before I even realize it, even the cooling air not enough to release the pent-up tension that all these thoughts of Willow are stirring in me.

There are a million reasons why this is not a good idea for either of us. I need to nip this in the bud. I pick up my phone and flick through the messages and work notifications to get to the contacts list I keep for times like this, sucking down wine as I scroll through the names and photos.

Models with bodies that don’t need Photoshop, actresses who talk dirty enough for an X rating. Leggy brunettes and manic redheads, nymphomaniacs with every kink in the book and shy types who let it all go at once. A list of perfect women who’d be here in a heartbeat, the push of a button.

But none of them is Willow, and tonight I’d rather have nothing than settle for something less.

I drop the phone to the side and replace it with the bottle, other hand already palming the hard cock in my briefs. This time the wine doesn’t taste like wine, it tastes like her lips again, like that delicate, sensitive tongue against mine. A taste worth any price you’d put on it, worth searching half the world for.

I open my eyes to the shimmering sky blue of the pool, impossible not to imagine her being here, her long frame under that surface, flickering in the gentle lap of the water, gliding through it with the smoothness of that golden skin and the easy elegance of her movements. Difficult not to imagine those naked breasts as she emerges from the water, droplets catching the light as they trace that perfect shape, wet hair slicked back, that long neck.

Hand clutching my hard cock like a loaded weapon now, teasing appreciation of her turns to the uncontrollable desire to take her again. To lift that pool-drenched body in my imagination and lay her on the lounger, to spread her open and lick the wetness from her thighs, feeling them tremble from the cool breeze and my rough tongue. To taste her tender navel, the shiver of her stomach, the hardness of her nipples. Roll them under my tongue before sucking the full softness of her breasts. Eventually tracing a finger between her legs to reveal the path to her soul, the richest and most complex taste, the one that satisfies both of our hungers. A taste that has to be approached slowly, delicately, the tongue soft as a brushstroke, coaxing forth moans and sighs from her body. Soft, melting, and juicy, rolled and flicked, sucked and pushed, until it flowers in my mouth as her thighs shake, the sound of her helpless pleasure filling the air…

I come hard, orgasm slamming out of me, a coiled spring of tension that’s been there for too long. But even in the aftermath, as I suck down another deep gulp of alcohol, tension seeping out of my body, there’s only a little relief. Temporary and physical. The unresolved thoughts in my head still lingering—backed off into the shadows, but still there.

There’s no doubt left in my mind.

This thing inside of me isn’t going to rest until I’ve had her again.

I spend the next day in Vegas, letting everybody know how disappointed I am at the lack of progress in the new place. I have a lengthy meeting with the flooring contractor where we struggle to find a solution to the fact that she can’t source the type of travertine I requested, all to the background music of construction workers drilling in the kitchen fittings.

Just when I think I’m getting somewhat close to achieving a sense of turning the chaos acceptable, Martin comes rushing through the doors of the place, almost running between the stacked-up furniture and half-painted walls, carrying a laptop under his arm.

“Cole!” he shouts desperately, as if I’m in danger of flying away. “Glad I caught you.”

I nod to the contractor to show that we’re done and look back at the hurried man.

“Something tells me I won’t be glad, though.”

“Well…” Martin says, pushing his spectacles up his sweaty nose, “probably not.”

He might look a mess, this wiry man with black, side-parted hair that he keeps having to palm into place, but Martin’s the only person I trust to be my second-in-command. In another life, Martin would have been a fantastic chef himself, were it not for his constantly trembling hands and persistently flustered nature. It’s his nervous disposition, however, that makes him perfect for keeping things running the way I like them—Martin basically does all my worrying for me.

“It’s Holly,” Michael says, with a look of dread.

I cross my arms, preparing for the worst. “Go on…”

“Now I don’t know this for sure,” Michael says, holding his palm up as if I’m a lion he needs to placate. “I just heard this. I’m trying to get through to her now, but…she might be pregnant.”

“No. That can’t be.”

Martin gulps audibly.

“The rumor is that she went to Cancun with her ex-husband to get things working again about a month ago and…well, they worked. Too well. She’s still there, and I’m having a hell of a time getting in touch with her, but she told Kyle that she might never come back—that she might just build a new life there.”

I turn away from Martin to pace a little.

“And I’m only finding this out now? Less than three weeks before the opening?”

“Maybe she’ll come back,” Martin says, optimistically. “And we can start looking for replacements in the meantime.”

“Replace my head chef? Just like that? You think chefs like Holly grow on trees? You don’t ‘replace’ Kobe. Fuck!” I say, kicking a veiled chair into the wall. “Three years I worked with her. Three years! She knows my recipes as well as I do, and now she’s ditching the greatest opportunity of her career for long walks on the beach with a guy she already dumped once?”

“Cole…” Martin says gently.

I march back toward him, finger jabbing at the air.

“This is what happens when you trust people. Time and time again. They leave you in the lurch.”

“She might not really be stayi—”

“What is it about cooks?” I shout, the drilling stopped now, as the workers watch me pace the room in frustration, slamming my fist against a wall. “Am I the only one who respects loyalty anymore? Is everyone in this business just out for their fucking selves? Those criminals I worked with on the reality show had more integrity than most of the so-called professionals I’ve worked with.”

“Cole,” Martin soothes once again. “If she’s really not coming back, and if she can’t work, maybe we can move Michelle here for a while. She knows the ropes.”

I stop pacing to stare at Martin disdainfully.

“Michelle’s serving eight hundred eaters a week in L.A. The place is killing it—why would I jeopardize that?”

“It’s just a last resort. It would buy us time. Plus, the L.A. crew have worked together for years, they could survive without her for a little while.”

I calm down just enough to take a few deep breaths and put a grateful hand on Martin’s shoulder.

“Ok. You’re right. I’m not happy. But ok,” I say. “I’ll try to think of who we could get to fill the spot—you do the same.”

“Of course,” Martin says. “And if you don’t mind me saying so…maybe you should take the night off, go blow off some steam, you know? You staying in Vegas tonight?”

“No chance,” I say, already pulling out my phone as I head toward the door. “Releasing this kind of tension is gonna take a hell of a lot more than some slot machines, my friend.”

Luckily, I know just the thing.