Chapter Four
Temptation had never looked so good.
Dante studied the tantalizing crepe before him. On the outside, the thin skin was pale yellow in color and dotted with bubbles of golden brown. A rich cajeta cream oozed from the ends, teasing him with a waft of caramel and cinnamon.
He slowly cut into it with his fork and licked his lips in anticipation.
And then he took a bite.
The taste was warmth and comfort all rolled into one delicious package. The crepe itself was soft and buttery, while the caramel spread had just the right amount of sweetness. Cajeta, also known as dulce de leche, had conquered him once again.
He’d never had a sweet tooth and could usually resist an offer of cake or pie. Then one day, Brandon had insisted he try the crepe when his restaurant started offering it on the menu. All of the desserts at L.A. Cuchara were baked by a local pastry chef named Amara Robles. She also just so happened to be the cousin of Brandon’s fiancée, Daisy. In his opinion, the crepe was Amara’s best creation yet.
He took another bite. Then another. And then it was gone.
Dante sipped his café con leche as he surveyed L.A. Cuchara’s busy dining room. Even at four o’clock on a Tuesday, the place was crowded. He was just about to check his emails on his phone when he felt a light slap on his back.
“Hola, amigo. Sorry to keep you waiting.” He looked up and saw Brandon taking a seat on the other side of the booth. Then he saw Alexa.
She had her hair tied up in a red bandanna. It reminded him of that Rosie the Riveter poster. She wore a black chef’s coat and skintight black leggings. They made eye contact, and he nodded at her.
What the hell was that?
It had been a full week since their, uh, talk at her house. He’d known he would see her today but hadn’t expected his reaction: instant desire. The fact that her brother was only a few feet away didn’t dim it in the slightest. Still, it wasn’t like he was going to do anything about it now. He had meant every word he’d said that night. He wanted her. Wanted to do things to her. But she had to be ready for it.
For now, they’d talk business.
“I had a chance to review the paperwork, and it’s pretty straightforward. Nick is suing Alexa for the damage to the wine bottle display and for loss of income, since he’s claiming some customers walked out without paying once the police showed up.”
Alexa let out a huge sigh and folded her arms across her chest. She clearly did not want to be there.
Brandon, on the other hand, was more animated. “I get that. What I don’t get is how the bastard thinks he can sue me. I wasn’t even in the same state,” he said, throwing his arms up in the air.
“He’s claiming that the whole incident was part of some larger business sabotage because he owns a competing restaurant. And since Alexa is part owner of L.A. Cuchara, he’s suing the Cuchara Restaurants corporation. So, technically, yes, he’s suing you, too.”
Alexa shook her head. “This is so wrong. How can he get away with this? I thought having me arrested was a dick move. This is so below the belt.”
Dante agreed. He couldn’t believe it when Brandon had called the day before to tell him that he’d been served. Brandon had thought it was a reaction to the fact that Dante had been successful in getting the charges dropped against Alexa. But the lawyer in him knew better. Nick could care less about the criminal case. The guy knew a civil case could potentially mean a big payday—and the perfect payback.
“So now what?” Brandon asked.
Dante took a breath before answering. “We can go to court or we can try to settle.”
“Settle? So we give him more than just the couple of hundred dollars he’s claiming that stupid display was worth?”
“I would meet with his lawyer and see what they want and then we make a counteroffer. We’re not just going to hand Nick everything. We’ll negotiate.”
Brandon leaned back into the booth. “Or we fight and risk losing a percentage of the restaurant to him, right?”
“Possibly. I don’t think he can prove corporate sabotage. Personally, I think we have a pretty good chance of taking this to trial.”
“See, Brandon? Dante thinks we can win. He told me he could get the charges dropped, and he did it. I think he could make this go away, too.”
She looked at him, finally. Her vote of confidence had caught him off guard, and so did her expression. Although her words were positive, her body language and shifty eyes were not.
She’s uncomfortable.
That meant she was still thinking about the other night.
And so was he.
To his credit, he’d had only the purest of intentions when he’d offered to give her the massage. It had been obvious that she was wound up, and he’d wanted to help. But then it had only taken a few seconds for him to get just as wound up for an entirely different reason. When she’d leaned back against his chest, something snapped inside him. And when she kept releasing those sexy sighs and moans, he couldn’t stop imagining her saying them while she was naked underneath him. It didn’t take a genius to realize she was imagining the same thing. Before he knew it, he was on top of her and devouring her mouth like a starving man who hadn’t realized he’d been hungry. It surprised the hell out of him that she was equally as revved up. But then she’d begged him to take her without even looking at him and he wondered what she really wanted—him or merely a distraction to get over her very bad day?
So he’d dug deep and stopped things.
And now she was embarrassed.
“Well, I guess Alex and I need to talk about what we want to do,” Brandon said, referring to his sister by the nickname he’d used since they were kids. “When do we need to make a decision?”
“Take a few days and I’ll check in with you to see where your heads are at. We have some time.”
“Sounds good. All right, I’m headed home for the day. Daisy is threatening to paint the baby’s room some pastel crap unless I go with her to look at swatches. I’ll talk to you later.”
Alexa slid out from the booth so her brother could leave. Dante expected her to follow, but she surprised him again by sitting back down. “Now that Brandon’s gone, tell me the truth,” she said. Her eyes were dark and pleading. “Do you really think we can win if we fight this lawsuit?”
“I do,” he answered. He debated whether to reach across the table to grab her hands to reassure her. But he didn’t trust himself to touch her just yet. So he kept his hands to himself. “I wouldn’t tell you something just because I think you want to hear it. I always mean what I say, and I always follow through on my promises.”
Her cheeks flushed, and he knew that she realized his words held a double meaning. He’d promised her that night at her house that he was going to be amazing at fucking her. And now they were both remembering that. The mood between them shifted. He waited for her to bolt.
“Was there something else you wanted to discuss?”
She slowly nodded. “I need to show you something. Follow me.”
Dante pulled out his wallet and tossed a couple of dollars on the table for his server. Then he grabbed his briefcase and suit jacket and followed Alexa through the restaurant.
They ended up in her office located off the kitchen. It was much smaller than Brandon’s, and more cluttered, with piles of table linens, boxes of serving platters, and assorted bottles of liquor scattered all around. She shut the door behind him.
“I got this last night,” she said and walked over to the desk to pick up her phone.
She gave it to him, and he looked down at the screen. It was a single text from an unknown phone number.
It was good seeing you again, baby. Let’s get together to talk and maybe you can convince me to drop everything.
Fury blared from every nerve. Nick.
“You didn’t answer him, did you?”
“No. If I did, my text would be there, too. I didn’t show it to Brandon, either. I figured you should see it first.”
“So I can tell you it’s okay to go talk to him?”
“Don’t say it like that. It’s not like I want to talk to him. But if it means that he’ll drop the lawsuit, then maybe I should?”
“Alexa, you know exactly what it’s going to take for him to do that. Actually, you don’t know, because there’s no guarantee he’ll do anything he says he’s going to do. You said it yourself, he’s an asshole.”
She tossed the phone back onto the desk. “I know. God, I hate this so much. I wish I’d never met him.”
“Then don’t go see him.”
“But I can’t sit around and do nothing.”
“We won’t.”
“We?”
“I’m your lawyer. This is my fight, too.”
She tightened her lips. He knew she couldn’t argue with that fact, no matter how much she probably hated to admit that she needed him.
Alexa blew out a big breath and shook her head. “I sure can pick them, can’t I?”
Although he might have told her that a few times before, he knew better than to agree with her at that moment. So he just shrugged.
She studied him for a few seconds before speaking again. “This is why me and you should just stay friends. I don’t ever want to be telling someone years from now that I wish I’d never met you.”
Irritation grated his nerves. “I’m not, nor will I ever be, Nick. I could never hurt you.”
“Of course not,” she said drily. “Brandon would kick your ass.”
“Brandon or not, I’d still treat you right because that’s what you deserve.”
She shook her head. “I think the other night was a mistake.”
He hadn’t seen that coming at all. “You know that’s not true.”
“What I know is that the two of us are too different. You want me, but it’s only because I’m a novelty. Something to break the routine between the Kimberlys of this world. But once you get what you want, the novelty will fade.”
His brain scrambled. How could she even think such a thing? How could she think that about him? He was determined to make her see that he was nothing like Nick or any of the other men who had made her feel like she could be tossed aside so easily.
Dante stepped closer so she could clearly see that he meant every word he was about to say. “Well, this is what I know. I know that there’s something between us that we need to stop denying. I’ve wanted you since I was twenty years old, and my desire hasn’t faded over time. If anything, it’s only gotten hotter. That’s not novelty. That’s fate.”
…
For a second, she wanted to jump into his arms right there and tell him that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Even more, in fact.
She wanted to tell him that she hadn’t been able to forget what it felt like to have his tongue in her mouth and his erection pressed against her thigh. That she’d thought about it every night since and that she cried out his name every time she came against her own hand.
Then Nick had texted her and made her realize that she was being reckless again—with her body and her heart.
“I’m trying to be less impulsive,” she confessed.
He narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m trying very hard not to let my emotions get the best of me, especially when it comes to guys. Jumping into bed with you for a quickie isn’t a good idea right now.”
His expression darkened. “Oh, my sweet Alexa. I’m not looking for a onetime hookup. I’ve waited too damned long for you. One time won’t nearly be enough.”
Again, his words shocked her. She liked this side of him. Blatant. Demanding.
“No, it would never work.”
He inched even closer. She tried to step away from him, but there was nowhere to go. He’d backed her up against her bookcase. “I scare you, don’t I? That’s why you’ve been running away from me. You only go for guys who are safe.”
She laughed. “Safe? Really? How are guys who’ll cheat on me or steal from me safe?”
Dante lowered his head and searched her eyes. She told herself to look away, but she couldn’t. “Because those guys already have one foot out the door. And when they leave—or you leave them—it won’t hurt as deep because you never fully invested your heart in the first place.”
Again with the analyzing and judging. Irritation bubbled to the surface. How dare he pretend to understand anything about her?
“If that’s true—if you really think I purposefully go after guys who I know aren’t good for me—then why did I let you kiss me that night after the party?”
She expected a more surprised reaction than the one she got. Instead, Dante only shrugged. “If memory serves me correctly, you’re the one who ended things when we were just getting started. I was into you, Alexa. Deep. You were the one who pushed me away.”
“Only because I realized we didn’t belong together,” she said.
She’d met Dante when they were both eighteen and Brandon brought him to Puerto Rico for the summer after their freshman year at NYU. But it took two more years before she finally saw him. She remembered the moment as clearly as if it had happened the day before. Already working as a cook in her tío’s taqueria, Alexa had used the family dinner table for experimentations with recipes she’d wanted to introduce at the restaurant. One night, during the third summer of Dante staying with them, she’d cooked some random stew made with oysters and paprika. Lots of paprika. While Brandon and her mami had only taken a couple of spoonfuls before getting up from the table in search of something else to eat, Dante had sat there until he’d finished every last drop. She hadn’t thought much about it until later that night when she passed by Brandon’s bedroom door and overheard them talking about the soup.
“I can’t believe you actually ate it,” her brother had said at the time.
“Why? It was good,” she had heard Dante respond.
“Bullshit. You only ate it because you have a crush on my sister and you wanted to make her happy.”
She’d covered her mouth in shock and then had crept closer to the door to hear more. Dante had denied it at first. But after Brandon confronted him with evidence of supposed long looks and overenthusiastic laughs at her jokes, he’d admitted the truth.
Then a few days later, after a party they’d held at her house, they’d finally kissed.
Alexa touched her lips at the memory, and then she remembered Dante was standing in front of her just like he’d done that night.
“How could you know that we didn’t belong together, Alexa? We were only together for a couple of weeks.”
And they had been an intense couple of weeks, too. So intense that one night they’d nearly had sex. The only reason they’d stopped was because Brandon had come home early from a date. They’d made plans to finish what they’d started the next night. Instead, they broke up and Dante left for New York the following day.
He never really knew why she put the brakes on everything. It was time to tell him.
She looked down at her feet. “It was because of the beach.”
“What?”
“Remember, the day your friends arrived from New York and you wanted to take them to that spot on the beach where we’d been hanging out?”
“I remember,” he said quietly.
“At first it was fun. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. Then the conversation switched to classes and professors and internships—things that I couldn’t even relate to. And there was this one girl who you were trying to teach how to surf and she kept hanging on you and—”
His hand touched her cheek, and she lifted her head to look at him. “She was just a friend. She didn’t mean anything to me.”
The words warmed her, but they still didn’t take away the lingering pain from what she was about to admit.
“I know. But then she invited your whole group to go to her parents’ house in the Hamptons over Labor Day and asked if you could finish teaching her how to surf there. You didn’t even hesitate and said okay. And all of it—the talk about school and the Hamptons—reminded me that I was the only person there who wasn’t going back with you to New York when the summer was over.”
“Alexa—”
She held up her hand. “Up until that moment, for some reason, I believed you were going to be different from the other guys I’d been with. You know, the ones who spent their summers and spring breaks in Puerto Rico, too. Daddy’s money allowed them to stay at the most expensive resorts. But eventually, they’d grow bored and want to explore the ‘real’ island, ending up in my tío’s restaurant so they could try local cuisine like mofongo and fried plantains. And sooner or later, a night out with a local girl like me also seemed like the perfect souvenir from their tropical vacation.”
He shook his head. “That’s why you broke up with me later that night? Because you thought I’d just leave Puerto Rico and forget about everything that had happened between us?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It wasn’t like you were going to quit college and become a dishwasher in our restaurant. And there was no way I was going to get a scholarship to NYU when I had only graduated high school by the skin of my teeth.”
Dante reached out to hold her face. “We could’ve made it work, Alexa. But you didn’t trust in me. You didn’t trust us.”
She closed her eyes, fighting back the tears that threatened to expose her crumbling resolve. Her throat tightened and she couldn’t respond, even if she knew what to say.
“Trust us now,” he whispered just before his mouth covered hers. Her palms flattened against his chest in an earnest attempt to push him off. Instead, all she could do was shudder as his tongue broke through the seam between her lips. Her thoughts jumbled. Her knees weakened. One of his hands slipped between them and cupped her breast through her chef’s coat. In that moment she hated her coat, hated that its thick fabric was getting in the way of feeling his touch on her bare skin. The kiss became more fervent, and she forgot that she wasn’t supposed to let him know how much she enjoyed being claimed by him.
Because that’s exactly what he was doing.
His lips trailed down to the side of her neck, and he drew slow, small circles with his tongue over her skin. Then he sucked hard on the spot where her neck met her shoulder, eliciting delicious pleasure. Finally, he bit down. An exquisite pain sent flames of heat straight to her core. Her fingers curled, and she tugged at his shirt, desperate for him to devour her even deeper. So when his knee nudged her legs apart, she didn’t question it. She opened to him.
With a groan, he pressed himself between her thighs. “Do you feel that? That’s how much I fucking want you. How much I’ve always wanted you,” he whispered between their openmouthed kisses. “Give in to this, Alexa. Tell me you’re ready for us to happen.”
Lust pooled in her belly. His words were as scathing as his touch. Every nerve in her body buzzed with anticipation and wanton ache. Although she’d always been attracted to Dante, what she felt now was so beyond that. And that worried her.
Slow this down. Think.
Even if she’d been wrong to end things so quickly when they were younger, it didn’t mean that they should be together now. This attraction—this lust—could go away tomorrow. He’d said he didn’t want a one-night stand, yet he wasn’t asking her out to a movie, either.
She needed to know exactly what he wanted. She pulled her head back and focused on his chin, afraid of what she’d see if she looked into his eyes.
The ringing of her office phone saved her from having to think about that possibility. “I better get that,” she said but didn’t move.
He sighed. “Go ahead and answer your phone. But don’t think you’re going to get out of giving me an answer next time.”
She slid out from the tight space between him and the bookcase and walked around her desk to reach the phone before it stopped ringing. When she picked up the handset, she glanced up to see Dante’s back as he left her office.
His words, however, clung to her as tightly as his hands had minutes before.
Two hours later Alexa still couldn’t shake what Dante had said. And what he’d done with that mouth of his.
A knock at her door interrupted her thoughts before they turned X-rated. It was her new sous chef, Gabriel.
“I’m ready to get started on the prep work. You have your list ready?”
“Just about. Let me take one more look before I head out to the farmers’ market,” she answered and started reviewing her checklist.
Peel and devein shrimp for ceviche.
Boil the yucca.
Shred chicken for the empanadas.
Sleep with Dante.
Oh, Lord, had she really written that? She blinked a few times and scanned her list again. Alexa let out a breath when she realized she hadn’t—it was just her mind drifting again to Dante’s proposition. She wanted to kick herself for allowing him to invade her thoughts while she was trying to work.
She glanced one last time at her list to make sure Dante’s name wasn’t anywhere on it and then handed it to Gabriel. “That should be everything. Thanks for taking care of things while I’m gone.”
Gabriel told her he was happy to help and then headed back to the kitchen.
Two hours later, while shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables at her favorite organics stand, Alexa was still trying to push thoughts of Dante far from her mind.
“Ms. Alexa, how are you?”
She turned to see the stand’s owner, Mr. Owen, smiling at her from behind a crate of bananas.
“I’m super. How’s business today?”
He shrugged. “Can’t complain. Hey, did you smell the mangoes yet? They’re as sweet as honey. Let me cut one open for you.”
Alexa nodded and smiled. She’d been buying produce from Mr. Owen’s farm stand since she’d moved to L.A. Back then, she could barely afford a couple of oranges and a stalk of broccoli. These days she bought by the truckload. And that earned her a free mango now and then.
As she waited for Mr. Owen to return with her treat, she noticed a man at the next stand over talking loudly with the young woman who seemed to be working it. He was saying something about her overcharging him for some nuts. Just when she thought he was acting ridiculous over something that could have been an honest mistake, she noticed a second man on the other side of the stand shoveling packages of dried fruit and chocolates into a backpack.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Hey, he’s stealing from her!”
Without thinking, Alexa dropped her canvas bags and ran toward the thief. His panicked eyes met hers, and he took off running in the opposite direction. But not before throwing the backpack straight into her chest and knocking her on her ass.
Mr. Owen and a security guard helped her to her feet.
“Did he get away?” she asked after dusting herself off.
The guard said the man with the backpack had disappeared but they’d caught his accomplice—the one who’d been trying to distract the stand worker.
“I can’t believe you went after him,” Mr. Owen said.
“Yeah, you’re lucky he didn’t have a knife or a gun. Be glad he just threw a backpack at you,” the security guard said.
What was with his tone? She thought she’d get a pat on the back from the guy, not a scolding.
“I guess I wasn’t thinking,” she admitted.
The guard shook his head. “Well, next time, make sure that you do. Okay?”
As Mr. Owen helped her load the rest of her purchases into the restaurant’s delivery truck, he couldn’t stop talking about how lucky she’d been.
“I don’t even want to think of how things could have ended up differently,” he told her.
And he was right. She wanted to kick herself for going after the thief. What if he hadn’t run? Would she have tackled him to the ground?
But the big question, the one that nagged at her the rest of the night, was why she kept doing things without thinking them through first.
The other day she’d nearly fired a vendor because he’d arrived two hours late with his delivery. Luckily, Gabriel had stepped in and found out that the man’s wife had been in an accident. Her impulsiveness had nearly cost her hundreds of dollars and a good vendor.
This time it could’ve cost her much more.
Her staff and her customers deserved better. She knew she needed to be more responsible. More thoughtful. Brandon once told her that he worked so hard because he wanted his restaurants to be sustainable. He wanted the people working for him to always count on having a job to come to every day. She knew now what he’d meant. The restaurant business was not for the fainthearted. She recently read in some article that more than half of new restaurants in Los Angeles failed within their first five years. Theirs had been open for almost three. She and Brandon owed that to their team.
Now Nick’s lawsuit threatened to make L.A. Cuchara just another statistic. How could she have let things with him get so out of hand?
She remembered his text.
Didn’t she owe it to Brandon, to the L.A. Cuchara staff, to at least try to make the lawsuit go away? Guilt rushed through her again. She should’ve convinced her friends to pick another restaurant. Then that horrible night would have never happened.
Images of Dante pressing her body into her couch as he kissed her all over flashed before her eyes. Wishing away that night would also mean she’d regretted what had happened between them.
Did she?
Almost immediately she decided that she didn’t. But it wasn’t that easy.
And if she took things farther with him, there was a good chance he’d drop L.A. Cuchara as a client if it all went south. His friendship with Brandon could also suffer. She couldn’t risk that—no matter how good his lips had felt on her body.
She had to be a responsible adult who made responsible decisions from now on.
In her mind, Alexa started a new checklist of things she needed to do tomorrow. First, she was going to call Nick and try to convince him to drop the lawsuit.
Second, she was going to tell Dante that she was never going to sleep with him.