Noa being smaller than me should naturally give me the upper hand in arguments. It doesn’t. Her lively, beautiful eyes darken with a tempestuous storm, and if she could, she’d put me in the middle of her exasperated hurricane. If she could destroy me with a glare, she would.
“I defended you,” I reason. “Accomplished or not, he shouldn’t speak to you the way he does.”
“Like you do?”
I rear back. “I have never disrespected you like that.”
“He’s trying to make me a better cook. What have you ever done for me?”
My face couldn’t freeze any further, but it does. “Look at me, Noa.”
It takes seconds of forced effort, but she does.
“I’m in a rented apron cleaning up food scraps in a restaurant when I should be perfecting a pharmaceutical takeover. A takeover I’m probably going to lose because I’m here, doing this, with you.”
Noa recoils. “Don’t do me any favors. Go back to your corporate underworld for all I care. I bet if I went up to Saint right now and asked if I could stay on as a single, he’d let me. You know why? Because I respect him. I listen to him.I actually like him.”
My lips peel back from my teeth as my gaze bounces between Saint and her. Sure, I refuse to acknowledge him as a human, never mind as a person with a title in my mind. But Noa calling him by his first name sends a swirl of fire into my brain so heated and so strong that I see red.
“Go try to fuck him, then,” I whisper viciously, “and see what I’m capable of if you do.”
Noa doesn’t gasp. Tears don’t sparkle in those beautiful eyes. Her mouth thins. She reaches behind her and yanks at the ties to her apron. She pulls it off, lays it on the table with the utmost care, then turns.
“Don’t you dare turn your back on me, Lavender.”
My former pet name for her stops her in her tracks, as I knew it would.
I didn’t expect a shudder of pain to caress the planes of her back. It’s enough to make me falter. My threat null.
I’m forced to watch her approach Saint and touch the back of his shoulder to get his attention. When he turns to her, she leaves her hand there, smiling at him while her strawberry-pink lips ask him a question.
I can’t hear what she says, but his answering smile is enough.
Blood clots burst in my vision. I pull at my apron’s ties, but they don’t give. I yank so hard the threads rip under the pressure.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Noa
With a rock lodged in my stomach as I picture what Stone must look like behind me, I drop my hand from Chef Toussaint’s shoulder.
“I appreciate you giving me a second chance,” I finish saying to him.
“And I’m happy to be your mentor, so long as I’m not used as a jealousy play.”
Shame inflames my cheeks until Saint softens the blow with empathetic, “I’ve had my share of passionate wildfires, and more than a few have ended in charred remains.” He looks behind him to where Stone boils to the point of overflowing. “Good luck with that one.”
I sigh, but my thoughts are far away. In the past, where they don’t belong. “I shouldn’t bring that kind of energy into the kitchen.”
“Leave it behind next time and we’ll all be just fine.”
A dangerous growl sounds out behind me, but I cross my arms defiantly, pretending to be in deep conversation with Saint.
Then my legs go out from under me.
“What—Stone!”
Breath hisses from his clenched teeth so hotly, I’m shocked not to see the fire coming out of his mouth.
