Seared Read online

  Seared

  Master Chefs, Book One

  Suleikha Snyder

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  About the Author

  Praise for Suleikha Snyder’s Books

  Copyright

  Dedication

  I’m pretty sure this book wouldn’t exist without Regina Small, who believed in it from the get-go despite her militant stance against stepbrother romances (“Leave your house to date!” she advises). Thank you, too, to my agent Courtney Miller-Callihan and my dear friend Elizabeth Kerri Mahon for their invaluable feedback and endless support for my banana-pants ideas.

  The German soap angle wouldn’t exist without Verbotene Liebe‘s Tom Chroust, Jo Weil and Thore Schölermann—and thank you to Shveta Thakrar for coming up with the name! And, of course, I have to shout-out to Gordon Ramsay and Paul Rudd.

  Chapter One

  I hadn’t seen him in years. Ten years, to be exact. And my palms were sweaty, my cheeks warm. I felt sixteen again, gawky and standing in the doorway waiting for one precious glimpse of him. But this time I wasn’t leaving, shuttled off to boarding school without a second thought. This time, I was coming home. For good.

  Would he know me? Would he remember us? The stupid questions had plagued me during each interminable hour from Cologne to New York and practically beaten me in the 40-minute cab ride to this trendy Hell’s Kitchen gastropub. But, then, he’d always wanted to cause me pain...even if he’d never said so aloud. And I’d been so willing, so needy for it, until it all got taken away from me. Until his rules were superseded by our parents’ rules and then the school’s. By the time I went to university, I’d almost convinced myself that the summer where everything changed between us was a dream. Something to cherish but never repeat.

  Yet here I was. Under the bell at Calanais, the multiple Michelin-starred restaurant headed by celebrity chef Lachlan Christie. And I didn’t just want a repeat. I wanted a do-over. One where we both got what we wanted and reveled in it.

  “Excuse me?” The narrow-hipped host looked down his equally narrow nose at me. I hadn’t even registered his appearance at my side, but now he loomed tall and ruler-thin, ready to slap down against my unruly palm. “We’re closed. We don’t open for another twenty minutes.” He tilted his head meaningfully toward the sidewalk and not the elegant, intimate bar area just a few feet away.

  “You shouldn’t unlock the doors if you’re not open.” The tart response was out before I could stop it. I could hear the harsh edges of my three years in Germany in the words. Judging by the host’s wide green eyes and stiff, stick-up-his-butt posture, he’d heard the edges, too. Well, in for a penny and all that. “I’m here to see Lachlan,” I said, imperiously drawing myself up to my full height of 5’4 in heels-and-fuck-you.

  He snorted. “You and everybody else, sister.”

  I couldn’t hold back the laugh. Oh, this glorified waiter with model-perfect hair and Broadway dreams didn’t know the half of it. “Lachlan will see me,” I assured, adding the magic words: “We’re family.”

  The host’s eyebrows went sky-high in disbelief. Yeah, I know, I thought as he sized me up. We looked nothing alike. I was petite and dark, whereas Lachlan was, well, Lachlan. “Just tell him Naya’s here,” I snapped as authoritatively as I could. A whip-crack. The kind of order Lachlan had become famous for while I was still earning my degree in screenwriting.

  Lachlan was infamous. He ran his kitchen like a dominant’s playroom, demanding perfection and complete obedience. Mistakes could get you harangued on national television, but the corrections....oh, those were what brought in the female viewers, and no doubt his customers, too. His voice would drop to an intense, husky, whisper as he told his sous chef or his contestant how to fix their error. He put everything into those directions, his utter disappointment and his hope that you could and would do better. And who didn’t want to please him as a result? To follow each of his instructions to the letter?

  “Open your mouth, Naya. Taste it. Tell me what you feel.”

  “I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”

  I looked down to find my hands shaking. I quickly wrapped them around the straps of my shoulder bag—my only luggage; the rest would arrive from Cologne tomorrow, neatly delivered to the Brooklyn brownstone my mother had called home since her divorce.

  On some level, I could blame her for all of this, for every step I’d taken to get here. But that was a box I didn’t want to open today...or ever, really. Not when I’d come so far. Not when I could look down the length of the restaurant—deeper than it was wide—and see the doors to the kitchen swinging. Was that a bright, ginger-blond head I spied in the pass-through? My heart thumped. Just a flash of him in real life was as arresting as his full presence on TV. Not that I had two seasons of his show in my Netflix streaming queue or anything.

  Then, the kitchen doors swung again and there he was.

  Lachlan Christie, live and in person.

  Across the room but so magnetic I could, and would, snap to him in an instant.

  At first glance, Lachlan was built like a boxer, stocky and firm. The V-line of his torso tapered to a footie player’s thighs and a butt that, if memory served, was nothing short of spectacular. They could probably Michelin-star that ass. His chef’s jacket was buttoned with military precision, but his sleeves were pushed up past his elbows. A stupid thing to focus on, a dear stupid thing, but I was saving his face for last.

  Oh, how I’d missed his face. It was lined now, with age and character and stress. A little red from, no doubt, bending to check things bubbling and boiling on the stove. And there was a shadow of beard along his jaw. I’d never seen him anything but clean-shaven, and I could guess that it would grow in far darker than the hair on his head. But his eyes were unchanged, and his mouth still fought smiles like a knockout was imminent. He was a thousand times more handsome at thirty-one than he’d been at twenty-one.

  “You never laugh, Lock.”

  “Then make me laugh, darling.”

  Calanais, only moments ago a small and claustrophobic space, was suddenly gargantuan. As if the distance between us was miles. But he didn’t speed up, and I couldn’t move. I was fixed to one spot. My black stilettos had practically fused to the polished hardwood. I could feel every bead of sweat trickling down the back of my black silk blouse, hear each of my breaths like they were ratcheting wheezes. Oh, God. What was I doing here?

  He’d never tried to call me. Never emailed. Never even visited when I was home on holiday. Maybe he would deny me now, too. Gesture me to the sidewalk with the rest of the hoi-polloi. Demand I make a reservation. Tell his snobby employee that I was never to darken the doors of his precious gastropub again. I ran the scenarios, scripted them, block
ed them and—

  “Naya.”

  Somehow, suddenly, there were only inches between us, and I hadn’t noticed. I’d been so busy with the negatives and the doubts that I’d ceased to be aware of my surroundings. But now he filled my vision, blocking out the light and everything else. All I saw, all I knew, was his spotless white coat, his sharp blue eyes. “Naya,” he said again, naming me, acknowledging me, in that crisp, Scots-accented English. “What the fuck are you doing here? Are you really home?” He sounded like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, like he was as stunned as I was. “Have you really come back to me?”

  I had only two words for him.

  Two words I’d practiced for ten years.

  “Yes, Chef.”

  * * *

  “Yes, Chef.” The words were as soft as buttercream. Just as sweet. For a moment they were all he could register. He’d heard them so many times in his dreams, said in so many ways. Murmured from beneath him. Gasped out, hoarse and distant, from the reaches of sub space.

  She was home. Her. Sweet Naya. All grown up. From the moment he’d stepped out of the kitchen he’d felt her. Known her. Like called to like, even after all this time. And up close, finally close again, he was just as slayed. The pretty sprite of a teenage girl he remembered had become a beautiful woman. Her black hair was swept back from her face in a sleek up-do. Bold makeup outlined her wide hazel eyes and lush mouth. She was dressed from head to toe in black, equal parts continental and quintessential New Yorker. But in her voice, oh, there was the familiarity. The whisper. The need.

  Was it only seconds that stretched by or hours? Lachlan didn’t know. He wanted to savor this moment sip by sip like an ounce of Lagavulin opened up with a few drops of water.

  But he couldn’t, of course. Because she wasn’t a tumbler of single-malt and they weren’t alone. “Welcome back,” he said, with proper familial warmth when he realized his GM had materialized behind them. Likely checking that he hadn’t left his celebrity boss with a deranged stalker or undercover paparazzo. Davis was a snotty little shit, but he was ruthless and efficient—exactly the qualities Lachlan valued in his floor staff. No doubt he’d tried to show Naya the door. That was unacceptable, and the sooner Davis was educated on the error of his ways, the better.

  “Davis, the next time Naya comes calling, bring her straight to me. No delays. No fucking around.” And just for the pleasure of seeing the boy squirm, he added, “She’s my sister.”

  Naya tipped back her head and laughed, exposing the pale brown column of her throat. “Stepsister,” she corrected even as he imagined a chain of blue-black finger marks decorating her flesh. “Barely that anymore,” she explained to his gobsmacked manager, her gentle and promising tone replaced with brisk, business-like consonants. “My mother and his father have been split up for the better part of a decade.”

  “Didn’t stop you from keeping the name, now, did it?” Lachlan pointed out. It gave him a perverse sort of pleasure that she hadn’t changed back to her mother’s maiden name or that of her long-out-of-the-picture father. Ten years apart, but there were some ties that still bound them no matter what.

  “It’s a good name. Christie. Short. Easy to spell. Easy to pronounce.” She regarded him coolly, the initial heat of reunion, of memory, momentarily banked. It was not for public consumption, not for Davis’ prying eyes. “People either associate me with a famous auction house or a hotshot TV chef with his own line of cookware at Target. Either way, it’s a win.”

  A win. He’d lost her once, and now she’d returned to him. This was a win. “Go away,” he found himself telling Davis, complete with a dismissive hand gesture. “Sister dear and I have a lot of catching up to do before the evening dinner rush.”

  The GM opened his mouth to protest, but then thought better of it. One dressing down was usually enough. He nodded tightly, gave Naya one more incredulous look, and then vanished into the back.

  Once they were alone, he closed the remaining inches between them, swept her into a hug. Yes. This was what he’d been waiting to do, what he’d been needing to do, since the moment he saw her again. Sense memory couldn’t compare. Pictures weren’t enough. Touch was everything. She still fit perfectly against him, her head tucking beneath his chin and her arms slipping around his waist. She smelled like rosewater and peppermints and felt like a sensual week spent in bed wearing nothing but skin and sweat.

  “Are you finally going to kiss me?” Her coy question was hot and damp against his collar, practically steaming it stiff.

  “No, darling,” he said in a dark growl no camera or microphone would ever capture for the masses. “I’m finally going to make you scream.”

  Chapter Two

  It was a simple hug. And it wasn’t. I could feel Lachlan in every part of me, as sure and as firm as his promise to make me scream. Strength. Security. Time and distance falling away as we breathed each other in and catalogued everything that had changed. He’d filled out, grown taller. But he still smelled like oranges and ginger and wood fire. He still made me want a thousand wicked things. When he released me, giving my cheek an affectionate and brotherly pat, my body still burned. I’d flirtatiously asked about a kiss, he’d answered with so much more.

  “I’m ready, Lock.”

  “No. You’re not ready, and neither am I.”

  “But I want to. I want to do everything you ask.”

  “You’re going to wreck me, love.”

  “I want that, too.”

  We’d been so young. I’d been so young. Barely able to parse the scandalous sex advice in the issues of Cosmo my mother stockpiled next to her cookbooks. Scrunchies? Ice cubes? What? Never mind the nuances of power exchange, submission or pain play, which Lachlan may have dabbled with but never, ever put into words. Now, things were different. Now I knew my own mind, and my own needs. The simple, harmless, dominance games he’d taught me during our year of innocent, coltish, play...they were more than just potential now. Master and servant. Dom and sub. Oh, wouldn’t he be surprised by how much I’d learned in London, in Berlin, in Cologne?

  “When did you get in?” he asked. Concern and curiosity wrapped in command, just like with his question of what the fuck I was doing here.

  “Barely two hours ago,” I answered automatically. “I came directly from JFK.”

  Every time I came back to visit, it got harder. Especially since my new home was a country very, very aware of its fascist past, and the ones I’d grown up in were still coming to terms with what they’d wrought in the present. I was, more than ever, conscious of my skin, my hair, the inflections in my voice as I navigated Customs and Immigration. My British passport, my U.S. driver’s license...I had all of the documentation, but what I really wanted to say to the person stamping my papers was, “My real home is Lachlan Christie. Turn on the TV, and you’ll probably see his face.”

  And now here we were: making small talk. Like there weren’t so many big things to say, to do. It was absurd, but I went through the motions as he took me by the elbow and gave me the nickel tour. The cute little bar with padded leather barstools and purse hooks. The black tables and matching banquettes. Everything was classic and understated yet solid, like Lachlan himself. He’d taken as much care with Calanais as he did with every dish he cooked. And everyone he loved.

  “The menu is a combination of UK comfort food and New American,” he was saying in that crisp, authoritative way. I didn’t tell him that I’d already looked up the menu online, voraciously read every rave review. Because I did love hearing him speak, even if it was of nothing consequential.

  I’d lain awake so many nights wishing for one call. One more order. One more thing I could do for him. One more dose of his voice. Was he indulging me with it now or torturing me? Each scenario was equally likely. Even when I was just sixteen, he’d loved making me wait. Trying one of his new recipes? Not until I’d done all my homework. A present from a French chocolatier? Only if I sharpened each blade in his knife block to glea
ming and they passed his inspection. A sip of his favorite cabernet? “Your mum would kill me if she found out. But alright. Open your mouth, Naya. Taste it. Tell me what you feel.” I’d felt too much. I still felt too much.

  Minutes ticked by, the tour continued, and any continental poise and polish that the trans-Atlantic airplane flight hadn’t scrubbed away was hanging in shreds. “Lock.” I put a decade’s worth of frustration into the nickname only a few in his inner circle dared use. I’d been in that circle once. Did I belong there now? “I flew eight hours to get here.”

  He stopped walking, pivoted and turned. The icy paleness of his gaze left no question of what he thought of my complaint. That it was beneath me. Beneath us. And would not be tolerated. “I waited a lifetime. You will be patient.” Whip-crack. It left behind the most beautiful sting. He soothed the invisible mark with the brush of his thumb against my nape. “All good things, Naya. All good things.”

  I don’t want the good ones, I wanted to tell him. I’d had enough of that with fumbling uni boys and backpacking tourists looking for a bit of fun. I’d done the dates. I’d done hanging round the pub. I’d gone to clubs and balls and tennis matches. None of it mattered. None of it came close. I was twenty-seven, desperately horny and in need of a goddamn spanking. A fucking, too. One that only he could provide.

  I didn’t care about propriety. I didn’t care about how or where we’d left things, or that talking about his menu was the first real conversation we’d had in ages. I’d waited long enough. “Lachlan, now,” I pleaded, making a fist and pushing at him.

  “Naya. Stop.” He pulled at me, taking me back into his arms and calming me with the rub of his calloused hands up and down my spine. As if I were a bread dough that needed kneading. “Shhh,” he whispered against my hair. “Just a little longer. Hours, really. Tonight and then tomorrow.”

  “Why not now?” Maybe ten years hadn’t passed. Maybe I was still sixteen and willful and petulant. Maybe I would still need to be sent away. “Is this all some sort of mistake? Do you not want to do this? Are you putting me off so you can let me down easy later?”