Cockney: A Stepbrother Romance (5 page)

Barney clears his throat and checks the ridiculous looking watch on his wrist, “Well, shall we decide on dinner? I’m starved.”

“Oh that sounds
lovely
honey,” My mother says, smiling and taking Barney’s arm.

Honey?
I find myself glaring at their backs as they walk way. I mean, jeez, how has this whole relationship of theirs gotten to this point without me even knowing? Was I seriously
that
wrapped up in school and my own life not to see this? And
lovely
? When the heck did my mom start using decidedly British words like
lovely
?

They’re halfway down the staircase when I turn back to a smug looking Oliver, “
What?
”

“Oh, nothing, it’s just your face right now.”

I frown. “What about it?”

“It’s so...
angry
,” he says with a chuckle.

“I’m
fine
, just jet-lag,” I mutter, stepping into my room. 

He follows, of course, and I turn to give him a look. “Okay, so you
live
here?”

“In my house? Yes, Chloe; strange I know. It must be a European thing to live in your own home.”

I roll my eyes, “No, I mean, it’s your
dad’s
house, and aren’t you like this big hot-shot chef now?”

He grins, “Hot shot, huh?”

“You know what I mean,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “Why don’t you have a place of your own?”

Oliver makes a face, “You know what rent is like in this fuckin’ city? Forget it, sweetheart. Here, I got a whole floor to myse-” He smiles thinly at me. “
Had
a whole floor to myself, with two stories between dad and me.” He grins as I give him a quizzical look before he leans into me, “Plenty of space to keep the screamers from waking him, catch me?”

I wrinkle my nose. “
Screamers?
”

“Oh
yes chef!”
He starts to moan loudly in a high-pitched female falsetto voice, “Oh
chef
, you’re so
naughty!
”

I blush bright crimson and shake my head “Okay, okay! Enough, I get it.
Jesus Christ.”

“Oh, they say that a lot too,” he says with a grin.

Cocky little shit.

“Don’t worry though, luv, I’ll try and pick you up some earplugs or something.”

“Oy!” Barney calls from the first floor, “You kids mind eating in or did you want to eat out?”

Oliver sticks his tongue out at me and curls it lewdly up and down as I make a face and look away. 

“Either one dad!” he yells, “I’m a
really
big
fan of either.”

*****

Thirty minutes later, I’m still scowling, but now I’m at least scowling with delicious Chinese food sitting in front of me.

I’m also realizing I need to wrap my head around this situation and deal with it. I mean, I’m
here
; this is happening. Whatever happens after this fall with grad school back home is something to think about, but for now, this is where I am. 

And hey, the bright side is that I’ve got a job that other up-and-coming cooks and bakers would literally kill for. I mean, I’m working in one of the hottest kitchens in London right now; that’s hardly bad luck.

So what if the chef - my boss - also happens to be my new stepbrother?

...So what if I can’t get the feel of his hungry mouth on my lips or his powerful hands on my body out of my head? Totally normal, right? I can definitely get over this and just do it; no problem at all.

I look up to see Oliver just
staring
at me, grinning as if he’s inside my head reading my very thoughts. The idea of him reading my mind bring an uncomfortable flush to my cheeks as I look down into my dumplings.

“So, you bake now.”

It’s really more of a statement than a question, and I swallow the bite of food in my mouth as I look up at him, fully ready to throw that dickish attitude right back in his face, when my mother answers for me.

“Well, Chloe’s not a
real
baker, she just-”

“
Mom,
” I say sharply, frowning at large glass of wine in her hand. It’s like we haven’t had this same conversation forty times before. “Mom, I bake, and it’s my
job
. I’m pretty sure that makes me a baker.”

“Well, it isn’t your
career
or anything,” She says, shaking her head at Barney as she takes a big sip from her glass, as if I’m some silly little girl pretending to be a princess or something.

“Um, yeah, mom. It might be.”

I’m trying, at least.

“A career working in
kitchens?
” My mother says disdainfully, as if looking at roadkill or something. 

Oliver snorts and makes a coughing sound, and she looks up at him with a whole new expression. “Oh, no offense meant Oliver, but you’re a
professional
. This is just a
hobby
for her.”

“Mom! What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean you do what you love, right?” Oliver says loudly, suddenly, interrupting the exchange. “And you happen to love cupcakes and biscuits and all that, yeah?”

I frown, not sure I like his opinion of what I do any more than my mother’s based on that tone, but I nod my head anyway. 

Oliver shrugs, “Well, it’s not like you’re working at
Jolie
for free, right?” He looks at his dad, “Wait, you
are
paying her, right?”

Barney nods. “Oh, of course.”

“Well good!” Oliver reaches down and snags one of my dumplings off my plate with his chopsticks, “So, you’re doing what you love, and being paid for it.” He shrugs. “Seems like that might make you a professional.”

He shoots me a quick wink before turning back to my mother. 

The conversation changes to movies after that.

*****

Mercifully, Oliver ducks out right after dinner to go do something at the restaurant even though it’s closed on Mondays. 

“He’s
such
a hard worker, that one!” My mother says, smiling at Barney as we clean the takeout boxes from the dining room table.

“Yeah, well, he better be,” Barney says wryly. “The Army whipped a little sense into him.”

I frown.
Oliver was in the army?

Barney continues with a shake of his head. “Still though, that boy needs to get more into work and less into trouble if you ask me.”

I excuse myself to go upstairs, and with every step, the only thought running through my head is that if Oliver 

Trouble?
I can feel the flush in my cheeks as I quickly exit the dining room. With every step, all I can think is that the only “trouble” I can see is
Oliver himself. 

He’s trouble with a cocky, troublingly-attractive smile. Trouble with inked tattoos running down his muscled arms. Arms that I’m intimately familiar with; especially how they feel wrapped around my body. 

He’s trouble with a dirty, devious, and panty-dropping mouth; one that I happen to know firsthand what it feels like to kiss.

Oliver? In trouble?
I bite my lip as I close the door to my new room behind me and lean against it and shake my head. It’s when I look up that I see that there’s a note on my pillow:

“8 am sharp. DO NOT BE LATE.”

Great
. I haven’t even started yet and I’m already getting yelled at by my boss.

My very bossy, very distractingly attractive boss.

My new stepbrother.

Yeah, no, Oliver’s not
in
trouble.

I am
, and with
that man
sleeping right next door all night and being my boss all day at work?

Yeah, I’m in big,
big
trouble.

I’m leaning against the outside wall back behind the kitchen, frowning at the cobblestone streets of London’s south bank and sipping espresso. I close my eyes as I take a sip, breathing it all in and just
loving it
.

I love the smell, the sounds and the taste of restaurants opening in the morning. This life is
not
for everyone, that’s for damn sure. Late nights, super early mornings, and all manner of drink, drugs, and sex in between. Honestly, those who cook your food might be the final great rock stars in the world, like the Stones back in the ‘70s or something. 

We might be the world’s last pirates, and I fuckin’
love it
.

I love the chaos, the threat of danger, the pressure, the burns, the cuts, the screaming maelstrom of fuckin’ chaos that somehow births something beautiful. I love that, somehow, through the utter chaos of a commercial kitchen during service, the madness can still give birth to something pure and something perfect: a meal that transcends food and becomes a fucking experience.

And that’s what I want. I want people to walk away from a meal I’ve cooked them
changed
on a visceral, fundamental level. I want to rock their world; I want that first bite of food to be a fuckin orgasm for them.
That’s
what I love about all this. I love ending the night and looking out over my field of battle in that kitchen, and knowing that I bled for the cause and won. The cause of a perfect meal.

I take another sip of the espresso and frown. What I
don’t
love is lateness. Lateness like how Chloe is already ten fucking minutes late to her first day on the job. The job I’d never have given her, truth be told. I run a fucking
machine
back there on that line, and I do
not
have time to babysit fucking
hobbyists
trying to “rough it” with the big boys in the kitchen. Fuck that. And her being late is just pissing me off even more.

I can’t have it; not in any kitchen but
certainly
not here at this one. People here need to fear me like they do their father, or a Goddamn brigadier general. 

And if she thinks I’m going to go easy on her because of our parents, or because of our...well,
history
, she’s sorely mistaken.

Oh, fuckin’ finally
. She’s coming around the corner, on her fucking cellphone of course, with a coffee. She looks up quickly, as if feeling my eyes boring into her. I sip the last of my espresso, my arms crossed over my kitchen whites as I narrow my gaze at her.

“Sorry!” She says, looking up from twitter or whatever bullshit has her late to
my
kitchen. She throws me her best “cute” wincing face.

It sort of works, even if I
hate
to admit it.

“The trains-” She shakes her head; “Sorry, I’m not used to-”

“So leave earlier.”

She shoots me a sharp look. “
Look
, I just
got here
last night, you know. It’s not like I’ve ever been to London bef-”

“So look at a map.”

She drops her jaw, her mouth going into this adorable and shocked looking “o” face. I have to suppress the urge to grin, because truth be told, I’m more interested in seeing how far I can push this girl than I am actually mad at her. Yes, lateness is something I abhor, but I’m not a fuckin’ dictator. Honestly, I’m partially amazed she’s
only
ten minutes late after trying to figure out London’s tube system on day one.