I followed them. Pierre—he introduced himself again when I referred to him as “the cook”—plucked one of the menus from beside the stove and shoved it into her hands. He didn’t have a clue that she was my wife, and I wanted to keep it that way. To find out whether she really knew what she was doing.

I wanted her out of the house, but not at the expense of giving my customers food poisoning.

Pierre stabbed at the menu with his oily finger, leaving a stain on the parchment as he pointed at one of the dishes. I couldn’t help but notice it was the most expensive, long-titled entrée on the menu. A fucking trap if I ever saw one. My eyes narrowed in annoyance, but I didn’t move. Just took out a toothpick from my breast pocket and placed it between my lips, rolling it from side to side with my tongue.

“Roasted venison loin, grains, parsnip puree and sauce poivrade.” His smile was triumphant.

Sparrow turned her gaze to him, not a muscle in her round, freckled face flinching. “It takes about three and a half hours to make this dish,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“I have time,” the chef hissed, nostrils flaring.

A sudden, unexpected urge to cut the son of a bitch to tiny pieces washed over me, but I leaned against one of the steel counters instead, looking both bored and content. “So do I.”

She looked between us like this was a conspiracy, but threw her red mane behind her shoulder and shrugged off our attitude. “Better get started, then.”

Sparrow got down to business straightaway. She almost flipped Pierre the finger when he sarcastically offered her an apron. I watched as she filled up the empty station he assigned her with the ingredients she needed. Her movements were swift and confident as she got comfortable and found everything she needed. I knew the chef set her up with an unfair task. He just gave her the name of the dish and hoped she’d fuck up. But by the look on his face every time she ran from side to side, holding carrots, beef stock and bay leaves, I had a feeling this girl knew her way around the kitchen, much to his dismay.

While I watched her cook, I suddenly realized it was her art. The pan was her canvas, the ingredients her paint. She cooked with fire in her eyes, with passion in her soul, with love in her heart.

Occasionally she’d wipe her forehead with her milky-white, freckled arm and smile apologetically, probably thinking she looked like a mess.

But she was wrong. This was a much-needed reminder that Red was kind of hot, in her own quirky way, anyway.

Like the way she curled the tip of her tongue on her upper lip when she concentrated. Something about it made me so hard I almost shoved her against the stove and proved to her just how much we could enjoy each other’s company. Or the way my wallflower suddenly became the center of the room, working the hardest without calling attention to herself or rambling about it. She glowed. Corny as it sounds, she fucking glowed.

“Hey, can you fetch the red wine from over there?” she asked at some point, running between one point of the kitchen to the other. I was so taken aback by her request, I felt almost offended.

“No, I cannot,” I answered evenly. “Can you not overstep your fucking bounds? You’re here auditioning for a job.”

“Someone’s on that special time of the month,” she grinned, grabbing the wine bottle by its neck.

“Just do your thing, Red.”

“O-kaaaay,” she drawled, still wiggling her ass to an inaudible tune in her head. “So just look over the pan and make sure the olive oil’s not overheating while I get the bottle opener.”

She finished making the dish a little after the restaurant closed for the night. Her red hair was everywhere—face, neck, sticking to her forehead—and Cat’s dress looked like she had just lost a food fight. But she looked happy, and that’s a look I’d never seen on her face before.

I ordered Pierre to follow me to one of the black leather banquettes, where he poured us both red wine while she served the food.

“Gentlemen.” She couldn’t contain her wide beam as she presented us with the plates, repeating the name of the dish and finishing off with a little bow. “Enjoy your meal.”

We both picked up our silverware and stabbed into the food. The minute I shoved the fork into my mouth, I was done for.

Yeah, she was that good.

I knew Pierre thought so, too, by the way his mouth hung open halfway through his bite, looking up at her with hate-filled eyes.

“Too salty,” he gritted through his teeth.

“Bullshit,” I sneered. “It’s excellent.”

Her gaze bolted to me, her face opening up with something sincere I probably didn’t deserve. She was just as surprised as I was by my compliment. “You think?”