Play Me (4 page)

“Sure.” I
waved a hand at it. “You’d look great in it.”

“Not for me,”
she said, shoving it into my arms. “For you.”

I shoved it back. “I
told you,” I said, “I don’t need any more clothes.”

After two hours of
shopping I was itching to get back to my apartment and finally finish
this morning’s practice. Surely Jake was up and about by now
and wouldn’t be bothered by my playing. I absentmindedly ran my
fingers over a rack of clothes, wondering what kind of dresses the
women he dated wore. Not that I cared. Because I didn’t.
Really.

Nina hung the dress
back up and came up behind me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders,
enveloping me. I felt my frustration with her melt away. She was
always good with hugs. She turned me towards a mirror and I looked at
the two of us, at first glance so different, but the longer one
looked, the more our similarities became evident. The same ski slope
nose and large eyes, the same pale skin and long necks. In bare feet,
I was taller, but she was wearing her usual funky heels and I was in
my favorite black flats so we were about the same height. She was
curvier, but we were sisters, no doubt about that. Guess I could
forget my theory about getting left on my parents’ doorstep.

“I just want you
to be happy,” Nina said, squeezing me tight. “You know
that, right?”

“I know that.”
I squeezed her back before giving her a big sister stare in the
mirror. “But I’m still not buying that red dress.”

Jake

“And who moves a
whole fucking piano into their studio apartment? And then yells at
me
for having the nerve to want to sleep in past ten?” I fumed to
Dakota over dinner prep, my knife flying furiously. “Who plays
piano all day?”

“A piano player?”

I looked up from the
onions I was chopping and found her staring at me, arms crossed.
“What? You don’t think something’s a little weird
about her?”

“Like I said the
first three times you asked me, she seems a little intense,”
Dakota said, raising one eyebrow. She was really good at being
unimpressed with me. “Kind of like someone else I know.”

“Oh, no.” I
put down my knife and wiped my hands, outraged. “You cannot be
comparing my ambition to her lunacy.”

“It’s a
short trip between the two,” Dakota said with a shrug. “And
you know it.”

I hated when she was
right. But that didn’t mean Ella was any less of an annoyance.
Sure she had stopped playing after my visit, but I still hadn’t
been able to go back to sleep. Instead, I had gone back to my
apartment and been annoyed, but awake until it was time to head to
work. Now I was in my kitchen—MY kitchen, that I had worked so
hard for—and grumpy as fuck.

“Remind me why I
hired you?” I muttered at Dakota.

“Because I’m
the best sous chef you know,” she informed me, calmly returning
to her own prep. And she was right about that too. After we met in
culinary school, we had gotten into the habit of hiring each other
whenever we had the chance. We worked really well together—so
well, in fact, that most people assumed we had a romantic history,
which we didn’t. We both understood that nothing ruined a good
working relationship like a romantic one.

We returned to our work
in companionable silence, until I got the sense I was being watched.
Without even looking up—I could tell when Dakota wanted to say
something—I let out a deep sigh. “What?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,”
she said in the way that meant it was definitely something.

I put down my knife
again and looked up at her. “Out with it,” I ordered.

She gave me a grin. “I
just thought it was interesting how much you’ve been talking
about your neighbor today.”

“Stop it,”
I told her, knowing exactly what she was hinting at.

But of course she
didn’t. “I can’t remember the last time I heard you
talk about a woman for longer than ten minutes. I’ve been
listening to you bitch about this one for almost an hour.”

“Annoyance is not
the same as attraction,” I said, realizing too late I had just
backed myself into a corner. Dammit. I was too tired to be
interacting with someone as sharp as Dakota.

“Aha.” Her
smile grew wider. “So she was cute.”

“I didn’t
say that,” I argued, even though cute would not be the word I
would use to describe Ella. She was hot as hell and just as
irritating. But still, even my frustration with her hadn’t
dimmed the intense attraction I was doing my best to ignore. She was
probably nuts—again, who puts a piano in a studio
apartment?—and I had a strict rule about that. Don’t
screw with crazy. It had served me well during my dating life, and
while I had had a few near misses with girls who got overly attached,
for the most part, I had avoided worst-case scenarios. Messing with
someone in my building however, well, that could go bad real fast if
I wasn’t careful. Too bad I had told her about the curtains
though, I could have built up enough fantasies to get me through this
dry spell. Ten bucks the sexy lingerie Ella was wearing last night
weren’t the only ones she owned.

“I think you
did,” Dakota responded playfully. “You think she’s
cute. When was the last time you went on a date?”

“When was the
last time
you
went on a date?” I fired back, knowing she
was just as busy as I was. Then I wished I hadn’t said
anything, remembering how disastrous her love life had been lately.
Dakota was great at a lot of things, but finding good guys was not
one of them. Her last boyfriend had been one hell of a prick. “I’m
sorry,” I told her, but she brushed it off.

“It’s
fine,” she said. “In fact, I have one tomorrow night,”
she told me, blushing a little.

“What?” How
did I not know? But before I could even ask, she reached over and
patted my hand.

“You’ve
been busy with the restaurant.”

It was true, but too
busy to know that my best friend was dating again? Maybe I
was
getting a little obsessed. I quickly dismissed that thought. I was
ambitious. Not obsessed. But still, I could make time for Dakota.

“What are you
doing after work tonight?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Going
home and going to sleep,” she said. “Exactly what you
should do.”

“Or we could do
brownie night,” I suggested. It was something we did in
culinary school when we were really stressed out—try to outdo
each other with our brownie recipes. And hanging out with my best
friend was exactly what I needed to shake off the stress of work and
this lingering annoyance over Ella and her goddamn piano. And her
legs. And hips. And ass. Fuck. Stop it, I told myself.

“Brownie night,
really?” Dakota asked. “That would be awesome.”

“Bring your
A-game,” I warned. “I’m going all out on chocolate
chips.”

“Oh, you know I
will.” Dakota flicked a bit of cilantro at me. “Salted
caramel, baby. Unbeatable.”

“We’ll
see,” I told her, tossing the cilantro back. “We’ll
see.”

Tonight was turning out
to be a bitch of a night. By the end of it I was going to be in sore
need of something with a kick. Ever since Patricia had left, we would
always get at least one asshole customer that would declare fault
with the food and blame it on the fact that we had a new chef. It was
total bullshit—we were working off of Patricia’s recipes
and all of us had worked under her for years—but it still
managed to piss me off each time it happened. And tonight seemed to
be an asshole convention of sorts. It seemed like every other meal
would come back with complaints. The meat was overdone (it wasn’t),
the mashed potatoes were too lumpy (they weren’t), and the
greatest insult, the new chef (me) was taking liberties with
Patricia’s perfect recipes (I wasn’t, though I was
itching to try).

“I’m going
to go out there,” I said, after a dish was sent back twice. A
dish that had been cooked to perfection each time. Not only did it
piss me off, but also it was bad for the morale of my chefs who were
working their asses off. “This is ridiculous.” I threw
down my apron, but Dakota blocked my way. “Move,” I told
her.

“Yeah, right.”
She rolled her eyes up at me. She was several inches shorter than I
was and I could have picked her up and moved her myself, but I knew
that even attempting that would be the last mistake I ever made.
“What are you going to do, Jake?” she asked. “Go
out there and yell at some ingrate who has no idea what rare steak is
supposed to look or taste like? He’s a moron and you’re
an adult.” She gave me a once-over. “I think.”

“Ha,” I
told her, not finding this very funny at all. But the haze of anger
had begun to lift and I saw that she was right, and going out there
would have been a very, very bad idea. I rubbed my eyes. I was
exhausted. The night had been long and my lack of sleep was catching
up to me. I cursed Ella and her piano for what seemed like the
hundredth time that night, even though I knew it wasn’t her
fault that the restaurant was full of jerks tonight.

“We’re
almost done,” Dakota told me. “No new orders are coming
in. Go sit in your office and calm down.”

I took a deep breath. I
hated that I had nearly lost my temper in front of my staff. They
needed someone who would be calm during the storm, not cause it in
the first place. I had to keep reminding myself that I was there to
set an example. I was the head of the kitchen now. Patricia had
always kept a cool head about shithead customers—I had to do
the same.

“Thanks, Dakota,”
I told her, clapping her on the shoulder. “And let’s make
tonight a whisky and brownie night. I’m going to need a stiff
drink when this is all over.”

Ella

A loud laugh startled
me awake. I sat up in bed, heart pounding, forgetting for a moment
where I was. My new curtains made the apartment so black that it took
a few minutes before my eyes adjusted enough for me to make out the
room in front of me. What the hell? I thought, reaching for my phone.
The bright light made me squint. Three a.m.?

I heard the laugh again
and then a shriek and some giggling. What was going on? The noise
didn’t sound like it was coming from across the hall, but
actually from up above. I went over to my curtain, pulled it back and
looked up. All the lights in Jake’s apartment were on and it
was pretty clear that’s where the noise was coming from.

What a hypocrite! He
really had some nerve. How dare he come down and tell me my playing
was waking him up when he’s up at three a.m. partying and being
an inconsiderate jerk. And after informing me how thin the walls were
here. Well, he was right about that. Now that I had heard what was
going on upstairs, it was hard to block it out.

I went back to my bed,
hoping that the noise would stop, but the moment I lay down, there
came another shriek and I was done. No way was I going to let this
guy tell me when I could or couldn’t play my piano when he was
partying it up in the middle of the night. Clearly he liked to party
and his annoyance about my playing was based solely on his apparently
frequent hangovers. Not a surprise considering this is how he spent
his nights.

I grabbed my robe and
shoved my feet into my slippers. How could none of our other
neighbors said anything about the noise? He was being so completely
rude right now.

As I stomped up the
stairs, I chided myself for even allowing myself to fantasize about
this guy. He might be incredibly attractive and well built, but he
was a total jerk. I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. He
seemed exactly like the kind of guy who didn’t care about
anyone but himself.

The laughter filled the
hallway and I clenched my jaw as I approached his door. This was my
home and I wasn’t going to let some scruffy, unwashed, possible
drunk hold my sleep and schedule hostage. Fist curled, I pounded on
the door.

The laughter
immediately stopped and I heard the scuffle of feet. Was that a
woman’s voice I heard? Oh no. Did he have a date over? Had I
interrupted
that
? Embarrassment rising in my throat, I was
about to turn around and race back down the stairs to my apartment,
when the door opened and I found myself confronted with a half naked
Jake.

Where was his shirt? I
thought, staring at his perfect chest, on full display. All those
tattoos I had wanted to check out? Well, now was the chance. The
biggest was an anatomically correct heart right over where his own
would be. On one of the valves was a name: Lucy. His girlfriend? He
seemed to take up the entire doorway, his shoulders so wide and his
hips so narrow that he looked a bit like an upside down Dorito. Yum.

No. Not yum, I told
myself and forced myself to look up into his face, which was a little
flushed. I could smell the whisky on his breath and his eyes were a
little hooded, whether it was from the booze or exhaustion, I
couldn’t tell. He was still ridiculously handsome.

My lecture on his
hypocrisy and the rudeness of his behavior died in my throat.

“Hi,” was
what I ended up saying.

“Hi,” he
said back, his eyes scanning me. I pulled my silk robe closer,
realizing that it was way too short to be worn out of my apartment.

“Oh my god,”
a female voice said behind him, and he moved aside to let a young
woman about my age step into the doorway. She was curvy and petite,
her dark hair in a thick, messy braid across her shoulder. She was
wearing an apron that was covered in flour and chocolate, her
striking blue eyes giving me an apologetic look. “Did we wake
you? I’m so sorry!”

Was this Lucy, the name
tattooed on and over his heart? She was very pretty, and I felt even
more self-conscious with my tangled hair and sleep-crusted eyes. Of
course a guy like Jake had a girlfriend that looked like this. I was
just thankful I hadn’t interrupted them doing something more
intimate than what appeared to be baking. At three in the morning.
Who the hell was this guy?