"Thank you for being good enough to deserve it." His expression softens slightly. "You've got talent, Maya. Real talent. Don't let anyone, including me, make you doubt that."
The words settle warm in my chest; better than any compliment I've ever received. We finish the galette in silence, and when I finally glance at the clock, it's nearly midnight.
"I should go," I say reluctantly. "Mom's probably wondering where I am."
"Yeah." But he doesn't move toward the door. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Wouldn't miss it."
This time, when I leave, I don't feel invisible.
I feel seen.
And it's the best feeling in the world.
Chapter 5 - Levi
The door closes behind her, and I stand there like an idiot, staring at it, listening to her footsteps fade into the parking lot.
Why the fuck did I just let her leave?
My hands curl into fists at my sides, frustration boiling up through my chest. I had the perfect moment standing there with flour on her nose, close enough to feel the heat of her, close enough to see the way her breath caught when I touched her face.
Close enough to kiss her.
And I didn't. I stepped back like a coward, retreated to safe distance, let the moment dissolve because I'm too afraid of what happens if I actually reach for what I want.
"Fuck." The word echoes in the empty kitchen.
I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the floor, head falling back against the exposed brick, hands coming up to cover my face. The tile is cold beneath me, the ventilation system humming overhead, and I'm thirty-six years old sitting on a kitchen floor at midnight because I'm too much of a coward to kiss the woman I can't stop thinking about.
She's my employee. She's twelve years younger than me. She's just starting her career and I'm her boss and there are a thousand valid reasons why I shouldn't have kissed her in that moment.
But God, I wanted to.
I wanted to pull her close and find out if she tastes as sweet as she looks, wanted to feel her soften against me, wanted to hear the little sound she'd make when my mouth found hers. I wanted to stop pretending I don't notice every time she walks into aroom, stop acting like I don't watch her when she's focused on a task, stop lying to myself that this is just professional respect.
It's not respect. Or it is, but it's also desire and need and this aching hunger I haven't felt in years, maybe ever.
And she made a fucking perfect apple galette with cardamom whipped cream that shouldn't work but absolutely does, and she talked about her grandmother with this light in her eyes, and she told me I wasn't going to fail with such conviction that I almost believed her.
She's talented. Really talented. The kind of natural instinct you can't teach, the ability to taste a dish in her head before she makes it, to understand not just how to execute but why. In two weeks, she's become essential to Juniper's in a way I didn't anticipate.
What if...
No. I can't think like that. Can't let myself imagine a world where Maya Sutton isn't just my employee but my partner, in the kitchen and out of it. Can't picture us working side by side, building this restaurant into something even better than my original vision, creating a life together that's as good as the food we make.
Except I'm already thinking it. Already imagining what it would be like to come home to her after service, to fall into bed together exhausted and satisfied, to wake up and do it all again. To create not just a restaurant but a partnership, the kind where two people push each other to be better, where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
A dream kitchen and a dream life.
With a woman who's too young and too much my employee and too good for a burned-out chef who runs on caffeine and anxiety.
"You're such an idiot," I mutter into my hands.
I should have kissed her. Should have taken the risk, dealt with the consequences, found out if this thing I'm feeling is one-sided or if she feels it too. Because sometimes, like tonight, when she looked at me with flour on her nose and her lips parted, I could swear she feels it too.
The way her breath caught. The way she didn't step back. The way her eyes dropped to my mouth for just a second like she was thinking the same thing I was.