Chapter 10

LAYLA

My hands shook, the tiny spreading knife slipping from my fingers and bouncing on the wooden floor. Who puts expensive hardwood in a kitchen anyway?

Whatever happened to good old linoleum? Or that fancy tile that was in the laundry room?

“Is it safe to come in?” Briggs asked, hesitating on the far side of the island.

“It’s your kitchen,” I said, reaching down to retrieve the knife.

“I know better than to get in a woman’s way when she’s busy in the kitchen.”

“Did your mother teach you that, Briggsy?” Sonya asked.

“As a matter of fact, she did.”

I went back to spreading cream cheese on the slices of smoked salmon.

Briggs was having some of his teammates over to see the babies. When he asked me if I could prepare some appetizers to serve out by the pool, I thought I would be making sandwiches and cutting up fruit.

Instead, he presented me with expensive fish. Who serves that at a pool party? And the pâté? Really? Most of the guests were hockey players. Did they really eat that shit?

The fruit tray came already prepared, with strange hunks of mystery produce that I didn’t recognize. What was wrong with grapes and strawberries?

What did I know? I was just the poor girl from the trailer park. Briggs was way out of my league. I didn’t belong in his world as anything other than an employee.

He hadn’t laid a hand on me since the first night we arrived at the house. I thought the tickling and accidental boob touching in the nursery was just a bit of fatigue-induced silliness on his part.

But when he put his hand on my hip later in the kitchen? ~That~ wasn’t innocent.

I’d gone over it a million times in the past two weeks. Okay, maybe not a million. But I did think about it during those rare moments when I was fully awake.

Mary was determined to get the triplets on a synchronized schedule that would bring some order to the house. And it only took ten days. The woman was amazing.

We’d had three nights in a row where we only had to get up once.

So back to my confession about dwelling on what my psyche had dubbed as ~The One Where Briggs Couldn’t Forget.~

Even though ~Friends~ debuted long before I was born, it’s still my favorite sitcom of all time. I’ve seen every episode more times than I can count. And I started labeling my encounters with Briggs like episodes of ~Friends~.

What would’ve happened if I hadn’t run away that night? If I turned around? What if he’d kissed me? Touched me? Carried me to his bedroom?

“Layla?”

“Hm?” I glanced up at the sound of Sonya’s voice.

“Wherever you were just now must’ve been pretty hot,” she whispered.

“Where’s the caviar and crème fraîche tartlets?” Briggs asked, peering into the fridge.

“I don’t know how to make them,” I confessed. “I don’t even know what crème fraîche is.”

“It’s not hard,” he said.

“I’m not familiar with those ingredients, Briggs,” I snapped. “I worked in a diner, remember? Not Gordon Ramsay’s.”

“Sonya, would you mind seeing if Mary needs a hand with the babies?”

~Shit.~ Was I about to get fired?

“You be nice to her, Briggsy,” Sonya warned as she removed her apron and wiped her hands on a towel.

A tiny drop of perspiration slid down my spine, my belly doing some Olympic-level gymnastics as Sonya disappeared up the back stairs. My chin vibrated, my pride battling with my tear ducts.

I couldn’t lose this job. Where would I live? I’d be on the street. And my nephews were my whole world now. It would kill me to leave them.

“Are you crying?” Briggs asked.

“No,” I lied, turning my back to him. I busied myself arranging the weird little bread-shaped crackers on the platter.

“Layla?”

~Uh-oh.~

Briggs was standing right behind me. Take two of ~The One Where Briggs Couldn’t Forget.~ The rich, leathery scent of his cologne surrounded me, his warm breath on my bare neck.

“Why are you crying?” he murmured.

“I’m not.”

His hands encircled my waist, gently turning me around so I was facing him, trapped between the counter and his hard body.

He brought his hand to my cheek, wiping away a stray tear with the rough pad of his thumb.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped.

“For what?”

“Snapping at you.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You like it when your employees talk back to you?”

“I don’t think of you as my employee, Layla,” he said, his deep voice coming out in a husky whisper. “And I like a feisty woman, who isn’t afraid to speak her mind.”

“But I work for you,” I reminded him. “That makes me your employee.”

His eyes were an inferno of lust, and his giant hands held my tiny waist hostage while we hovered at the edge of an invisible line. If we crossed it, there would be no going back.

I held my breath, every nerve ending in my body sizzling in anticipation.

He dropped his hands and stepped back, clearing his throat before he started taking ingredients out of the refrigerator.

I let out the breath I’d been holding, deflating like a balloon as my heart rate returned to normal.

Crushing disappointment triggered another cascade of tears. I thought Briggs was going to kiss me. And I wasn’t going to run away this time. I wanted to know what it felt like to have a man’s lips on mine. Not any man. Just Briggs.

“I’m going to show you how to make the tartlets,” he informed me, setting some items on the counter.

“A well-rounded chef should be familiar with all cuisines, regardless of whether they’re planning to work in a diner or a five-star restaurant.”

“I’m not a chef.”

“But you would like to be,” he stated. “You’re very passionate about cooking.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to be a chef. And I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.”

He twisted the lid on the jar of crème fraîche. “Arrange the tart shells on the tray, please.”

“I would never be able to afford culinary school,” I explained.

“Why can’t you get student loans?” he asked as he filled a plastic piping bag.

“The professional chef program is sixteen thousand dollars. I’d never get enough loans to cover that.”

“I’d loan you the money.”

“I really appreciate the offer,” I said quietly. “But right now, I’m happy being your nanny.”

“Pipe a tablespoon onto one side of each tart,” he explained, squeezing the bag as he demonstrated how to do it.

“Where did you learn to cook, Briggs?”

“My mothers.”

“Did you say ~mothers~?”

“Yes.”

“Plural?”

“Yes.”

“You have two mothers?”

“Haven’t you read my autobiography?”

“No,” I laughed. “I didn’t even know you had one.”

“Really? Your crazy sister didn’t sleep with it under her pillow?”

“Not that I know of,” I replied. “I need more of the cream. The bag is almost empty.”

“Crème,” he corrected.

“Sorry. ~Crème~.”

“I don’t have a dad,” he explained as he spooned more of the fancy cream into the piping bag. “My mothers are lesbians, obviously. They met in culinary school and fell in love.

“I have twin sisters from the same sperm donor, so they’re my biological half-siblings. And we were all born on the same day.”

“What?!” I whipped my head up to see if he was pulling my leg, but his face was dead serious.

“You’ve got crème all over your hands,” he said, reaching for my wrist. He lifted my arm, bringing my hand up to smear cream on my cheek!

“Hey!” I laughed. “That’s not funny.”

He smeared some on my other cheek too, before grabbing the piping bag and squirting a blob right on the end of my nose.

“Briggs!” I cried. “Stop!”

“I’m having way too much fun to stop.”

I tried to grab the piping bag from his hand, but he held it above his head. “Give me that, Briggs. I need to finish the tarts.”

“No way,” he said. “As soon as I do, you’ll squirt it all over me.”

“No, I won’t,” I huffed. “I’m not five years old.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Just gimme the thing,” I said, jumping up to try and grab it.

He captured both of my wrists, securing them with one of his meaty paws before squirting cream all over my face until the bag was empty.

“Stop!” I begged, laughing as he squeezed every last drop out.

He tossed the bag on the counter and let go of my wrists. “You’ve got a little something on your mouth,” he whispered, running his thumb across my bottom lip to wipe the cream away.

And then he stuck his thumb in his own mouth and sucked it clean!

“What on earth is going on down here?” Sonya asked.

Sonya and Mary stood at the bottom of the stairs, their arms full of babies as they took in my crème-wreathed head.

“Layla got carried away with the piping bag,” Briggs said.

“I did not! You squirted it all over me!”

“Briggs, take this child,” Sonya said, handing over George. “I’m going to finish the tarts and clean up this mess. Layla, you go on upstairs and clean yourself up. The guests will be here any minute.”