Who's the Boss? - Erin McCarthy Page 0,20

and excitement.”

I set Kennedy back down, who promptly started to climb my leg. I leaned over and gave Jasmine a kiss on the cheek. “You look beautiful.” She did. Her gorgeous features had first caught my attention a dozen years earlier, but what had made me fall head over heels for Jasmine at twenty-three was how sweet and innocent and intelligent she was.

She had been a brand-new transplant to New York from Barbados, and I had been a restless New Yorker, not sure what I wanted to do with my life. Jasmine and her love had grounded me, given me a purpose. For years I’d thought of her as the one who had gotten away, but she’d done the right thing breaking up with me. She had a serious intention to stay a virgin until marriage, and while I had respected that, I hadn’t been ready for the commitment she needed. At all. I was years away from being that kind of guy. Eventually, she had told me she felt herself caving, and that she would hate herself if she compromised her values knowing there was no way I could offer her marriage.

So she had dumped me.

My one and only true heartbreak. I’d been devastated. I’d even gone and proposed to her in an eleventh-hour attempt to win her back, to which she had said no.

It was the smartest thing she could have ever done, and now we were great friends. I might even call her my best friend. Sidney was very cool with our friendship, and it probably didn’t hurt that while we had dated, I had never seen his wife naked. Tough to swallow at twenty-three, great for our friendship at thirty-five.

“Ever the charmer,” she said, pulling back and looking at me. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

Jasmine was also damn near psychic. She always knew when I was turning around something in my head. “I’m fine. I start my new job Monday. The staff meeting didn’t exactly go as smoothly as I had hoped. One of the chefs quit.”

“That’s typical, right?” she asked, trying to pull Kennedy off of my leg.

Her daughter shrieked and flailed her arms. I took her from Jasmine and bounced her on my hip. “Yes. Pretty typical. But the other chef is someone I met at Michael’s engagement party and she can’t stand me.”

Jasmine raised her eyebrows. “Oh, God, you hit on her, didn’t you?”

“No,” I protested. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Then what would you say?”

“I called her a manhater and then made out with her in the hallway,” I said. When put that way, it was no wonder she wanted to stab me with a fork. None of which should matter in the kitchen at Bone, but Isla was passionate. I had a hard time imagining she could set all her emotions aside.

Jasmine started laughing. “What? Oh, Sean.”

“How does that even happen?” Sidney asked, sitting down on the sofa to pull on his loafers. “How do you get women to make out with you after you insult them?”

“It’s a gift,” I told him. “Or maybe a curse. Because now we have to work together and she can’t stand me. She threw a drink in my face tonight.”

Jasmine eyed me. “Tell me exactly what you said before she threw the drink in your face.”

“Uh…” I tried to remember her exact words. “She asked me why I kissed her and I told her because she looked like she wanted me too.” I winced. “Okay, I hear it when I say it out loud. I’m usually smoother than that.”

“But?”

“But what? Nothing. I don’t know. She throws me off my game.” I buried my lips in Kennedy’s curls and breathed in her sweet scent. She rewarded me by laying her head on my chest and squeezing her arms around me. “I have to take a step back and just be polite. Reserved. Not flirtatious. You know, everything I’m not.”

“Give yourself a little more credit. You know how to be professional.”

“I do know how to do that.” I wouldn’t have gotten where I was if I didn’t.

“Eye on the prize, brother,” Sidney said, standing back up and smoothing down his pant legs. “You want to open your own restaurant, you can’t let some cute chef distract you.”

Sidney and Jasmine were really the only two people in my life who knew my ultimate goal was my own restaurant because well, my mother would have too many opinions, most of them not encouraging. Michael would be supportive, but I wasn’t