As he walked into the holding area outside the room where promo videos were being shot, her eyes found him and came alive, and clung, and said a million things he knew she didn’t know she was saying.
Blown. Up. In. His. Face.
They were one elimination down. If they lasted to the end, they had four more cooking segments, and a finale to shoot. That was another four weeks with her.
Four whole weeks.
Just four weeks.
His heart felt like a pebble in his chest.
Ashna and he were still head and shoulders above the rest of the teams in viewer votes. Social media would not stop buzzing about them. The early episodes had brought in a record number of viewers. Rod had been inundated with joint interview requests, but it was clear that Ashna wanted nothing to do with Rico outside the studio—or even inside it. Their popularity wrecked her.
Question was, why did knowing that wreck him?
Why are you here?
Why couldn’t he stop asking that?
She caught the question in his eyes and stiffened. Turning away from him, she found China and gave her a hug. Was that it? Did her being on the show have something to do with China roping her in? The idea of her letting someone pressure her into doing something she didn’t want to made something wild move inside Rico. Something an awful lot like his underperforming survival instinct.
Finally, she turned away from China, squared her shoulders, and made her way toward him. He couldn’t believe China hadn’t prepared her for what it was like to be in the public eye. Then again, if Rico hadn’t had an existential crisis at Zee’s bachelor party, Ashna’s experience on the show might not have turned into an international media explosion.
An explosion that was working excellently for China Dashwood and her team. Yes, Rico was aware that they had been friends from before he and Ashna had met. Yes, China was yet another person Ashna had hidden him from.
This is Frederico Silva, my partner on the show.
A perfect stranger.
That’s all he was. That. Was. All.
Never in the past ten years had he looked at wanting to win as anything but a singular goal. Now he wanted to both return to the arena and walk away, in almost equal measure.
The fact that his knee felt like it was leaking pain up and down his body didn’t help. Today was probably not the best day to try to wean himself off the narcotics completely. The new regimen his doctor had put him on hadn’t worked. The road to freedom from pain wasn’t going to be an easy one, but easy was overrated.
Lilly Cromwell stopped Ashna and the two women exchanged hugs. When had Ashna developed relationships with everyone on the show? Everyone wanted to chat with her, unthreatened by her and Rico’s wild success with voters. Not that he didn’t get it. That innate kindness she emanated was a tranquilizer, an intoxicant. Who alive could resist it? Today’s social stops were also obviously her avoiding making her way to him.
Pulling out his phone, he pretended to stare at it so he wouldn’t stare at her. She was impeccably put together, as always, dark kohl outlining her singularly shaped eyes, heavy lidded and slanting upward on a curve. Bronze dusted her lids. All the skillful makeup did nothing to hide the exhaustion weighing her down. Her hair was gathered into a bun at her nape. She had hated putting it up. In high school she had either left it down or braided it.
It’s too heavy and I always have this one hair that tugs at my scalp and drives me crazy.
He wondered if it still fell all the way down to her waist, and if the thick blunt ends would still spill across his forearms when she tilted her head back to kiss him.
“Hi.” Finally, she was standing in front of him. Instead of her usual red chef’s jacket she was wearing a maroon silk blouse that put her collarbones on full display.
Her collarbones had a way of mirroring her moods. They stood out in sharp relief when she was screaming at someone at the goal line. The curve was smoother, gentler when she was being determined off the pitch. Two completely different ways in which she could be fierce. Of course, something entirely magical happened to those lines when she was aroused.
She caught him skimming the bones radiating from the perfectly shaped hollow at the base of her throat. Her gaze drank in whatever she saw in his eyes.
“Hi.” He tucked his phone into his pocket. It had sucked as a cover anyway. Moreover, he was a grown man, a world-renowned athlete. Try to remember that, will you?
She gave him a searching look and it had to be the lack of meds because a hungry pit opened up inside him. The camera was watching, so he held out his arm as they were called to the interview area.
There was only a moment of hesitation before she slid a hand into the crook of his elbow. Her hand was ice cold even through the cotton of his shirt.
They walked down a corridor lined with Food Network legends. Cameras clicked, and her fingers tightened on his arm even as she kept a good six inches between their bodies. Which was commendable because the giant magnet between them had gone back into overdrive.
The effort of holding himself at the distance she’d stipulated intensified the pain in his body, and idiot that he was, he overcompensated by trying to appear excessively relaxed and in control.
Jonah led them to another waiting area with stiff-backed chairs and she let go of Rico’s arm, leaving it even colder.
She asked Jonah about his two-month-old and he showed her pictures on his phone before running off to put out some fire with a smile on his face.
They were going to shoot extra footage before the competition segment. Usually it was DJ asking questions, and that put her at ease. Today it was a crew they hadn’t seen before. Her nervousness was palpable.
“It’s just an interview,” he said, hating how seeing her like this made him feel. “Just pretend you’re at a party and answer as though someone’s chatting with you. It’s not a performance. Just be yourself.”
“Just be myself?” She looked down at her hands. “How is everything so easy for you?” She bit her lip, clearly regretting the words the moment they left her mouth.
Sure, this was easy for him: being in the public eye, knowing how to navigate the spotlight.
“Not everything,” he said quietly. Obviously, some things were easier for her than for him, because twelve years later he was the one back here, still looking for closure, not her. “I could ask you the same question.”
The universe shifted in her eyes. They softened with loss, then hardened with the effort to cover it.
“I thought you wanted to be here. To save your restaurant. You chose this.” Over me. “Then why is it so hard?” It came out harsher than he’d intended, but he couldn’t be stupid enough to give up control again.
Did she regret making that choice?
She regretted something. That was clear.
Is this also something Daddy dearest is demanding? Why is it still so hard for you to stand up to him? The words almost came to his tongue, but her father still made too much rage rise inside him. And letting her see his rage at him had cost him everything once.
You’re a bastard. She’s a princess.
How had an asshole like that made her?
Her hands shook in her lap and she gripped them together. “You would never understand.”
How were they back here, where it mattered if they understood each other or not? But it did and here they were.
“You’re right, I don’t. I couldn’t have imagined it, you following in your father’s footsteps, you taking over the restaurant. You hated it, Ashna.” That day when he’d shown up at Curried Dreams uninvited, he’d seen misery inside her. The kind that had shaken him all the way to his young soul. It struck him that the misery he’d seen that day had congealed inside her now, burrowed so deep he couldn’t separate her from it.