Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(15)

“Do I look okay, miss?” She registered for the first time that he had an accent. A very British accent. And those tightly clipped notes gave his words the exact impact of a slap.

God help her, she had just tried to be nice! He just stood there taking deep breaths, his very stiff—very broad—back expanding and then releasing with deliberation. Between those football player shoulders and that ridiculous chef’s hat he looked so large, so tall that she did take a step back this time, so she didn’t have to lean her head back to take him in.

He turned the water off and inspected his hands. They had to be hurting like a bitch.

“Do you want me to take a look?” she asked his back, feeling just the tiniest bit sorry for him.

He threw a look at the ceiling as though praying for patience and turned around with unmissable reluctance.

She made a beckoning gesture with her fingers. “Let me.”

He kept his hands by his sides. “As I said, I’m fine. Thank you all the same.” With nothing more than that, he gave her his back again and started spooning the caramel into a bowl.

When she didn’t run off the way he evidently expected her to, he half turned back toward her again. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather do my job than stand around calculating the value of your hands.”

Her confusion must have shown on her face because he drew another annoyingly exaggerated breath. “You asked me if I had any idea what your hands were worth.” He was doing that overenunciating thing again and, news flash: it sounded even more condescending in a British accent.

She’d had enough. “I’m a surgeon,” she said, mirroring his enunciation and feeling like a prized fool for doing it. “Our hands are important to the work we do.”

This only made the scowl return to his face. “Good information. Congratulations. And I’m the chef and I still have dessert to serve. Before someone else comes by and tries to destroy it.”

“I was not trying to destroy your dessert.” She tried to sound dignified, but this was the most juvenile conversation she had ever had. “It’s just food. And your sauce seems just fine.”

He went utterly still. “It’s caramel. Not”—he paused as though the word tasted bitter in his mouth—“sauce.” Then he continued with whatever it was he was doing with his precious caramel—which, Trisha realized, smelled like someone had melted heaven and slathered it in butter.

She felt light-headed. “Listen, I’m sorry. I’m just not comfortable in kitchens, okay? I was burned as a child.”

Nothing. Here she was trying to be the bigger person and he wasn’t even listening to her. She flipped him off in her head and without letting herself think about the trauma of the memory of being burned, or how much fun her siblings made of her because of the incident, she yanked open a drawer and pulled out the biggest bowl she could find.

Then, against her better judgment, and because she was hungry enough to commit murder, she spoke to him again. “Excuse me.” She pointed her spoon at the rice when what she really wanted to do was shove him out of her way and stab her spoon into the pot and start eating right out of it.

He stepped aside, taking his precious caramel with him all the way to the other end of the kitchen without helping her with the rice. Weren’t her parents paying him to feed people? But she said nothing. Because who wanted to unleash all that enunciating again? Instead, she served herself, piling the rice high. She had just brought a giant spoonful to her mouth when her sister sashayed into the kitchen.

“There you are,” Nisha said, smiling widely. Her eyes found the sulky man at the other end of the room. His back was to them and he was so focused on his caramel, one would think he were performing lifesaving surgery. He certainly seemed to think he was.

Nisha’s smile turned into a grin. She wiggled her brows, completely missing Trisha’s current mood.

What? Trisha mouthed, seriously considering sororicide if her sister didn’t let her eat in peace.

Nisha’s eyes danced in the man’s direction and dropped to his behind.

Really? Trisha narrowed her eyes, then without looking where her sister was looking, she stormed out of the kitchen, bowl in hand.

“What’s got you all grumpy?” Nisha asked, catching up with her in the corridor.

“Seriously, I have the best day of my professional life and all you and Ma can think of is how to throw me at men!”

“I thought you wanted to be thrown at men. Weren’t you biting my head off earlier about withholding good butt from you? Seriously, what’s wrong? Didn’t you see him and his . . . oh!—” Her eyes went round, and she let out a squeak of delight. “You got the grant!” She threw her arms around Trisha.

There, was that so hard? That’s all Trisha had wanted. She let Nisha squeeze her tight, the irritation inside her melting away. Then again maybe it was this pulav. She shoved another spoonful into her mouth. It was seriously the best thing she had ever tasted. She thought she knew rice. She’d grown up eating rice. But this . . . this was like an explosion of familiar flavors doing an entirely unexpected dance in her mouth.

“I’m so sorry. It should have been the first thing I asked,” her sister said with enough remorse that the remnants of Trisha’s annoyance fizzled.

“That’s okay. I know how important today was to you.”