Free Steel & Ice by Emily Eck Page B

never
knew when they were going to come collecting, and what they would
want in return. I’d learned this the hard way on the streets. A
joint could end up costing you a belated blow job if you weren’t
careful. And a thirty year old drug dealer had no issues convincing
a fourteen year old girl that this was an acceptable trade.
    He returned with my drink, and sat down
opposite of me. “I bought you a drink, so you’re obligated to talk
to me, right?” he asked, with a twinkle in his eye, referring to
our conversation at Eight Oh Eight.
    “ I suppose I am,” I
concurred with a polite nod. There was a moment of silence. And
then another moment. My calm was slowly evaporating.
    He saved me by asking, “How long have you
been cooking?”
    “ Six years.”
    “ I worked in a kitchen
before. Not many girls in the one I worked at. None
actually.”
    “ That’s how it usually is,”
I replied with a shrug.
    “ It seems like the guys you
came to Checks with are cool. Does anyone mess with you in the
kitchen?”
    I frowned. “What do you mean?”
    He rubbed his left shoulder. “It’s just that
it must be hard working around a bunch of guys all night. They
don’t fuck with you or try anything on you do they?” he asked a
little aggressively.
    “ Oh.” I was catching on now.
“No. They’re all cool with me. They have no choice. I run the show,
plus they all know I could cook them under the table any day.” He
chuckled at my boasting. I raised my eyebrows letting him know I
wasn’t joking. I was the best cook and everyone knew it. “Larry and
I have worked together for most of those six years, and he sets new
guys straight if they don’t follow the rules.”
    “ The rules?” he asked with a
smirk and an eyebrow arch. Ah fuck, those eyebrows were going to be
the death of me.
    “ We work in close proximity,
as you know if you’ve been a line cook. It’s inevitable we are all
gonna bump into each other, especially on a Friday night when there
are six of us. That’s no big deal. Now if a guy’s fingers bump my
boob, then we got a problem. Basically, don’t grab any part of me.
That’s rule number one.”
    “ And number two?” Eyebrow
arch.
    “ Um, rule number two is that
they can talk about women all they want. I am the minority after all. I hear a
lot of stuff from them. I just don’t want them talking about me and
I sure as hell wouldn’t tolerate them talking about getting rough
with a woman. But none of the guys we have now are like
that.”
    “ So what happens if they
don’t follow the rules?”
    I shrugged my shoulders. “They get dealt
with.”
    “ Excuse me?” he
laughed.
    “ I’ll regulate when
necessary. And if a guy still ain’t getting’ it, Larry will handle
it. Only once has it gone past Larry.”
    “ What’s after Larry?” he
asked, becoming slightly distressed and rubbed his shoulder
again.
    “ Well, once a guy tried to
push himself on me in the freezer. I shoved him. He slipped and
fell. I took the opportunity to run out of the freezer. Told Larry.
He told the other cooks. They beat his ass on the back dock and the
guy never came back to work,” I told him
matter-of-factly.
    He was quiet. Obviously contemplating
something. In the UK I think they would say ‘I could see the cogs
turning in his head.’ I wasn’t exactly sure what a cog was, but I
had read those lines in some romance novel before. It seemed an
appropriate estimation of the man sitting in front of me. It also
appeared the shoulder rub was his contemplation move.
    “ Are you OK?” I asked in a
shaky voice, feeling concerned I might have said something wrong
that would send him running. He reached out and took my hand from
around my coffee cup. I had long fingers. Long legs, long toes,
long neck. Yet my hand for once felt delicate in his giant hand. It
was a foreign feeling. I contemplated this as I stared at our
intertwined fingers. He has nice hands. Hands that had put in work
and weren’t afraid to get