The Billionaire’s Full Figured Desire

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Blurb:

A plus size, billionaire, interracial romance book. Growing up plus size, Frida had to deal with endless teasing and harassment. Her sanctuary became the world of cooking, a passion that eventually led her to pave her own path in life. Now she owns a thriving restaurant!

As if her joy couldn’t get any better, Frida embarks on a whirlwind romance with Terrence, a strikingly handsome billionaire and renowned food critic. However, Terrence still has a job to do—and that’s reviewing her restaurant. And now their relationship and her business are on the line…

Can their relationship survive the high stakes of culinary critique and personal desires? And will Frida and Terrence find a way to balance their love and the success of her restaurant? Find out in this BWWM, BBW romance story by Tanya Goldberg.

Chapter 1

Literally, anybody who was anybody in the general Seattle area knew which restaurants were the best, and they knew it in a big way. They knew who specialized in seafood, they knew who to go for to dine on a killer duck paté, they knew where you could get deep-fried calamari, ostrich fillets, or duck an l’orange.

At least, the ones who were foodies knew. And in a city like Seattle, there weren’t many people who weren’t foodies. Some regarded Seattle as one of the finest culinary cities anywhere in the U.S. these days, and it was certainly the culinary hub of the Pacific Northwest.

These things were known facts, agreed upon by the general unofficial consensus. They were known, just as it was known what the best restaurants in Seattle were. And everybody knew that Ritorno Casa was not it. An Italian bistro out in Pioneer Square, they were one of the higher-rated dining experiences in the city.

They may not have been the best, but they were good! Both the Zagat Guide and Yelp.com had Ritorno Casa placed at no lower than second in the city, which meant that they were forever playing second fiddle to the real King of Culinary Cooking in Seattle.

If there were any empty tables in Ritorno Casa, then it was because the people who weren’t dining there were too busy eating at its rival restaurant, L’Ultima Cena. Although if truth be told, the title “rival restaurant” was a bit of a misnomer because Ritorno Casa wasn’t a true rival. They came in second with a sizable lead between the two establishments, and all parties involved knew it.

The ironic thing about that, though, was twenty-eight-year-old Frida Carter dined at Ritorno Casa almost every night. Well, she did on her nights off. The ironic part of that was that Frida was the Head Chef at L’Ultima Cena. But her nights off were few and far between, and she most certainly didn’t want to spend them in the exact place where she spent her days. As much as she liked working there, she couldn’t spend any free time there if she had the choice. What kind of lunatic would even consider that?

To be honest, a mere change of venue wasn’t the refreshing experience that she had imagined it would be, it was a very similar atmosphere and environment. A restaurant is a restaurant, is a restaurant, as the saying went. Frida also found that her taste for exquisitely fine foods was significantly diminished, although, if truth be told, she’d expected that one. It wasn’t so much that she had less desire for fine foods but certainly had less effort to make them for herself at home. And her willingness to put in the effort had suffered a considerable decline.

It wasn’t that her passion for cooking itself was lacking more so it was the effort of having to spend hours over her own stove cooking a meal that was nothing less than perfect to then eat it within a couple of minutes. She didn’t find it worth her time after working in a kitchen all day.

There were some nights when Frida had eaten unspeakable things, like Pot Noodles and the like, just to avoid cooking a proper meal for herself, albeit something huge or messy. Years ago, she would have sacrificed countless hours of sleep to slow-cook a lamb shank or some other delicious culinary adventure. Like a civilized person! Although technically speaking Frida knew that not many people put in as much effort as she thought appropriate, she doubted any normal person who worked long hours would go home to cook an extravagant meal from scratch.

But Frida was no longer the person that she used to be. Today, however, she felt very much like herself. Sitting in a restaurant, wearing a dress that accentuated her plus-size curves. Although she was alone, Frida felt no embarrassment, or self-consciousness, which made a nice change. It was almost as though she was the food critic this time, at a window that she’d been on the other side of multiple times. Frida couldn’t even count the number of times that she herself had had to prepare dishes for food critics.

Often, they were the most anal, pedantic people on the face of the Earth. Worse than customers, worse than vegan customers! And yet, as much as Frida wanted to give them a piece of her mind, she couldn’t. They held an outrageous amount of power over whether her restaurant retained its top spot on the Zagat Guide, and on Yelp.com, and if she pushed them too far, that could change faster than she could even blink. And so she was forced to reduce herself to being an obsequious, gaseous sycophant. And she was forced to using complex, Oxford Dictionary words so that nobody would know that she was insulting them. That was always pretty risky, but then what’s life without a little risk?

So that day was Frida’s first evening off work in…she couldn’t even remember! The life of a Head Chef wasn’t exactly action-packed, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t busy! Most of what she did was hiring, firing, training, and prepping to host events at the restaurant, like birthday parties, after-parties, premiers, that kind of thing. Over the past few years, Frida had placed herself in charge of overseeing the project to enhance their Front of House staff. That one small step advanced them from a simple restaurant to a place where people could go for drinks too. Being able to bring a sense of difference to the restaurant was the one thing that could always guarantee business, it didn’t matter if people were dining or just popping in to have a quick drink, there was the option to do both or just one which helped when business was quiet.

But now, on her one free day off this week, Frida was finding it strange; she was missing that familiar pain in her lower back that she got from bending low to prepare hundreds of tiny canapes a day. That pain was…well…painful, but it was bittersweet at the same time. When you finally stood up and felt your spine realign, it gave you the feeling that you’d actually been working hard. Which was always rewarding, it had to be said. Frida found any aspect of her job rewarding, which was why she would never picture herself doing anything else. Some people would never understand the need to put so much effort and time into making food for others but seeing the enjoyment of their faces and feeling your body acknowledge its hard work was definitely reward enough.

Frida had actually wrestled with the idea of going out tonight. She’d spent most of her morning inside and was inclined to keep doing the same, but she couldn’t face leaving dinner to the last minute and then eating Pot Noodle again. She prided herself on treating her body like a temple, and one did not simply put Pot Noodle in a temple. Or any kind of freeze-dried produce that you could get from Walmart for ninety cents or less. That was a pretty good rule of thumb, as far as healthy eating went.