The Billionaire’s Full Figured Desire

“But that leaves a blight on our reputation,” Frida pointed out. “We’re the best restaurant in Seattle, but not by a lot! If we take a hit like the one that a bad review could perpetrate, our rivals will be waiting to overtake us when the dust clears. Our reputation will be shot, and I don’t know if we can get up from that.”

“Are you serious?” Terrence’s jaw dropped.

“Deadly.” Frida nodded grimly. “It only takes one bad review to kill a restaurant. Dead. That’s why we’re generally so terrified of you guys.”

“Then we are trapped,” Terrence said darkly. “Either I give you an honest review, and you risk getting shut down and me getting my license taken, or we tank the review, and the restaurant suffers. Either way, we get fu*ked in the ass from either direction. There must be a way out.”

“What if there isn’t?” Frida asked quietly.

“If there’s no way out,” Terrence breathed. “Then I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Terrence’s reveal kept Frida on edge all day, and awake all night. She didn’t think that she collectively got even two hours of sleep the entire time that she was lying down in bed. She kept throwing off the blankets, changing her clothes, rearranging the bedsheets. She was restless. She even got up for an hour or so and had a read of her current favorite book, Guardian Angel: The Magenta Conflict. She couldn’t escape the niggling feeling that she was no longer safe, even in her own house. What Terrence had shared with her, and the gravity of what it meant, had shocked her to her core.

It wasn’t illegal, what Terrence had done, but tipping her off in advance of the day of the critique was extremely unethical, and if anyone found out, Terrence’s business could take a massive hit. Not only that, but Frida was shocked at how readily he had told her. Like he was so ready to risk his entire career for her.

She didn’t know what to make of that. Was it sweet? Crazy? Creepy? Should she be charmed?

Complimented that he thought so much of her to tell her, or alarmed? In any case, Frida was all too well aware of the trouble that they could get into if it got out what Terrence had done. Ordinarily, nobody would have any reason to even suspect that Frida would know about the critiquing, no reason to suspect that Terrence would have told her. Except for the fact that they had dined together in a restaurant mere days ago. Except for the fact that countless people had seen and recognized them during their nighttime walk. Except for the fact that all her work colleagues and countless diners had seen him visit her at her place of business and seen them leave together.

Frida was even surprising herself that she could be so calculating, so discerning, but she decided to be thankful that she was, and not look too deeply into it. She was definitely going to need to be a bit cunning if she and Terrence were to have any hope of escaping this conundrum unscathed. And it was this vexing puzzle, more than anything else, that had kept her up all night.

She had briefly considered calling in sick, taking the day off, letting Andrew take the reins, but she’d quickly kicked that idea into touch.

The reason being that Frida didn’t take many days off work, such as the definitive trait of a Head Chef. And her absence on the day of a food critique would only serve to draw attention to her, and the possible reasons for her absence, especially if she returned to work, healthy as a horse, the next day. So to make it believable, she’d have to take multiple days off, which wasn’t possible in her job.

Even if it was, Frida was willing to bet that some suspicious people would still try and figure out why she’d been off on the day a food critic was coming to visit.

Not only that but she couldn’t alert Andrew to the fact that a critic was coming in, because that would put them back into the same boat. And she couldn’t take the day off, knowing that a critic was coming in, and hang Andrew out to dry. He was her friend, and she refused to do that to him. The sky outside Frida’s windows began to get lighter and lighter, and with it, time ticked away. With each passing moment, she became increasingly aware that her time was running out.

Frida had to admit, she felt a certain resentment toward Terrence for deciding to tell her in the first place! At first, she thought that Terrence didn’t want to have to give her a bad review, and felt insulted that he didn’t have faith in her abilities as a chef. But once he’d explained, she’d got the picture, and he was right. Even if she’d done well, not knowing that Terrence had been there to critique the restaurant, she’d still be under suspicion.

Because nobody would believe that Terrence and Frida were “involved” in any way, shape, or form and that he hadn’t tipped her off. Terrence’s eventual solution to the matter, to his credit it, would solve the problem, but Frida was unwilling to take the chance. She was unwilling to tank a review on purpose simply to remove all suspicion because the flip side to that coin was she would be left with a bad review. Which was just the ticket that Ritorno Casa would be waiting for?

As the top-ranked restaurant in Seattle, one bad review was all it could take to destroy her entire reputation. And once that happened, who was to say that she would ever get it back? No! Frida wasn’t sure of a lot, but she was certain that she couldn’t gamble the restaurant’s reputation and future in such away. Frida sighed exasperatedly and went back to her kitchen for another cup of chamomile tea. It felt like the walls of the entire situation were closing in on her. Like she was trapped, and that there was no way out.

Not for the first time, she wondered how Terrence was doing, and she briefly considered texting him. It was only then that she realized with a jolt that she didn’t actually know his number! With all their talking and…well…other activities, neither of them had spent much time staring at their phone screens. And there hadn’t been much time to exchange numbers, it’d slipped their minds. Personally, Frida was of the opinion that technology had infected the world, and specifically the next generations. Pretty much everyone needed a break from their phones and their tablets and their TV screens, just for a minute.

On the whole, Frida thought that it was pretty impressive that they’d managed to go for so long without even thinking to exchange phone details. In any case, she didn’t want to wake him up in the middle of the night to tell him that she’d changed her mind about their plan. Although in truth, it wasn’t their plan, and it never had been, because she hadn’t come out and agreed to it. The question was, how was she going to break that to him?

Frida really hoped that Terrence hadn’t gone to bed thinking that the entire situation was resolved only to find out in the morning that Frida was going to do…well, she didn’t even know what she was going to do. But she wasn’t going to purposefully tank the review, she knew that much.

She couldn’t do that, not to the restaurant that had become her whole life for the past three years. And certainly not for a guy she just met, no matter how badly she wished for him to remain unscathed by being in a relationship with her. Wait, was Terrence in a relationship with her? Frida immediately cursed, she had made a secret pact with herself not to go anywhere near this topic during her designated Overthinking Time.