The Billionaire’s Full Figured Desire

Chapter 9

Nothing good could come from Frida wondering what the connection between Terrence and she meant to him. Or what it meant to her for that matter. Then she wondered if he was wondering what it meant to her. Frida doubted that he was, to be perfectly honest; in her experience, men hardly ever took the time out of their day to sit back and wonder what women were thinking. It really wasn’t in their nature. And if it was, then they hid it and ignored it extremely well.

Frida began to feel her nerves creeping up on edge again; she was still rattled that she had no idea what the lay of Terrence’s thoughts were. A good night’s sleep could do wonders for a man, and she had no idea what could be running through his head. Conversely, sleep could also f-word the s-word up, so to speak. And Frida had no way of knowing which one, if either, had occurred.

All of a sudden, she began to wonder if she and Terrence not exchanging phone details was such a good idea. To be fair, if she had had his phone number, she probably would have just spammed his phone with text messages that he would have ignored because he felt as though she was smothering him, and she would’ve gotten more and more agitated and panicky because then he would be ignoring her as opposed to not in contact with her, and then what would she do?

Wow, Frida thought to herself. That nervous breakdown really crept up on me, I must say. Definitely didn’t see that one coming.

Pretty soon, the sun was a few hours out of its highest point in the sky, and Frida was showered, breakfasted, and ready to make the commute to work. And no matter what she did, how many cups of coffee she had on the way in, she couldn’t rid herself of the sinking feeling of dread that she felt in the pit of her stomach. Not that she had high hopes for doing that anyway. Pretty much the only thing that tended to calm Frida’s nerves these days, “smooth out the rough edges,” was a bottle of Chardonnay, an hour in a bathtub, and a book.

But reading, soaking, and drinking were on the list of things that one simply can’t do whilst cooking in a professional kitchen. Not that Frida had personally tried them, but she was fairly sure, especially the drinking one. That was all kinds of dangerous. Drunk and holding sharp knives is not a sentence that anybody wants to say regarding themselves. Instead of walking like she normally did, Frida decided to take the bus to work, and she wasn’t at all pleased with how much more she seemed to be sweating than normal.

Sweating was such a disgusting bodily process, on the face of it! Wasn’t there some…less icky way for toxins to leave the body? Some way that wasn’t so smelly and attention-drawing? Personally, Frida felt as though the human body was actually very poorly designed if she was honest. A lot of the functions that they embraced each and every day as necessities could be very easily cut out with a little work. Assuming she had omnipotent powers at her disposal, of course. Frida could tell that she was nervous when she started literally redesigning the human body inside her head, that was an especially bad sign.

As soon as Frida arrived at work and walked into the restaurant’s dining area, she felt herself looking around, expecting to see Terrence sitting in the food critic’s most beloved spot, underneath the antlers. She didn’t though, the dining area was littered with a few customers getting a last-minute late breakfast in.

Frida frowned and scolded herself for the thought. Why would Terrence be in already? The point of being a food critic was to do one’s job without attracting attention. And there were few things that attracted more attention than a thirty-year-old man in a suit in a restaurant in the middle of the morning. Then again, Terrence would probably have the common sense to dress a little less conspicuously when on the job. He wasn’t exactly a newbie, after all, Frida was just slipping into her old habit of overthinking the situation.

But then again, that habit was harder to resist today than it had ever been, Frida felt. Today was not just any other day, after all, today was the day that Terrence Harrison critiqued her restaurant. Just the thought of it made Frida’s heartbeat treble, at least it felt like it was. It felt like it was pounding against her ribcage, threatening to burst out of her chest like those things from Alien. Facehuggies? That sounded right.

Every time that Frida saw someone, or made eye contact with someone on her way in, she felt a rise in nervousness, as though someone would surely suss her just by looking. She felt as though she had the truth of what she knew stamped across her forehead, as though it poured out from behind her guarded eyes, scalded itself into her skin. Each time that somebody even looked at her, she thought to herself in a panic. They know! They know!

But barely anyone glanced at her for more than a few moments on her way into the kitchen, and she got scarcely more than a few “morning, Chef”’s on her way into her office. When she finally made it to her desk, her door shut behind her, she slumped into her chair behind her desk and let out a huge sigh of relief. Although, deep down, she knew that there was no call for it. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. Not even close, actually. She couldn’t explain her relief, not even to herself, but Frida just felt as though they at least had a chance to get out of this predicament unscathed.

Not that she herself knew what was moving her thoughts in this regard. Frida had no idea what time Terrence was supposed to making his entrance, though that really was the point of a surprise critiquing, at the end of the day, wasn’t it? Frida supposed that she would feel much better if she knew the lay of Terrence’s thoughts as he’d woken up that morning. Before they’d parted ways last, he was firmly for tanking their review, in order to incur minimal damage to his reputation. Frida didn’t want to say it out loud, but she felt as though he was being selfish in that regard; tanking the review meant that her restaurant’s reputation would suffer, something he didn’t seem to be so concerned about.