Page 8 of Mariah

“I thought I could keep my work separate. Like I could be around like-minded people while also not engaging. Taking a Little is not a job requirement.”

“It certainly isn’t,” Pastor Ryan agreed. “So why the second thoughts?”

“My kitchen assistant. I hadn’t even unpacked my bags before the boss asked me to give one of his Littles a job.”

Pastor Ryan sucked in a breath. “And you couldn’t say no, because you’d just gotten here.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, how’s that going?”

“It sucks.” He scowled, then softened. “The Little, Mariah, she’s competent enough, and professional enough, I suppose, but that’s almost making it harder.”

“Because if she’s not reminding you of how much you want to avoid Littles, then you’re being reminded you’re naturally inclined toward them and it’s harder to keep your guard up and remember why you’re really here,” Pastor Ryan surmised, taking a bite of his sandwich.

Graham frowned. The guy was good, and he already felt better just from talking with someone who seemed to understand exactly where he was coming from. “Yes, that’s it, exactly,” he agreed. “So what do I do? Should I quit?”

Pastor Ryan simply took another bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully before answering. “Do you want to quit?”

Graham considered. “Not really, no. The job is too good and the opportunity is almost unheard of for someone with my experience.”

“Well, then let me ask you this as you seem to have more experience than I do. Are all Littles like your ex? Is the toxicity and the pushing something universal to the lifestyle?”

Graham sighed. He’d answered this question many times over in therapy and he knew the reality in his core. Plus, Pastor Ryan was, by his own admission, inexperienced and Graham didn’t want to misrepresent the lifestyle and give him the wrong idea. He liked the guy, felt like he’d found an ally in him, and wanted him to stay. “Most Littles aren’t like Kaylie,” he admitted.

“Well, there you go. In life, I find we are given the biggest blessings when we are open to receiving them. When we can maintain the balance between cautious and not closed off. Take this conversation for instance. You could have just sent me away. I’d have had no trouble finding food outside this place. But you needed someone to talk to and I needed a sandwich and for whatever reason, you were open to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, we could help each other. And look what happened. My stomach is full and I think, if I’m not being too presumptuous, that we’ve both found a new friend.”

Graham grinned. “You’re not being too presumptuous.” He wasn’t a religious man, and he’d never pictured himself ending up friends with a man of the cloth, but he liked Pastor Ryan and he got the distinct feeling that the two of them could help each other. “So what you’re saying is I came here for a reason, and I need to stay open to whatever that reason may be, even if it’s not what I originally thought.”

“Precisely.” Pastor Ryan stood and carried his plate to the sink. “Thank you for the sandwich. It really hit the spot. Any chance I could trouble you for a glass of milk?”

Graham smirked, finding that he wasn’t ready for his new friend to leave. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll even throw in some cookies if you tell me how a non-kinky pastor ended up in a place like Utopia.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Chapter 5

Mariah

Baze had her scheduled for a day off, a day on, so it was almost forty-eight hours before she got to talk to Chef Graham again. She saw him several times, for meal service, but that was always hectic and there were too many people around. Plus, Chef Graham seemed even more closed off than usual when he was serving them. It had taken one dinner service for her friends to stop teasing her about him ending up as her Daddy. Well, most of them anyway. Margo and Luna had turned into hopeless romantics with too many stars in their eyes to see what was right in front of them. Just because Chef Graham looked like a Daddy and talked like a Daddy didn’t mean he was one. And it certainly didn’t mean he was interested in being hers.

Still, she couldn’t help the butterflies she got in her stomach whenever she thought about seeing him. And now that she was about to work with him again, they seemed to have multiplied into a full butterfly garden.

She dressed carefully, making sure her uniform was neatly pressed, her Pull-up wasn’t bunched under her clothes and not a hair was out of place. She even ditched her cat apron in favor of a plain black one with Utopia’s insignia on it.

When she got down to the kitchen before breakfast service on Wednesday, she heard voices coming from the kitchen before she entered. Frowning, she peeked her head in and saw a thin young man about her age with scraggly black hair wearing a chef’s uniform, standing over the island with his knife poised above a pile of fruit that needed chopping.

Unable to stop herself, she rushed in, stopping short before she angrily demanded an explanation.

“Mariah!” Chef Graham exclaimed. “Oh good. You’re here, and right on time. I want you to meet Earl. He’ll be my other kitchen assistant, working when you can’t.”

“If he’ll be working when I can’t, then why is he here now?” Mariah asked sharply, barely keeping the scowl off her face, hating the way her voice sounded. It was perfectly reasonable for Graham to hire a second assistant, especially when she could only work part time. So why did it feel like rejection? Why did Earl’s presence make her feel jealous as hell and physically ill?

If Chef Graham noticed her over-the-top reaction, he didn’t let on. “A kitchen staff is a team. They need to be able to anticipate one another’s needs and have each other’s backs. It’s about working together, even when they’re not physically working together. We have a big event coming up at the end of next week, a special dinner for Baze and some local business people. I want us to be comfortable with each other before then and I figured this would do that, as well as getting a lot of prep work done for the week. Kill two birds with one stone and all that.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” Fighting the disappointment she felt at not having Chef Graham all to herself, Mariah stepped up to the counter, grabbed a knife and started to chop.

Might as well make the best of the situation, she told herself, pasting on a smile. “So, Earl, I haven’t seen you around here before. Are you staying at Utopia?” So far all the staff Baze had hired had come from out of town and had been put up in the hotel.