Page 1 of Dirty Chef
One
Alessia Rossi
I grimaced and lifted Adam’s dirty underwear by the neck of a beer bottle. We needed to rethink the whole Alessia-cleans-and-Adam-cooks deal. One day off a week, and I was spending half of it picking up after him.
Who knew living with a forty-three-year-old man would prepare me for motherhood?
It would probably save me an hour if he could wait until he got to his room before he kicked off all his clothes, though he usually left the underwear on. Maybe our living room had simply become his laundry basket, and he threw it out of his room. It wouldn’t surprise me. He was a pig.
Said pig came through the front door five minutes later, sweating after his morning run.
I averted my gaze from an exposed torso, sweatpants riding low, and the cap he wore backward.
He’d taken off his hoodie at some point and was wiping sweat off his face with it. For the record, it was January and frigid outside.
“Fuck me,” he wheezed.
I snuck a peek as he removed his earbuds and tossed his ball cap on the couch.
“Hey!” I scowled. “Pick that up, you tool.”
He blinked and looked over at me. “You on the rag, love? No, that can’t be it. You have another week or so.” He jerked his chin at me. “What’s up?”
“This.” I gestured at the living room. “I’m sick of cleaning up after you. You’re such a slob.”
He frowned and eyed the room—the couch in the center of the space, the entertainment unit between the doors to our bedrooms, the table, the shelves, the kitchen behind me.
“It looks fine to me.”
Mannaggia, he drove me batshit. “Because I just tidied up,” I exclaimed. “I still have to vacuum, dust, and mop the floors.”
He grinned and walked over to me, only to land a loud kiss on my forehead. “I’ll make you forget this argument when I fix dinner tonight. It’ll be fucking spectacular.”
A heavy sigh escaped me, and I knew it was a battle that wasn’t worth winning. “I have a date tonight, so you’ll have to impress me some other time.”
Adam’s already sharp features tightened, and he took a step back. His gray eyes chilled, a contrast to the casual shrug he offered. “All right. Your loss.”
Nice.
“I’m gonna shower.” He started toward his room.
I narrowed my eyes at his retreating form. Fuck it, he could clean his own mess. I was done. Sooner or later, he was going to notice the piles of dirty clothes and garbage he left behind.
He may win verbal arguments most of the time, but he didn’t go up against my stubbornness willingly, and it was for good reason.
* * *
Wistfulness tightened my stomach as I put another pair of baby socks into my online cart. I didn’t begrudge Isla her happiness; in fact, I was bouncing off the damn walls with excitement for her fast-approaching due date. I just…wished I were there beside her with a baby on the way.
Baby fever sucked ass.
It’d struck once I hit thirty, almost overnight, a little over a year ago. I saw babies everywhere, and everyone was pregnant.
My readiness for children was something I kept to myself, mainly because my love life was a disaster.
It didn’t help that I was more interested in online shopping than the men I went out to dinner with every now and then.
I should be getting ready for my date, but I couldn’t tear myself away from all the adorable clothes for newborns on my laptop. Pinks, purples, yellows—I wanted to buy it all. I’d already purchased plenty of blues and greens, because we’d known Isla was expecting a boy for several weeks. Then, the other week, she’d felt iffy when she was in Florida, so she’d gone to see a doctor.
Okay, she’d been dragged there by her very overprotective fiancé. Jack was also Adam’s twin brother, and I had grown up with the Grady brothers’ ways. There were four of them, and if you didn’t learn, you didn’t make it.
It’d been a good thing, though. Because while at the doctor, they’d discovered a second little miracle hiding behind her brother. In a matter of a few short weeks, Isla and Jack would become parents to a boy and a girl.
My Visa bill cried.
It couldn’t be helped. Having been sort of adopted by the Grady family when I was a teenager, I’d expected nieces and nephews much sooner. They’d been in their mid-to-late twenties when I was fifteen; alas, it wasn’t until Jack met Isla and fell head over heels that the baby-making began.
My phone buzzed next to me on the couch, and I glanced down to see a text from Adam.
I had to let Miranda go home. She wasn’t feeling well. Can you cover for her?
“Maybe she’s pregnant.” I made a face and stuck out my tongue at the screen. Then I sighed and ran a hand through my hair as I looked at the clock above the flat screen. Fuck. I’d have to cancel on Garrett again.
