It may be stupid of me, but I trust my captor—in this, at least.
Before I can formulate how to tell him this, Lucas bends his head, kissing me on the mouth, and walks out of the kitchen, leaving me standing there dazed… and filled with new, fragile hope.
* * *
We don’t discuss the issue of me cooking for the guards again, but a week later, I get a delivery of restaurant-grade kitchen equipment, everything from an enormous oven to huge pots and pans. Diego and Eduardo spend two days remodeling the kitchen and installing everything, and when they’re done, I have everything I need to cook for a small army.
And by the time the next week is through, that’s exactly what I find myself doing. As soon as Lucas leaves for work, I get busy preparing for the madness that is lunch. Diego and Eduardo must’ve told the other guards that Lucas relented, and the kitchen teems with visitors from ten in the morning until late into the afternoon. And then the dinner rush begins. One day, seventy-nine guards stop by—I count, just to make sure I’m not exaggerating—and I realize I’m going to have to do something to manage the situation. Lucas is remarkably stoic about everything, putting up with the insane disruption of our routine without any complaints, but I’m sure he won’t let this go on forever. And I myself miss having meals with just the two of us—or three, if Misha comes over. There’s a huge difference between giving a few leftovers to the guards and running what is quickly becoming an all-day restaurant operation. By the time dinner is over, I’m exhausted to the point of passing out, and several times, I do pass out in the living room as we watch TV—a situation that usually results in Lucas carrying me to bed and fucking my brains out before letting me go back to sleep.
There’s also another, more tricky concern.
“Lucas, are the guards defraying any of the food expenses?” I ask him one morning as I mix up batter for blini—Russian-style crepes. “Or is Esguerra paying for the ingredients?”
“No, and no,” Lucas replies, watching me with a hooded stare from the table. I have no idea if he wants the crepes, or if it’s my tiny shorts that have him intrigued, but there’s a distinct look of hunger on his starkly masculine face.
Refusing to let it distract me, I put down the whisk on a paper towel and frown at Lucas. “No? But this is a lot of food—and some of the ingredients are really expensive.”
“So what?” His gaze travels over my body, lingering on the sliver of stomach exposed by my tank top. “You’re enjoying this, and we can afford it.”
I tug down the shirt and wait for his eyes to meet mine again. “We?”
“Sure,” Lucas says without blinking. “I told you, Esguerra pays me well, and I’ve accumulated a nice stash over the years.”
“Right.” I decide that he misspoke with that pronoun, and return to the topic at hand. “But that still doesn’t mean you should pay out of pocket for everyone’s food,” I say. “I mean, we’re talking hundreds of dollars a day.”
Lucas shrugs. “All right. If you’re worried, I’ll tell the guards to start paying for their meals. Your food is certainly good enough for a high-end restaurant, so I think it’s a good idea if you charged like one.”
“Seriously?” I stare at him. “You want me to run a real restaurant?”
“Sweetheart, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you are running a real restaurant.” Lucas gets up to walk over to me. His eyes gleam as he stops in front of me and says, “A very good restaurant, as evidenced by the fact that a third of the guards come by at least once a day. And the rest… Well, many are still stuck on the crash, but most who don’t come simply can’t—they have duties that prevent them from leaving their posts.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t realized my food was that popular, though the seventy-nine visitors that one day should’ve given me a clue.
“Yes, oh.” Lucas reaches out to brush a strand of hair off my forehead. “You’ve been having fun with this, so I haven’t said anything, but now that we’re talking about it, I think it’s a good idea to make the fuckers pay, and pay well. That might weed out some of the cheaper bastards and reduce the workload for you.”
“All right,” I agree after a moment of deliberation. “If you think that would be okay, I’ll try.”
* * *
I follow Lucas’s suggestion with trepidation, certain that no one in their right mind would want to pay for my cooking when they could eat in the cafeteria for free. The main reason I do it is because I don’t want to bankrupt Lucas with my hobby. He’s been beyond generous with me, but I can’t ask him to subsidize everyone’s meals forever. Also, I’m not exactly opposed to a reduced workload; as fun of a challenge as this has been, laboring in the kitchen for ten-plus hours a day is hard work. I’m so tired I’m having to wear concealer to hide my undereye circles, and I know if Lucas notices that, he might put a stop to the whole operation.
My health is still his top worry.
To my surprise, when I post the prices—genuine high-end restaurant prices, written in black marker on a sheet of paper pinned to the front door—nobody so much as voices a peep of protest. By the time the day is over, I make over six million Colombian pesos—nearly two thousand US dollars.
Stunned, I show the haul to Lucas. “They paid. Can you believe it? They actually paid.”
“I can, unfortunately.” He glowers at the pile of money on the table. “They’re not as cheap as I’d hoped.”
And so the madness continues. My business—and I have to think of it as such now—is very lucrative, but it’s also exhausting. I do everything from the cooking to the serving to the cleaning. By the time another three weeks have gone by, I realize that if I’m going to operate as a restaurant, I’m going to need to either get help or limit the scope of what I’m doing.
“I think I’m going to serve only lunch,” I say to Lucas as I scrub the pots and pans left over from dinner. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll put out a few tables in the back yard, make it into a sit-down cafe of sorts instead of giving everyone takeout. That way, if more people come than can be comfortably seated during open hours, they’ll have to make a reservation for another day.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Lucas says, coming over to help me lift a heavy pan out of the sink. “For tonight, why don’t you go to bed early? I’ll finish up here and join you.”
“No, that’s okay, I can do it,” I say, but he brushes me aside and goes to work scrubbing the remaining pots. Seeing that he has no intention of budging, I sigh and thank him before wearily trudging off to take a shower.
At this point, I’ll take any help I can get.
* * *
The next day, I start implementing my ideas. At first, some guards grumble about being deprived of dinner, but when Lucas shows up and gives them a glacial stare, all the grumbling stops. By the time the week is over, I’ve successfully transitioned from a disorganized all-day takeout operation to a small and highly sought-after lunch cafe.
“I’m booked solid for the next three weeks,” I tell Lucas in gleeful disbelief as we go on a morning walk—our first in almost two weeks. “Seriously, I’m having to take reservations for the next month.”
“Of course, what did you expect?” He gives me a warm smile. “I’ve always told you your cooking is amazing.”
I grin, delighted at the praise. I suspect Lucas is more excited about the return of our private dinners than my cafe’s popularity, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s been incredibly supportive of my venture. I’m sure the profit the cafe makes doesn’t hurt, but he was on board with everything even when my hobby was a financial drain.
“What have you been doing with the money?” I ask, wondering for the first time what happens to the pile of cash I give Lucas every night. “Do you deposit it somewhere? Invest it?”
“I put it into your account, of course. What else?”
“My account?” My eyebrows crawl up. “What do you mean, my account?”
“The account I opened for you in the Cayman Islands,” Lucas says casually, as if that sort of thing is done every day. “Well, technically, it’s in both of our names, as per the advice of my accountant, but you’re the primary account holder.”
“What?” I stop and frown at him, certain I must be misunderstanding something. “You’ve been depositing that money into an account for me? Why?”
“Because it’s your money,” he says, as if it’s obvious. “You earned it, so what else would I do with it?”
“Um, keep it, seeing as I’m cooking with the ingredients you buy using equipment that you paid for?”
“Yes, but I’m not the one doing the actual cooking,” Lucas says reasonably. “Besides, I do deduct food expenses before making the deposits. The money going into the account is pure business profit—your business profit.”
My head spins as I stare at him. “But what do you expect me to do with that money? And how much money is there by now, anyway?”