LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Colby turned back the cuffs on her clean white chef’s jacket to expose the tattoo of an antique silver serving spoon on her left forearm and resisted the urge to adjust the rolled-up athletic socks tucked down the front of her pants.

      The intricate swirls of the spoon’s inked handle, crisscrossed with old burn marks and a wickedly curved knife scar, would bolster her cred in any restaurant kitchen in New York. Giving away the fact that the only bulge in her checked pants was cotton instead of cock? Would not.

      No big deal, she reminded herself as the 6 train lurched to a stop at the Seventy-Seventh Street station. Just another one-on-one interview in just another kitchen with just another arrogant misogynist of a head chef. You’ve done this a hundred times. Man up.

      Colby’s snort was swallowed by the hydraulic hiss of the doors opening. Man up? That’s exactly what she intended to do.

      Because no matter what mantra she repeated as part of the pep talk she’d been using since she started fending for herself at sixteen, this was definitely not just any old job in any old kitchen. Scoring this gig at Maison de Ville would prove, once and for all, that she was every bit as talented as any male chef who’d been promoted over her.

      Hustling across the platform and up the stairs into the chill brilliance of autumn in New York, Colby shoved her way through the mob of early-morning commuters still yawning into their blue paper coffee cups. She glanced up and down Lexington Avenue to orient herself—the Upper East Side of Manhattan was so not her hood—and caught a glimpse of herself reflected in the glass of a shop window. Superimposed on the clear surface separating the fur-clad mannequins from the street, a stranger stared back at Colby.

      She lifted her hand to the side of her head, watching as the boyish reflection copied the motion, fingertips brushing across the soft bristles of buzzed hair. Colby had intended to shave off every single strand, but Grant had flatly refused. Once he quit trying to talk Colby out of this stunt, he’d argued that leaving a fall of dark gold across the top of her head would be enough to change her look from feminine to androgynous—and since she was never going to pass for übermasculine, androgyny was her best bet. Hence, the tousled fall of longer blond hair along the crest of her skull.

      Because nothing said “take me and my kick-ass knife skills seriously” like a Mohawk.

      Grinning at the young guy mirrored in the window, Colby straightened her shoulders and took off for the restaurant. The sound of her best friend’s voice in her head reminded her to butch up her walk. Confidence was key.

      One thing Colby had never lacked was confidence. Supporting herself independently since the age of sixteen would do that for a girl. And she’d been practicing for this daring social experiment of professional cross-dressing practically her entire adult life.

      A woman in a high-end restaurant kitchen worked hard to be “one of the guys,” or she didn’t work at all. Colby was lucky—she was tall and lean, without any of those distracting curves at the bust and hips that would’ve made it even harder for her to blend in with the other chefs on the line. She’d despaired over her flat chest as a preteen, but now she was grateful not to have to bind her breasts like some ingenue in a Shakespeare play.

      Just go in there and show Chef Fevre what you’ve got. In one hour, you’ll have the proof you need to make restaurateurs finally take you seriously as head chef material.

      Colby’s

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