Burned: A Facile Restaurant Short Story

By Jacey Conrad and Gia Corona

Burned is the next installment of ten erotic romance short stories by Jacey Conrad and Gia Corona. The series focuses on the love lives of members of the Facile restaurant staff, each story centering around a different couple.

Publicist EJ Lasher is not thrilled to hear that her ex-boyfriend, celebrity chef Morgan Jeffries, is visiting Facile, the latest restaurant she’s promoting. She and Morgan did not leave things on a good note – well, technically, she left the note on his knife case and he didn’t notice it for weeks. And she doesn’t look forward to facing Morgan’s famous, profanity-driven temper when he realizes she works for Facile.

Morgan Jeffries made a name for himself with his runaway mouth and talent in the kitchen. Pressured into visiting Facile by his network, he is astonished to find that his hostess for the evening is EJ, known to him as his former girlfriend, “Lizzie.” The sweet girl he once knew has been replaced by some cold, business-like, glamazon. As two old flames meet in Remy Billodeaux’s steaming kitchen, EJ is about to put the “ex” in sex.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeanette Battista
• Release date: Dec 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311906182

Jacey Conrad

Jacey Conrad is a sushi-loving, pop culture nerd living in semi-rural Kentucky with her high school sweetheart husband and two impressionable children. She delights in horribly made mutant shark movies and watching Sean Bean die in his various cinematic incarnations.

Book preview

BURNED

A Facile Restaurant Short Story

Jacey Conrad and Gia Corona

Copyright © 2014 Jacey Conrad & Gia Corona

All rights reserved

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Table of Contents

Burned

About the Authors

Burned: A Facile Restaurant Short Story

E.J. Lasher stood in front of the mirror in the posh, comfortable ladies room of Facile, carefully painting on a coat of lipstick in a deep, true red called Provocateur. She pouted at the mirror, swiping the corner of her mouth with her pinky. Perfect.

E.J. stepped back from the mirror to check her appearance one more time. Her hair was slicked back into a sleek, dark ponytail. The sharp black Stella McCartney accentuated her lithe, long figure with a drape halter neck and back that dipped to the base of her spine. It was the epitome of the little black cocktail dress, but still professional. She topped the outfit with several strands of crystal and jet beads, dangling between her breasts at varying lengths. Her sky-high black heels featured little spikes running up and down the stilettos, because she wanted him to know who he was dealing with now.

She was ready for this.

She could handle this.

She was a professional, damn it.

Fuck Morgan Jeffries.

No, don’t fuck Morgan Jeffries. Fucking Morgan Jeffries is strictly against policy, she told her reflection sternly. Right, good plan. No boning the enemy. Excellent.

E.J. snagged the black leather folder embossed with the logo for her restaurant promotions company, Enticement, and tucked her lipstick in the spine. In the past three years, she’d built her company from nothing but a few good reference letters and the logo, which she’d doodled on a tear-stained napkin on the flight to New Orleans. Now, she loved her life in the Big Easy. She loved her cozy garden apartment with its eclectic shabby romantic furnishings and the adorable drag queens who lived down the hall. She loved sitting on her porch with fresh beignets, poring over old paperbacks until the humidity warped the pages.

E.J. pivoted on her stilettos and click-clacked her way out of the ladies room, down the dark, wood-paneled hallway toward the manager’s office. She was glad she’d elected to wear her hair up and off her neck, because the evening promised to be a sultry mess. A born and bred Manhattan girl, she missed cold weather, proper bagels, and rudeness, but New Orleans was home to a constant cycle of new restaurants. And pushing eateries from