Dinner at Wyatt's

by Victoria Gordon

  Sure enough! When Adrienne arrived next day with a scruffy, greasy-haired photographer in tow, it was to first admit that she didn’t really work for the magazine in question, but had gained herself a freelance entree into a possible future job.

  ‘You’ve just got to help me, Justine,’ she pleaded openly. ‘If I can just swing the editor round to considering this life-style series — and I can, with Wyatt’s as the first instalment — then I’m set for a job, no worries. Please, Justine!’

  It took Justine back to her schooldays, but she forced from her mind the inevitable results of an Adrienne plea and gave in, though not without a twinge of misgiving. She watched her friend dabble at a luxurious lunch, while the young photographer gobbled his food eagerly, and she dutifully answered the questions as they came.

  ‘Right,’ Adrienne said finally, reaching down to replace notebook and pen in her copious handbag.

  ‘Now, Justine, tell me what Wyatt Burns is really like.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much I can tell you,’ said Justine, visibly relaxing now that the interview was over. ‘He’s very organised, very professional—’

  ‘And very handsome, with a womanising reputation to match,’ Adrianne interrupted. ‘Come on, don’t you fancy him just a little?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ Justine lied, quite convincingly, she thought. ‘He’s also rude, domineering, overbearing, and extremely chauvinistic. I think he’d have women chained in the kitchen for life if he had his way.’

  ‘Hah! More like the bedroom, if you ask me.’

  ‘Well, it’s the same thing,’ Justine countered. ‘He’s the most arrogant, chauvinistic man I’ve ever met; he makes the worst of the Parisians I know seem like yappy little puppy dogs. I’m not kidding, Adrienne. I still don’t know what I’m doing here! He damned near sacked me the moment he saw me — didn’t want a female chef here for anything.’

  Adrienne arched one daintily-plucked eyebrow. ‘But you’re still here, and managing the place in his absence, no less. You must have done a mighty job of changing his mind.’

  ‘Humph! Nobody changes Wyatt’s mind but Wyatt,’ Justine snorted. ‘He’ll likely have my head on a platter for this international menu idea, despite its popularity.’

  ‘Oh, surely not! He’d be too good a businessman for that,’ Adrienne replied, but Justine was hardly listening as she watched the grotty little photographer scuttling around with his cameras in action.

  ‘How about in the kitchen? Does he interfere with your work very much?’ Adrianne continued.

  ‘Oh ... oh, no,’ was the reply. ‘I hardly ever see him in the kitchen, which is just as well,’ said Justine. ‘And if he did get in the way I’d only have to start cooking mushrooms and he’d be gone in a flash. He cannot abide mushrooms.’

  ‘Interesting. Well, anyway, dear, I must be off now. I see we’ve got all the pix we’ll need.’

  ‘All right. But please, Adrienne, don’t make too much of that interview, will you? I don’t want all kinds of trouble with Wyatt when he comes back,’

  ‘Of course not,’ Adrienne assured her. ‘As I said, I’m not even sure I can sell it, and in any event it would be ages before it’s published. You know how the magazine business works; they’re always several months ahead.’

  Justine didn’t, and indeed she was already having very strong second thoughts. ‘Well, just remember that my job’s at stake in this too,’ she cautioned. ‘I know you want to make a good impression, but ...’

  ‘Not to worry,’ was the quick reply.

  So Justine didn’t — not until the day Wyatt returned. And by then it was far, far too late to worry.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She was at her desk, without the slightest idea that he had returned, and the voice that rumbled through the intercom was the growl of some fearsome, angry beast.

  ‘Justine! Get yourself up here to my office. Now!’

  No time to wonder, to question, even to reply. The decisive click of the intercom going off was as unfeelingly mechanical as the voice itself.

  And when she knocked tentatively on the door of Wyatt’s office, the barked demand for her presence inside was more than enough warning that something was very, very wrong.

  Wyatt’s face was a thundercloud, eyes snapping like bolts of lightning as he watched Justine enter and walk uneasily towards his desk. He brusquely gestured for her to be seated, but before her bottom touched the chair she was reaching to catch the folded magazine he had flung at her.

  ‘Just what the bloody hell is this?’ he demanded through gritted teeth, and she could feel him struggling for control.

  Adrienne! The thought scorched through her like a brand even as she looked at the story. Then Justine’s eyes widened and she began to tremble, only not through fear, but vivid, righteous, all-encompassing rage.

  ‘The bitch!’ she cried. ‘Oh, but ... I ... I didn’t ...’ She couldn’t go on. Because she had, of course! Anger and sheer outrage had ensnared her tongue and her mind as well.

  ‘You didn’t? Well then, just who the hell is that in the picture, the blonde one with the big mouth?’ he sneered. ‘The one with the employer who’s rude, domineering, overbearing and extremely chauvinistic? Who’d have women chained up in the kitchen if he had his way? The one who bloody well will have your head on a platter, you Judas bitch!’

  ‘But ... but I didn’t,’ Justine protested. ‘She’d put away her ... notebook ...’ And, she realised upon reading her own exact words, replaced it with a hidden tape recorder. It was all there — every single word of their supposedly off-the-record chat. Even the comment about the mushrooms.

  She fell silent and stayed that way. What could she possibly say, even if she were able to speak around the giant knot in her stomach?

  The article was everything he thought it was, a total, complete betrayal, a startling breach of confidence not only to her, but by her. The fact that her old school friend had brazenly led her down the garden path and callously dumped her in the proverbial compost bin was nothing when compared to the damage it all must have done to Wyatt’s personal image. No wonder he was so angry!

  She would have cried, only she was too numbed by the whole thing for crying ... yet. In fact her unwanted, unthinking reaction was to laugh hysterically.

  ‘And I suppose you didn’t allow the photographer to take those pictures,’ Wyatt’s accusing growl continued. ‘And you didn’t blatantly ignore my opinions when you created this international section in the menu. Tell me, Justine, just what the hell did you do? Take complete and utter leave of your senses? That’s obvious,’ he continued without waiting for any form of reply. ‘But what I don’t understand is why. Surely you can’t have been that annoyed with me, and I just can’t believe you’d normally be that deceitful, that damnably underhanded.’

  ‘I ... I wasn’t ...’ she tried to say, only to have him roar across her timorous voice.

  ‘Damn it, can’t you talk either? Surely you must have had some reason for trying to completely discredit this house and everything it stands for.’

  ‘I didn’t... I didn’t!’ she cried. And then, suddenly angry for all her despair: ‘I increased our turnover by an average twenty-four per cent with my international menu, but still, I only did it as an experiment. Possum and I thought ...’

  ‘Possum? Bloody hell, woman, surely you haven’t been listening to my scatterbrained sister? Hell!’ And he slammed the desk so angrily with his fist that pens and pencils danced in fear before cowering silent again.

  ‘Damn you!’ Justine screamed out her fear in pure defence. ‘Didn’t you listen? A twenty-four per cent increase in turnover. Twenty-four per cent! Doesn’t that count for anything?’

  ‘Not when you do it without my permission!’ He, too, seemed to be shouting now, his voice like thunder in the room.

  ‘Your permission! What am I, your slave?’ she retorted. Now her anger was becoming more real than defensive. ‘Well, you know where you can stick that idea, Mr Wyat
t Burns! With mushrooms, and I hope you choke. I’m a professional and you hired me as a professional, and any sensible man would damned well appreciate my little experiment for its success!’

  ‘And ignore the complaints as being purely irrelevant, I suppose,’ he sneered, upper lip curled back to reveal teeth that seemed to Justine like those of a ravening wolf.

  ‘What complaints? Show me the complaints,’ she raged, no longer totally in control. She lunged to her feet, her own palm now slamming into the top of the desk as she leaned across it and hissed at him like an angry alley cat.

  Wordless, he reached to a small stack of papers on his desk and flung them down like a gauntlet before her. Justine snatched them up, half her mind relieved that there were so few, the rest apprehensive about the contents.

  It took her only an instant, it seemed, to scan them. One was obviously from the Colonel Blimp type; two more were from unquestionable supporters who she doubted had ever been inside Wyatt’s, and a final one was from somebody who didn’t think the Italian dish they had been served was really genuine.

  ‘My God! And you want to sack me for this load of rubbish?’ she cried angrily. ‘Well, go ahead ... just go ahead. In fact, don’t even bother. I quit! If this is any example of the way you treat your chefs I can do without you and your restaurant!’

  She was already half turned away when an iron hand clamped on to her wrist, pinning her to the desk like a butterfly in a display case.

  ‘Who said anything about sacking you?’ Wyatt asked in a voice gone suddenly, frighteningly, deceptively quiet. ‘Not that I shouldn’t, mind, after that damned interview.’

  ‘Oh, bother the interview!’ Justine snapped. ‘If you’d so much as bothered to ask, I’d have told you it was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you. Damn Adrienne, anyway; the bitch used to be my friend, if you can imagine it. But I did not, and would not, discuss things like she’s printed as part of any interview, and you should know that, too. I just wouldn’t! Oh, wait until I get my hands on her ... I’ll ...’

  ‘You’ll what?’ he asked, interrupting her before she could even think of a suitable punishment. ‘And do you honestly mean to tell me that what she’s printed here wasn’t part of the interview?’

  ‘Damn it! Isn’t that what I’ve just been saying?’ she raged, oblivious to the tears that now streaked down unnoticed across her pale cheeks. ‘She’d already put away her notebook and I thought we were just ... chatting like old friends. Friends! Oh, my heavens ...’

  ‘Friends like that and you don’t need any enemies,’ he growled. ‘Funny, I seem to have employees like that ...’

  ‘You do not! What I said to her was ... supposed to be confidential,’ Justine replied.

  ‘But true.’ Wyatt’s voice was once again soft, but his eyes were anything but! They seemed to glow at her like coals, threatening, lurking, menacing.

  She didn’t reply. What sense to it? The words, when said, had seemed true enough if somewhat exaggerated for effect. But reading them? In print the truth seemed totally overshadowed by the effect. Even the remark about him not liking mushrooms seemed an accusation. He had every right to be angry.

  ‘I’m only surprised there’s nothing in the story about my making a pass at you ... or didn’t she bother to ask about that?’ he said then.

  ‘She ... tried,’ Justine replied lamely. How senseless, now, to try and tell him how private that was to her, how sensitive, how intimate. It would only make her look even more of a fool.

  ‘Obviously not very hard ... or were you just protecting your own reputation?’ he sneered. ‘Didn’t you take her up for a woman’s-eye view of the brothel? That would have made marvellous copy, wouldn’t it — Restaurateur keeps Chef in Mirrored Love Nest!’

  Justine gasped at the cruelty of it, but Wyatt ignored her pain.

  ‘I think you’d better trot off down and chain yourself up again in your kitchen,’ he said coldly. ‘Obviously you were too busy making sweeping changes and giving ridiculous interviews to get the books up to date, and I’d like a dearer picture of what’s really happening before I decide what to do about you.’

  ‘But the books are up to date,’ Justine replied, now totally confused. ‘At least, they were up to yesterday. I haven’t got round to them yet today.’

  ‘If that’s what you call book-keeping, thank heaven you’re a chef,’ he retorted angrily. ‘Now get yourself out of here and see if you can manage to spend some time doing what you’re paid to do!’

  She left, stunned by the stolid coldness of his attitude. In the kitchen, Armand was busy with the initial preparations on that day’s international special, and Justine didn’t know whether to stop him or let him continue. It seemed most likely that Wyatt would quickly put an end to her experiment, but there were half a dozen bookings for that evening made especially because of the international special, and she didn’t quite dare cancel at this stage.

  Let him cancel if he wants to, she thought, and let him explain it to the customers, while he’s at it.

  Instead she busied herself by checking the various meats in the enormous cold room, and it wasn’t until she had been there almost ten minutes that she had calmed down sufficiently to risk speaking to anyone.

  Cooled down is right, she thought idly, inspecting the goose bumps on her forearms as she reached for the inside latch. She usually would have put on a sweater or coverall before making such an intensive assessment.

  Justine pushed at the latch, then cursed under her breath when it refused to give. Damn the thing! She pushed again, and yet again, but something was obviously wrong. The latch simply wouldn’t move.

  She kicked at the door in her anger, realising the sound wouldn’t carry through the heavy, insulated walls, and was about to kick again when the door suddenly opened.

  ‘I did not realise you were here,’ said Armand, his arms full of packaged meats. ‘The butcher he has come and gone, but as I could not find you ...’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Armand,’ Justine replied, interrupting him. She was in no mood at this moment to engage in small talk with her own butcher or suffer the pig-eyed leers of the oaf she had sacked and Wyatt had reinstated.

  ‘Listen, we must check the latch on this cold room,’ she explained. ‘It’s ... sticking or something. I almost got locked in there.’

  He looked perturbed. ‘It was all right only a half an hour ago,’ he said. ‘I will check it now, however.’

  He stepped into the cold room, slamming the heavy door after him. Justine stood uncertainly on the outside, but an instant later the door swung open without her help, then closed and opened three more times.

  ‘It seems fine to me,’ said Armand, emerging empty-handed. ‘And in any case we cannot have it checked now until Monday, unless you wish to pay a horrible overtime bill for it. But I think it is all right.’

  Justine glanced at her wrist-watch. One-thirty! This was one Saturday, she decided, that had already got off to a bad start; she’d completely lost the morning.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to be careful with it, just in case,’ she replied. ‘Please let everybody know that it’s suspect, so they don’t go wandering in there without somebody knowing about it.’

  ‘I will do that,’ he replied gravely, and Justine turned away, only to stop just short of walking straight through Gloria Calder.

  ‘I’m sorry, Gloria,’ she said with a sad shake of her head. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Gloria stood there silently, her eyes watchful until Armand had walked away. When she finally spoke it wasn’t until she was quite sure they wouldn’t be overheard.

  ‘I think you’ve already done it,’ she said then, with a malicious gleam in her eyes. ‘I just came to say thank you and ask if you’ve a new job lined up.’

  Justine went cold inside, colder than she had even thought of being while inside the cool room. So that was the way of it, she thought. Not only sacked, but having to hear it from ... No, not from Gloria ... if Wyatt was to sa
ck her he would damned well have to do it himself. In person.

  Keeping a calm exterior despite the sick feeling inside, she contrived to smile sweetly as she replied.

  ‘Why, thank you, Gloria. But I think you might be just a little ahead of yourself,’ she replied, and quickly turned and walked away without any attempt at explanation. If she was already sacked, none would be needed, and if she wasn’t ... well, she’d worry about it later. It was none of Gloria’s business in any event.

  None of which was the slightest consolation as she plunged into the arduous task of preparing for that evening’s diners. One of the juniors was ill, bookings were right to the maximum and it would be a hard night’s slogging for all concerned.

  Justine’s own troubled conscience and her growing certainty that a sacking was inevitable made her a vicious taskmistress throughout the afternoon, even though she recognised the problem and did her level best to maintain an even temper.

  Wyatt, fortunately, avoided the kitchen entirely. Had he interrupted her delicate tightrope of control, Justine was certain she wouldn’t have had to be sacked — she’d have quit out of hand.

  As it was, only Sebastian and the unflappable actress Possum managed to avoid her foul temper and changeable temperament. Sebastian merely stayed out of the kitchen, while Possum, for perhaps the first time since Justine’s arrival at Wyatt’s, behaved impeccably.

  When Wyatt finally did make an appearance, it was midway through the evening. He was, as might be expected in his position as host, impeccably dressed and groomed, but what surprised Justine was not his appearance but his attitude.

  ‘How are you coping in here?’ he asked quite pleasantly. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve a moment to step into your international comer with me?’

  ‘I ... could,’ Justine replied cautiously, then looked at her no-longer-immaculate coverall. ‘But I really don’t think ... I mean, look at me.’