Three Little Words

by Jenny Holiday

  When he’d caught up on the drink orders, he burst through the doors to the kitchen and shouted, “I ordered boudin, y’all. Where is it?”

  “Shit—that was for you?” said Izzy, the kitchen’s expediter, whose job was to stage-manage the employees during rushes.

  “Yes. And I also want a large house salad.”

  Without waiting for a response—he tried not to be as much of a dick as most chefs, but he knew how to keep a kitchen in line—he picked up a couple of plates that were ready to go and headed back out.

  He pasted on his game face. Years of practice had enabled him to tamp all his shit down and present a calm, welcoming face to customers.

  “Gumbo.” He set the first dish down in front of a man who didn’t meet his eyes. “And the snapper.” The man’s companion was a thin woman with deep lines around her mouth and eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said, the two words infused with more feeling than the usual throwaway expression of gratitude. When he let go of the plate and started to retract his arm, she laid her hand on his forearm and said it again. “Thank you.”

  He knew how she felt. He knew that when you were hungry and someone did you a solid, it felt important to thank them.

  He also knew his response should be casual, that he shouldn’t call attention to the charitable aspect of the evening. “You’re most welcome. I hope you enjoy.”

  He noticed that neither diner had a coat warm enough for a regular February day in New York, much less this particularly nasty one.

  You know who else hadn’t dressed for the weather?

  Not to mention seemed like she hadn’t had a decent meal in a week, given the way she’d demolished his pecans?

  He turned, taking a moment to study the model at his bar.

  The difference between Gia and his customers this evening, though, was that her situation was entirely self-inflicted.

  Which was not something he had a lot of sympathy for.

  But Lalande would have fed her just the same, so Bennett would, too.

  He and Tosha walked up to the bar at the same time. Bennett hitched his head toward Gia, and Tosha set down the plate of food in front of her. Bennett went back behind the bar to refill Gia’s wineglass and to pour himself a glass of tea.

  “I can’t possibly eat this all,” Gia protested.

  “You don’t have to.” He produced a side plate from behind the bar. “I’m going to help you.”

  He was starving. He stabbed a ball and took a bite. There it was. Things might be a little unbalanced in terms of the service this evening, but the food was absolutely up to snuff. His shoulders relaxed a little.

  “Meatballs?” Gia peered at the plate like it was rotting roadkill. “And…” She furrowed her brow. “Some kind of pâté?”

  “Kind of. It’s all boudin, which is a traditional Louisiana sausage.”

  “Same as the name of the restaurant.”

  “Yep. We serve a few different kinds. It’s all based on a pork-and-rice filling.” He pointed to what she’d thought was pâté. “This is boudin blanc. Loose sausage—no casing—which is how it’s traditionally eaten.” He picked up a piece of baguette. “You spread it on bread. Maybe add a little mustard if you’re into that. Which you should be because we make our own, and it’s pretty amazing if I do say so myself.”

  “And these?” She pointed to his most popular menu item.

  “Boudin balls. Deep-fried sausage balls, basically.” He picked one up and broke it in half to show her the darkly hued interior. “Made from our boudin noir.”

  “You dye them?”

  He barked a laugh. He would personally murder anyone he caught with food dye in his kitchen. “Nope, the red is from pig’s blood.”

  He eyed her. Was she going to be the kind of person who would happily eat one part of an animal but blanch at eating another?

  Yes, yes she was, judging by how quickly the fork that had been on its way to her mouth reversed direction.

  “Deep fried isn’t really my thing.” She pulled the fork out of the meatball and made a fake apologetic face. “Kind of a job hazard.”

  He tried not to sneer as he turned to fill a new drink order, but damn, he had no time for people who were afraid of real food. “I ordered you a salad, too,” he said, forcing his tone to be neutral. “It should be here soon.”

  “It’s here now.” Ruben, Bennett’s sous-chef, came up behind Gia and set down the restaurant’s house salad, which was Bibb lettuce, roasted beets, shaved fennel, and some of the pecans Gia had hoovered earlier, with a creamy tarragon dressing served on the side.

  Ruben wasn’t wearing his whites, and he stepped behind the bar. “Everything’s under control back there now. Let me do the bar, and you can enjoy your evening.”

  Bennett didn’t argue. Ruben had been with Bennett for years—he’d come up from New Orleans after Bennett opened Boudin—and was a trusted deputy. He wouldn’t jeopardize the evening’s service by bailing on the kitchen if he was needed there.

  “Thanks.” He came around to sit next to Gia. “Ruben, this is Gia, one of the bridesmaids in Noah’s wedding. Our flight was canceled.”

  “Oh, shit!” Gia said, cutting off Ruben’s attempt to greet her. “We should be on the phone trying to rebook!”

  She whipped out her phone, and Bennett saw Ruben stiffen. Ruben knew how Bennett felt about phones in his restaurant. All his staff did. He made them go stand out back when they wanted to use theirs.

  “I’m not picking up a cell signal,” Gia said. “Must be the storm. What’s your Wi-Fi password?” She didn’t look up as she asked, so she didn’t see Ruben grimace.

  “No Wi-Fi,” Bennett said mildly.

  She did look up then, her face composing itself into an expression that would have been a more appropriate response to his confessing he murdered puppies in the kitchen. If he’d entertained the notion that someone who carried around a Polaroid camera might be refreshingly low-tech in other ways, that look of hers crushed it. “You don’t have Wi-Fi here?”

  “Nope.” Bennett speared a bite of her salad and swallowed it along with his anti-Wi-Fi rant. It would only fall on deaf ears. Cute ears, he noticed, as Gia tucked her hair behind one of them—it was small and perfectly shaped and sported a tiny ladybug earring that was completely incongruent with her prickly personality.

  Ruben moved aside and pointed behind him to a sign that said, “Wi-Fi Password: Eff off and talk to each other.” Everyone always thought it was tongue-in-cheek, but Bennett was dead serious about it.

  “Wow.” She blinked several times. “Wow.”

  He took pity on her and got out his own phone, but he had no service, either. “I have a landline at my apartment. Finish your dinner, and we can call when we get home.”

  She looked for a moment like she was going to argue some more, but then she stabbed a beet and popped it into her mouth.

  “Oh my God.” She blinked rapidly. “This is a beet? I’ve never tasted anything this delicious. What did you do to it? Give it a hand job?”

  Ruben burst out laughing.

  “They’re lightly smoked, then roasted.” Bennett tried not to smile, but damn, Gia was funny. “Glazed with a little raw macadamia oil.” At least she had good taste in root vegetables.

  “Try the dressing,” Ruben said, because in Bennett’s restaurant, even a lowly salad dressing was given the star treatment.

  But what did you want to bet Miss No Blood in My Sausage wasn’t into fatty, creamy dressings with her beets?

  Gia speared another beet and barely dipped one end of it into the dressing. It emerged with the tiniest speck of dressing on it, and she ate it. It would be enough, though.

  As if on cue, her eyes widened. “Oh my God. That is good.”

  She redipped the beet—more generously this time—but then said, “Oh, sorry. If we’re sharing, I shouldn’t be double-dipping.”

  Bennett made a “go right ahead” gesture. “We take double-dipping as a compliment arou
nd here.” They ate in silence for a minute, until he remembered the photo, which was on the other side of her. “Hey, can I see that picture? Is it done developing?”

  She slid it over to him. He was at the center of the image, in profile. The focus on everything else was soft. The candle flames at the edges looked like small, fuzzy, yellow suns. It was hard to say why, but the picture evoked energy and activity.

  He liked seeing himself this way, at the center of this place he had built. Inhabiting this life he had made out of nothing.

  He wanted to ask if he could keep the photo, but that would be weird. Anyway, she’d already labeled it. It was destined for her bag.

  “So you gonna make it to this wedding?” Ruben asked, drawing him from his thoughts.

  “We have to,” Bennett said. “I’ve got the rings.”

  “Eh,” Gia said dismissively. “They can buy cheap stand-ins for the ceremony. I have the dress.”

  “And they can’t buy a cheap stand-in for that?”

  “No, because the whole point of a wedding dress is that you wear it at your wedding. That’s its one and only function. The rings you wear forever.”

  Bennett opened his mouth to argue, but actually, she was right.

  “Besides,” she said, “the dress belonged to Wendy’s mother. Wendy’s parents are both dead. And Wendy is…well, she’s one of those people who really had to work for her happily ever after, you know what I mean?”

  “If she’s anything like Noah on that front, I do know.”

  “You’ve met her, right?”

  “Yeah—a couple times. Noah was a regular here before he hit the road with Wendy, and we lived in the same building, too.” Bennett missed Noah. He hadn’t really realized how much he’d relied on him until he was gone. They had a similar outlook on life, because they’d both had to work hard to get where they were. Neither of them took things—or people—for granted.

  “Actually,” Bennett went on, “the first time I met Wendy, she was sitting right where you are.” He chuckled, thinking back to the night Noah first brought Wendy in. Anyone with eyeballs could see that they were perfect for each other, but Gia was right about their happily-ever-after being hard won. It had certainly taken them long enough to catch on to how well suited they were. He looked down at the untouched sausage plate. “She ate an entire order of the boudin balls, in fact.”

  “Aren’t Chef’s balls amazing?” said Ruben, who had been following their conversation. But then, belatedly, he grimaced as he realized he’d phrased the question awkwardly.

  But it was too late. Gia did not miss a beat before calmly informing him, “Actually, I haven’t tasted Chef’s balls.” Then she paused ever so slightly before adding, “Yet.”

  Bennett laughed even as a flare of heat traveled through his body. “Well, you haven’t lived until you’ve tasted my balls. They’re legendary. They get rave reviews.”

  He thought it would stop there—that was probably about enough suggestiveness, given that he and Gia didn’t really know each other—but she looked right at him and said, “I bet they do. Engorged with all that blood.”

  Damn. Was she…propositioning him? He would think so, except for the fact that she’d spent the previous several hours of their acquaintance acting like she was barely tolerating him.

  He had to admit, she was tempting. Despite her appalling lack of taste—she hadn’t even tried any of the sausage. And her appalling manners—he thought back to her behavior at the airport.

  She was just so goddamn pretty. Pretty and picky and entitled.

  It was more than pretty, though. Beauty was ultimately superficial. There was something else about Gia that pulled him in, something hard to put into words. It was like there was a mystery simmering under the surface, a restlessness—like she was floating above the world rather than actively participating in it. He wanted to know why. Even her deadpan humor, as funny as it was, seemed a way for her to keep the world at arm’s length.

  It would have to remain a mystery, though, even if she was hitting on him. Bennett didn’t do casual. Not anymore.

  But Jesus Christ, when she picked up a boudin ball—with her fingers, not her fork—and slowly brought it to her mouth, her eyes on him the whole time?

  He kind of wished he did do casual.

  She licked her lips before the ball made it to her mouth. He expected her to take a bite. His balls were pretty big—ha. But no. She opened her mouth wide and carefully placed the whole thing on her tongue.

  And gasped as her eyes widened.

  “Oh my God,” she said, the phrase barely recognizable through the mouthful. “Oh my God.”

  Well.

  Shit.

  Chapter Two

  It was totally immature. And mean. Bennett didn’t have a coat—Gia was still wearing his—but she couldn’t help it.

  Bennett’s back, as he trudged ahead of her, made such a perfect target.

  Since she’d decided she was going to sleep with him, she could consider this foreplay. He’d gotten her to eat deep-fried pig’s blood—no, to enjoy deep-fried pig’s blood—so she was pretty sure he could coax out other forms of enjoyment as well.

  There were lots of ways to seduce men, if you could even call it that. Not to be conceited, but it usually didn’t require too much effort on her part. And hey, if you were going to be blessed/cursed with looks that matched the current cultural norms for beauty, why not use them? Especially if they were the only currency you had.

  Still, she hadn’t resorted to throwing a snowball to get a boy’s attention since, oh, about fifth grade. What was next? Was she going to pull his hair?

  An image arose in her mind’s eye then, unbidden, fully formed, and a little bit shocking: her hands tangled in his hair, pulling his head between her legs.

  She shivered, not from the cold, and let the snowball fly.

  “Ooof!” He whirled, surprised and indignant. He took a moment to assess the scene, to confirm her guilt, then said, “You are going to regret that.” His voice was low and sure and so very…southern. It carried through the fast-falling snow and lodged deep in her core.

  She was pretty sure she was not going to regret it.

  Bennett had no free hands—he was carrying his bag and her suitcase. So she stooped and scooped up a bunch more snow. She got another two balls—what was it with them and balls?—off before he abandoned their luggage to a snowdrift and started retaliating.

  “Ahhhh!” Gia used Wendy’s garment bag to block his first volley, only belatedly realizing that using the priceless family heirloom wedding dress as a shield probably wasn’t helping on the “make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch” front.

  She looked around and, spotting an awning extending from a shuttered grocery store, ran for it, shrieking as several incoming missiles hit her back. Once there, she hung the dress and her purse on the awning’s crank and ducked behind the wooden structure that would have been used to display produce in more agreeable weather. Conveniently, there was a huge snowdrift within arm’s reach—in the ninety minutes they’d been in the restaurant, the storm had positively dumped snow.

  Sheltered as she was, she was able to get off several direct hits while avoiding most of the incoming ones. She also had the advantage of knowing her way around a snowball fight. You didn’t grow up in Canada with an older brother and survive otherwise.

  Bennett wasn’t packing his balls tightly enough—ha!—so they often disintegrated before they reached her, and when they were still intact, they were mere puffballs. Hers, on the other hand, were well packed and lethal.

  As she pummeled him, she erupted with laughter, and wow, it had been a long time since she’d laughed like that—probably not since the last time she’d gotten together with the girls. Bennett’s sputtering and empty threats only made her laugh harder. She ignored her frozen hand and kept up the onslaught until he approached with his hands up, like she had a gun. “I surrender!” he said, his deep-blue eyes dancing under snowflake-stu
dded lashes.

  I surrender.

  That phrase always had the effect of immediately jolting her back in time…

  She was nineteen and in Ibiza on her first big overseas job. Savoring the taste of money and youth and freedom. Dancing in a dress a designer had given her that retailed for more than a semester’s tuition had cost.

  I surrender was the first thing Lukas ever said to her. It was his opening line as he approached her on a dance floor, hands up. Then, as he’d come closer, he’d mimed being slain by her beauty.

  She had found it all charming. But she’d been nineteen and naive.

  “You okay?” A hand appeared. A gloved one. It was Bennett, postsurrender, reaching down to help her up from her battle station.

  She reminded herself that she was no longer nineteen and naive, and took Bennett’s hand. As soon as she was on her feet, she dropped it and went to retrieve the dress. She waited, squinting up the street, while he collected their luggage. Visibility had noticeably decreased, even since they’d left the restaurant. She’d been telling herself all night that they’d be able to get on a flight out tomorrow, but she was going to have to face facts. No one was getting out anytime—

  “Ahhhh!” A wall of snow rained down on her from behind. So much snow that she couldn’t see.

  “You bastard!” she yelled, whirling on him. How had he done that? That had been a wheelbarrow’s worth of snow.

  Or, you know, a recycling bin’s worth.

  “Oh, shit, sorry, that was too much, wasn’t it?” He dropped the bin, contrition written all over his face, and started brushing the snow off her hair.

  She should have told him there was no such thing as “too much” in a snowball fight, that it was every man for himself, and that he’d just made a genius move. Instead she stood there and let him stroke her head. After he’d brushed off as much snow as he could, he lifted her hair from the neck of the coat and tried to turn the collar up to better shield her from the storm.

  “Crap.” His face fell when he came around to stand in front of her. She must look like a drowned rat.