On the Steamy Side

by Louisa Edwards

  Lilah laughed. “That sounds awfully soap opera, as if I had a grand passion that blew up, leaving me nursing a broken heart.”

  Devon gave her a searing look, as if he’d noticed her distinct lack of actual denial, but all he said was,

  “Well, I already know you didn’t come to New York because you had a fantastic new career lined up.”

  “My childhood dreams didn’t center around clearing dirty dishes and filling water glasses,” she agreed.

  “I was happy enough teaching drama at the local high school, while it lasted. If budget cuts hadn’t gutted the arts program in our school system, I might still be there.”

  “That’s probably my cue to tell you how sorry I am, but I haven’t had enough coffee to be able to lie effectively,” Devon said. “I’m glad you got canned. Worked out great for me.”

  He gave her a lazy smile that made Lilah grin back. “Don’t be sorry for me. It’s not like teaching was my childhood dream, either. I fell into it, because it was easy and seemed stable and secure. Which turned out to be a giant illusion.” Just like every other socalled “safe” choice she’d ever made.

  “Anyway,” Lilah continued, “I don’t think I’ve done so badly in the career department. I get to hang out with my new pal, Tucker, for the next month. That sounds like a pretty great job anyone would love to have!”

  Tucker didn’t say anything, but she thought he wanted to. Something perilously close to hope flickered across his sulky young face, and it made Lilah’s throat tighten.

  Lilah went to the hidden fridge to search for buttermilk. There wasn’t any, but the fancy Greek yogurt would work as a substitute.

  “What are you making, anyway?” Devon asked carelessly.

  “Biscuits,” Lilah said, starting to mix them up on autopilot. She’d made them so many times, she didn’t need a recipe.

  Devon smiled a smug sort of smile, as if his expectations had been fulfilled. Lilah didn’t mind. He’d change his tune once he tasted them.

  “I thought you were going to get in the shower,” she said.

  “Right.” He pushed off the counter and gave her a cocky eyebrow arch. “I’ll be back in a few to see how the biscuits turn out.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Devon wasn’t back yet, but a quick peek in the oven revealed a cast-iron skillet—

  enameled, Lilah’d sniffed in disapproval, but that was the closest thing she could find to the ancient, well-seasoned skillet she’d learned to make biscuits in as a child younger than Tucker—full of small rounds of dough puffing and crisping to a pretty golden brown on top. They were about done, she decided, and hunted up a pair of oven mitts.

  “These biscuits were my favorite when I was your age,” she told Tucker, who maintained his stoic silence. She was hoping if she kept up a sort of running commentary, eventually something she said would engage him enough to get him to talk back.

  “My Aunt Bertie used to make a batch every morning. With as many kids as we had in the house, they were always gone before lunch.”

  Tucker made a little motion, a jerk of his chin that made Lilah wonder if he was about to jump in. She paused for a second, but when he stayed quiet, she went on.

  “My cousin Trudy likes biscuits with homemade strawberry jam, and her oldest brother, Walt, likes them with peanut butter. I know! Walt’s bonkers, he’d eat peanut butter on anything, he’s plum crazy for it. My favorite way to have biscuits is with red-eye gravy, this really thin, salty sauce you make by boiling country ham with strong coffee. Sounds funny to you, I bet, that a kid would like something with coffee—yuck! But it’s good, I promise you.”

  Tucker rolled his eyes and made a puking face. The retching noises were rendered with the authenticity only a ten-year-old boy could produce. Lilah grinned.

  Lilah found a cupboard stacked with meticulously matched sage-green china. Piling a couple of steaming hot biscuits on the plate, she set it in front of Tucker, saying, “But if we don’t have red-eye gravy—and I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a good hunk of country ham anywhere in Manhattan—

  the best way to eat fresh, hot biscuits is with butter and a little dab of something sweet.”

  Praying the enormous walk-in pantry held something simple like molasses or maple syrup, Lilah crowed when she found a squat little jar of honey. It didn’t look like any honey she’d ever seen before; rather than being tawny gold in color and syrupy in texture, this honey was a pale, pale yellow and looked thick enough to spread with a knife. It was labeled “Acacia Honey” from Hawaii, but Lilah was willing to bet it would top her biscuits like a dream.

  She was right. Across from each other in the cozy breakfast nook, Lilah and Tucker slathered the warm, tender biscuits with creamery butter and the strange, thick honey. It had an almost grainy texture that was a delicious contrast to the crumbly biscuits and melting butter. Tucker hesitated before taking his first bite, possibly a little gun-shy after his first breakfast, but once he tried it, his eyes lit up. After a few moments of silent, dedicated eating, Tucker looked up at her, honey smearing his mouth and crumbs dotting his chin, and said, “This is good.”

  Lilah tried to contain her joy at his initiation of conversation in a single smile. “I’m glad you like it.”

  He nodded and went back to eating. Lilah attempted not to worry that it had been an aberration and that Tucker had already resumed his self-imposed vow of silence. Just when she was about to start gabbing again to fill the quiet air, he slid her a glance. She smiled encouragingly, and with a tentative voice, Tucker said, “You had a lot of cousins, huh?”

  Lilah was in the middle of one of her best Walt stories, the one where he convinced the twins, Hannah and Keith, to climb to the very top of the magnolia tree behind the house, when Devon came back in.

  Fresh from the shower, Devon was devastating. A close shave emphasized the sharp angles of his jaw, the slight cleft in his chin. His hair was wet and spiky, a casually tousled look that Lilah was sure took several minutes and a couple hundred dollars’ worth of product to achieve. He was wearing casual clothes, suitable for a day sweating in a hot professional kitchen, but even swathed in loose black pants and a plain white T-shirt, there was no denying his masculine beauty.

  Still, Lilah thought she might prefer him as he’d been early that morning—sleep-mussed hair and a pillow crease running down his stubbled cheek.

  Even from a few feet away, he smelled like soap and the spice of his cologne. Lilah inhaled as deeply as she could without being obvious. She smiled up at him.

  “I was just telling Tuck about my family back home,” she said.

  Devon smiled back, but the happy expression faded as he took in the plates in front of Tucker. The one he’d prepared was nearly untouched and had turned into a cold, congealed mess of runny yellow mush and neon-orange fish eggs. The other plate was nothing but crumbs, and Tucker was in the middle of dotting his fingertip around the plate and picking those crumbs up with his sticky, honey-covered digit. He froze guiltily when he realized Devon was watching him.

  Devon, bless his heart, tried to laugh it off. “Slow down, kid, I bet Lilah will make you more biscuits if you ask nicely.”

  He picked up Tucker’s other plate and took it to the sink. Lilah watched him scrape the food off it into the garbage disposal, feeling awful. Some father-son bonding experience this was turning out to be!

  Tucker wouldn’t eat Devon’s food, but scarfed down her biscuits like he’d been on starvation rations for weeks.

  His thin shoulders were hunched again, and he was curled in on himself the way he’d been before she started drawing him out with stories about her cousins’ wilder days.

  “I think the salmon roe was maybe a bit adventurous for someone his age,” Lilah said apologetically.

  Devon added the scraped plate to the dishwasher with a clatter. “Doesn’t matter,” he said with that wide, fake smile she’d last seen on the television screen. “No big shocker, I suck at figuring out what would sound good to
a kid. I’m just glad you were here to fix him something he’d eat.”

  “Do you want a biscuit?” Lilah asked, her heart squeezing tight.

  He shook his head without looking at them. “I’ve got to get to the restaurant. See you later. Or not, if you’re asleep when I get home. Let Paolo know if you want to go out, he’ll drive you anywhere you need to go.”

  With that, Devon was out the door. Lilah didn’t want to read defeat in the slope of his departing shoulders, but she couldn’t help but wonder if the first step of Operation Fatherhood had done more harm than good.

  Luckily, family breakfast was only the beginning.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Tosser was on a right tear this morning. Frankie watched as Devon hissed a few choice words to Milo that nearly had the tough young buck in tears.

  Their absent and much-lamented boss, Adam Temple, knew how to skin a man with the sharp side of his tongue, no question, but there was an underlying sweetness of temper to the man that Devon Sparks absolutely lacked.

  Frankie knew they were in the shit from the moment he arrived at Market, yawning and cursing the breaking dawn, to find Devon already there, hassling the jolly old geezer who delivered the whole ducklings from up the Hudson River Valley. It weren’t the executive chef’s bailiwick to check in produce deliveries—that was one of Frankie’s despised souschef jobs—but there the Tosser was, waving a clipboard around and looking incensed.

  Maybe the arse didn’t think forty pound of duck breast would see them through the night’s service; maybe he didn’t like the cut of the poor delivery knob’s trousers. Either way, he was making a right git of himself.

  Frankie shook his head and went inside. After all, if the visiting exec chef wanted to check in deliveries, that was his lookout. Frankie was happy enough to ditch the chore.

  He hung up his battered black denim jacket in the employee locker room and took the stairs to the kitchen two at a time.

  Nodding to Violet, who was rolling out what looked like a nice pâte brisée at the pastry station, Frankie bounded over to his beloved wood-fired grill and ducked his head into the lowboy to check his prep. He had plenty of the hand-mixed spice rub for the rib-eye, but he needed to chop and blanch buckets of watercress to be tempuraed later and then plated beside. He also seemed to be low on chopped rosemary and mint.

  Ticking off tasks in his mind, Frankie nearly didn’t notice Grant doing his stress dance on the other side of the open pass into the dining room. Grant had been on a hair-trigger ever since Devon Sparks showed up. Not that Frankie was elated to be back under the Tosser’s thumb, but Grant looked close to nervous collapse.

  Frankie suppressed an eye roll. Grant was a good mate, and a better manager, but the man could whip himself into a strop faster than anyone Frankie knew. As it usually all came to nothing, Frankie debated whether or not to put his oar in, but a particularly vigorous hand-wring from Grant decided the issue.

  “Oi there, Grant. What’s the crack?”

  Turning an aggrieved face on Frankie, Grant ground out, “That … that … overbearing, arrogant, unfeeling bastard of an executive chef hired a new bartender.”

  Frankie blinked. “Well. How sodding dare he? That’s just not on.”

  “Oh, shut it,” Grant said disgustedly. “I know I’m being ridiculous. It’s more about who he hired.” Grant blew out a sigh that ruffled the wheat-colored hair lying across his forehead. With his cornflower-blue eyes and clear-skinned good looks, Grant was the poster boy for clean living and personal responsibility. It was amazing he and Frankie were such good mates, when you came to think about it.

  “Who’d he hire, then?” Frankie asked soothingly.

  Everything about Grant’s expression and tone conveyed deepest tragedy. “Christian Colby.”

  “Chris?” Frankie was surprised. “From Chapel?” The Lower East Side pub was a favored late-night hangout with their crew, partly due to the grotty appeal of its hardcore punk music scene, and partly due to Christian Colby’s undeniably fantastic cocktails.

  “Yes,” cried Grant. “And the worst part is, I know he’s going to be brilliant, and when Adam gets back he’ll want him to stay on, and then …”

  “What?” Bloody hell, but this was fascinating.

  “Then,” Grant intoned solemnly, “he’ll always be around. Where I work. Every day.”

  Frankie started to point out that Grant saw Chris nearly every day after work, when the whole crew staked out the bar at Chapel until the wee hours of the morning, but then he paused. More often than not, he realized, Grant went home instead of out, pleading exhaustion.

  It was believable; after a hectic dinner service with a fully booked restaurant, they were all knackered. For Frankie and his fellow line cooks, that often manifested as being wired, too high on the adrenaline rush of finishing tickets and banging out a complete service to go straight home to bed.

  Especially when that bed was empty.

  Frankie sighed. Jess had started cutting back on his hours at Market and getting involved with summer classes and photography clubs and other school-related things. NYU started in a little over a month, and the closer it got, the more Frankie was uncomfortably aware of the incongruity between the way he lived his life, and the life unfolding in front of Jess.

  This was only a problem when they were apart. When they were together, Frankie was generally too happy to bother much about the future. But when Jess was off with his college friends, being an upstanding young member of society somewhere out of Frankie’s sight, well, that was when Frankie started to think.

  Thinking was a pisser. He tried to avoid it as much as possible, but in the early morning hours before daylight filtered through the grime-coated skylight in his tiny one-room attic loft, jokingly called the Garret, Frankie couldn’t help but wonder how much longer he’d have with Jess before the younger man sussed out that there were legions upon legions of better men than Frankie with whom to dally.

  For instance, Wes Murphy, the kitchen’s new extern who was about Jess’s age, single, and charming. Wes and Jess had struck up an aggravatingly fast friendship.

  When their schedules meshed and both Jess and Frankie worked the same night, more often than not, they hit Chapel afterward. Those nights, Jess spent half his time with Wes. Granted, Frankie was usually on stage with his punk band, Dreck, and Jess was in the audience being a right fanboy, but still. Wes was there beside him, close enough to touch.

  “You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Grant demanded, shocking Frankie back into the here and now.

  “I am,” Frankie lied. “You’re on about Christian and why it’s a bad thing to have a bloody fantastic bartender coming to work here.”

  Grant threw up his hands. “Never mind. I know you think I’m being stupid. Just … whatever. Forget about it, Frankie.”

  With that, he stalked off, still shaking his head. Frankie watched him go with that squirmy feeling in his gut that told him he could’ve handled that better. Ah, well, you can’t win them all, as Frankie’s da used to say.

  Shrugging it off, Frankie pointed himself toward the kitchen, intending to take care of the rest of his mise en place. A happy voice calling his name stopped him.

  “Frankie! Hey!”

  Joy bloomed in his heart. “Jess! Didn’t know you were on today,” Frankie said, turning in time to catch the bundle of slender, long-limbed young man that barreled into his arms.

  “I wasn’t,” Jess mumbled into Frankie’s neck. “I switched with Kristen. Just felt like I hadn’t seen you in forever. You’re out when I get home, or I’m asleep already when you come in.”

  “It’s been a bad run,” Frankie agreed, letting his arms relearn the wondrous heft and weight of Jess’s warm, wriggling body.

  “I’m thinking about quitting the photography club,” Jess admitted. “It takes up so much time.”

  Time I could be spending with you. Jess didn’t say it, but Frankie heard it on the air as clear as a bell.
>
  Pulling back gently, he said, “Might want to think twice about that, Bit. Making friends in your club, aren’t you?”

  Jess refused to be pushed away, nudging back into Frankie’s arms with a contented sigh. “Sure, but they won’t stop being my friends if I quit the club. We’ll have classes together once the semester starts, probably have to do projects and stuff.”

  In other words, they’d only be postponing the inevitable.

  “You’re here now,” Frankie said, taking the coward’s way out and avoiding the conversation. “Want to come out back and keep me company while I have a smoke?”

  Jess gave him a stern look. It was ridiculously adorable on his gorgeous young face, all narrowed blue eyes, sweet mouth, and floppy auburn hair.

  “That depends. On what number cigarette this is for you.”

  Frankie groaned. “It’s not gone ten in the morning. Can’t the mothering wait till I’ve at least had a nice cuppa?”

  “No. You promised you’d cut back. So how many are you up to?”

  “Three,” Frankie confessed grudgingly. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

  “At ten o’clock?” Jess looked highly skeptical.

  “Fine, don’t come,” Frankie said. “Best go check in with Grant, anyroad. See if anything wants doing.”

  Unworthy of him, perhaps, but Jess was after him all the time about the smoking. Maybe dealing with a stroppy Grant would remind him that there were worse fates to befall a young server than standing by the loading dock watching a sous chef smoke a fag.

  “Fine,” Jess echoed, sticking out his tongue. “Hey, is Wes here? I want to say hi before I find Grant.”

  Frankie couldn’t help the torrent of jealousy that sluiced through his veins at the mention of the younger, closer-to-Jess’s-age chef, but he could damn well keep it from showing on his face.

  “Don’t know, Bit, may as well see. I’m off to worship the nicotine goddess.”

  Without waiting to see if Jess found his new best friend, Frankie headed for the great outdoors. Devon was still loitering in the alley, Frankie was surprised to see, though the duck deliveryman had long since scarpered.