“I’m saying Chef Temple fucked his way to the top. He did what it took to get his restaurant—not that it was a chore, I bet. That Eleanor chick is decent-looking, in a naughty-librarian kind of way.”
Abruptly unable to handle even one more word out of Rob, Miranda slid from the booth and stood. Her stomach was clenched in enough knots to make her fiercely glad she hadn’t drunk anything.
“Okay, thanks,” she said quickly. “I’ve got what I need, so I’m heading out.”
Rob was already looking past her, searching for the waiter. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Miranda nodded and left the bar, head whirling with unwelcome images.
Adam and Eleanor. They’d had a relationship. Worse than that, Adam had used that poor woman and then ruthlessly discarded her. A chill prickled across Miranda’s shoulders. Adam had used sex to get what he wanted before, parlaying his charm and sensuality into a hit restaurant.
Could that be the reason for his pursuit of Miranda? To charm her, seduce her into writing only what Adam wanted? With a sinking heart, she acknowledged it was all too likely. Ignoring the corner of her mind that wished she’d never answered her cell, never gone to see Rob at that bar, Miranda resolved to be on her guard.
No more flirting. No more kisses. And definitely no more insanely hot groping up against the kitchen counter.
She had a terrible feeling that might be easier said than done.
It was disgustingly cheesy, but all Adam could think about was that scene from the Jimmy Cagney movie, where Jimmy climbs a tower or something and says, with this maniacal laugh, “Top of the world, Ma!”
Okay, so the movie was White Heat and the premise had something to do with Cagney as supercriminal thug, as near as Adam could remember, but still. The near-psychotic euphoria of that moment struck a chord.
Sometimes life was fucking awesome.
A restaurant that was a smash hit after only one week, phone lines burning up with reservations, insanely talented crew—all the things he’d always wanted, the life he’d been working toward since he was eighteen. Plus one stunning extra to top it all off, like the dollop of crème fraîche on a teaspoon of Beluga caviar.
Miranda Wake. A sizzling hot redhead full of contradictions and surprises. They’d squeezed a few more cooking lessons in over the past week, and even though they’d stuck to the culinary stuff, Adam knew it was only a matter of time. Looks passed back and forth, bodies brushed against each other as they moved around the kitchen—at this point, the sparky tension between them was enough to power a six-burner range.
They’d talked endlessly, conversations ranging from politics (they were both liberal—no shocker there, they both lived in Manhattan) to religion (Miranda went to the Methodist church near her apartment; Adam subscribed more to the Church of Sunday Brunch) to pop culture (they agreed that Aliens was as close to flawless as a movie could get).
Adam had noticed that when the talk turned personal, Miranda held back. He’d told her all about his crazy family, his Florida retiree parents, his cranky grandmother, and even his loser cousin, Joey, who blew every paycheck on the dogs. Miranda listened to it, soaked it up like a sponge, matter of fact, but she didn’t offer much in return. He’d tried to draw her out, ask about her parents and what it was like to lose them so young, but she snapped shut tighter than a fresh oyster.
So okay. She wasn’t ready to talk about that stuff yet. But Adam wasn’t discouraged. Something was building between them, layer upon layer every time they met, like a flawless terrine, and Adam couldn’t wait to finally dig in.
He pictured her tart mouth all pursed in concentration during that first lesson as she cracked egg after egg, and the image made him want to laugh out loud with joy or hug someone or something.
Frankie, innocently stocking the grill station with his mise en place, was the victim of Adam’s outpouring of emotion. Luckily, he was used to it.
“Oi,” he complained when Adam collared him with one arm around the neck and hauled him in for a bear hug.
“Shut up and enjoy it, you deviant,” Adam said, releasing him after a pointed squeeze. “You know you love me.”
“You’re off your nut,” Frankie said, attempting an unsuccessful scowl. “What did that scribbler of yours do to you this afternoon?”
“Nothing,” Adam said. Nothing except drive him crazy with her sidelong glances and casual touches. And there’d been a moment, when he’d straightened up from removing the parbaked piecrust from the oven, he’d been sure she was about to jump him.
Frankie raised a brow, and Adam smiled. They both knew Adam would spill his guts if there were anything to tell. They didn’t do secrets, not with each other.
Which reminded him of the one and only brown spot on the otherwise delectable peach that was currently his life. He was keeping a secret from Miranda. Kind of a doozy, too. Christ, when was that kid brother of hers going to fess up and make an honest man out of Frankie? Not to mention Adam.
“No time for gossip now. Prep, man, prep! We open in three hours.”
“If you can keep your mind on business long enough to make it through service,” Frankie said.
“Right,” Adam agreed. “Let’s all hope for that.”
“We’ll keep our fingers crossed, yeah?”
“Totally,” Milo said, skimming past with a huge stainless steel bowl of chopped cucumber. “What are we crossing our fingers for?”
“For my sanity,” Adam told him. “And no mistakes today, right, amico?”
“Fuckin’ A,” was the fervent response. “I think my balls are still hiding somewhere behind my pelvic bone, man. You’re scary when you get pissed.”
Adam gave him a smile full of teeth. “Don’t fuck up and I won’t have to castrate you.”
“Yeah, boss!” Milo saluted sharply with one hand, nearly dropped the bowl, and hurried off to his station looking nervous but on point.
Adam made his rounds of the kitchen, sniffing appreciatively at Violet’s fresh-baked poppyseed brioche rolls and exchanging noninterrogatory pleasantries with Quentin as the big man steadily minced garlic.
When he got to the stock prep station, however, he hit a snag.
No Miranda, no Rob Meeks. No perfectly diced mirepoix, carrots, celery, and onions cut to the same size and caramelized to an even, aromatic tenderness.
He knew where Miranda was—he’d sent her home to take a shower after their semisuccessful stab at quiche this afternoon. Crust always seemed like the simplest thing in the world, until you tried to teach someone else how to make it. She’d been caked in flour by the end of the lesson.
But Miranda wasn’t the only one who was missing. Adam stood by the stock station and fretted. Robin Meeks wasn’t working out as an extern. Little mistakes, piddling small-time stuff, but it added up, and Adam didn’t love it.
Like today. It wasn’t exactly late yet—there was still plenty of time to get the stock going. But it needed to happen soon, and he didn’t have any idea if Rob was just running behind or if he’d totally flaked or what. Not for the first time, he cursed his own soft streak when it came to hosting culinary school externs. They were never as solid as his handpicked crew.
The rest of the guys were all here. Even Billy Perez, stoic at the dishwashing station, spraying down a set of stainless steel mixing bowls. Adam cocked his head and watched the slight frown of concentration on Billy’s face. The way the kid took to his menial task like it was his fucking reason for living.
Adam whistled a shrill wake-up call that made everyone in the kitchen glance up from what they were doing. He beckoned Billy over and the crew got back to business. The kid wiped his hands on his apron and walked over, navigating the bustling rows of workspace and darting cooks with ease.
Yeah, this was gonna work.
When Billy reached his side and raised his dark eyebrows inquiringly, Adam planted his forefinger on the empty cutting block between them.
“You see this?” he said. “Know wha
t station this is?”
Billy narrowed his eyes like he wasn’t sure what Adam was getting at. Slowly, he said, “It’s stock. Veg prep. Right?”
“Yup. And guess who’s on it today.”
“Looks like no one yet, but usually Rob. And the new girl?” Billy said, shifting his weight. He still wasn’t getting it and clearly sort of wished Adam would just let him go back to his dishes already.
Adam clasped his hands behind his back and rocked up onto the balls of his feet. “But Rob ain’t here. You are. I want this station going. You up for it?”
Billy’s eyes widened and Adam caught the flash of burning ambition flaring up quick and hot.
“I’m up for it,” Billy said, his voice fierce and a little lilting with the accent that only seemed to come out of him in moments of stress. And, evidently, moments of joy as well, because Adam could see that the kid was jacked up to the point of jittery nerves at the prospect of dicing a few vegetables.
“I know you’ve heard me give the spiel about how to make stock. You could probably say it all back to me, in English and Spanish, that’s how hard you were listening. Don’t think I didn’t notice.” Adam gave Billy his very best I-know-all-I-see-all look. The guy was duly impressed. Adam remembered again why he loved the young ones, those eager, bright-eyed kids who were drawn to the magic that happened when food met heat.
He’d been one of those kids once. Okay, so in most ways he probably still was. But that was a good thing! He never wanted to lose the sense of shock and awe he got over a perfectly caramelized carrot or a stock so clear you could read the newspaper through it.
Billy didn’t have his own knife set so Adam lent him a good eight-inch all-purpose chef’s knife and sent him running for the boxes of carrots, onions, and celery that Adam had picked up that morning from the Union Square market.
Adam watched him long enough to see that he’d gotten a good start, but then he got called over to mediate a heated discussion between Frankie and Quentin on the best way to score the meat to ensure maximum penetration of the marinade. He lost track of things for a while, and before he knew it, there were some angry tones emanating from the vicinity of the stock station.
Ah. Rob was here. Miranda, too, looking a little frazzled as the shrimpy, red-faced extern faced off with the calm Hispanic kid.
Adam knew who he’d put his money on.
He sauntered over. “Problem?”
“Yes,” Rob said, puffing right up with indignation and smug self-assurance. “The dish boy,” he said, sneering, “is off his station. Worse than that, he’s pretending to man my station.”
Adam was amused. “Not to get all Queen of Hearts on your ass, but all the stations around here belong to me. Nobody works anything except on my say-so. And I say you were late, so ‘the dish boy’ gets a shot.”
The told-you-so look Rob Meeks aimed in Miranda’s direction was unexpected, and Adam frowned. Wordless communication seemed to point to a level of intimacy that made something ugly coil and tighten in Adam’s gut. They’d arrived around the same time. Together? He took another look at the extern: still thin-faced and sallow, with pockmarks and a bad attitude.
Not possible. Not with the way she’d caught her breath this afternoon when Adam pressed close under the pretext of showing her how to roll out the pastry dough.
Just in case, though, he sent Rob over to help Milo with garde-manger prep. The little pisser went, with a barely concealed glower of dissatisfaction.
Adam winked at Miranda and beckoned her over with a slight nod. “How about you stick with me tonight? See how we do things up at the pass.”
She stiffened for a beat, then appeared to force herself to relax. “You mean I get a break from dicing? I’m there. The blisters on my blisters are starting to get blisters.”
Adam laughed at her mock-aggrieved expression and made the appropriately impressed noises over her proffered palms. There were indeed several deeply red and abraded spots, right where the handle of the knife pressed against the knobs of bone at the ends of her fingers. Pretending a need to examine them more closely, Adam took her hands in one of his.
“Yeah, the knife work can be brutal when you’re first starting out.” He stroked one finger lightly down the center of her palm and was highly gratified by her immediate and pronounced shiver.
“The key,” he continued, rubbing delicately at the sensitive skin surrounding her cute little protocalluses, “is to keep at it. Build up new, thicker layers of skin that can withstand the constant repetitive motion.”
Miranda jerked her hands away. “So. You’re saying I should go help Rob with the prep so I can toughen up?”
Adam frowned. “No, I still want you with me tonight. It’ll be good for your book.” There, that was believable, right?
Or not. Miranda raised one skeptical brow, but she didn’t call him on it, and Adam let out a surreptitious relieved breath. Not that it was a total lie. Truth was, he’d mellowed on the whole book thing over the last week. Once he’d had time to think about it, it wasn’t such a bad thing. And after a week of getting to know her better, he trusted Miranda. The kind of book she was sure to write could only benefit Market.
So it was with real sincerity that he said, “I’m serious. I wanted you to learn to cook, and you’re well on your way.”
That made her laugh out loud, the sound tinged with a bitterness that bewildered Adam. What was going on with her?
“Now I know you’re lying,” she accused.
He thought of some of the culinary crimes perpetrated by the lovely woman in front of him, from the overpoached eggs to the scalded-milk debacle to the mess she’d made of a simple roasted chicken, and squinted one eye shut. “Okay, maybe ‘well on your way’ is overstating it. But you’re trying and that’s what counts. You know, since I’m not paying you or being forced to eat your cooking.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and Miranda loosened up enough to slug him in the chest. Adam grinned.
“All I meant was, and ouch, by the way, was that there’s more than one way to work in the kitchen and every job is important. That’s what privileged culinary-school brats like Rob Meeks don’t get. He thinks he’s better than a mere dishwasher because he’s got some classroom training. But Billy Perez has been here since day one, working his ass off doing whatever is asked of him and paying attention. I’d lay you better than even odds he could do nearly any job in here. Whereas Rob can barely manage to show up for his shift on time, and when he is here, he’s usually too busy kissing my ass to do his job.”
“But Rob has had a lot of specialized training,” Miranda pointed out. “It seems like he’d be a more valuable asset than someone with no experience.”
Adam shrugged. “It does seem that way. I don’t know, all I can tell you is that from what I’ve seen, hard work and potential? They trump experience every single time.” He led her up toward the pass where it was quieter, a little out of the way of the cheerful chaos of the kitchen.
“Interesting,” Miranda said. “So, do you think Billy has the potential to do your job?”
Her tone was half teasing, half combative, but Adam took it seriously. “I do, actually. Maybe not tonight, but someday. Yeah. He’s got it.”
“What?” she pushed, frustrated as always with Adam’s inability to articulate.
Adam rocked on his heels, trying to put the indefinable into words. “Billy Perez has ‘it,’ that fire, passion, drive for perfection, insanity”—he laughed—“whatever you want to call it.”
“Ambition?” she asked, trying to pin it down.
“It’s more than that. It’s more than a love of food or cooking, or a need to succeed. I mean, it’s all of those things, but other things, too. Sorry, I suck as an interview subject.” He kneaded the back of his neck with one hand. This was the only time Adam ever felt self-conscious in his whole life, practically, when Miranda was staring at him with those laser eyes, trying to yank a coherent response to some questio
n out of him like tugging the wishbone from a goose.
“No,” she surprised him by saying. “I’ve learned a lot from you these past few days.”
For a moment it seemed as if there were more she wanted to say. He could almost see the words forming in her mouth, but she pressed her lips together in an almost unhappy line instead. And then she flushed a little in that way he loved and it made Adam smile, his momentary awkwardness and her strange air of sadness forgotten.
“And tonight, you’re gonna learn even more,” he said grandly, sweeping one arm out to encompass the long horizontal opening onto the dining room.
“Oui, chef,” she said, saluting smartly, and Adam loved the way her blue eyes sparkled in the harsh kitchen lights. That feeling was back, that top-of-the-world mojo, and he knew down to the soles of his feet that this was going to be a night to remember.
EIGHTEEN
What a difference a week makes, Miranda thought. A few short days ago, she’d confidently believed in the version of Market she’d presented to her publisher, with a cocky, overrated chef, terrible working conditions, and employees who were the very next thing to criminals. Well, she’d at least believed it enough to commit to basing a book on it and to accept the offer of insider information from a disgruntled employee.
And now? Everything was all jumbled up.
The people working here were happy. The customers were happy.
Miranda was happy.
Well, she would’ve been if she didn’t have this book deal hanging over her head. Not to mention the tension over the true source of Adam’s interest in her. Despite Rob’s story about Eleanor Bonning, despite common sense, part of Miranda desperately wanted to believe that what she had with Adam was different. Special.
Ridiculous.
She sighed and let her mind wander while Adam went over the menu with Grant. The serving staff was beginning to pile into the kitchen to taste the evening’s specials so they could recommend things to customers.
Miranda hung back, her stomach too tight and knotted to handle the pickled-cherry clafouti, a tender puff of lightly sweetened pancake dotted with tart cherries, black with juice, and its little fan of perfectly crisped slices of duck breast. From the moans and groans of the servers, she was missing out, but Miranda couldn’t think of anything except the crop of rumors and gossip she’d gotten from Rob Meeks.
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