Fire Me Up

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Tell me where to start!” she hollered back at Adrian, who stood opposite her workstation, barking out gruff directives just as he’d done for the last three days straight.

  “One ticket at a time, Red. Plate what’s in front of you first and get it out the door. Jesse!” He tossed the word over his thickly muscled shoulder, readjusting his Harley-Davidson baseball hat over the hard-edged platinum hair slipping out from beneath the brim. “Drop the fries for the two coming up, then the wings as soon as those new burgers get fired. Go!”

  Teagan’s eyes stung from the one-two punch of smoke and heat coming off the grill, and she swiped an arm across her forehead in a sad attempt to keep her perspiration at least manageable. She gave the burger currently laid out on the plate in front of her an unsure glance and an even more unsure poke. How the hell Adrian knew if it was properly cooked with just one touch was a total flipping mystery.

  But not half as magical as the other things he could do with just a few touches. Not to mention his mouth.

  “Shit.” Teagan watched helplessly as the top of the perfectly split, perfectly toasted burger roll tumbled from her shaking grasp to the floor, sadly not the first food-victim of her wandering, lust-addled mind. Frowning, she whirled to grab another roll from the shelf above her station, shoving it into the wide-mouthed industrial toaster with a firm clank.

  Adrian shot a stare at the digital display on the fryer before sending his focus onto her station without so much as a hint of emotion, either good or bad. “Those fries are coming up in sixty. Let’s get those burgers on the floor in sixty-five.”

  Things had been all business between them ever since the reality check of his comment the other day had reminded her that her number one focus—her only focus—should be on taking care of things, not being taken care of. She needed him to help her in the kitchen, not the bedroom, and she’d do well to keep that thought front and center.

  Damn it, how had she dropped two rolls in a row?

  Teagan kicked the latest offender into the pile beneath her workstation and focused on her remaining tickets. While being in the kitchen still sent unease rippling under her skin, at least she was starting to get the hang of things. Adrian might be brusque, but he sure as hell knew his stuff. For the third night in a row, nothing massive had cropped up to sink them, although tonight’s dinner rush had done its best to try. Teagan suspected it was more Adrian’s skill and anticipation than anything she or Jesse had done, although Jesse had gone nose to grindstone with impressive dedication. She really owed him—and Brennan, and everyone else left on her skeletal payroll—answers about those glitchy paychecks.

  Problem was, as far as she could tell, there weren’t any.

  Teagan had genuinely meant to honor her father’s request to handle the accounting on his own. She couldn’t deny that the Double Shot was his business, one he’d built from a pile of fresh dirt and a dream of something more. And after twenty-five years, he could run the books in his sleep.

  Which was exactly why she’d printed out the records the minute she’d crossed the threshold the other day. Her father hadn’t made an accounting error since she was in the eighth grade, and something about this didn’t pass the smell test.

  “Your fries are up, unless you’re waiting for them to invite themselves onto the plates.”

  Even though Adrian had notched his voice one level lower than normal as he approached her from behind, she still jumped halfway to the giant stainless steel updraft hood positioned over the grill.

  “Oh!” Thankfully, she’d already put the replacement roll on the plate awaiting the fries and garnish, otherwise it would’ve likely joined its buddies in the reject pile spilling out from beneath her station. “Right. Sorry.” She turned to finish plating the burgers in front of her, waiting for Adrian’s nod of approval before sending them to the hot window and focusing on the next orders. As little as she liked it, her niggling worries over the books were going to have to stay pretty low on the priority totem pole until she could press more answers from her father. She had bigger fish to fry. Along with two batches of wings and some onions.

  Twenty minutes later, she finally, blessedly, made the call to close the kitchen. Jesse headed back to the dishwashing station to work with the new guy, who had thankfully been eager enough for a job that he’d offered to work for peanuts and start today. Teagan braced both hands on the cool surface of the countertop, letting her chin loll onto her chest with a slow, exhausted exhale. The iron fingers of pain gripping her lower back didn’t even consider relenting, although the rest of her was sorely tempted.

  Working with food was sucking the life out of her.

  “Just because the kitchen’s closed doesn’t mean you’re off the hook, Red. We’ve got breakdown to do, and not a little bit.” Adrian fixed her with his standard-issue smoky stare, and the nickname slid over her awareness to land smack in her libido’s lap.

  “You don’t have to call me that,” she said, hating the irritation seeping into her tone at his low-level teasing. But to her surprise, rather than pop a brow or get indignant, Adrian cracked a dark, sexy, holy-hell grin.

  “I know. Now check your lowboy and tell me what you’ve got left. As much as it sucks, tomorrow’s garnish vegetables aren’t going to slice themselves.”

  Teagan consolidated what she had left from her line containers before starting in on the tomatoes they’d surely go through in tomorrow’s lunch rush. Assembling already-prepped ingredients in the surging insanity of a shift felt somehow different from putting her hands on food with nothing but time, and the knots in her shoulders went for the full corkscrew.

  “So do you want to tell me why you hate food so much?” The lack of judgment in Adrian’s rough voice tripped up both her brain and her hands, and Teagan fumbled her tomato halfway across the cutting board, following the gaffe with an unladylike swear.

  “I don’t hate food,” she said, but the words had none of the conviction she’d wanted to pin them with, so she added, “I’m just not crazy about cooking.”

  “Mmm. It shows.”

  “Thanks. I hadn’t noticed.” She reset her grip on the smooth knife handle, focusing even harder on slicing the tomato. How the hell did some people find this relaxing?

  “Here.” Adrian took a step toward her, the corded muscles in his forearm flexing tight over the scrolled letters inked there as he gestured to her body. “You’re losing all your energy to wasted movement. Keep your arms close to you, otherwise you’ll burn out and get burned.”

  “Sounds fun.” Despite her sarcasm, she let her elbows list in toward her rib cage as she continued to slice, and damn if Adrian wasn’t right.

  “It’s not. How come you don’t like to cook?”

  Teagan’s gut doubled down, but she didn’t flinch. “I’m not good at it. What’s your tattoo mean?”

  “You’re not bad at it. And nice try with the bait and switch. What’s the real reason?”

  For a split second, the words almost surfaced, begging to come up for air. “I . . . ouch!” Pain streaked across the pad of her finger, making her drop the knife with a clatter.

  “Whoa, let’s see it.” Adrian snapped up her hand with surprising gentleness.

  “It’s fine.” The default response pressed past her lips, as involuntary as her heartbeat, but he didn’t let go.

  “Ahh, you got yourself pretty good.” He had a clean kitchen towel over the cut before she could see it, a tiny crimson stain blooming on the white cloth as he held her hand with pressure that was both firm and full of care.

  “I’ll be fine.” Teagan made a move to extricate her fingers from his grip, but he didn’t let go.

  “I know. But if it doesn’t stop bleeding, you’re going to have to redo all this prep work. So give it a minute. Where’s your first-aid kit?”

  The question was so methodical and straightforward that she gave in to it. “On the wall, by the pantry.”

  Adrian nodded, but didn’t move. With his eyes focu
sed on her hand in his, he quietly said, “Live with no regrets.”

  She blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  “My tattoo. It means live with no regrets.” He cradled her fingers just a fraction tighter. “It’s something my nonna used to say all the time.”

  “Oh.” Teagan was so stunned by the revelation that she couldn’t come up with anything else for a long minute. “So, um, that’s your grandmother?”

  Adrian nodded, his unreadable gaze still fixed on their hands as he spoke. “It’s Italian for grandmother, but we weren’t actually related by blood. Nonna was my legal guardian. She adopted me from foster care when I was ten.”

  “So how come you called her Nonna and not Mom, then?” Teagan winced, inwardly cursing the nosy question, but to her surprise, he answered without pause.

  “She always said that even though I didn’t know the woman who gave birth to me, that person was still my mother. Nonna was in her fifties when she took me in, so the name just seemed to fit. She passed away not long after I finished culinary school.”

  The residual heat from the kitchen coupled with the closeness of Adrian’s body, and it hummed over her skin where he cradled her from forearm to fingertips.

  “I’m sorry. It sounds like you were close.” Before she could cut the move short, Teagan lifted her right hand to cover their already-twined fingers.

  “Mmm-hmm.” He leveled her with a no-nonsense gaze as he fell quiet, and something about it loosened the words from deep in her chest.

  “I don’t like to cook because my mother was a chef.” Her heart pounded with the admission she’d held inside for so long, and suddenly she couldn’t stop herself from letting the whole story spill out.

  “She was classically trained at a crazy young age—New York, Paris, you name it. She’d been everywhere before she was even twenty-five. Food was her whole life. But then she met my father in Dublin. They had this whirlwind romance, love at first sight and all that.” Teagan couldn’t squash the sardonic eye-roll that welled up every time she thought of it, but she continued, unable to rein the story in now that she’d popped the cork on the long-buried words.

  “All my father ever wanted, besides her, was to run his own pub. Cheap land and amazing opportunity brought them here to the States, and in hindsight, I think my mother thought it would be an adventure, just like the rest of her life. But they had me by then, and things got harder.”

  Teagan paused, waiting for her survival instincts to catch up to her impulsive mouth. But there was no pity in Adrian’s hazel stare, and the urge to stop talking didn’t come.

  So she didn’t.

  “It takes a lot of elbow grease to open a bar, and Pine Mountain is a far cry from big-city glamour, you know? My mother began to resent coming to the States, and she missed the life she had before she came here with my father. Before they had me. But by then, it was too late.”

  Adrian’s hand remained steady over hers. “Sounds tough.”

  “Not too tough.” Teagan shrugged, her lips feeling like sandpaper as they scraped over the rest. “A week before my eighth birthday, she walked out the door and never looked back.”

  His steady hand flinched just slightly before going even tighter. “I’m sorry.”

  She’d always hated when people went the sympathy route over her mother’s departure, even though she knew the sentiment was usually well-intentioned. But pity was like pouring alcohol on an open wound. Sure, the person offering it up thought it would help. But really, all it did was end up stinging like a sonofabitch.

  So how come she didn’t want Adrian to let go?

  “Yeah.” Teagan snapped herself back to the kitchen with a hard blink. “My father was devastated, but he raised me by himself regardless. So now it’s just me and him.”

  “And that’s why you hate to cook.”

  Teagan nodded, the loss of the story she’d kept on lockdown making her shoulders strangely light. “My mother wanted me to be a chef, just like her, to live the dream she gave up. But I’m not like her. I chose to stay. I chose my family.”

  “You can have both, you know.” Adrian unwound the towel from her injured finger, testing the cut with a gentle touch. It was shallow, the bleeding all but stopped now, although it stung with all the force of a small wound in a well-used place.

  “I guess I’m going to find out, whether I want to or not.”

  She gathered her thoughts while Adrian went and got the first-aid kit, centering herself while she cleaned the cut and wrapped it in a thick dressing of gauze and waterproof bandages. They worked side by side in comfortable quiet as they finished breaking down the kitchen, and Teagan felt oddly energized despite the fatigue she knew should be invading her bones. When Adrian went to check in with Jesse, she headed to the bar, zeroing in on the spot where Brennan leaned heavily against the burnished wood.

  “Hey. You okay?” Her brow pulled in concern as he shifted his weight with a grimace, but the expression was gone just as fast as it appeared.

  “Yup. It’s getting pretty quiet now that it’s after midnight. Well, more quiet, I guess.” Brennan tipped his head toward the thinner-than-usual crowd dotting the bar, and Teagan took advantage of the lull.

  “Brennan, I really appreciate all you’ve done over the past few days, and I’m grateful for your understanding over the paychecks. I promise to have it figured out really soon.”

  “No big deal on the hours. And your father beat you to it on the paycheck thing.”

  Teagan’s head whipped up. “He . . . what?”

  Brennan nodded and wiped down the bar, easygoing as ever. “He dropped a check by my place before I came in today. Said the bank made an error or something. He didn’t tell you?”

  “No,” she said, and everything about this felt dead wrong. She’d seen her father this morning when she’d dropped off more test strips for his glucose meter. Why wouldn’t he have said anything? “I must’ve missed that.”

  “Yeah, he said you were up to your eye teeth with the other stuff, so he was going to handle paychecks and all that from home to help you out.” Brennan paused to shift his weight again, probably just as dead on his feet as she was. “I hope I’m not out of line for saying so, but he seemed kind of worried about you.”

  Teagan released a nerve-jangled breath. “My favorite two-way street.”

  Okay, so maybe all this kitchen work was getting to her. Accounting errors were uncommon, sure, but not unheard of, and it must’ve been something simple if her father had gotten it taken care of so quickly. Plus, if he was worried about her handling everything else, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to bother her with the details. She wasn’t prone to overreacting, but with everything that had gone down in the last few days, it was possible she’d just gotten caught up in a force field of all this think-the-worst crap.

  She relaxed a notch at the thought, leaning back against the dark wood paneling opposite the bar. “I’m sure it’ll all be fine once we get things settled. Thanks for being flexible until we figure it out.”

  “No problem. I don’t mind helping with the management stuff.” He tossed a nod to the door leading to the kitchen, serving up a crooked smile. “How’s it going in the kitchen with Gigantor?”

  Teagan laughed, the first burst of true goodness she’d felt in days. “Okay, I guess. He knows what he’s doing, and it’s keeping us afloat for now.”

  She busied herself with restocking the cocktail napkins on the bar, even though the holders were already full to brimming. Brennan was too perceptive for his own damned good, and the last thing she needed was for him to make a big deal out of things that weren’t there.

  Namely the totally weird sense of security she felt confiding her deepest, darkest secrets to her deeper, darker kitchen savior.

  “Just let me know if that changes,” Brennan said, the intention in his nearly black eyes clear as he finished wiping down the bar in front of him.

  “Sure. Why don’t you get out of here and catch up on your sleep? I can co
ver the bar for the rest of the night.”

  “Your father would be pissed purple if he knew I let you close by yourself. I’ll stick around, just in case. It’s not even two hours.”

  Teagan cranked up her smile to maximum wattage and looked Brennan dead in the eye. “There won’t be more than five people here by the time we close, most of whom I’ve probably known since birth and all of whom would be thrilled to walk me to my car, if I needed that sort of chaperone. Which I don’t. Now get out of this bar and get some decent sleep. I’m not asking.”

  For a second, Brennan looked like he was thinking about arguing, and she geared up to match him. But then he shot a glance down at his legs as if he’d wanted to get off them hours ago, and he relented. “Only if you text me when you leave, then again when you get home.”

  “Seriously?” Jeez. One XX chromosome, and the male population thought you couldn’t take care of yourself. Or anyone else.

  But on this, Brennan didn’t budge. “Take it or leave it, O’Malley.”

  “Fine. Whatever rocks your cradle,” she said, tucking her smile between her lips as she scanned the sparse crowd in the softly lit bar. “But fifty bucks says it’ll be the quietest night we’ve had in ages.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Adrian’s arm throbbed with the kind of pain that made ibuprofen cackle ’til it ran out of breath, but he popped two anyway, just for grins. Those other painkillers turned him into a walking whack job, and he had to get home somehow. Spending another night on the office couch wasn’t part of his game plan, no matter how weirdly comfortable the damned thing had been a few days ago.

  Or how enticing the view when he woke up. Christ, he was straddling the line between stupid and extremely stupid by going all touchy-feely on Teagan, telling her about his nonna like that. But the only way he could get past the don’t touch was to dare her, and that meant spilling his own stuff first. He hadn’t meant to manipulate her, only to help ease the tension any idiot could see was swallowing her whole in the kitchen.