Under Her Clothes

by Louisa Edwards

  Marc was here. His younger brother, looking to reconnect, to bring Dom back into the family fold.

  It took everything Dominic had not to stiffen, but he kept his back ramrod straight and his shoulders back. Head high.

  A kitchen is a battlefield, their father had always said. Your men will not follow a weakling. Show them pride and strength. Never weakness.

  Dominic clamped his jaw tight. As the owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant, their father had said a lot of things. Dom had gotten good at ignoring them.

  Not seeing or speaking to Edouard Fevre for the past decade or so had helped with that.

  “You want me to go, patron?” Antonio squinted out over the kitchen, as if he wanted to give Dominic privacy while he came up with an answer.

  The fact that relief was the first emotion to wash over him had Dominic biting out “No. I’ll deal with him” before he had time to overthink it.

  Antonio evinced no reaction, merely nodded briskly and went back to overseeing the frantic dinner rush. There was a reason he was Dominic’s favorite.

  With impeccable timing, a grease flare skyrocketed over Colby St. James at the grill station, making the short, skinny cooking school grad at the station next to him jump. Colby, however, didn’t even take a step back. Cursing with a vicious precision that would have impressed the most hardened dockworker, St. James ignored the danger of singeing off his own eyebrows to rescue the rib eyes at the back of the grill from charring.

  Only when the flare-up had died down and the steaks were all safe at the front of the grill did Colby swipe his forearms over his sweaty forehead. He winced, grimacing down at his arm, before going back to flipping steaks as if he hadn’t noticed the three-inch burn mark turning a more livid red with each passing moment.

  Caught between approval of the kid’s stamina and an appalling desire to charge across the kitchen and stick Colby’s arm under cold water and wrap him in icy compresses to stop the burn, Dominic turned on his heel and stalked over to the dining room doors.

  The runners stared at him, then shrugged at each other. It wasn’t often that Dominic made the rounds of the dining room; he preferred to command the kitchen himself or to preside from his office desk while dealing with the myriad of tasks that went along with running the city’s top French restaurant.

  Ignoring the frisson of whispers and glances from the elegantly dressed diners, Dom stalked between the widely spaced tables with his facial expression set to neutral. All his attention was on the familiar stranger seated alone at the deuce by the front window.

  Only eighteen months Dom’s junior, carefree and happy-go-lucky Marc had always seemed even younger. But the mischievous smile Dom remembered was nowhere in sight as Marc leaned back in the soft, upholstered chair and stared out the window at twilit Park Avenue. His carefully composed plate—the duck breast, Dom noted, at perfect medium rare—sat before him, untouched.

  A dark shadow of beard roughened Marc’s hard jaw, and the crinkles beside his gray eyes didn’t look like laugh lines. Dominic felt a frown pulling at his own mouth.

  What had happened to his brother while Dom wasn’t looking?

  As if sensing the presence looming over him, Marc turned from his contemplation of the late-rush-hour crowds of CEOs speeding home in their black chauffeured cars. Blinking up at Dom, he said, “Finally. What does it take to give my compliments to the chef in this dump?”

  Dom stiffened, unused to teasing. “It might help if you actually tasted the food,” he pointed out, crossing his arms.

  “I don’t have to taste it to know that it’s perfect. You made it.”

  The words sounded like a compliment, but there was a twist of bitterness beneath them that plucked at Dom’s patience. “Haven’t we outgrown this rivalry, Marc?”

  “We didn’t have time to outgrow it or get over it. You left.”

  Guilt soured the back of Dominic’s tongue. “Eva Jansen offered me an opportunity. I had to take it.”

  “Even though it meant leaving Paris. Leaving your family.”

  A fresh start in a new city and distance from the past—especially his father—had been the main reasons Dom took this job. He hadn’t intended to leave his brother behind, too, at least not completely, but after everything that had happened, it had been easy to let silence take root and grow until it blanketed everything. “If you want to be a great chef, Marc—”

  “Oh, yes. S’il te plaît.” One of Marc’s thick, black brows winged up. “Remind me that I could be a great chef, too, if I’d only apply myself. If I had any discipline. If I only wanted it enough...”

  Dom clenched his jaw. For some reason, a vision of Colby St. James—scrappy and tough and totally against the rules—rose up before his mind’s eye. “Believe me. It is possible to want this life too much. There are things you should not sacrifice.”

  He hadn’t meant to say that, the words peeled from him like the rind from an orange, but for the first time in five years, Dom saw his brother smile. The broad, infectious grin sent a shaft of light down into the darkest parts of Dom’s heart.

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Marc told him. “You should not give up your family.”

  That wasn’t what Dom had been referring to, but he liked the look of Marc’s smile too much to correct him. Despite the way their father had occasionally pitted them against one another, Dom’s issues had never truly been with his brother. Which, of course, was what made him the perfect emissary to bring Dom back into the family fold.

  Not that Dom had to go.

  “How long do you intend to stay in New York?” he demanded.

  Marc picked up his knife and fork, wielding the gleaming silver utensils with a careless ease that told Dom his younger brother was still practicing the culinary arts. Spearing a tender slice of maple-lacquered duck and swirling it in the fragrant sauce, Marc used his knife to gesture at the chair across the table from him.

  “You could sit down, you know.”

  Dom could only imagine the reaction from his scandalized front-of-house staff. “It’s not that sort of restaurant, Marc.”

  The bite of duck went into Marc’s mouth. He chewed it with evident enjoyment before swallowing. “It’s yours, no? It can be whatever sort of restaurant you want.”

  “New York isn’t like Paris. Here, I work for Eva Jansen.”

  “An employee,” Marc sneered with the arrogance of someone who’d never had to make his own way in the world. “Not an owner. You should have your own place, Dom. No boss to tell you what to cook.”

  Irritation prickled at Dom’s scalp. “I set my own menus and run Maison the way I wish. Believe me, she is a better boss than Papa ever was. At least she trusts me.”

  There it was, on the table between them, as heavy and real as the crystal water goblets and the sterling silver saltcellar. If Dominic could have picked it up and thrown it across the restaurant to shatter against the far wall, he would have—but Marc didn’t leap to their father’s defense.

  Instead, he tipped his head down slightly, as if acknowledging the truth of their shared childhood and teenage years, then flitted to a new subject as lightly as if he were settling a dot of meringue on top of a cake. “It sounds like you’re happy here.”

  Happy was maybe too strong a word. “Eva’s got me interviewing candidates for the top spot at her next restaurant venture. When I prove I can do that, it will propel me to the next level at Jansen Hospitality. I won’t just be a chef, an employee—I’ll be a vice president at one of the largest, most successful restaurant groups in North America.”

  Which was more than Edouard Fevre, with his one restaurant, could say. Even if it was Michelin starred.

  Dom regretted the moment of petty triumph when Marc shook his shaggy head and gave him a genuine smile. “Congratulations, mon frère. I’m truly pleased for yo
u. Let’s go out after dinner service to celebrate. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “I can’t tonight, but I can meet you for coffee tomorrow.”

  “Coffee doesn’t make much of a celebration.”

  “There’s nothing to celebrate yet.” Dom glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “I have two weeks of observation with the five candidates before I give Eva my choice.”

  “Ha, Papa’s old trick. Making them work like a commis for two weeks to prove themselves; see who sticks it out.”

  “I already know who the final contenders will be,” Dom admitted. Of course, that made him think of Colby again—the long, lean lines of the young chef’s body, hinted at by the bulky chef’s uniform. Dom grimaced to hide the sudden surge of his pulse. “One of them, in fact, is the reason I can’t join you for drinks tonight. I have to supervise a punishment.”

  “Poor bastard.” Marc shook his head over his shaved fennel salad. “What did he do to merit your wrath?”

  He made me want him.

  Dominic bit the inside of his lip until he tasted blood. That wasn’t the reason he’d singled Colby out. Was it? No.

  “Colby disobeyed my orders,” Dom growled, but even as he said the words, he questioned them.

  Colby had disobeyed, but he’d also taken initiative. He’d pitched in to help rather than stand idle. He’d thought for himself. And now Dominic was punishing him for it.

  Marc’s narrow gaze raked over Dom’s face with a younger brother’s keen eye for weakness. “Ah. I see. He didn’t show you the proper respect.”

  Before Dom could protest or argue, Marc was pushing back his chair and tossing his ivory linen napkin to the table. “Dominic, mon frère. You are more like our father than you want to believe. I can only hope you are quicker to forgive than he is.”

  Dom stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s taken far too long, but Papa is finally ready to admit he wants you to come home,” Marc said, an unreadable expression on his face. “He’s getting on in years and his health is not what it was. Papa wants to know he’s leaving the restaurant in good hands.”

  It took everything Dom had not to stagger under the idea of his strong, vital father weakened by age. “Then he should leave it to you. I have my own life now—you’re the one who stayed.”

  Bitter as a Seville orange, Marc laughed. “Please. No matter what I do, I’ll never be you. No matter how far away you go, I’m still in your shadow.”

  “Then why are you here, trying to get me to go back?”

  “Do you know how tiring it is to be always pretending, playing a role? I’ve been playing the part of dutiful son and heir ever since you left, and I’m sick of it. Papa wants the real thing back—and so do I. Then maybe I can finally figure out how to be something other than second best.”

  With that parting shot still ringing in Dom’s ears, Marc brushed past him and strode out of the restaurant. The wide-eyed hostess popped out from behind the front desk, hurrying over to have a whispered conference with Henri, the manager.

  Clearing his throat, Dominic nodded briskly to the guests at the nearby tables and gestured Henri and Chloe out into the foyer.

  “Did that guy just dine and dash?” Chloe was hissing to Henri, her elegant ash-blond chignon quivering with indignation.

  The front-of-house manager gave the shrug that always reminded Dominic of his dad. It was a gesture that was quintessentially French and could mean anything from “What can you do?” to “It’s no big deal; I already called the cops.”

  Hoping to forestall them both before this became an even bigger thing, Dominic said, “I comped his meal. He’s a chef, visiting from France.”

  Henri and Chloe exchanged glances. It was common for restaurants to treat visiting chefs like VIPs, comping drinks and desserts, sending out showy extra courses, that kind of thing. Comping a whole meal was less common, but Dominic didn’t feel like putting his personal life on display for the whole restaurant.

  “Remind me at the end of the shift, and I’ll throw some money into the pool for tips,” he said to distract them.

  From the way Henri sniffed, it wasn’t a very good distraction, but they knew better than to question Dominic.

  Everyone knew better than to defy Chef Fevre. So how had one cheeky, irreverent young chef managed to take over every inch of spare space in Dom’s thoughts? Even the difficult conversation with his brother couldn’t dislodge Colby St. James for long, although Marc’s final words gave Dominic a strange sort of hope for reconciliation.

  After all, Dom did know what it was like to hide who he really was, to play the role that was expected of him. He understood it intimately. And, like Marc, he found himself tiring of the pretense and longing for something real...even if it threatened everything he’d worked for.

  Which was ridiculous. If Dominic had any brains or self-preservation instincts at all, he’d assign Antonio the task of supervising Colby after hours. The last thing he needed was to feed this incredibly inconvenient lust by spending hours alone with the man he lusted after.

  He needed time and distance to figure out what it was about Colby that drew him so strongly, and he had to learn to resist its pull. Everything Dom wanted in life hovered just beyond the reach of his fingertips—power, independence, freedom...even the chance at a new start with his brother.

  Falling for Colby St. James would be the fastest way to wreck all Dom’s chances for good.

  Chapter Four

  Somehow, Colby managed to stay out of the weeds during service every night for a week Even during the heat of the dinner rush, when orders were flying into the kitchen fast enough to bury her, Colby kept her head up and her feet under her, and she sent perfect dish after perfect dish up to the window.

  Perfection came at a price, however. She ended the week with two new burns—one of them on her fucking foot, courtesy of that douche nozzle, Manning—and after seven nights of cleaning the kitchen under the watchful eye of the sous chef, Antonio, Colby was running on fumes. Wiping her forehead as she completed her final order, she looked up to see that the only ones still working were John Qui, taking his turn expediting dishes from the kitchen to the dining room again, and the chef candidate who’d been assigned to desserts that night.

  One look at Felix Kerman, the largest of the of the culinary school grads, was enough to let you know he was not cut out for a life at the pastry table. Colby watched a bead of sweat trickle down his temple as he fought to make his thick sausage fingers do the delicate work of plating and decorating the fussy desserts the last few tables had ordered.

  Cursing herself, she stomped over to the corner sink to wash her hands. She rolled down her sleeves to cover the gauze taped over the angry red burn mark on her forearm, then grabbed the last tray of raspberry tartlets off the rack and set it down next to Kerman.

  “What are you doing?” he rumbled, panic showing the whites of his big, brown eyes.

  “I can’t stand watching you try to do the designs on these plates,” Colby announced, lifting her chin and daring him to call her on the lie. In the last week, she’d developed a soft spot for the guy. “Gimme that squeeze bottle before you hurt yourself.”

  Desperate gratitude flickered in the depths of Kerman’s soft gaze. “You don’t have to do this. I can make it.”

  “Before Fevre comes back in and sees you sweating?” Colby challenged. “Come on. All it takes is one wrong shake and you’re sending a bad plate up to the pass. You know Qui will have to bump it back to you—he can’t afford to go easy on us. And then you’re further behind than before.”

  Kerman handed over the squirt bottle without another word. They got into a steady rhythm of spooning out crème anglaise, plating the tartlets on top, scattering a few fresh berries and browning the whole shebang with a handheld torch before Colby added the finis
hing touch of a few artistic swirls of vibrant green spearmint coulis. Behind them, the other chefs were breaking down their stations, catcalling quietly and slapping each other on the back in the camaraderie of a well-played dinner service, but Colby ignored them.

  “You can’t afford to go easy, either,” Kerman mumbled. “Shouldn’t be helping me. I’m gonna flame out anyway—I’m in way over my head.”

  It was nothing Colby hadn’t thought to herself when she’d made her initial judgments about each of her competitors. But something about the friendly giant at her side made her say, “Yeah, you probably will flame out with an attitude like that. Shit. Buck up, Kerman. There’s a reason your boss recommended you for this gig. Eva Jansen wants to hire the next big thing—and somebody out there thinks you’re it. Remember that, and don’t count yourself out before someone else gets the chance.”

  “You’re right.” Kerman’s lantern jaw firmed up and his big paws moved a little faster, with a little more confidence. “It would just be so humiliating to have Chef Fevre send me home.”

  “He’s not so bad,” Colby said, concentrating on her designs. The key was to be loose and quick with it—any kind of painstaking effort showed on the plate. It was easier to focus on that than to contemplate a week’s worth of intense glances and shivering awareness of Chef Fevre, always in the background, always watching, always...there.

  “I get nervous when he even looks at me. How did you get away with sassing him like that, the first day?”

  “I didn’t get away with it. I’ve been closing down the kitchen every night this week, and I’ve got another seven days of this stupid two-week interview to go.” Her back ached just thinking about it, but hopefully the adrenaline rush of a successful dinner service would keep her going until this place was spotless.

  “What are you ladies gossiping about over here?” Manning sauntered up, as smug and self-satisfied as if he hadn’t almost broken down in a fit of tears when that table sent back his salmon special earlier.