Hot Summer Nights

by Lisa Marie Perry

  Not in a mood to bolster the self-entitled’s egos, she softened her features to pleasant and approachable and visited the buffet first. Smoothly, her staff was changing the offerings from European-influenced breakfast foods to afternoon-oriented selections ranging from fruit to salad options to an array of fresh breads.

  “The air’s so refreshing and cool in here, but the food stays just hot enough,” a woman wrapped in pale chiffon said, pinching the buttered bread roll on her plate. “I spent the morning sorting out appointments and answering email in one of the cabanas at the pool, but the heat said it was time for a break. In here you wouldn’t know it’s a stifling California July out there.”

  My hair knows it. Gabrielle’s gold-brushed auburn coils always seemed to know when heat and humidity were in cahoots. No scrunchie, barrette, bandanna or salon stylist’s diligence could wrestle her curly hair to submission, so she’d finally embraced expensively messy as her style. Today she’d had to double up hairnets to secure it all out of the way, and now the loose curls lounged against her shoulders.

  “The Pearl’s committed to your comfort,” Gabrielle told the woman, who accepted this with a smile. “Temperature distractions just won’t do for us. We want you to concentrate on having a truly gourmet experience.” For tourists, that usually meant eating in a relaxed environment. For locals concerned with being seen at the place to be seen, that often meant satisfying an impulse for superficial entertainment. For corporate types who convened here and spread papers and tablets on the tables and left room for little more than coffee trays, the frills the Pearl had to offer were only background novelties that couldn’t compete with productivity.

  “Well, now, friendly and respectful young ladies aren’t extinct, after all. There’s hope for America’s youth yet.” The woman eyed the Pearl’s elegant logo in sapphire-blue on Gabrielle’s self-customized asymmetrical T-shirt. Whether out of rebellion or simply because she couldn’t help it, she hunted for creative ways to feed her greedy free spirit. “My grandniece is a college senior, has an internship in LA. What she wouldn’t give to be in Belleza, working at a resort. Are you receiving college credit or a paycheck?”

  It was Gabrielle’s turn to smile. Another fact of life, much like her unruly curls, was that she appeared younger than her actual age. At fifteen she could pass for ten, at twenty she was mistaken as a middle school student, and at twenty-eight she was still being carded at nightclubs and invited to fraternity parties.

  “A paycheck. My Harvard and Le Cordon Bleu days are far behind me.” In her periphery, the Pearl’s lead bartender was crooking two fingers. Continuing before the woman had an opportunity to flush with embarrassment, she said, “I’m Gabrielle Royce, executive chef here at the Pearl. Our bartender’s waving me over, but I hope you’ll enjoy your meal. Bring your grandniece sometime. The Belleza’s holistic spa services are very popular with twentysomethings.”

  The bar was drawing a crowd quickly, but Jonah Grady—eighty-six in years, but ageless at heart—was a friend to the resort’s owners, had been the town’s favorite bachelor bartender since the place’s conception and still commanded the space as though he were comfortably at home. In a way, this bar was his home. His companion, really, because no one in the Belleza Resort and Spa family could imagine them apart. They were fork and spoon, peanut butter and jelly, cheddar and cabaret sauvignon—a necessary pair.

  Dressed in hues ranging from dove-white to slate, the bar gleamed gorgeously against sunlight. Soaring arched windows exposed palm trees as bold and proud as the resort itself and a watchful, slow-motion blue sky lounging over jagged mountains. The California sky was a sneaky thing. Lazy, unhurried and moody, it seemed to mock the people who hustled and bustled and hurried below it and most times appeared to move when no one was looking.

  Gabrielle had a thing for sunrises and sunsets, but in recent weeks had found herself working through every dawn and dusk. When she wasn’t at the restaurant, she was attending restaurant-related functions or carving out time to spend with her friends. Perhaps one evening she’d sit at the bar, let Jonah mix her a drink and talk about absolutely nothing important while the sky silently darkened to ink.

  “Didn’t mean to bother you,” Jonah said once he set a glass of Chardonnay in front of an eager patron and walked to the end of the bar where Gabrielle waited. “Charlene accosted me in the staff lounge, begging me to let her work the bar for a while tonight. She said she’d cover my breaks.”

  “Our bartending team is solid.” That was something to be thankful for, though she wished the same could be true for the kitchen and waitstaff. “Charlene knows this. Tell me you reminded her.”

  “I did.” The youthful glint that Gabrielle thought she could always count on finding in the man’s eyes now hinted at controlled frustration. “She stood in front of the bagel basket until I finally said I’d speak with you about it. There’s ambition and then there’s aggression. I don’t like aggression.”

  “Okay, I’ll get a minute with her,” she said, but the glance he sent her was painfully abrasive. “Jonah, hey, I said I’ll get a minute. I take food as seriously as the next person, and I swear Charlene won’t hold the bagels hostage the next time she tries to vent about not wanting to be a hostess forever.”

  “It’s not about taking food seriously. I take my job here seriously. I’m the head bartender and I don’t need some bright-eyed girl trying to get her talons on my bar.”

  Damn. Jonah Grady was all old school charm and had never given off this degree of lethal anger. It was as though he were possessed—but to entertain that ridiculousness, she’d have to also believe in the other legends surrounding the resort. Curses and black magic and crappola like that. “So it’s finally your turn to cave under the stress, hmm, Jonah? I assumed it’d be Robyn next, or maybe Kim’s parents, but you’re a mortal just like the rest of us.”

  “Don’t go running to the Parkers and getting them on some campaign to have me retire. I’m still going strong. It’s you young folks I’m thinking about. Friends bickering, people lying to the ones they say they care about, everyone hurting someone else to get ahead.”

  “If you’re referring to what happened with Kim and Jaxon, that’s all been ironed out,” she said gently. “It’s all good now. They love each other, they’re getting married and Robs and I support that.”

  “Another lie,” he sneered. “Get as old as I am, you figure out that you’ve told enough lies to spot one a mile away. And Gabby, that was a damn pitiful one.”

  “What part of what I just said was a lie?” she demanded, her tone modulated and her gaze coasting down the bar to detect eavesdroppers.

  “You support Kim and Jaxon? Wasn’t long ago you were bouncing around here saying how you’d never do what she did.”

  “Which is true. I’d never screw a guest or fall in love with a guest, because it’s too risky. Too complicated. Too easy to start to wonder whether my sexual relationships are being defined by business or if it’s the other way around. Sex has nothing to do with my career, and it never will.” She gulped in another bracing breath, because apparently the first one hadn’t taken effect. “As far as Kim goes, what she has with Jaxon is real and, yeah, I support the hell out of that. I thought we were talking about Charlene anyway.”

  “The sooner you find her and her talons, the better.”

  “The ‘talons’ are acrylic nails and they’re always tastefully manicured. Beautifully, actually. And she’s not a girl. She’s a young woman trying to make it in a town that’s pretty much survival of the most ambitious. That is what she is—ambitious, not aggressive. She’s part of Generation Me First. So am I, so I get it. Now quit acting like a crotchety old man and making me hang out in her corner. I’m mad at you for it.”

  “Let me pour you my best summer cocktail. I’ll even give it some pizzazz, add a trick to it and get these folks worked up. You’ll know I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks, Jonah,” she said, reaching across the bar to pat his sl
eeve. No matter heat of summer or colliding tempers, he always portrayed an enviable fresh coolness while she was always packing prescription-strength deodorant and a miniature battery-powered fan. “But I can’t drink now. I’m cooking and waitressing, and I’m not at a tasting.”

  “I know. I said it to gauge how riled up at me you were.”

  “You old badass,” she whispered, stunned that he’d pulled something that was…oh, precisely what she might do in his position. “I need to get back to the kitchen, but don’t forget you’re going to owe me that drink.”

  Gabrielle surveyed the airy dining room as she picked up a near-empty carafe and brought it to the kitchen for a refill. Calmness. No…peacefulness. Peacefulness was good. You didn’t mess with peacefulness.

  She entered the kitchen and would never be able to explain why her focus darted past stainless steel counters and commercial appliances and rows of chefs and cooks to where Shoshanna was muscling an oversized stockpot off the top of a range. The flame leaped and swelled, and the woman turned in the direction of the prep sinks as a cart came fast around the corner preceded by a chef shouting, “Get that damn pot outta the way!”

  Gabrielle ditched the carafe and rushed forward to try to stop the force of the cart, but a wheel popped off and the cart met Shoshanna in a vile collision. Dishes jerked off the cart and struck the floor in a dozen small crashes. The stockpot hit the sous-chef square in the middle and knocked her backward against the range. The flame reached for her, but failed to gain purchase, because a wave of boiling water had already escaped the pot and was bringing her down screaming onto the floor.

  “Lift her off the friggin’ water!” Gabrielle shouted above the chaotic gasps and curses. So many intelligent, ingenious minds, yet those who’d actually paused in their tasks only gathered about loosely to watch in paralyzed shock as Shoshanna writhed in heart-shredding pain.

  “Oh, my God! Damn it, my God, she was boiling that at one-thirty Fahrenheit,” a line cook said, as the man beside him shook his head and grumbled “I can’t watch this” and went back on the line.

  This was her staff? Sure, she preached that the Pearl couldn’t stop, but a horrendous scalding was a genuine emergency. She began to reach for the woman, but a booming voice and hulking body cut her off.

  “Chef Royce, protect your hands,” Stu said. Ready with towels, he scooped up Shoshanna and the puddle of steaming water nearly turned Gabrielle’s stomach.

  “She’s been in it about twenty seconds,” she said, watching him carry the sous-chef to vacant floor space near a prep table. Third degree. There has to be third degree somewhere. “Did anyone call 911? Somebody call 911, now. At one-thirty, she was rolling in it too long.”

  “We don’t know that yet,” he said, peeling off Shoshanna’s apron, and Gabrielle knelt to help unbutton the drenched shirt. If the fabric stuck, they’d need to leave it be and send up a prayer for her. “We know she’s hurting like hell and needs to cool down.”

  Nicola appeared with a bucket of cold water. “And what about her leg? What do we know about that, besides the human tibia isn’t made to bend?”

  Oh, Lord. A break.

  Shoshanna’s wails drummed against Gabrielle’s ears, but they were able to remove her soggy shirt and cool her skin continuously until paramedics arrived at the kitchen’s private exit. A strip on her forearm had begun to blister, and Gabrielle hoped that area was the worst of her burns. Her abdomen and a spot on her neck were beet-red. The scald injuries combined with the obviously broken shin meant she wouldn’t be returning to this kitchen anytime soon and the Pearl would need to recruit an immediate replacement.

  An hour later, the kitchen was still strained and in crisis mode. Gabrielle had reported the incident to the Belleza’s general manager—finding it crazy-difficult to converse with Kim as an employee to her employer rather than as friends—and was now struggling to shoulder Shoshanna’s duties on top of the extras she’d already taken on.

  “Charlene,” she said, approaching the posh hostess desk. Charlene Vincent’s perfected breezy, old-fashioned Hollywood glam look belied the day’s insanity. Whether it was her hairstyle or the color scheme of her makeup or the figure-amplifying dress, Gabrielle couldn’t pinpoint, but the woman was a replica of Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. “Shoshanna Smirnov’s out of commission.”

  “Oh, I heard. So sad. Really sad.” Charlene’s pouty smile remained in place, and when she noticed the irked frown Gabrielle couldn’t hide, she explained, “The hostess is the face of a restaurant. I’m the front door of the Pearl. Got to greet the guests with a great smile. But, really, so sad about Shosh.”

  “With her gone, we’re even more severely short-staffed than we were this morning. I’m putting one of the bartenders here at the desk, and I’d like you to wait tables for the rest of your shift. It’d free me up a bit to stay in the kitchen.”

  “Oh… I totally understand you. Yeah, if I were so sweaty and couldn’t go freshen up, I’d want to be unseen, too. So many A-list guys are out to play. A girl can’t get any decent action if she doesn’t put her best face forward.”

  Gabrielle felt her eyes narrow. Jonah, I can’t believe you provoked me to defend this person. “I need to stay in the kitchen to cook, Charlene.”

  The hostess’s smile faltered. “Can’t do it, sorry, Gabs. I’m not dressed to be rushing back and forth and I’d never get grease stink out of this dress. But I guess tomorrow I could help you out. Who can I speak to about upping my salary?”

  “There’s no salary upping, Char. We’re all pulling together because the Pearl functions as one unit. Think about that before you come back tomorrow. And if you want to be put at the bar, you’re gonna really want to absorb what I’m telling you instead of cornering someone who, even if he wanted to train you, lacks the authority to change your position at this restaurant.”

  “Anything else?” Charlene said tightly. “I’m due to go on break.”

  Yes. Quit flirting with every guy who walks in here wearing a suit and Rolex. Think about how you’re coming off to other people. Change your attitude.

  No way. Gabrielle had no right to dictate to this woman the same jazz that her mother had dictated to her before Gabrielle had removed herself from the Royce family fold to design her own life. Defying her family, choosing culinary arts over med school, hadn’t been painless, and she’d be damned if she shook her finger at someone who had the prerogative to live outside the lines as much as she wanted without shattering laws and stomping company rules.

  “Nothing else, Charlene. I’ll get someone from bartending to hold down the desk while you’re on break.”

  “Good. After work I’m getting one of those quickie facials. There’s a party in LA my friends are hyped about, and today’s been so stressful that I might check it out to Zen things down a bit.” Charlene dismissed her with a head tilt and a sharp wave goodbye.

  Returning to the kitchen, Gabrielle was thinking very unpleasant things about self-unconscious, self-unaware folks when she realized the doors hadn’t swung closed behind her.

  Turning so suddenly that her pink Converse high-tops squeaked, she stopped just as abruptly when her gaze latched on to the man in front of her and… Would. Not. Let. Go.

  It wasn’t that she recognized him, exactly. He had to be a stranger, because the arousal that had her feeling kind of weak and had turned her erogenous zones against her and had taunted that she’d better add “change panties” to her to-do list was unfamiliar and a little bit disturbing.

  No words had passed between them, and although she was sure she’d never met him before Gabrielle wanted this man and everything his angry mouth, marble-hard body and large hands could do for her.

  The hands. They were good hands. Not pretty—she didn’t get hot for men whose hands were prettier than her scarred chef’s hands. This guy’s were closer to ugly, actually. Ugly but clean. Mmm, she so liked that. They were splayed against the doors, holding them open wide, and every masculine l
ine from fingertip to wrist seduced her to immediately imagine how deep her mouth could take those long, big-knuckled fingers.

  Did he know what her mind was sketching? Was he standing in her doorway in his six-figure suit and watching her through his five-figure sunglasses and seeing sex and nakedness and freaky things that high-society debutantes from upstate New York weren’t supposed to know? Had he figured out in seconds that if he asked, she might let him strum her, work her and pleasure her?

  She really hoped not. The man didn’t belong in the Pearl’s kitchen or Gabrielle’s unfiltered thoughts. As certain as she was of her attraction to him, she knew he was a guest. That made him out of reach, even though she could stretch out a hand and stroke a path from his neck to his sleek leather belt that she was confident she could find a few raunchy uses for.

  “Can I do you?” Gabrielle’s brain tripped over itself. Okay, what? “Can I do something for you?”

  “You could’ve come to my table when I signaled you, but, since you went ahead talking to that hostess and walked right past me again, I figured the only way to get the food I ordered was if I took it from the kitchen myself, so you might as well just give me the damn plate.”

  And now we return to lifestyles of the rich and self-important. “I apologize.”

  “For neglecting a patron? That apology’s late and useless, but I’ll take it.”

  Gabrielle’s jaw almost hit the toes of her Converse high-tops. “Excuse me, but not seeing you isn’t the same as neglect.” Asshole. Wait, she didn’t say that aloud, did she? He didn’t wear that struck, stunned expression that assholes usually wore when told that they were assholes, so she was safe. Well, as safe as she could be staring down a man who was as sexy as he was domineering. “The Pearl doesn’t take orders and refuse to fulfill them as a practice. I’m not sure where your waiter or waitress could’ve gone.”

  “Waiter. He took my order and disappeared. Your superiors might want to get control of their staff.”