Taste for Trouble (Blake Brothers Trilogy)

by Sey, Susan

  James handed the guy’s Botoxed mother the glass of champagne to approve and followed Wyn’s horrified gaze to the lumps of meat James had spent an entire week perfecting. Meatballs? he wanted to say. Oh, no. Those are solid gold door knockers. And they ought to be, given his current hourly rate and the time he’d spent on them.

  Wyn didn’t appear to expect an answer, however. One of those invisibility things again, James assumed. Besides, it wasn’t a question so much as a trap. That much James knew. But what the purpose of the trap was he had not the first clue. He tried to look both intrigued and subservient as the man of the hour went on.

  “Because when I agreed to help Kate teach her wayward assistant a lesson, she assured me the food wouldn’t suffer. That everything would be up to Kate Every Day standards.”

  “Kate Every Day standards,” James echoed carefully.

  The man fixed him with a patient smile. “Look. This isn’t a roadside barbecue. This is an engagement party.”

  “Oh, darling, relax,” his mother said. At least James assumed she was his mother. The matching ice-cutter cheekbones and permanently curled upper lip certainly pointed that direction. Although, James mused, it was possible they just shared a plastic surgeon. “They’re just meatballs,” the woman said. “Consider it a nod to your charming bride’s roots.”

  Wyn gave his mother a quelling look. “In six weeks, she’ll be a Quist, Mother. Any other roots are superfluous.”

  “It’s not that simple, Wynton.”

  “Of course it is.”

  She regarded her son with worried eyes and pinched lips. “You know best, of course,” she murmured and drained the glass of champagne. She held the empty flute off to the side in a vaguely preemptory manner. It took James a minute to understand she meant him to take it from her. He grabbed the glass.

  “Tell the chef I need to speak with her,” Wyn said to James, then turned and fell into muted conversation with his mother who James figured wouldn’t so much as blink at a plateful of mac-n-cheese and beanie weenies so long as her champagne glass stayed full. He realized with a start that if he disappeared right now and sent some other poor guy out to deal with Wyn nobody would know the difference. The Quists had glanced at him once or twice but only saw the uniform.

  He didn’t know if this knowledge comforted him or depressed him.

  He left the kitchen and found Bel in the dining room babying a couple of cakes into formation. One was dressed in a frothy swath of white frosting, the other in a smooth chocolate tuxedo. Bride and groom cakes, he thought. Adorable. Hand it to Bel. The girl might love her lists with a regulatory fervor, but whimsy lurked in her heart. He was sure of it.

  Too bad she saved it all for her cakes. Her kiss could’ve used a drop or two. Yeah, take that kiss of hers, add a little whimsy, subtract the frown of disapproval and—

  James blinked, startled at the direction of his thoughts. It was the frown, he thought. Bel was staring at her cakes with the same scowl she’d given James last week while he was kissing her. He’d peeked through his lashes to see how it was going over and had been taken aback at the fierceness of her expression, even with her eyes closed. He’d broken the kiss off with unusual haste and wondered if he ought to offer a written apology. Or maybe arrange for some governmental protection.

  It was quite a frown. Those cakes had better be on their best behavior. God knew James had been. Though why Bel would disapprove of cakes that seemed perfect, he couldn’t fathom. He shrugged. There was a lot about Bel he found baffling.

  “Bel.”

  One last glare at the cakes and she lifted her head. Whatever she saw in his face had her bee-lining it to his side.

  “The groom thinks meatballs are déclassé,” he informed her.

  She nodded, unsurprised. “It happens,” she said. “What about the champagne?”

  “Mommy likes it.”

  “That’s all it takes.” She set aside the frosting bag and wiped her hands on a rag. She strode briskly into the kitchen and presented herself at Wyn’s elbow.

  “Hello, Mr. Quist. I’m Belinda West, Kate Davis’ chef. I understand you have a question?”

  Wyn gave Bel a patronizing smile. “Why, yes, dear, I do. It seems there’s been a...miscommunication.”

  Bel regarded him with grave eyes. “Yes?”

  “Yes. I allowed a free hand with today’s menu on the assumption that the importance of this gathering was understood. But based on this—” He waved what James would swear was a manicured hand toward the plate in front of him. “—I’d have to say that was a faulty assumption.”

  Bel’s brow puckered in concern. “I’m so sorry. What seems to be the problem?”

  “Well, I don’t know how things are done where you’re from, but around here, we save meatballs for backyard picnics and Italian restaurants.” He smiled as if he hadn’t all but called her tacky and gauche. “This engagement party is my future wife’s introduction to the circles in which my family moves. Her first step into society, as it were. It’s meant to set the tone for our entire marriage and the lifestyle we intend to pursue. So I’m afraid that this—” Again with that dismissive flick of the wrist toward a week’s worth of James’ work. It was starting to piss him off some, that wrist. “—is unacceptable.”

  Bel blinked down at the man’s plate and said, “Oh, dear. Perhaps I can explain.” She lowered her voice and, though the only other people in the kitchen were James and Wyn’s mother, she leaned in confidentially. “Those aren’t meatballs,” she said. “Those are boulettes catalanes.”

  “Boulettes catalanes.” Wyn gave the meatballs a skeptical look. Bel nodded earnestly.

  “They’re a Mediterranean variation on a classic tapas dish—ground veal, spiced and slow-simmered, hand rolled and skewered, then dressed in an olive and white wine sauce. I thought they’d make a lovely counterpoint on the palate to the fresh crispness of the popiah.”

  “Popiah?”

  Bel pointed to what looked an awful lot like an egg roll to James. “Popiah. The boulettes catalanes are so rich, you know? The tender veal, the creamy sauce? I liked the juxtaposition of that against the popiah’s bright notes of ginger and tamari on crisp shredded heirloom cabbage.” She lifted elegant hands to the sides as if weighing one against the other. “Slow-simmered versus farm-fresh. Mediterranean versus Asian. I thought a fusion theme provided a lovely metaphor for marriage, where a partnership of opposites creates a single, breathtaking whole.” She brought her hands together, laced the fingers and beamed. “Just like you and your beautiful bride.”

  “See?” Mrs. Quist gave her son a bracing pat on the arm. “The meatballs do represent your fiancée. Your cool to her hot. Your fresh to her cooked. Your well-bred and educated to her—”

  “That’s enough, Mother,” Wyn said again, giving the meatballs a narrow inspection. Bel had undercut his authority with a charming, deferential precision and now it was either admit to culinary ignorance or play along. And James had a feeling this guy wasn’t the type to admit a mistake.

  Bel said, “If they’re not to your taste, I’ll certainly have them removed from the menu.”

  “No,” Wyn said slowly. “While I certainly appreciate your effort at making a statement through the menu, my concerns are more cosmetic. The appearance on the plate, you see?”

  Bel nodded. “I do hear that a lot. But it’s been my experience that the more discerning and well-traveled the audience, the more this dish is appreciated. You can fool the eye, you see, but you can’t fool an educated palate. Perhaps you’d like to taste one then make your decision?”

  Wyn forced a chuckle, a little of his bluster restored at Bel’s confidence in his palate. James eyed Bel with renewed appreciation. She was sneaky. He admired that.

  Wyn helped himself to a delicate bite of meatball—boulette catalane, James corrected himself—and the guy’s eyes nearly crossed with pleasure. An unexpected burst of pride rolled through James. He didn’t necessarily care whether or not this
guy liked his work but damn. He’d taken the raw materials and created a dish that made even reluctant people’s taste buds do a little happy dance.

  When Wyn had recovered his composure, he patted his mouth with a napkin, pretended to consider for a moment, then said, “They’ll do, I suppose.”

  “Very good,” Bel said, her eyes downcast and humble. “I’ll have the staff begin plating then?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Fine,” his mother said and cast a regretful look at her empty champagne glass on the counter. “Now let’s just hope your lovely bride gets here in time to appreciate them.”

  “She’ll be here,” Wyn said.

  “She was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.”

  Drew poked his head in the kitchen door. “The guests are beginning to arrive.”

  “She’ll be here,” Wyn told his mother again.

  “Of course, dear.” Mrs. Quist arranged her face in appropriately placid lines, though naked hope lit her eyes. James almost felt sorry for her. She pressed a kiss to Wyn’s cheek and said, “I’ll just go greet at the door until your fiancée...” figures out how to be a decent wife to a man of your stature “...arrives.”

  She sailed out of the kitchen and into, James assumed, her native habitat: the primitive, blood-thirsty, unforgiving land of DC Ladies Who Lunch.

  Wyn snapped his fingers at James, whose attention had, to be fair, wandered. “Serve the champagne,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” James said smartly, earning himself a sharp look from Bel. But mockery from invisible people turned out to be invisible as well. James had suspected as much. He followed Wyn into the dining room and gave Drew and Will the okay to start pouring.

  Then he headed back into the kitchen where Bel deftly dished up a plate with a little smattering of all the hors d’oeuvres she and James had stockpiled over the course of the week. It was gorgeous. She held it out to James and said, “Just like this, okay?”

  “Sure.” He started slapping food onto plates. “Hey, what did you say these were again?”

  “Boulettes catalanes.”

  “Which means?”

  She flashed him a grin. “Meatballs. In French.”

  “Why, Bel. Aren’t you the naughty one?”

  She rolled her eyes at him, though dimples fluttered in her cheeks. James shook his head. “Tell you what, if I were the bride, I’d be late, too. Really late. Like whoops, I forgot and married somebody else late.”

  “I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.”

  James snorted. “I don’t know. Aside from the fact that he’s really, really rich, I’m not seeing the appeal.”

  “You’re not a woman,” Bel said. “He’s actually really good-looking.”

  James poked an egg roll into place. “He’s a jerk, Bel. A hundred bucks says he couldn’t pick either of us out of a line up right now.” He handed the plate to Bel and she applied an artful twirl of pale green sauce to the edge.

  “So?”

  “So it speaks to a basic meanness of character. Geez.” He wagged his head in sympathy for the tardy, unknown bride. “Poor thing.”

  “I’m sure she has her reasons,” Bel said again.

  “Yep. And I bet not one of them has to do with his sterling personality. He’s not what you’d call a loveable kind of guy.”

  “There are better reasons to get married than love,” she said, her mouth prim.

  “Better?” James stared at her. “Name one.”

  “Security,” she said. “Trust. Affection. Compatibility.”

  “Well, sure. If you’re marrying your lawyer.”

  She flinched almost imperceptibly, then finished swirling sauce onto the plate James had just handed her.

  He closed his eyes. “Please tell me Ford wasn’t your lawyer.”

  The silence was damning. He touched her sleeve, and her arm was warm and vital inside it. She always looked so cool. It constantly surprised James to find her so alive under his touch. “Bel—”

  I’m sorry, he wanted to say. Not that he’d done anything to be ashamed of. He still felt no guilt over being the catalyst Bel’s fiancé and her assistant needed to act on their emotions. But until just this moment, he hadn’t realized that Bel might’ve been hurt. She’d taken the whole thing so stoically, and argued with such eloquence for keeping her heart out of big decisions.

  Before James could think of just what he wanted to say, Drew poked his head into the kitchen again. The combination of joy and panic on his thin face had the plate in James’ hand clattering onto the countertop.

  “Good lord. What?” James asked, his stomach tight.

  “The bride,” Drew breathed, eyes wild. “She’s here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bel breathed a sigh of relief. The bride had arrived. Thank God. The last thing she needed right now was another wedding-related disaster on her résumé. She was going to get a reputation. Plus the Quist family had owned most of DC and a great many seats in both the House and the Senate since time immemorial. If there was going to be a family kerfuffle, Bel wanted no part of it. When giants fought, little people took shelter.

  “Great,” she said. “I’ll go see about the—”

  James put his hand on Bel’s arm, and she dutifully ignored the slow roll of awareness that moved through her. God, she was tired of that. Hadn’t she made a rule about touching?

  She gave the hand on her sleeve a pointed look but James’ eyes were fixed on his brother with an intensity that had Bel looking back to see what she’d missed.

  “Drew,” James said. “Who’s the bride?”

  “You’d better come see.”

  Five seconds later, the three of them were stacked on top of one another like the Three Stooges, one eye each to a crack in the kitchen door. Bel, by virtue of being the shortest, was on her knees with James’s body curved over her own, his chin all but nestled in her hair. She could feel his breath as it fluttered the strands behind her ear. She suppressed a delicious shiver.

  “I can’t see anything,” she whispered.

  “Me, neither.” James’ voice was an intimate rumble and at such close range it sent a zippy little vibration through her. She squeezed to the side, putting another precious inch between her traitorous body and temptation.

  “Patience,” Drew said. As the tallest guy in the room, he was the top of the totem pole and Bel envied him with her entire heart.

  She watched the glittery swirl of DC matrons for a few more ticks, then said, “Seriously, I can’t see anything. I’m going to—”

  And then the crowd broke and Bel caught a glimpse of moonlight colored hair. She saw a demure suit over an eye-popping set of curves and a pale, vulnerable expanse of inner wrist, terribly thin and oddly exposed, when the woman reached out to shake hands with somebody.

  Bel’s entire world constricted to that image, that single slice of the whole picture she’d been provided.

  She’d seen that hair before. Those curves. That thin, fragile wrist.

  “Oh my God,” Bel breathed, easing back from the door.

  “Exactly,” Drew said.

  “What?” James asked.

  Bel sat on her heels and tried to think. Tried to force her brain to deliver some alternative to the disaster before her. “Where’s Will?” she asked Drew.

  “Serving champagne.”

  “Has he seen her yet?”

  James shifted his gaze to Drew. “Seen who?”

  Drew ignored him and answered Bel. “Don’t think so.”

  “Has she seen him?” Bel asked.

  “Has who seen Will?” James asked, through his teeth this time.

  “She hasn’t screamed the place down yet,” Drew said. “So probably not.”

  “Good. Get him in here.”

  Drew disappeared and James planted himself in front of Bel, arms folded. “Bel. Who the hell is the bride?”

  Bel sucked in a deep breath, closed her eyes and sent up a little prayer that Drew was both fast and
lucky. Then she opened her eyes and said, “Remember that little waitress Will harassed out of a job at your big underwear shindig last weekend?”

  James’ brows disappeared into the sunny mess of his hair. “No way.”

  “Way.”

  Drew burst back through the kitchen door, dragging Will by the sleeve.

  “For God’s sake,” Will said. “What?”

  “Blake brother powwow,” Drew informed him. Will lifted one sandy brow and turned his attention to James. James nodded toward Bel. Bel clasped her hands together and prayed for guidance.

  “We have a small situation,” she said. “The bride has arrived.”

  “Good for her,” Will said. “I understood there was some danger of a no-show.”

  “Well, that’s not a problem anymore. Now the problem is that you’ve met her before.”

  Will turned an unsurprised gaze on James. “Ah. The bride’s a former, ah, fan of yours?”

  “No,” Bel said. “Nothing like that.” She checked the event sheet on her clipboard and said, “Her name is Audrey Bing. She’s the waitress you got fired last weekend.”

  Understanding dawned on Will’s sharp face and he glanced toward the door, as if he could see through it to the scene on the other side. “Ah,” he said softly. “Interesting.”

  James frowned at his brother. “What does that mean? Interesting?”

  Will lifted his shoulders and managed to make even a vinyl tux look elegant. “The girl’s got balls,” he said. “I’ll give her that.”

  Drew stepped forward. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning she took a hit last week—lost her job, lost her shot at James. But I’ll give her credit, she didn’t back down, did she? She got right back on the horse. And now—” He nodded toward the kitchen door. “—she’s hooked herself a real golden goose. And not just temporarily, either. She grabbed the brass ring this time.” He smiled. “Or should I say the gold ring? Hell, if everything I hear about the Quist fortune is true, she’s probably in for several carats on a platinum band, easy. Hats off to you, Aubrey.”