It was a given that some of these people wouldn’t show up despite promising to attend, in which case Dev would lure in some beautiful people off the street, seat them carefully and pray that they behaved themselves.
He looked at his watch and went to check on things in the kitchen, where Bodvar and Maurizio were barely speaking and the other staff were keeping their heads ducked and their shoulders hunched behind growing piles of crab shells and legs. Bodvar insisted that all ingredients be fresh and refused to buy shelled crabmeat or lobster meat since he couldn’t be sure how old it was.
Dev had refrained from pointing out that the crabs and lobsters themselves could have been frozen for any length of time before they were put out at the fish market. It didn’t seem wise.
The poor bastards in the kitchen had been there since the early hours of the morning, slicing and scooping out avocados for the soup. They’d then progressed to deboning the fish and cracking open the lobster.
Yesterday they’d prepped all the vegetables and worked on sauces. They’d baked the cheesecakes the day before. Everyone looked exhausted. Truth to tell, they looked as if they’d like to stuff Bodvar bodily into the giant oven and serve his head as a centerpiece.
Dev couldn’t blame them. Bodvar was a maestro with food, but he was a lousy people person. And he was even more jacked up today than usual, bouncing on his toes, twitching and screaming what sounded like Swedish obscenities. He’d been up all night, for sure. And his whole reputation, like Dev’s, was riding on the success of this event.
Still, there was no violence other than verbal. No blood. So Dev went to check on Lila and the backup bartenders, one a stacked little blonde named Judy and one a long-haired guy from Texas named Bobby Ray. Everything seemed under control.
At eight Dev’s buddies arrived, including Pete, Adam and Jay. Adam was still annoyed at Dev for the medical school prank, but at least he was speaking to him and was here to support him. He’d asked them to come early so that the first guests wouldn’t feel as if, well, they were the first guests. Dev sent everyone over to the bar for free drinks.
At eight-thirty, his mom and dad showed with his brother and his wife to kick off the McKee Family Circus. Mami, at fifty-two years old, looked thirty-eight at most. Her black hair streamed to her caramel shoulders, her huge dark eyes needed little makeup and if he hadn’t seen her bruising the day after her discreet lid lift, he’d never have believed she’d had one.
Mami had a figure to die for and an emotional range that rivaled a roller coaster, which was probably why Dev dealt so patiently and effectively with Lila the moody bartender. Mami was also an incorrigible chismosa, or busybody. She could charm the skin off a snake, but there was a reason he kept his file cabinets and desk locked and didn’t talk about business around her.
Dev hurried over and whistled appreciatively at her form-fitting, plunging red cocktail dress and spiked heels while she preened. Then he kissed her cheek and clapped his long-suffering Irish father on the back. “Dad, you’re looking good.”
This was an egregious lie. His father snorted and patted the large belly that copious amounts of home-cooked Cuban food and gallons of Irish whiskey had cultivated. “Right. Your mother just told her sister that I’ll give birth to twins next month.”
Mami whipped her head around. “Ay! I say no such theeng.”
“You think I don’t oonderstand Spanish after therty yares with ya, woman?” Dad shot back in his Irish brogue.
“Mami, have a glass of champagne. Dad?”
“Bubbly piss,” his father said with disgust. “No. Jameson’s, rocks. Before I go into labor, eh?” He shot his wife a dirty look and Dev edged him away with a pleading glance toward Pete.
“Señor McKee,” Pete boomed out. “Lila was just asking how you are. She’s got a whiskey with your name on it.”
One disaster averted, Dev offered champagne to his sister-in-law and asked after his small nephews. His brother Aidan, a professor of comparative religion, looked around in appreciation. “Place looks great, Devster. Who knew you had taste?”
“Hey, I saved all the leftover eighties fabric for you, bro. I figured you might take up quilting.”
“How’d you guess?”
“You want a real drink, or you want bubbly piss?” Dev made a wry face and gestured toward the champagne fountain.
“Got a good cabernet?”
“Of course.” Dev hijacked a waiter’s tray and supplied his brother with the wine, as a commotion of noise and flashbulbs started at the main entrance. “Excuse me.”
An ex-Miami Dolphins player and his wife had arrived, and it looked as if a photographer and reporter from one of the newspapers had, too.
Dev greeted everyone and made sure they got drinks right away. More people followed: friends, business acquaintances, VIPs. As the room filled and people seemed to be having a good time, he relaxed a little.
He stuck his head into the bar and was pleased to see that everything was going smoothly there. At least five men leaned on the bar, riveted by Lila’s assets. These were showcased in a skin-tight, electric-blue sequined camisole—worn Miami-style. In other words with no bra, nipples plainly visible under the clingy, sparkly material.
Dev winked at her and was rewarded with a soulless black stare and a toss of her mane. He departed for the kitchen and was less reassured by what was going on in Bodvar’s domain.
First, it was hotter than July in the Sahara. The ovens produced waves of shimmering, suffocating heat. Curls of white steam wafted up from ten different pots, creating an aromatic but stifling stainless-steel bowel of hell.
Towering over his sweating, cowering minions was a Satanic blond Bodvar, perspiration and menace rolling down his irate face and soaking his collar and the brim of his tall hat. His eyes rolled maniacally in his head, the whites showing.
Dev squinted at him. If he didn’t know better—
No. Don’t even think it.
But the guy showed every sign of using amphetamines.
At his feet was an overturned pan in a lake of tomato sauce flecked with onions and spices, which looked like nothing so much as a pool of blood and gore. Had he thrown it down in a fit of temper?
On the counter next to him were two sheets of blackened, burned bruschetta.
“What’s going on, here?” Dev asked.
Bodvar yelled something having to do with incompetence, laziness, stupidity. Since this was in half-English, half-Swedish and peppered with foul words in both, Dev didn’t understand it all, but it was pretty easy to get the gist of it.
“Okay, everyone. Let’s calm down and get the mess cleaned up. Get the bruschetta remade and back into the ovens.”
Bodvar roared that there was no more bread. Dev held up a finger and pulled out his cell phone, hitting speed dial for Ciara. Could she stop at a grocery’s bakery on her way and bring about ten baguettes? Sure. Problem solved.
Bodvar lashed out about the poor quality of grocery store-baked bread. Plus baguettes were French, not Italian. “That,” Dev told him, “can’t be helped. Make sure the topping is good and we’ll hope not everyone is as picky as you.”
Without a word of thanks, his chef invited him, not so politely, to leave his kitchen immediately. Since thirty minutes before the grand opening was not the time to fire him, Dev complied only to find three waiters in the back making extremely free with sixteen-ounce plastic cups of champagne from the fountains.
Unfortunately, now was not the time to fire them, either. He did take away their cups and kick their butts back into service, but he was afraid the damage had been done. There were eight waiters in all, and his professional eye detected that seven of them were at least somewhat impaired, judging by their rolling gaits and goofy grins. Great. Just friggin’ great.
Dev snagged them, one by one, and whispered violently that he didn’t want to hear any confessions, but if he saw them within a foot of any alcohol again that night, he’d personally dismember them and toss them in the Du
mpster behind the restaurant.
He begged the one sober guy, who was in his forties, to help police the rest of them.
Dev headed back to his guests and worked the room, which had filled almost to capacity when Kylie made her entrance.
She was stunning in a sea-foam-green strapless chiffon dress with a long matching chiffon scarf wound around her graceful neck. She’d twisted her hair up into a loose knot and secured it with a silver clip. And she wore the same silver sandals that she’d worn to Mark’s wedding—the ones of which he had very fond memories.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Dev’s dad exclaimed, swirling the whiskey in his glass. “And who’s the goddess?”
Dev watched her walk in, watched the way the crowd parted for her and took note, whispering as she passed. Who was she? Not emaciated enough to be a model. Not trampy enough to be a pop star. Was she an up-and-coming designer? An actress from another country? A mogul’s wife without her mogul?
Nope. She was his big, bad, bank lady.
Dev could feel himself grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t help it. Because she was walking right toward him.
His dad gaped, fixated on the perfection of her face, the curve of her shapely calves, the swing of her graceful hips.
He almost tripped over his own feet himself as she approached, and had to lock his knees.
“Hello, Dev,” she said with that Swiss-vault smile. “Congratulations on your grand opening.” And she kissed him—on the cheek, to his disappointment.
24
DEV SMELLED WONDERFUL—of some sort of exotic woodsy aftershave. He’d dressed in Miami black, in an understated raw silk shirt and trousers with a European cut. His calfskin shoes had to be Italian, and were polished to a high shine. He looked like what he was: a successful restaurateur with a perhaps shadowy past.
“Be still my heart,” rumbled the older gentleman standing next to Dev, and she turned toward him with a smile.
“Kylie, meet my father, Declan McKee. He’s Irish, he’ll soon be drunk, and you shouldn’t trust him in any dark hallways. Dad, this is Kylie Kent, my…account manager at the bank. Keep your hands to yourself.”
Declan managed to look wounded at the implication that he might be a rogue, but at the same time he rakishly waggled his eyebrows at her. She understood instantly how his son had acquired what she’d once called his peculiar, repulsive appeal.
“So good to meet you,” she said, offering her hand.
“Dazzled,” Declan said. “Charmed. Befuddled. Annihilated, actually.”
“Oh, my.” Kylie raised her eyebrows at Dev. “He’s even more full of blarney than you are.”
As Dev and his father laughed, a tiny but voluptuous woman in low-cut red silk bustled over, leading with her bosom. She reminded Kylie of a slightly older version of Salma Hayek.
“Ay, Devonito, who is the beautiful lady?”
“Devonito?” Kylie teased him in a whisper, then turned.
“Mami, this is my account manager at the bank, Kylie Kent. Kylie, my mother, Maria Elena. She loves to exasperate her husband—”
“Hear! Hear!” said Declan, loudly.
“—and torment her children. Don’t tell her anything that you don’t want the entire city to know by morning.”
Maria Elena rolled her eyes at the men. “Please,” she told Kylie, “ignore his lies. Someone must—how you say?—keep the men in line. They are fools.”
Kylie chuckled. “I’ll drink to that.” She raised the glass Dev had supplied and took a sip of champagne.
“Now. I have eyes. I see things. You manage more than my son’s account, no?”
Kylie choked on the tiny bubbles she’d inhaled and began to cough. Dev smacked her lightly on the back.
“Yes, and very well,” he said to his mother. “Come along now, Kylie. That’s not a conversation you want to get into with Mami. Am I right?”
Grateful, she went with him, calling over her shoulder, “Very nice to meet you, Mrs. McKee.”
“Ha,” said the little scarlet diva. “You see? She is slipping with our son, Declan. Her face is red as the inside of a sandía. A watermelon.”
“Oh, my God,” Kylie moaned.
“My parents are a lot to handle,” Dev said apologetically. “They’re completely dysfunctional but that’s the only way they know how to function. And neither of them could tolerate anyone else, so they’re truly meant to be together.”
“I see.”
“Doubtful, but that’s a taste of them, anyway.” He laughed. He looked tense and worried; deep lines etched his forehead and dark circles had gathered under his eyes.
“You okay, Dev?”
“Yeah. Great. Especially now that you’re here.” He brushed her cheek with his knuckles, which sent a tingle through her. She told herself not to be touched by either the gesture or his words, but who was she kidding?
“Something’s bothering you,” she told him. “I can see it.”
He blew out a breath. “We’ve got some tipsy waiters and a cranked-out, abusive chef who ejected me from the kitchen for peacekeeping. It’s a little troublesome.”
“A little?”
He shot her a tight grin as a guy she remembered as one of Mark’s groomsmen walked over. “Hey, Pete. Kylie, you remember Pete from the wedding, right?”
“Of course.” She smiled and extended her hand.
Pete caught it, folded it in and kissed her on the cheek. “And how could I forget you?”
It was the warm, sweet gesture of a teddy bear, not a slick move by an operator. She liked him immediately.
“Pete, here, is the guy I rely on when I need someone to look in on the bar. He’s a lifesaver and a good friend.” Dev clapped him on the shoulder and he shrugged good-naturedly. “Don’t know what I’d do without—”
He was interrupted by an ominous clatter and curses from the kitchen.
“Uh-oh. I’d better check on that.” Dev careened toward the noise as one of the waiters scrambled out, followed by two more. “Pete? Can you and the guys start getting everyone seated? It’s after nine.”
“Sure.”
Kylie and Pete exchanged worried glances.
“I’ll help,” she said. “People just need to find their place cards, right?”
“Yeah.”
A bad feeling drove her toward the kitchen first, though.
“Herre Gud! Du bondlurk!” she heard. “Get out! Get out of here, Idioten!”
“No, no, no. Guys, you’re not leaving.” This was Dev, his tone urgent. “You can’t leave!”
“Hons Hjarna! Out, out, out! I’ll kill you!”
“Shut up, Bodvar. Guys, you can’t take off in the middle of our grand opening. You can’t.”
China shattered. Footsteps scrambled. She heard a door opening.
“You’re killing me, guys. Come back here. I’ll pay you double—”
Kylie pushed through the double doors of the kitchen to find a bunch of shattered white bowls on the floor in the middle of a creamy, pale green swamp.
“Please, Sergio, don’t go. I will pay you triple if you stay through the night. And you, too, Bucky.” Dev pleaded with the last two waiters, a forty-something guy and a sick-looking kid in his early twenties.
“Just ignore Bodvar,” he said in an undertone. “He’s on something. He’s freaking out. I am begging you, don’t leave me with nobody to serve this dinner.”
The guy named Sergio nodded. “Okay, boss.”
Bucky slowly nodded, too.
“Thank you,” Dev said. “Thank you. Kid, go stick your finger down your throat in there and you’ll feel better. Okay? Then wash up and get out here as soon as you can. People are starting to sit down. We’ve got to get the avocado soup out there while ballistic Bodvar finishes up the crab cakes.”
“What can I do?” Kylie asked, as Dev turned, already rolling up his sleeves.
“You ever waited tables?” he asked, looking desperate.
“Yes. College.”
&n
bsp; “No. Forget it. I can’t ask you to—”
But she was already sorting through the tuxedo parts and shirts on a nearby hanging rack. “Go get people seated. Send Pete and anyone else you can press into service back here. Will your mom and dad help?”
“Kylie, really—”
“Dev, find me five people at the very least. You have too much riding on this opening for us to let it fall apart. We can do this. Now, go get ’em.”
“You’re a goddess,” he said, and ran out.
Kylie dealt first with Bodvar, who had stalked into the refrigerator and was sulking while he cooled off.
“Listen up, you,” she said.
“Do not talk to me, health inspector lady!” he yelled.
“I will talk to you, and you will shut the hell up,” she said in quiet but deadly tones.
That got his attention. His blue eyes bulged and his lipless mouth dropped open.
“I’m not from the health department. I’m from the bank that has financed this restaurant. And if you do anything else to screw up this opening with your stupid histrionics, I will have a team of attorneys down on your ass so fast you won’t even know what hit you. We’ll sue you for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and get your Nordic ass deported. So you get out of this fridge and back to your pots and pans. Got it?”
He closed his mouth and glared at her from his superior height, not moving.
“Do you understand me?” Kylie shouted.
At last he muttered something incomprehensible under his breath and stomped past her.
For a horrible moment, she thought he’d walk out the door. But her instincts paid off: the big bully didn’t know what to do when he was the one being bullied.
Blame It on the Bachelor Page 16
