Before she got lost in her plumber fantasy—who would have guessed she even had a plumber fantasy—Tilly turned away to find Karen and fix Dan’s dinner.
From the corner of her eye, Tilly saw Dan finally stand up and stretch. She’d been trying not to be obvious as she watched him, telling herself she watched him out of concern for Babka, not out of interest in his body. Several times he had looked at the pipe and shaken his head at whatever he found.
When he bent down again to turn on the water at the base of the sink, then stood, stretching out his back, she decided to investigate.
“How is the sink?”
He turned to her, a bit of sweat gleaming on his forehead under his blond hair. “It should be fine.” He reached over and turned on the faucet. Out came water, which flowed nicely into the sink, down the drain and through the pipes. At the sight, Tilly instructed Karen to cancel the plumber.
Relief lifted the worry off her shoulders. “Thank you.”
Dan stepped back and looked over his work. “And even though you came home with me to shower, I still beat the plumber.”
“I don’t think I can ever thank you enough, but dinner should be ready.”
“What’s dinner?”
“A noble dish for a noble deed. Fresh Babka-made kielbasa cooked in beer with saffron, raisins and boiled new potatoes. The dish has many names, but one of them is wereszczaka, for a court chef to the Saxon kings of Poland in the late 1600s.”
“Maybe we should get you a cooking show and you can do for Polish cooking in Chicago what Rick Bayless did for Mexican. Have a show on PBS and everything.”
Tilly gazed wistfully over his shoulder. “I’d get to go to Poland,” she said.
“You’ve never been?”
“I’ve never had the money or the time. All my extra money went into school, then into Babka. And, while I’d like to be the Rick Bayless of Polish cuisine, I’m not yet, which means I have to be at my restaurant rather than traveling.” She gestured to the plate of sausage and potatoes. “Everything you see here is the result of an attentive Polish grandmother and lots of reading.”
He flashed his confident smile. “The food smells delicious. Is there someplace I can eat other than the dining room?” He gestured to his shorts, which were now soaked. They clung to his thighs and Tilly was forced to remind herself he was here to fix her sink, not be her sex object. You don’t have time for a relationship. You have a restaurant to run.
Her inner admonishments couldn’t compete with the feeling Dan had her back. Or she wanted to see his naked back.
He smiled at her and she didn’t care about her restaurant or her pot sink.
“Oh, I didn’t even think to remind you to pack extra clothes. Do you want to go back to your house and change? Dinner will keep.”
“No worries.” Dan waved her concern away. “I’ll change later. I’d like to talk with you while I eat.”
Her heart skipped. No customers had packed into her restaurant since her sink had broken. They had time to discover the meaning of life together, solve the secrets of the universe and create a budget for the federal government. She gestured to her office/closet. “Have a seat at my desk and I’ll get your dinner.”
Dan looked directly at her as he responded. “Perfect.”
Tilly shivered.
* * *
BY THE TIME TILLY RETURNED with his food, Dan had washed his hands and arms and found a towel to sit on in the folding chair. She placed the food in front of him, ignored her desk chair and sat down on a second folding chair.
“This looks amazing.” He grabbed a fork and knife and took his first taste of sausage. “This is amazing,” he said after he’d swallowed. The sausage popped in his mouth as he bit through the casing, releasing a flood of garlicky juices. Vinegar in the sauce cut through the richness of the meat, and the sweetness of the raisins paired perfectly with the spicy luxury of saffron and black pepper. “If this isn’t on your menu every night, it should be.”
“Thank you.”
Dan took another bite. “Is there marjoram and paprika in here as well?”
“How did you know?”
“I have a great palate. Let’s chat a little before we talk about your drain. The subject would ruin my meal.” Dan took another bite and chewed the savory sausage. Tilly Milek was an excellent cook. Her food was passionate and intense, just like the chef herself.
More people needed to come into the restaurant and try her food. Doubting a review was a bad position for a critic to be in, but he hoped what he’d written would inspire people to come to Babka, even if only out of curiosity. For the first time in his writing career, he hoped people ignored him. As a reviewer, he had to hold firm to his position. Stick to his guns.
Except sticking to his guns seemed a sure way to blow himself to bits right now. One: he didn’t think Tilly was the failure he’d supposed her to be earlier. Two: when it wasn’t oversalted, her food was delicious. Babka could have culinary staying power in Chicago.
This was why he didn’t make friends with chefs. He was supposed to remain objective in his reviews. Mixing business and pleasure also ended poorly—don’t get your bread where you get your butter and all that. He kept The Eater firmly separate from his image as Dan Meier, food writer, so no one questioned any conflicting motivations. Keeping The Eater anonymous helped. But now he didn’t just have conflicting motivations. He’d poured all his motivations into a cocktail shaker and was trying to mask cheap gin with olive brine.
He swallowed and mashed a tiny, boiled potato into the sauce before enjoying its fluffy earthiness. “Why did you get into cooking?”
Tilly blinked in surprise. “I grew up in a restaurant. All I’ve ever wanted to do was cook.”
“What about it do you like?”
“Everything. I love the smell of the food and the ovens. I love the sounds of the kitchen. Mostly, I love the rush.” Tilly gestured with her hands, leaning forward into her excitement.
Dan raised his eyebrow at her as he chewed to encourage her to continue.
“A date took me to one of Chicago’s fancier restaurants before my junior prom. Until that night, all I wanted to do was run Healthy Food, my mom’s restaurant. Healthy Food was comfortable and it was—is—home. The food is always the same, the same retired old Poles eat there at five every day, and that’s how the neighborhood wants it.”
Tilly’s mouth lifted up in a smile and her voice had the confidence of someone who knew exactly where she came from and where she was going. Currently floundering around in his own uncertainty, Dan was jealous. He wanted to share her faith.
“The restaurant was elegant, with white tablecloths and waiters who spoke reverently of each dish and of the chef, who must have been something close to God. The next day, I went to the library and figured out what I needed to do to become a chef at one of those restaurants. My grandmother helped me fill out the culinary school applications, against my mother’s objections. Babunia insisted I reach for the stars and bought me my first knife set when I got the acceptance letter. I was using those knives at the Taste.”
She held out her palm, where a scar ran from the fleshy part of her thumb to her pinkie finger. “I got this scar learning not to shuck oysters with my paring knife and no kitchen towel.”
Dan could hear the clomping of her clog against the floor as she twitched her foot. Tilly enjoyed cooking, but she also enjoyed talking about cooking. Listening to her, he learned that her food wasn’t just a combination of ingredients and heat. She put her family, history and memories into each recipe. He wanted to know about every scar on her hand, and how long it had taken her to get the knife callus on her left hand.
“Every day in Babka’s kitchen gives me a high. I’ve heard professional athletes talk about the stress of the game and the adrenaline it produces.” Tilly’s face began to flush and Dan wondered what kind of reaction she had to sex if she got this hot and bothered by cooking. “I enjoy cooking at home, but in a restaurant kitche
n, it’s my own kind of competition. I’m racing the customers’ expectations and my expectations of myself. I never played sports or did debate or anything else involving competition. Before I discovered kitchens outside my mother’s, I never considered myself a competitive person. But in a restaurant kitchen like Babka, I’m in my own World Series and the restaurant is my stadium.”
Tilly sighed and collapsed against the metal chair hard enough it rocked back on its legs before settling. “Besides the impending financial doom if Babka fails, in a slow restaurant, there is no rush.”
“Do you have a plan B if Babka doesn’t make it?”
“We will make it.”
“If you don’t?”
“I will. I have to. Babka is my grandmother’s legacy. I should check on my staff.” Tilly stood and walked through the kitchen, checking the control knobs on the stoves and wiping down counters. Dan got the point. This conversation was over.
Tilly returned several minutes later. Dan was finished with all of his meal except his wine, and his excuse not to talk about the drain was gone.
“About my drain?” Tilly’s face was still tense from his previous suggestion Babka might not make it.
He followed her lead and left the previous conversation alone. Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulling out a washer that looked as if it had been chewed up and spit out by some large cat. The washer had been a bitch to get off so he could fix the sink and, given what Dan had found in the pipes, he suspected he wasn’t supposed to be able to do so at all. Someone had tried to engineer an expensive plumbing repair. They just hadn’t known much about plumbing when they’d done it. “There were two things wrong with your sink. First, this washer was worn—on purpose, I’d imagine.”
“What do you mean on purpose?” She bent over to peer at the washer, their earlier conversation momentarily forgotten.
“The sink’s new?”
“Yes.”
“No new sink should have a washer this worn. Even a washer from an old sink shouldn’t look like this.” Dan took a sip of his wine. Tilly’s bartender had made a smart match between his garlicky sausage and the Tuscan red he was currently drinking. “Secondly, I found something clogging the drain.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t want to see and I don’t want to show you. It wasn’t natural.”
“What was it?” she asked, frustration raising her voice an octave. “I work in a restaurant kitchen. Gross is not new to me.”
“It looked like a toupee.” He took another sip. The wine was excellent, bold and rich. It had been a perfect pairing for his dinner, but he was glad he had saved some to savor alone.
“A what? Impossible. No one in my kitchen is bald. How would a toupee get in the drain?”
“Well...” Her skepticism amused him. “It was stuffed in there pretty deeply. I had to snake your drain and was lucky to find it.”
“How do you know it’s a toupee and not, not...”
“Not some other large clump of hair that wouldn’t belong in the drain of a restaurant sink anyway? Does it matter? Something was stuffed deep into the drain. It wasn’t accidental. It was a toupee and it was filthy.” He grimaced at the memory. “I threw it out.”
“But everything works now.” She looked back at the sink and rubbed her hands together nervously.
“Tilly, I think you have a bigger problem.” She didn’t seem to be getting the point he was trying to make. “All of this was done on purpose.”
“Don’t be silly.” She turned her head to face him and absently waved away his objections. “Why would anyone do this on purpose? I’m sure it was all an accident.”
“The washer looks like it was put in the garbage disposal and torn to shreds and someone stuffed the hair down into your pipes. It couldn’t have gotten that far down on its own.”
CHAPTER NINE
“TILLY, DID YOU HEAR ME? I think this was done on purpose.”
She blinked quickly several times but his words wouldn’t go away.
I think this was done on purpose.
She tried to focus on what Dan was saying, but the millions of tiny things that had gone wrong to get everyone out of sync tonight flashed through her mind. The prepped ingredients in the wrong place. Spices missing. The knife she couldn’t find. A missing six-top’s reservation that they were able to seat, but not before looking unprofessional.
Little things went wrong in a restaurant all the time. Between the sharp objects, foods and heat, a restaurant kitchen was a disaster neatly hidden away from the paying public. She had assumed all those things that went wrong, those little things driving her entire staff batty, were everyday restaurant errors.
So what if they hadn’t had such mistakes before? Mistakes were bound to happen. It was just bad luck they happened all at once.
Dan’s words changed her thoughts. What if the cat had been let in on purpose, by someone who knew Bunny brought her dog everywhere she went? That person then sabotaged her pot sink, hoping for an expensive plumbing repair, forcing Babka to close for the night. This meant an employee was responsible.
She shook her head and blinked again. No, such a scheme was too absurd to believe. The toupee got there by accident and the washer was simply defective. Thinking anything else was paranoid nonsense.
“Tilly?” She looked up at Dan, concern heavy in his eyes. “Are you okay? You blanked out for a minute.”
“No, I’m fine. It was just...I don’t know.” Her voice dropped, her shoulders drooped and all her normal vim drained out of her. “Thinking about how a toupee would get into the drain.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”
How was she supposed to lead the restaurant into offering a top-notch dining experience night after night after night if someone on her staff was interfering?
“Hey—” Dan reached out and placed his hand on her arm “—you aren’t in this alone. You have a great staff and supportive family.” His reassuring smile lit up her tiny office and gave her a quick boost of energy. “Now, was dessert part of the deal?”
“Dessert?” Tilly jumped up from her chair, grateful for something to do and someone to feed. “Of course! I have legumina wiśniowa for you. It’s baked cherry pudding served warm with cold sour cream.”
Dan admired the view as Tilly opened the refrigerator for the sour cream and got the pudding out of the warmer. The clangs of each door she shut echoed through the kitchen, pinging off the metal counters. It was much too quiet for a restaurant kitchen. The pot washer finally had his sink full of water, but the dishwashing machine wasn’t running. The only noise was the light chatter of the staff breaking the kitchen down for the night and doing early prep for tomorrow.
Babka’s business would pick up. Dan was sure of it. Tilly had made him a fabulous meal and what she served to her customers was probably as good. The oversalting was a one-off mistake by one of the line cooks.
Those people who ignored his review would find Babka’s food and service were excellent, and they would tell their friends. His one review wasn’t powerful enough to kill her restaurant. It would make things difficult for her for a bit, but if she was as good as he thought she was, Babka would pull through.
Tilly put a shallow dish of pudding in front of him and gave him a spoon. “I can’t sit down to chat. It’s getting late and I need to help close. Please come find me before you leave. I want to thank you again for fixing my pot sink.”
“It was my pleasure.”
Dan finished the tangy-sweet pudding and took his dish to the dishwasher. He found Tilly in the walk-in fridge, holding a notebook and mumbling to herself. “I came to say goodbye.”
She jumped and clasped the notebook to her chest. “Oh, you startled me. I was just planning specials for tomorrow.”
“The sausage was excellent. I recommend putting it on your menu.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” Her smile reached all the way to her eyes, where it acquired warmth and sent tingles down his spine. “Thank you ag
ain for everything. I don’t think dinner even came close to being a fair exchange.”
He smiled. If she only knew the heat in her eyes was thank-you enough. He wanted to kiss her, to feel the heat of her soft lips against his in the cold storage. He leaned into her a little. She looked at him as if she would welcome a kiss, but as soon as she found out he was the reviewer from CarpeChicago she wouldn’t look at him that way again. He might not get another chance to hold her. He could slip his arms around her, pull her close to him so her breasts pressed against him, and she wouldn’t protest.
What kind of asshole will you be when she finds out who you are? Think she’ll remember your kisses fondly or rinse her mouth out with baking soda and lemon? The thought was more effective than a cold shower.
Dan pulled back.
“Dinner was delicious. It’s been a long time since I’ve had such food and it is certainly a change from what is currently trendy in restaurants.”
She smiled at his compliment and a second urge to kiss her hit him like a blast of hot air through the refrigeration. No thoughts of Tilly’s reaction when she found out his duplicity could cool his hunger for her. Standing with her in her fridge, surrounded by cheese and butter with her chest rising and falling under her chef’s whites, she was something out of every food lover’s dirty dream.
He’d already kissed her once without telling her who he was, so what was another kiss? Of course, the kiss at the Taste had been an impulse. He hadn’t known who she was then, either. It wasn’t even fair to call the second brief peck anything more than what he had called it then, a good-luck kiss.
If he kissed her now, he would have to acknowledge he was no longer acting on impulse. There would be no question that he had talked himself first out of, and then into, kissing a woman under false pretenses. She stood in the fridge with her wonderful, bright hair sticking out in tufts from under her bandanna. He had wanted to kiss her since she walked out into the dining room, the red stain on her white chef’s jacket as vibrant as her hair and her personality, and her face wary but her eyes hopeful.
Reservations for Two Page 9
