Dreamveil (14 page)

“You’ve already done plenty.” She drew his hand away from her face and sat back on the stool. “But if you want to give me a little bonus, I’d love to watch you make the reduction with these figs for the duck.”

Dansant knew the power of his influence. He could compel others with it, and alter their memories, but he could not plant desires in their minds. She would not have asked for his kiss or responded to it if she had not wanted it. Now she spoke to him as if they were nothing more than pleasant but distant acquaintances.

I felt her need and her delight. She wants me as much as I hunger for her.

She was waiting for him to answer her. “Very well. Finish splitting those figs while I collect the wine and the herbs for the reduction.”

Rowan nodded, but when she tried to sit down on the stool she stood again and groped at the back of her jeans. She produced a squashed fig and frowned at it. “Hmmm. How did that get back there?”

Gradually she began noticing each chef’s work and how he went about it, and while she picked up a few new tricks, after a week she felt sure she could outcook most of the men on the line. She didn’t mind her menial status, however, because for all the fetching and carrying she did, she spent at least an hour every night watching Dansant cook.

No one could best the executive chef at anything, she decided. He used his knives like a surgeon, slicing and chopping and filleting with frightening speed and pinpoint accuracy. He also had a nose that could pick up anything from a bit of rotten basil leaf to a neglected tray of crème brûlée about to blacken under the broiler. Not even Lonzo, who had amazing hands and a psychic’s intuition when it came to cooking times, could keep up.

New York’s cutthroat fine dining scene had not changed a great deal from what Rowan had seen during her years of hanging around restaurants, but it did surprise her to discover just how successful D’Anges was. Not a single night went by that they didn’t have a full house or did less than a hundred and fifty meals. She’d already peeked in at the dining room when it was at full capacity, and seen a lot of happy, relaxed faces around the tables. Although the interior looked exactly the same as that of any fine dining establishment, the atmosphere was as warm, intimate, and relaxing as Dansant’s amazing cuisine was delicious.

It all seemed to her a little too good to be true.

She learned that patrons had to make reservations months in advance just to get in the door, and a place at the chef’s table—Dansant’s once-weekly event where he dined with a group of patrons in a private room—had become one of the most coveted spots in the city. Dansant made the rounds of the dining room every night, and sometimes Rowan saw how the women gushed all over him. It made her stomach turn a little.

She could admit she was a little jealous over how her entire gender seemed to sparkle around her boss. She could also feel sorry for them. If her secret love for Matthias had taught her anything, it was that wanting the unattainable is as stupid as expecting to have a chance at it, and where Dansant was concerned an unrequited, juvenile crush was all she could ever hope for.

Rowan worried that her interest might annoy her boss, but Dansant seemed happy to have her hovering at his side, and readily explained everything he was doing as he worked. He also insisted she taste practically every dish he prepared, and as she sipped and chewed and savored he tested her knowledge of the ingredients. That was how she learned that there were three types of snails used for
escargots
, and the American wine she knew as Chablis was an insult to its own name.

“The
escargots
we use for cooking are called
coureurs
, or runners, in spring,” Dansant explained, “and
voilés
, or veiled ones, in summer.”

“What do you call them in winter?” she asked with a straight face. “Popsicles?”

“
Operculées
, the covered ones. You see?” Dansant showed her a snail shell, and traced his finger around the membrane that sealed the open end. “This they do when they go to sleep during the cold months, and because of it they have more moisture than the snails we use in spring and summer. This makes them the best for all dishes.”

Rowan was still trying to get used to the fact that D’Anges’s chefs kept their supply of snails alive until they were ready to cook them. Although the current stock were hibernating away under a generous layer of grape leaves in a tank kept in the storeroom, it made her shudder to think of them crawling around the work stations while the chefs worked. She was also convinced that while she was not picky about food, and would never turn down a gourmet meal, she wasn’t going to be able to make herself eat
escargots
no matter how moist they were or when they were cooked.

Dansant didn’t seem insulted when she refused to taste his snail concoction, although he smiled as he tossed the morsel to a grateful Enrique. “You Americans are afraid to eat snail, but you will stand in line for hours to eat raw fish.”

“Sushi doesn’t crawl,” Rowan told him. “It swims.”

Dansant accompanied her down to his wine cellar when he needed her to retrieve a bottle of Chablis for a sauce he was reinventing. When she protested that she could find a bottle of wine on her own, he corrected her. “To you Americans Chablis is something you pick up at the convenience store. They sell it by the gallon for a few dollars, do they not?”

“They do,” she admitted. “But I’m guessing the Chablis you use doesn’t come in a screw-top jug.”

“
Non
. It does not.” He led her down the cellar stairs, turned on the overhead lights, and took her to a high rack filled with dusty bottles. “This is the Chablis we use.” He selected one bottle and wiped it off carefully with a towel. “There are tasting glasses there.” He nodded toward a row of small, upside-down goblets. “Take one.”

“I don’t really drink.”

“You are not drinking. You are tasting.” When she took down the glass, he continued. “French Chablis is made entirely from Chardonnay grapes. There is only one town in France that produces it, the town of Chablis in Burgundy.”

He took a corkscrew from a nail on the rack and carefully uncorked the bottle, then poured a small amount into her glass.

“In the old times the vintners would ferment and age their Chablis in special barrels made of oak. Now most of them follow modern ways and use vats made of stainless steel.” He urged the glass up to her nose. “Close your eyes. What do you smell?”

“Wine.” She chuckled, and then sniffed. “Uh, grapes. Alcohol. And . . . vanilla.”

“That is the influence of the oak barrels. At the modern vineyards they say the steel vats make for a purer wine, but I will not buy from them. By its nature Chablis is dry and very flinty, and it needs to age in the oak for balancing.” He pressed the edge of the glass against her bottom lip. “Now taste.”

Rowan took a sip, and instead of the sweet vanilla flavor she was expecting from the scent, the wine filled her mouth with a cool, sharp-edged taste that reminded her of biting into a green apple.

“Your American winemakers blend together weak wines that are barely a month old and call it Chablis,” Dansant said. “The best French Chablis is not sold until it has aged at least twenty years.”

She opened her eyes after she swallowed. “Oh, shit. Was I supposed to spit it back in the glass?”

He grinned like a boy. “I will not tell anyone if you will not.”

Dansant was as demanding as he was charming. He would return any delivery that wasn’t up to his standards, which were apparently much higher than those of other chefs around the city. As a result Lonzo often fielded irate phone calls from their vendors. He also expected the kitchen to be kept scrupulously clean, and once they had finished cleaning up after the last meal of the night, he personally checked the equipment and stations. If he found something not to his liking, he didn’t call over Enrique to handle a second cleanup, but made the chef responsible for the area do it while Dansant stood and watched.

In return the line cooks gave Dansant the kind of deference and respect men usually reserved for successful professional athletes. More than once Rowan caught one of the cooks watching Dansant work before turning away and shaking their head as if in disbelief. Enrique especially worshipped the executive chef, and while the dishwasher mainly kept to his corner of the kitchen, he watched Dansant like a hawk. The chef never even had to call for a clean pot or utensil; the dishwasher always seemed to anticipate his needs and brought it over as soon as Dansant had his ingredients assembled.

Rowan had already resigned herself to silently lusting after her handsome, charming boss for the duration of her employment. It wasn’t his fault he was born to make some other man very happy, although at times she wondered if his partner really appreciated how lucky he was. Whoever he was, Dansant’s boyfriend never showed up once at the restaurant, not even to pick him up after work. Rowan knew the cost of keeping a car in the city was outrageous, and the cab Dansant called every night to take him home was probably much cheaper, but it didn’t seem right that the guy never once bothered to stop in. None of the line cooks ever said a word about Dansant’s domestic situation, much to Rowan’s annoyance.

She did wish her boss could give her next-door neighbor a couple of private lessons on how to get along with people. Since she’d moved in she’d seen Meriden several times, usually in passing on the stairs. She always said hello, but he either ignored her or grunted something too low for her to hear. She figured he had a bad case of insomnia, as he usually arrived home an hour before her shift ended at one a.m. and left for work early in the morning before she woke up. Once she’d gotten up at dawn to use the bathroom and found him on the way out.

After her second week working at D’Anges, Rowan left a note for Meriden under his door, asking him to stop by and let her know about the status of her bike. When he didn’t, she tried knocking on his door when she knew he was home, but he didn’t answer. Other than staking out the bathroom, she wasn’t sure what to do.

Rather than bother Dansant about Meriden, she asked Lonzo one night if he knew where Meriden worked.

“He’s got a garage couple blocks from here. He the one working on your bike?” When she nodded, he waved her over to the office, where he flipped the Rolodex to M and jotted down an address on a sheet of notepaper. “Here’s the address and phone. I’d pay him a visit, see how the work’s going.”

“Thanks.” She folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket. “I think I will.”

The tools Meriden kept on his walls were grouped by type and arranged by size. Several workbenches, fashioned out of double sheets of half- inch plywood nailed to floor frames handmade of precisely cut two- by-fours, held screw and small part bins. On one she saw an a/c compressor that had been taken apart and was being reassembled. She smelled oil, grease, solvent, and the citrus tang of waterless hand cleaner.

Her bike sat parked between the bay’s two lifts, between a garnet-red compact car missing a hubcap and a dark blue pickup in need of a new paint job.

“What do you want?” Meriden said, his baritone booming through the bay.

Rowan turned and nearly smacked her face into his chest. “Shit.” She took a step back. “Ah, hi. I thought I’d drop in and see how it’s going.”

“It’s going.” Meriden wiped his dirty hands on an equally grimy red shop rag before sticking it in the back pocket of his jeans. He’d unbuttoned his work shirt, and grease spots splotched the front of the white wife beater he wore under it. “Don’t you have some overpriced carrots to peel?”

“Today’s my day off.” Rowan went around him to her bike, and crouched down to check the tires, which he hadn’t yet replaced. “Did you figure out what blew my tires?”

“Yeah. Stupidity.” He retreated back into his office.

Rowan didn’t run after him, but took a minute to inspect the work he’d already done and give herself time to cool down. That she wanted to knock him upside the head with an impact wrench didn’t bother her; she’d bet money Meriden had the same effect on everyone. It was the set of his jaw when he’d looked at her, the glitter in his black-hearted eyes, the way his mouth had flattened. He didn’t like her any more than she liked him, but obviously, there was something else going on under that thick skull. All that seething antagonism might have fooled someone else, but not Rowan. Meriden didn’t know that she had the equivalent of a PhD in pissing off people.

She rose and went around the pickup to the inside door leading to the office. At first glance it appeared as tidy as the garage, so she focused on the man standing behind the desk. He was shuffling invoices between two stacks while drinking from a coffee mug that had seen better days. He didn’t look at her, but Rowan saw the set of his shoulders shift and the muscles in his arms bunch.

No use dancing around it, not with Meriden. “Have you got some kind of problem with me?”

“I’m waiting on some parts.” He took one pile of invoices and carelessly stuffed them into an accordion file. “Your bike will ready in a week or two. Bye.”

“You didn’t answer me.” She went over to the desk. “What have I done to you that’s got your boxers in such a knot?”

He finally eyed her. “You’ll want to stay out of my pants, Cupcake.”

“See, that’s where you’re screwing up.” Rowan sat in the customer chair and folded her hands behind her head. “Always making it sexual. I haven’t come on to you. Most I’ve done is play the good neighbor. How you doing, nice day, that’s it. Not what you’d call a green light to test-drive my box of condoms, is it?”

He dropped the rest of the paperwork and came around the desk to stand over her. “You’ve got a mouth on you.”

“Mouth, tits, ass. Brain.” Rowan gazed up at him. “Just because they’re female doesn’t mean they work any less than yours.” She cocked her head to one side. “Oh, wait. You do have a brain in there, right? Or is that space just packed with more brawn?”

He looked away from her. “You know where the door is.”

“You know something? I didn’t start this shit. You’re the one who’s been treating me like you wouldn’t wipe your feet on my face.” She was crazy for standing up and leaning into him, but if she backed down now he’d stomp right over her forever. “Well, here I am, Big Guy. You want to unload on me, be my guest. Just do it now and get it the fuck over with, because I am
done
tiptoeing around your hostile ass.”

He regarded her for a long moment. “You tiptoe?”

“Like I’ve been dropped in the middle of a fucking minefield,” she assured him. “Every time I have to pee, I feel like I should be calling SWAT for backup.”

His mouth tightened, and for a minute she thought he was going to let her have it. Then a rumbling sound came from his chest, and she realized he was laughing—or trying to. And she was laughing right along with him, laughing until tears sprang in her eyes and she had to fall back down on the chair and clutch her aching sides.

“It’s not funny,” he told her, still chuckling.

“Oh, yeah? You should try listening through a door with your legs and eyes crossed.” She covered her mouth to smother the last of the giggles, and then wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “God, I needed that.”

“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “So did I.”

She glanced up. He looked less menacing without the usual scowl; his eyes almost looked warm and friendly. “So are we Sean and Rowan now, or back to Farm Boy and Cupcake?”

“Rowan.” He tested her name as if it belonged to a foreign language. “I’ve got a lot on my plate. Sorry for taking it out on you.”

“So buy me a beer sometime.
Sean
.” She cuffed his arm in a friendly gesture. “And thanks for working on my bike. I know it wasn’t your idea.”

His expression changed, became more reserved. “You doing all right, working at the restaurant?”

“It’s good. I’m learning a lot from Dansant.” She didn’t like the way he was looking at her now. “I probably should head back.”

He leaned over, grabbing the armrests and trapping her between him and the chair. “You said it’s your day off.”

“I’ve got things to do.”

“So?”

He straightened. “So come on.” He grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it. “I’ll buy you that beer.”

Maybe we should have stayed Farm Boy and Cupcake.
Rowan got up and followed him out.

The bar Meriden took her to was small, dark, and un-apologetically Irish. The smell of beer and whiskey blended with that of a couple decades of cheap frying oil and exhaled cigarette smoke to give it a dank, sour ambience. Not one of the half-dozen men parked on the bar stools looked a day under fifty. The bartender, an impassive-looking thug with smudged blue anchors tattooed on his biceps, greeted Sean with a jerk of his chin.

“Let me guess,” she said as she parked herself next to him at the end of the bar. “You’re a regular.”

“Don’t insult my watering hole.” He held up two fingers, and the bartender brought them two bottles of dark ale. “Thanks, Clancy.” Sean exchanged a ten for them, and then lifted his bottle to her. “Happy days, Cupcake.”

“Back at you.” She took a swallow, nodded over the agreeably bitter, yeasty taste, and examined the label, which sported the name of an unfamiliar local brewer. “Nice. I was expecting Guinness.”

“I’m not that fucking Irish.” He checked the football game on the overhead television and then glanced at the pool table behind the bar.

“You up for a game?”

He regarded her. “You’re not going to do that girl thing where you act like you’ve never played before and then proceed to wipe up the floor with my ass.”

She smiled serenely. “I never do the girl thing.”

He snorted and picked up his beer. “I bet.”

Rowan waived her feminine right to break, and watched as Meriden nearly cleared the table in less than five minutes. Only a bump in the table’s aged surface spoiled his fourth bank shot.

“You’re good.” She chalked the cue she selected and walked around the table, assessing the lousy shots he’d left her. “I think I’m in real trouble here. Care to make a friendly wager?”

He folded his arms. “I told you about the girl thing.” She laughed and set up for her first shot, and then went to work. Meriden was good, but she was better, and by the time she sank the eight he had dropped his arms and was watching her along with every other guy in the bar.

Clancy came out from behind the bar and joined Sean as they studied the pathetic remains of the game. “Look at it this way, lad,” the bartender said, clapping him on the shoulder. “At least we own the world.” Shaking his head, he retreated.

Rowan managed to keep her face straight as she parked the end of her cue on the floor. “Good game. Want to go for two out of three?”

“My rep’s shredded enough, thanks.” Sean took her cue and returned it to the rack. “Come on. Finish your beer, and I’ll buy you a victory hot dog.”

Meriden led her from the bar to a corner pushcart, where a talkative Chinese man with a beautiful Bronx accent built them two dogs on toasty home-baked rolls.

“Best thing for a cold day, huh? All beef, all the best,” he assured Rowan. “You want onion, sauerkraut? No? Ah, your boyfriend not care, sweetheart.”

“Let me check.” She turned to Sean. “Boyfriend, you care?”

“Wait,” he told the hot dog man, then bent over and kissed Rowan fast and hard on the mouth. “Okay, she can have them now.”

The vendor grinned so wide his merry dark eyes became crescents. “You see? I always right.”

Rowan licked her lips, which stung a little. “The things I do for a little sauerkraut.”

They walked over to Central Park, found a bench and sat to watch the after-work joggers huffing along the running paths. Rowan devoured her hot dog in a few bites and washed it down with the Coke he’d bought her. “I guess you’re not a fan of French cuisine.”

“I’m too big to be picky.” He sat back, bracketing the back of the bench with his long arms. “You work in a lot of kitchens before this?”

“I kept house for a couple of ladies, worked in a bakery. Took care of . . . an older guy.” She frowned as she realized she hadn’t thought of Matthias in days. “How’d you end up a mechanic?”

“I flunked the rocket scientist test.”

“Yeah, that one sucked.” She felt his hand against the back of her neck, not grabbing or stroking, just resting there. “You do a good business?”

“I do okay.”

She shouldn’t ask this, but she couldn’t resist. “You seeing anyone?”

“I’ve been spending my quality time with your bike.” He tugged at one of her curls. “You asking because you’re interested, or because I kissed you?”

“Now
you’re
doing the girl thing.” She turned her head and caught him watching her. “What?”

He stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Right now, with the sun on your face, you look about fifteen.”

“I’m over twenty-one.” Probably. She’d never know for sure. “Want to card me?”

His mouth hitched. “I’m thirty-two.”

That surprised her. “I figured you were late twenties, tops. What else are you hiding from me?”

“No wife, no girlfriend, no kids, no transmittable medical problems.” He ran his thumb along the outside of her bottom lip. “I hit Clancy’s maybe once or twice a month, and yeah, when I can afford it, I like French food just fine. But I’m more a pizza and beer guy.”

“Want to be my baby daddy?” When he slid closer, she went still. “Uh, kidding.”

He smiled a little, pressing his thumb down to part her lips. “We could get together sometime, Cupcake. Practice making one.”

Rowan barely felt the cold now. “You’re moving pretty fast. I think I’m getting friction burns on my face.”

Whatever she said, it acted like a pail of icy water. Meriden jerked away from her, and abruptly got to his feet.

“Sean?”

“I have to get back to the shop.” He turned and looked over her head. “You know where you are, how to get to your place from here?” When she nodded, he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. “All right. See you around.”

“What did I say?” Confused, Rowan watched him stride off. “What the hell did I say?”