One Hot Summer (2 page)

“Oh, thank God,” Remedy whispered.

Gwyneth spotted the treats, too, and lumbered in the other truck's direction, Remedy forgotten.

The passenger strode in the animal's direction, his arms spread wide. “Gwyneth, my baby. Why do you keep playing these games with me?”

Remedy staggered back to the stuck golf cart and sagged against it, catching her breath. Crisis averted, and not a moment too soon. She wasn't even going to contemplate the resort's liability if Gwyneth had accidentally hurt a guest or caused more than mild chaos.

Remedy was still resting against the cart, watching Gwyneth power eat the pile of fruit, when her phone rang. The caller ID showed the special events department secretary on the line. “Hey, Gloria, I just bumped knuckles with an elephant.”

“Okay
.
I'm not going to ask. I called to let you know Emily's waiting for you in your office.”

Remedy had to bite her tongue to keep another expletive from escaping her mouth. She'd rather wrangle elephants than meet with Emily Ford, the resort's surly executive catering chef, but there was no getting around it—today or any other day.

Ten minutes later, Remedy pasted a smile on her face and strode into her office. She might not be a famous actor like her parents were, but she'd long ago perfected a look of photo-ready red-carpet coolness. “Hello, Emily. What can I do for you?”

Emily was about the same age as Remedy's nearly thirty and, as far as Remedy had seen, never wore anything other than a white chef's jacket, black leggings, and bright green clogs, with her curly hair pulled into a tight ponytail and smiles limited to the sarcastic variety. By all accounts, she was a rock star of a chef. What she was
not
was easy to work with, which seemed to be a common fault among gifted artistic types, Remedy had learned from a very young age.

At Remedy's arrival, Emily shoved off the wall she'd been leaning against. “Two words: Baked Alaska.”

Good grief.
“We already discussed this. You can't serve Baked Alaska to firefighters. Just … no.”

Remedy may have only had one real job prior to being hired as Briscoe Ranch Resort's special events manager, but even she knew that the first rule of being a new hire was not to piss off your coworkers, at least for the first week or two. But it looked like the honeymoon was officially over for Remedy and Emily.

Emily's narrowed eyes shifted their focus to the stack of files balancing on the edge of Remedy's desk. Her fingers twitched as though she was giving serious consideration to knocking the files onto the floor as a cat might. “You and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this, because I'm serving it.”

Remedy slid the stack of files away from the edge of the desk. “How about a nice crème brûlée instead? You'd still get to torch the desserts, but in the kitchen, safely beneath the fire sprinklers. I'm sure the fire marshal would appreciate that.”

The suggestion only earned Remedy a hard laugh from Emily as she stomped out of Remedy's office and through the maze of resort offices, shouting for Alex, Remedy hot on her heels. They found him standing in the center of the main ballroom, his trim black suit, black hair, and lanky, pale body perfectly at ease in command of the ornately appointed room as he directed a crew in the installation of an elaborate pillared
mandap
stage piece for the Kumar/Srivastva wedding that included elaborate flower arrangements and intricately embroidered purple and gold drapery. The Kumar/Srivastva wedding's awe-inspiring design was yet another reminder of why Remedy had taken this job over a resort in Aruba. No other locale the world over could transform a wedding into a work of art like Briscoe Ranch Resort. Runaway elephants notwithstanding.

Emily outpaced Remedy and strode across the room, paying no mind to the fact that Alex was mid-instruction to the installation crew. “Baked Alaska for dessert at the Firefighters' Charity Ball. That's a brilliant idea, right?”

“It's not brilliant,” Remedy called before Alex could respond.

Alex strummed his fingers on his purple tie as his attention shifted between Remedy and Emily. His gaze glimmered and his lips hinted at a smile, as though he found their bickering delightful. “I heard you got to meet Gwyneth before Hector arrived. I also heard you commandeered a golf cart from a resort guest and crashed it into a sand trap.”

Remedy took the long way around the dance floor, knowing better than to take her chances on the slickly polished wood. “That was not my fault. I was trying to stop a rampaging elephant.”
More like
frolicking,
but whatever.

As Alex chuckled, Remedy's right wedge snagged on a vacuum cord she didn't see until it was too late. She pitched forward, yelping, her arms flailing and her legs scrambling for balance as she knocked into the empty cake display table. The table toppled with an earsplitting crash, but Remedy stayed standing. As two workers bustled to right the table, she smoothed a palm over her skirt and composed her expression.
Easy there, Pink Panther.

She turned to face Alex and Emily, her hands on her hips. Alex might be her boss, but Remedy outranked Emily. This was Remedy's call, and if Alex was as good a manager as he seemed to be he'd give her this chance to set a precedent with one of the key members of her special events team. “Like I was saying, serving Baked Alaska to firefighters isn't brilliant. Not only is it a cliché of the worst kind, but it's a recipe for disaster.”

“A recipe for disaster? Who's the one with the awful clichés now?” Emily said with an eye roll.

“Forget about clichés,” Remedy said. “I'm worried about safety. I'm worried about getting approval from the fire marshal.”

Alex huffed. “You should be worried about him, because Micah Garrity is a thorn in my side. But as far as safety goes, I'm thinking there's no safer time to serve flaming food than at a firefighter ball. We can almost guarantee that the resort won't burn down.”

It was the
almost
guarantee that had Remedy worried. “It's not like the firefighters are arriving in their fire trucks, dressed for the ball in their uniforms, ready to fight fires should the opportunity present itself. We're talking tuxes and limos here. Have you ever seen a firefighter battling flames in a tuxedo?”

“No, but I'd pay to,” Alex said.

Remedy actually had paid to see that once, complete with stage-effect flames, at an all-male revue while in Vegas with her girlfriends Cambelle and Maura, but that was beside the point.

Emily leaned against the nearest table, her gaze turning distant and dreamy. “It doesn't have to be food. For that picture you've painted me I'd be willing to set all kinds of things on fire.”

Probably she was joking.
God, let her be joking.
Remedy decided to run with the hope. “Sure, that's a great idea. And while we're at it, how about I have decorative trees brought into the ballroom and arrange for some cats to be stuck in them.”

Snorting, Emily squared up to Remedy and leveled a challenging glare at her. “Listen to you. You're so uptight, you're not going to last a week at this job.”

Alex pursed his lips. “Play nice, Emily. I don't need you chasing off this one like you did the last two.”

Seriously? Wow.
All Remedy had been told when she interviewed for the job was that Mr. Briscoe's daughter—who'd previously managed the resort's special events—had stepped down from the family business in favor of opening her own wedding dress business and, as a result, the hotel's event staff had been reorganized. Alex had been promoted to Chief Visionary Officer of the special events department and Remedy was hired as the events manager.

The confirmation that Emily was, indeed, trying to sabotage Remedy's job didn't pack the same punch as when Remedy's mother had confessed that Remedy's father hadn't been her first husband, but it still gave Remedy that same off-kilter feeling.

Ignoring it, Remedy narrowed her eyes at Emily. “I've lasted two weeks so far, if you must know. And I plan to last a lot longer than that, no matter how difficult you try to make it for me.” In truth, she planned to plant her feet at Briscoe Ranch Resort for a good long while—but only until she'd succeeded in building her reputation back up from the ashes so she could return to Los Angeles triumphant, but that was a plan she had no intention of sharing with her bosses or coworkers. “This Firefighters' Charity Ball next month is my first event for the resort, so I need us to work together on this. Please.”

Emily's face was stony. “Then what
I
need is Baked Alaska. Screw the fire marshal. He's even more uptight than you are.”

“Emily, Baked Alaska is a crazy idea,” Remedy said.

Alex wedged himself between them, draped his arms across both women's shoulders, and met Remedy's gaze. “Well, you're in luck, then, because the first rule of wedding planning here at Briscoe Ranch Resort is that there's no such thing as brilliance without a little madness.”

The man had a point. With a sigh of concession, Remedy angled her view around him to Emily. “A hundred firemen wearing tuxes isn't exciting enough for you all on its own?”

Emily's expression softened. “I'd like to see what those tux-wearing firemen look like in the glowing firelight of dozens of Baked Alaskas that are all sweeping into the room simultaneously as a dramatic finale to the exquisite four-course meal I've created for them.”

Time to let Emily win this round, if only because it might pave the way to a peaceful truce. “I guess I'll have to see about renting some cats and trees, then. Just … please don't set the ballroom on fire.”

Emily held up two fingers. “Chef's honor. And I'll tell you what—you can wield one of the torches that we use to light the desserts on fire.”

That did sound like fun. Remedy offered her a broad grin. “Why didn't you say so in the first place?”

 

Chapter Two

“Of course I'm fine, Mom. You have to stop worrying. It's not like I'm in the middle of nowhere, scraping by in some shanty with an outhouse. The cottage I'm renting has indoor plumbing and air-conditioning.”

Remedy smacked the side of the barely functional air-conditioning unit mounted in a living room window on the off-chance it might awaken the wheel-running hamsters she envisioned slacking off inside it. No luck. She stuck her face in the fridge and grabbed a water bottle, lingering there until the cooling fan kicked on.

Her mom sighed. “I can't help it. I'm an empty nester now.”

Remedy was nearly thirty, but her mom was right. This was the first time the two of them had lived apart. Even in college, Remedy had lived at her childhood home and commuted. “Mom. Half the time we lived together you were off on location. So just think about this as my turn to be off on location. It's temporary.”

“Got it. Temporary. I can handle that. I just wish I was there with you right now.”

The thought of her mom sweeping into the sleepy town of Dulcet, Texas, and making concerned faces at Remedy's run-down cottage and the dark circles under her eyes made her wince. “I wish you were, too. But the show must go on, right? You and I are so lucky to have jobs we love that keep us busy, so you'll have to trust me when I tell you I'm okay. My job at the resort is stressful, but every new job is at first, so I'm dealing with it.”

“Tenacity, it's one of my family's signature traits.”

It was one of Remedy's dad's family's traits, too, but Remedy knew better than to bring him up. Since their divorce when Remedy was twelve, her parents had taken their acting abilities to a new level by each pretending the other didn't exist.

“You hang in there, baby. And if you need anything at all, just call me.”

Remedy shouldered out the back door of the cottage and onto a small wooden deck that was little more than a platform for the steep staircase that dropped into a canyon that was thick with trees and underbrush. “Mom, you're on location in Budapest. If I need anything, what can you do to help?”

“I'm only here for a couple more weeks. Maybe I'll come be your personal assistant the way you were mine for so many years.”

Please, God, no.
“That's sweet, Mom, but this is something I need to do on my own.”

“Okay, fine. At least tell me you got the champagne I sent.”

Remedy eyed the stack of boxes on her kitchen table that had been waiting at her front door the day before. Her mom had sent two cases of champagne as a housewarming gift. Little had she known that Remedy's father had, too. “I did. Thank you. How'd you know I'd need a shot of decadence right about now?”

“I know my girl.”

Loud, twangy guitar music and a diesel engine announced the passing of yet another band of rowdy locals along the two-lane road that cut too close to Remedy's cottage. She stood on tiptoes and caught a glimpse of a hulking black truck stuffed with guys in ball caps barreling down the road. The local boys were out in force today. Maybe today wasn't an ordinary Sunday but some kind of Texas holiday she hadn't had the pleasure of experiencing yet.

After wishing her mom good-bye and promising to call her again in a few days, Remedy followed the tug of fresh air and loped down the stairs into the canyon, eager for the shady promises of the trees. In moments, she was immersed in the woods. She followed a dusty, meandering trail through the trees toward the creek she'd discovered a few days earlier.

One of her resolutions in moving to Texas was to take advantage of every opportunity to live like the locals, and she'd heard enough country western music to know that enjoying life's simpler pleasures by sitting on a rock at a creek and dipping your toes in the water was pure country through and through. Besides, the grand city of Dulcet boasted a mere three blocks of downtown shops and eateries and, given that the next largest town was more than thirty minutes away, since she didn't feel much like driving or hanging out at the resort sitting creek-side would have to suffice as entertainment on this, her only day off that week.