Too Darn Hot (2 page)

Eric bit back a chuckle.

He was laughing at her! The talentless chef with the splendid deltoids was laughing at her for succumbing to starvation in his own lousy restaurant.

Lina aimed her most malignant scowl at him. This was a look that could melt the suet off a side of beef. It had been known to reduce officious food editors and hapless restaurateurs to quivering, sputtering wrecks.

It was, needless to say, a useful expression.

Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect on Chef Reid, who took one look at Lina and loss the battle to contain his laughter.

Obviously this particular restaurateur was either too foolhardy or too stupid to respond appropriately. Then she remembered that he didn’t know who she was. She had the sudden wicked urge to enlighten him, just to see the look on his face.

The impulse shocked her. Never before had she even been tempted to flaunt her status.

Joy took a breather. She put down her fork, leaned back in her chair, and patted her lips with her napkin. “Or was it that big old Chrysler—”

“Shut up and eat your damn duck,” Lina growled as the last of Eric’s snickers died away.

“Actually, that’s your damn duck, Lina,” he informed her. “Why aren’t you eating it?”

Flamenco dancers began to stomp out a rhythm behind her eyes. “I. Don’t. Like. Duck.” She twisted in her chair and glared at Eric. “Okay? Satisfied? I don’t like duck. Don’t you have some lamb chops to cremate or something?”

“Lina!” Joy smiled an apology at Eric. “She doesn’t like duck.”

“Then why did she order it?”

Lina shot to her feet. “She didn’t have much of a choice, did she?”

Now that she was standing, Lina found herself looking up, and up some more, to make eye contact with the chef. She estimated him to be six one or two—he had eight or nine inches on her own five five. Her three-inch heels weren’t much help in bridging the gap.

Her voice rose in pitch and volume, despite her efforts to keep it level. “I have been sitting here for an hour and a half, and I can’t get anything to eat. Correction. That’s not true.” She lifted a roll and attempted to tear it—an exercise in futility. She gesticulated with the leaden loaf. “I can get all the wilted lettuce and...and hockey pucks I want.”

She tossed the roll into the bread basket, but missed. The thing bounced off the table and skipped across the floor, unscarred. “How do you have the—the nerve to—to—” At a loss for words, she gestured helplessly at her surroundings. Then she planted her hands on her hips and faced Eric head-on as if daring him to defend his establishment—to her and to a roomful of curious diners who’d stopped eating to listen.

Her eyes mere inches from his face, she saw the shadow of stubble on his firm jaw, a faint scar on his bottom lip...and the chagrin in his eyes. The deep laugh crinkles had smoothed out. He looked weary and tense and disheartened.

Lina blinked. What was she doing?

Humiliating the man in front of his customers and his employees, that’s what, a little voice said. Ashamed, she tore her gaze from his and took a step back. She cleared her throat.

“I, uh, shouldn’t have...” she murmured. “I was...That was...”

His voice was suddenly more smoke than honey—and frigidly polite. “As Joy can tell you, you’re not seeing The Cookhouse at its best, Lina. Excuse me.”

She watched the kitchen door swing shut on his stiff back.

Oh, hell.

Lina sank into her chair and glanced sheepishly at Joy, who gaped at her for long, torturous moments.

“Well. Why don’t you just insult the man, Lina? Jeepers!”

She groaned and cradled her face in her hands, massaging her throbbing forehead. “I’m hungry, Joy,” she whimpered.

“Give me a break. This isn’t like you. I haven’t seen you that irate since that Chef Rudolfo guy at The Golden Goose offered a night of unparalleled ecstasy if you’d agree to review the place.”

“Shhh!” Lina glanced around, hoping no one had overheard. “You didn’t tell Eric who I am, did you?”

Her friend rolled her eyes. “I know the rules.”

“Good.” She didn’t need that kind of complication. Joy had given The Cookhouse a big buildup and begged Lina to consider featuring it in her magazine column. A glowing Caroline Holland review could spell extraordinary success for a restaurant.

But as for The Cookhouse, it was a lost cause. Lina didn’t bother reviewing bad restaurants. What would be the point in devoting an article to trashing some dreadful eatery? That was done in other publications all the time, of course, but not in
Bon Vivant
, the slick monthly gourmet magazine she wrote for.

Her readers were interested in learning about places they’d want to patronize. Yes, she detailed the shortcomings as well as the strengths in her review, but each restaurant she covered had to offer, in its own way, a quality dining experience.

“Anyway, as for Rudolfo,” Lina said, “as I recall, I displayed remarkable restraint.”

Lowering her voice, Joy leaned across the table. “Restraint? Lina, you dumped a bowl of vichyssoise on the guy. No, two bowls. Yours and mine.”

“Well. At least it was cold. Lucky for him he wasn’t serving French onion soup that day.” She leaned across the table and whispered fiercely, “Any man dense enough to try to bribe the New York restaurant critic for
Bon Vivant
magazine with a `free ride on Mr. Johnson’ deserves a lot worse than a lapful of cold leek soup.”

“Maybe he didn’t know that the going rate for bribe offers is—what?—a few thousand bucks, right?”

“Oh, I think he knew. He probably just figured his free ride was worth a few grand.”

Joy resumed her meal. “Well, at least he doesn’t have a self-esteem problem.” She grinned around a mouthful of potato. “Or he didn’t before you came along.”

Right. Lina peeked over her shoulder at the closed kitchen door. Caroline the Barbarian, annihilator of male self-esteem.

Joy continued, “Maybe if you’d used a little of that fiery temper on Steve...”

Sighing, Lina returned her attention to her exasperating friend. “Let’s leave ex-husbands out of this. Unless you’d like to talk about Gary?”

In response, Joy stuck out her tongue.

Lina grinned. “I don’t know how Gary could have accused you of being immature.”

“Beats me.”

The kitchen door swung open, and Lina found herself holding her breath. She let it out when the maitre d’, Cookie D’Angelo, emerged with two dessert-laden plates—respectable-looking bananas Foster—and delivered them to the next table.

Lina wondered how an Amazon like this—six feet if she was an inch—had ended up with the name Cookie. Her hair was a short platinum cap, her clothes an eclectic blend of colors and styles that thumbed its nose at Madison Avenue but somehow worked admirably on Cookie D’Angelo.

She stopped at their table. “Hi, Joy. How did you like the Middle Eastern class?”

Joy attended so many of the biweekly cooking classes held at The Cookhouse that she’d become something of a regular.

“I loved it. I’ve been practicing my falafel since Wednesday.”

“I can attest to that,” Lina muttered. Three days of her roommate’s attempts at falafel made even this lousy restaurant look passable. When it came to the culinary arts, Joy had more enthusiasm than talent.

“Why aren’t you eating your duck, Lina?” Cookie asked.

Lina closed her eyes.
Lord, give me strength.

Cookie said, “The duck is one of the few things that’s good tonight.” She glanced furtively at the kitchen door and slid into a chair, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “This is hell night, pure and simple. Just when we think it can’t get worse—” from her mobile mouth came the sounds of a bomb whistling to earth and exploding “—another disaster.”

Joy said, “We already know about the incinerated pork chops.”

“Lamb chops, and you wouldn’t be smelling them if the range hood didn’t have PMS. On top of that, the dishwasher isn’t working.”

“That would be Joe, right?” Lina said.

“Well, that dishwasher isn’t working, either, but I meant the mechanical one. Chrissie’s a no-show, and Tommy and Deirdre had a fight and aren’t playing nice. They’re Eric’s assistants, a couple of local high school kids,” she explained to Lina. “Anyway, the bread is their responsibility.” As if to emphasize her point, Cookie plucked a roll from the linen-lined basket and thumped it soundly on the table. The thing was distressingly durable. “Great kids, but sometimes...” she growled, miming double strangulation.

Joy shook her head in amazement. “What a night!”

“It gets better.” Cookie’s body language signaled the coup de grace. “The storm yesterday knocked out our power for something like twenty hours, only we didn’t know it. The freezer... refrigerators...” She wrinkled her nose. “Everything spoiled. And our fish vendor—” she raised her palms in disbelief “—just plain doesn’t show.”

“Maybe he eloped with Chrissie,” Lina ventured.

“So we had to cancel all of the appetizers and most of the entrées on tonight’s menu. Then the new produce vendor brings us icky-poo veggies at the very last minute.” She grimaced at the sight of the two untouched salads. “Normally if that happened, Eric would just eighty-six the salads. But seeing as we didn’t have too much else to offer tonight...” She shrugged helplessly.

Joy shot Lina a look that said,
See? I told you there was a logical explanation
, which Lina answered with a look that said,
Any decent restaurant should be able to handle the occasional crisis without falling apart,
though her heart wasn’t in it. She knew that a disasterfest of this magnitude would have brought even the best-run restaurant to its knees. She had to admire Eric for having the grit to roll up his sleeves and forge ahead. No wonder the man looked exhausted.

She winced inwardly recalling her childish outburst.

Cookie rose and collected the salad plates, her clunky bracelets jangling. “Adam’s supposed to be busing tables, but since Joe’s had tee many martoonis, the poor kid gets to play galley slave for a night. I better give Betsy a hand, too, now that it’s slowed down out front.” She shrugged. “They call me the maitre dee, but sometimes I feel more like the maitre do. See ya.” She elbowed her way through the kitchen door.

Lina rose and, once again, flung her napkin on the table.

Joy frowned. “What are you going to do?”

“Attempt to pry my foot out of my mouth. Get the check.”

Chapter Two

“Who brought the Glenfiddich?” Eric asked. He had one eye on the sizzling pear slices and cherries he was tossing in a skillet, and one eye on Cookie, who was occupied with pouring whiskey over ice in two old-fashioned glasses. The Cookhouse didn’t have a liquor license, which suited him just fine, but the staff readily provided setups and mixers for those diners who brought their own spirits.

“Stu Cathcart,” Cookie answered. “I told him God will smite him for contaminating single-malt Scotch with ice, but would he listen?”

The fragrant aroma of cooking fruit filled the kitchen, competing with the glazed duck and roasted potatoes and, yes, scorched lamb chops Provencal. At the central work island, Tommy and Deirdre chopped, measured, and mixed in surly silence. Eric had finally managed to get the two teenagers to suspend hostilities, but it was a fragile cease-fire.

Thirteen-year-old Adam was scouring a pot at the big steel sink. After months of pleading by the boys, Eric had finally relented and permitted them to help out on Saturday nights, when The Cookhouse operated as a restaurant, and during the cooking classes and private parties that constituted the bulk of the business—provided the boys kept their grades up. Watching his son sweating and muttering over his work, Eric wondered if the kid was having second thoughts.

“I’ll teach Stu how to take his whiskey neat,” he offered as he moved to the center work island to slice a puff pastry shell and arrange the two halves on a dessert plate. “Just stick a straw in that bottle and hand it over.” A muscle in his jaw twitched.

The maitre d’ grinned and placed the glasses on a drinks tray. “Wait till quitting time. It’s embarrassing when the chef starts belting out bawdy drinking songs.”

He returned to the stove, keeping a death grip on the towel-covered handle of his skillet as he snapped his wrist to toss its contents. He stared fixedly at the leaping fruit, but what he saw was the sanctimonious expression on the face of Joy’s friend.

Lina.

Just who did she think she was, to mouth off at him like that in front of a roomful of paying customers?

He asked, “You really think anything could make this night worse?”

“Probably not.” Cookie sailed out with the drinks.

Hearing the door reopen immediately, Eric turned, expecting to see Betsy—

And nearly lost the panful of fruit in midtoss.

Perhaps the night could get worse after all.

Lina stood just inside the doorway. Something about her air of self-assurance—the way she spared only a cursory glance for her surroundings before meeting Eric’s gaze—caught him up short. Most customers exhibited some degree of wide-eyed awe in his sanctum. Not Lina.

Any other time he might have been intrigued, but at the moment he didn’t have the mental energy necessary to sustain a sense of curiosity.

He had just enough mental energy to notice that Lina’s short, figure-hugging dress was the same striking color as her eyes.

Sapphire blue.

To the youngsters working with him, a customer visiting the kitchen was nothing new. Three pairs of eyes regarded Lina with polite indifference. Three young faces returned her tentative smile. Then the kids bent to their tasks once more.

Squaring her shoulders, she delicately cleared her throat. “Eric—”

Betsy barreled through the doorway, nearly colliding with her. “The pears?” She plucked up a dessert plate and started slicing a piece of bourbon pecan tart.

“You got ‘em,” he said.

He turned his back on Lina and sprinkled brandy over the pear slices and cherries, regulating the flow of liquor with his thumb. A tilt of the pan over the flame, and the contents ignited. After a few moments the flame burned itself out and Eric deftly deposited the fruit on the plate between the puff pastry halves. He placed another piece of pastry on top and then Betsy scooped it up, along with the slice of pecan tart, and hurried out of the kitchen.