“Glad you finally got around to it,” Mr. Little snapped. “What were you doing, growing the leaves back there?”
She gave him and his anemic, stressed-out wife a frozen smile, glad she hadn’t sent George or Joy out. She was bolting back for the kitchen when she heard the man say, “My God. This is…edible.”
Great, Chef Wonderful got the raw veggies right. But what about the chicken?
As she pushed through the kitchen door, she wondered why she was being so critical of a guy who seemed to be saving her bacon, but she didn’t dwell on the thought. She was too astonished at the sight of George laying out a row of his favorite oatmeal and raisin cookies on a sheet of cheesecloth.
The stranger was talking, in that calm voice.
“And then you’re going to hold them over the boiling water when we’re ready. Okay, Georgie?” he was saying. “So they get soft.”
All Frankie could do was watch in amazement as the man, in a whirling dervish of motion, created dinner out of disaster. Twenty minutes later, he was spooning onto White Caps plates a curried, creamed chicken mixture that smelled out of this world.
“Now, it’s your turn, Angel. Come on, follow me.”
As he worked his way down a row of four plates, Joy was right behind him, sprinkling on raisins and almonds. Then the man packed couscous into a series of coffee cups and tapped out the mounds onto each plate. A sprig of parsley was put on top and then the man called, “Pick up.”
Frankie sprang into action, scooping up the plates at once, as she’d done since she started waiting tables when she was a teenager.
“Joy, you clear,” she called out.
Joy swept into the dining room with her, clearing the salads as Frankie slid the entrées in place.
It was over two hours later. Against all odds, the guests left happy and raving about the food, even the godforsaken Littles. The kitchen was cleaned up. And Joy and George were positively glowing with the good job they’d done under the stranger’s direction.
Frankie was the only one out of sorts.
She should have been falling on her knees to thank the man with the fancy knives and the quick hands. She should have been delirious with relief. Instead, she was crabby. Having always been the savior, it was hard to accept a demotion in favor of a man she didn’t know, who’d come out of nowhere.
And who still had a bag of frozen corn tied to his ankle.
The cook finished wiping off one of his knives and leaned under the overhead track lights to examine the blade carefully. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he slid it into the leather roll and tied up the bundle. When he put it into the backpack, she realized he’d never gotten to make his call.
“You want to use the phone now?” Her voice was gruff because what she needed to do was thank him, but gratitude was something she was rusty with. She was used to giving orders, not praising initiative, and the role reversal felt uncomfortable.
And maybe she was just a little envious of how easily he’d pulled everything together.
Which was a perfectly ridiculous way to feel.
When he looked at her, his eyes narrowed. Considering how relaxed he was with Joy and George, Frankie figured he must not like her very much. The idea irked her even though she knew there was no reason to care what his opinion of her was. She wasn’t going to see him again. Didn’t even know his name, as a matter of fact.
Instead of answering her, he looked over at Joy who had one foot on the stairs that led to the servants’ quarters. “Good night, Angel. You did a really good job tonight.”
Frankie wondered how he’d known that Joy was yawning and about to disappear up to bed when he’d been focusing on his knives.
Joy’s charming smile flashed across the kitchen. “Thanks, Nate.”
And that was how Frankie learned his name.
Nate zipped his pack closed and regarded the woman staring up at him evenly.Behind her vague hostility, he could see exhaustion lurking. She looked worn down and had the drooping mouth of someone who had barked too many orders to too many people in an enterprise that was going under.
He’d met a lot of managers just like her over the years.
Failure was everywhere around the White Caps Bed Breakfast. From what he’d seen outside, in the kitchen and through one quick look into the dining room, the place was a ball gown with sweat stains, a once beautiful mansion on the long fade into a junk pile.
And the business was taking this woman down with it.
How old was she? Early thirties? She probably looked older than she was and he tried to imagine what was under the long bangs and sensible glasses, the loose white waitstaff shirt and standard issue black pants.
She’d probably been full of hope when she’d bought the old ark and he imagined that optimism had lasted only until it became clear that servicing rich weekenders was a thankless job, a low-praise zone in the extreme. And then the first fix-it bill had probably come for a boiler or a roof or major piece of equipment, giving her a sense of how much old charm cost.
As if on cue, a wheeze came out of the walk-in. The noise was followed by something close to a cough, like there was a little old man dying in the compressor.
He watched while she closed her eyes as if deliberately ignoring the sounds.
If Nate was a betting man, he’d guess in one year White Caps would either be under new management or condemned by the state.
Her eyes flipped open. “So. The phone?”
She was definitely a fighter, though. Tough as nails, maybe even prepared to go down with the ship, although where that trip would take her he couldn’t imagine. More debt? Less sleep?
Or maybe she was just tending the pile of wood for her husband. Nate eyed her ring finger and didn’t see anything on it.
“Hello? Nate? Or whatever you call yourself. Use the phone or move out. It’s closing time.”
“Okay. Thanks,” he said, turning around and heading in the direction she’d pointed to earlier that evening. He walked into a darkened office and frowned when his feet made a sloppy noise, as if there were water on the floor.
He hit the light switch.
Good Lord, the place was soaked. He looked up at the ceiling, seeing a gaping hole that exposed pipes old enough to have been laid by God Himself.
Shaking his head, he reached for the phone, thinking he’d be lucky to get a dial tone. When he did, he punched in his buddy Spike’s cell phone number. He and Spike had been friends since they’d gone through the Culinary Institute of America as classmates and they’d decided to buy a restaurant together. Their business interest was behind Nate’s trip. After four months of searching, they couldn’t seem to find what they wanted in their price range in Manhattan so they were looking at other cities. Spike had found a place for them to consider in Montreal, but Nate wasn’t getting his hopes up. He didn’t think the situation was going to be any better over the border in Canada.
He absolutely believed they could make it as owners. Between his skills at the stove and Spike’s masterful work with pastries and breads, they had the fundamentals covered. But money was growing tight. Because Nate was living off the savings he was going to put toward their down payment, he was thinking it might be time to get a job for the summer and suspend the search at least until the fall. By then, new prospects would surely be on the market.
When he hung up with Spike, he looked toward the woman waiting in the doorway.
“What happened to your cook?” he asked.
“He quit tonight.”
Nate nodded, thinking that was the way of the kitchen world. You never got tenure as a chef but the trade-off was you didn’t have to give notice.
She began to tap her foot impatiently, but he wasn’t in a hurry. Taking a look around he saw a desk, a computer, a couple of chairs, some closet doors. There was nothing particularly interesting about the room until he got to the bookcases. To her left, he saw an old photograph of a young family smiling into the camera. Two parents, three children, clothes from the seventies.
He went over for a closer look but when he picked it up off the shelf, she snatched the frame out of his hand.
“Do you mind?”
They were standing close and he became curiously aware of her. In spite of the bangs and the Poindexter glasses, the baggy clothes and the bags under her eyes, his body started to heat up. Her eyes widened and he wondered if she felt it, too—the odd current that seemed to run between them.
“You looking for someone in your kitchen?” he asked abruptly.
“I don’t know,” she said, clipping the words short.
“You sure needed someone tonight. You’d have been up the creek if I hadn’t walked through your door.”
“How about this, I don’t know if I need you.” She put the photograph back, laying it face down on the shelf.
“You think I’m not qualified?” He smiled when she remained silent, figuring she probably hated the fact that he’d saved her. “Tell me, just how did I fail to impress you tonight?”
“You did fine but that doesn’t mean I’m going to hire you.”
He shook his head. “Fine? Man, you have a hard time with compliments, don’t you?”
“I don’t waste energy playing spit and polish with egos. Especially healthy ones.”
“So you prefer being around the depressed?” he retorted mildly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Nate shrugged. “Your staff’s so beaten down it’s a wonder they can put one foot in front of the other. That poor girl was ready to work herself to death tonight just for a kind word and George soaked up a little praise like he hadn’t heard any in a month.”
“Who made you an expert on those two?” Her hands were on her h*ps now as she looked up at him.
“It’s just obvious, lady. If you took your blinders off once in a while you might see what you’re doing to them.”
“What I’m doing to them? I’ll tell you what I’m doing to them.” She jabbed a finger at him. “I’m keeping a roof over Joy’s head and George out of a group home. So you can back off with the judgments.”
As she glared at him, he wondered why he was arguing with her. The last thing the woman needed was another battle. Besides, why did he care?
“Look, ah—why don’t we start over,” he said. “Can we call a truce here?”
He stuck his hand out, aware that he’d just decided to take a job he wasn’t being offered. But hell, he needed to spend the summer somewhere and she clearly needed the help. And White Caps was as good as any other place, even if it was sinking. At least he could have some fun and try out some new things he’d been thinking of without the food critics chomping at him.
When she just stared at him, he prompted her by looking down at his hand.
She tucked her arms into her body. “I think you better go.”
“Are you always this unreasonable?”
“Good night.”
He dropped his hand. “Let me get this straight. You have no cook. You’re looking at one who’s willing to work. But you’d rather shoot yourself in the foot just because you don’t like me?” When she kept looking at him, buttoned up tight, he shook his head. “Damn, woman. You ever think this place might be going under because of you?”
The strained silence that followed was the calm before the storm. He knew it because she started to shake and he had a vague thought that he should duck.
But what came at him wasn’t angry words or a slap or a right hook.
She started to cry. From behind the lenses, he saw tears well and then fall.
“Oh, God,” he pushed a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean—”
“You don’t know me,” she said hoarsely and, somehow, regally. Even through her tears, she faced him squarely as if she had nothing to hide, as if the crying jag was a temporary aberration, nothing that spelled the end of her inner strength. “You don’t know what’s going on here. You don’t—don’t know what we’ve been through. So you can just put your pack on and start walking.”