All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (7 page)

Running the show today, Sarriette’s sous-chef, Derry Jones, was whipping up a
cassoulet
, its generous, meaty scent already driving everyone mad with the hunger. With his vibrant skin ink and close-shaved head, Derry looked like he should be cooking in a prison kitchen, except the tats were all French wine and cheese labels, which Shane had to admit was pretty hard core for a guy who wasn’t even classically trained.

Unlike Thyme in New York, the kitchen at Sarriette was small and intimate, and the crew’s movements reflected it. Whereas the brigades in other behemoth places Shane had worked operated like fifty-piece orchestras with one tuneless instrument heralding a discordant service, Sarriette’s was more akin to a jazz ensemble. Easy, laid-back, sexy. Jack had handpicked his tight team, a positive Murderers’ Row of culinary talent, for good reason. Everyone knew his job but no one was afraid to jump in and help out. Rock stars without the ego.

But right this minute, the lead singer was confusing the hell out of him.

Shane slid his gaze to Jack, who tended a solitary chicken breast at the grill. One of the most amazing chefs Shane had ever worked with and the most boring piece of white meat Shane had ever seen. No marinade. No frills. Nada.

“Shane. Move all your stuff in?” Jack asked as he transferred the chicken to a cutting board to rest. Grabbing a dinner plate from the shelf above the alley, he arranged some baby spinach on it. If Shane didn’t know better, he would have sworn Jack actually counted the number of leaves on the plate.

“I didn’t have much.” He didn’t have any. Just a couple of pairs of jeans so faded and worn they were starting to hole up and a few shirts that might crumble to dust the next time he did laundry.

“Cara roll out the welcome mat?”

“Haven’t seen her.” Unless you counted fluorescent-pink sticky notes with prescriptive instructions affixed to his door.

A few quick cuts with a Forschner turned the chicken breast into half-inch strips, which Jack arranged in a fan beside the spinach. Something in Shane’s brain clicked. The careful selection down to the predetermined number of leaves? A piece of meat so plain it read like a recipe for denial? He didn’t need three guesses to figure out who was on the receiving end of this dish.

“I guess our hours don’t really match up,” Shane said.

“Best to keep it that way.”

Shane’s jaw muscles bunched so tightly there was a good chance he might crush his teeth to bone dust. This was the second time Jack had warned him away and, no siree, Bob, he did not like it.

When Shane didn’t respond, Jack folded his arms and lasered him with an acute look. “Listen, you’ve got a real future here but if you mess around with Cara, you might not. I don’t want a barrel load of awkwardness if shit goes down between you two and there’s an atmosphere. It’s not exactly good for morale.
Comprenez-vous?
”

So that’s why Jack had been reluctant to hand over the keys to the apartment. What had happened between he and Cara was already creating an atmosphere and Jack had picked up on it. Those startlingly green eyes zoned in on him. Shane could hardly believe how alike Jack was to their father. It had almost knocked him on his arse the first time they’d met at Thyme a year ago. He’d traveled all the way to the States so he could meet the ghost of Packy Sullivan.

“Not sure how it’s anyone else’s business,” Shane said.

Jack’s expression was one of disbelief; he was clearly not used to having his authority challenged. “She’s a ballbuster, mate.”

“A masticator,” Derry added.

“She’ll chew you up,” Jack said. “Major mastication. Your predecessor learned the hard way. Don’t go there, all right?”

The guy before him had fallen victim to Cara? Did she have some kinky thing for pastry chefs? Not that they’d even got to that level yet. Getting naked was usually a prerequisite for kink, whether with pastry chefs or otherwise.

“New guy thinks he’s got a chance with Cara?” Aaron Taylor, Sarriette’s maître d’ had just walked in and elected to throw in his unsolicited two cents. “Uh, no.”

What the hell? Shane was sorely tempted to disclose his marital status with the out-of-human-league Cara, though the amount of alcohol involved meant that defense probably wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.

“Sorry, mini Bono,” Aaron went on. “Maybe we could get you up to snuff with a
Queer Eye
makeover. My man would work wonders with you but as it stands”—he gave a flashy hand flourish in Shane’s general direction—“Cara’s a ten and you’re a sketchy six at best.”

“If even,” Derry added, like it was any of his damn business.

“Hey, guys, go easy,” Jack said with an indulgent smile that set Shane’s teeth on edge. “I’m sure that accent gets him lots of skirt.”

He shifted his attention to Aaron. “What’s up?”

Aaron tore his disapproving gaze away from Shane and reworked it for Jack’s benefit. “We have a problem. Rahm’s office called and the mayor needs a table tonight.”

“Exactly how is that a problem?”

The maître d’ looked distinctly put out. “Tonight’s seatings were booked out a month ago.”

“So the mayor can take his chances like everybody else,” Jack replied. Sarriette had a policy of two-to-one: two-thirds reservations and one-third open to walk-ins, which most nights resulted in long lines down Fulton Market in the trendy West Loop. Just like Jack had planned.

Aaron’s mouth worked. “Jack, it’s bad enough you refuse to raise the prices but if we can’t make exceptions for important customers—”

“Shane, what do you think?” Jack lobbed the question over his shoulder like a practice softball and then turned to follow up with that hardball gaze. As with everything Jack did, it felt like a test.

“Tell him we’ll call one of the taxpayers who already reserved and ask them to give up their table,” Shane tossed back without missing a beat.

“Fuck, yeah.” This from the laconic Derry.

“Really?” Aaron whipped his gaze from Jack to Shane and back again, his face filled with hope.

“I didn’t vote for him,” Jack said. “And until the city of Chicago deigns to stop screwing me over on my property tax assessment, then the mayor will have to line up with everybody else. Dennis!”

That punctuating bellow was for the extern commis who had started a week before Shane came on board. Clanging metal crashed from inside the walk-in fridge, followed by a very inventive string of swear words. Jack looked heavenward for inspiration.

“Would you treat the President of the United States this way?” Aaron asked in a huff.

“If he didn’t bother to make a bloody reservation,” Jack replied smoothly.

Disgruntled, Aaron stormed out, muttering something about how Cara was right and Jack was a Neanderthal about the business.

Jack opened his mouth again. “Den—”

“Yes, chef?” The gangly, ginger-topped extern also known as Dennis hovered at Jack’s shoulder, shivering from the cold of the freezer.

“Christ, don’t creep up on people like that.” Jack motioned to the chicken-and-spinach-leaf dish. “Take this up to Cara and do not drop it.”

Dennis shuffled forward, his hands trembling, and not from the freezer this time. The poor kid had been dropping stuff right, left, and center since he had arrived. He really wasn’t cut out for a busy line but Jack was going to let him work out the rest of his three month long externship to let him have the experience. Shane got the impression Dennis would rather be sacked but he was too afraid of Jack to give his notice.

“Hold on. Shane, throw me a lemon from that basket.”

Shane obliged, and Jack sliced the Meyer into eighths and placed a wedge on the side of the plate. He pulled his buzzing phone out of his pocket. The plunging octaves signaled to anyone within earshot that Lili was on the end of the line. He shooed Dennis away with the plate.

Shane followed the extern out through the swing doors.

“Hold up, D. I’ll take that.”

The kid looked terrified. “But Jack said—”

“That’s okay. I got it,” Shane finished, taking the plate from the rookie’s death grip. The porcelain would probably have shattered while Dennis did his best not to drop it. “Go take a leak if you need something to occupy your hands.”

Breathing deep, Shane headed upstairs and readied for an altitude change. While Jack’s office and the locker rooms were downstairs at kitchen and dining level, Cara’s was on the second floor, next to the private-party rooms. They had two, one that seated a dinner party of twelve and another that could accommodate up to thirty guests. Cara’s job was to keep the rooms booked and she fulfilled that function admirably. Almost every night since Shane’s arrival there had been an event to be catered upstairs and a crap load of grumbling from the brigade behind Jack’s back. The staff hated special events. They created a lot of extra work for the kitchen and were notoriously bad sources of tip income for the servers.

There was an oppressive stillness to the air as Shane made landfall on the next level. Cara’s office was ajar, so he pushed in without knocking.

Shoulda knocked.

She was halfway through pulling a T-shirt over her head, a lavender stretchy material that set off her golden hair and enhanced the cornflower blue of her eyes. The flash of skin covered by a whisper of pink lace sent a shot of awareness racing through him where it settled very comfortably between his legs. A comfort that lasted mere seconds before it became tight.

Okay, so he was glad he didn’t knock.

“Lost your manners?” The accusation drew her brows together into hash marks.

“Sorry,” he said.
Not really.
“Your door was open and I brought up your”—
boring—
“meal.”

He took her silence as an opportunity to drink her in. Pink sweatpants made her arse look even curvier than the tight skirts he’d seen molded to her. At least, he assumed so because she hadn’t actually turned around, but he’d been thinking of her heart-shaped behind for the last week and he had a pretty good idea. She wore cute girly trainers that looked like they were only suitable for indoor pursuits. Was she planning to jog around the dining room?

Her hands flew to her hair and she smoothed it back into a ponytail that was all business. The move stretched her shirt tight over what he now knew were lace-covered breasts—barely covered at that—and he imagined he saw the textured design embossing the tee’s fabric. Or maybe it was a nipple that was making the push. Damn, he was staring at her nipples, now jutting like bullets through that too-thin tee. His dick jumped in acknowledgment of the imminent danger.

He set the plate down and took a step back as if he’d just served the royal personage. Not far off with that snooty look she was giving him.

“Did you cook this?” she asked, her eyes darting to the plate and back to his again. Weird. Not snooty, more like skittish.

“No, Jack did. Seems kind of plain. Do you have dietary restrictions?” The guys said she never ate with the crew, that she considered herself too above them. There was a story here.

She let out a sigh. “I’m just careful about what I eat.”

Careful about what she eats, careful about a lot of things. But not in Vegas, where she had let go, opened up, got down. That boring lunch didn’t suit a woman who vibrated with such barely banked passion he could feel it twenty feet across a bar.

If he had his way, he’d feed her golden-pink, butter-drenched prawns. Slices of rare roast beef covered in au jus or rich gravy. For dessert, he’d smear a decadent raspberry chocolate parfait on their bodies and they’d take turns licking each other clean like hungry kittens.

If he had his way.

“You going for a run to work up an appetite?”

That tugged one corner of her mouth up into the barest of smiles. “I was going to do some yoga.” At her gesture to a mat on the floor, images of stretching, supple Cara-limbs flooded his brain.

So not helping.

“I got your note this morning,” he said. “I knocked on your door last night but you weren’t home.” That sounded like he was interested in where she spent her time. Not interested. Not in the slightest.

“I think the note said it all,” she said, passing deftly over his less-than-subtle probe as to her whereabouts. “There are two parking spots out back and you need to make sure your death machine doesn’t take up both of them. I almost crashed into it.”

“I’ll be careful about that.”

“Good.” She folded her arms beneath the breasts he wanted to touch with his flour-streaked fingers. More than just his fingers. “I’m sure you’re very busy,” she added with a pointed eyebrow raise toward the door.

He really needed to get back to the kitchen, especially now that Jack had imposed his no-fraternizing rule. If push came to shove, he had no doubt whom Jack would choose: the family he knew over the family he didn’t. Shane wasn’t supposed to care about that, though, was he? He wasn’t supposed to give a crap about what Jack Kilroy thought, and the idea that Jack had a problem with Shane breathing the rarified air around Lemon Tart’s pretty blonde head made him feel a touch rebellious. Anyway, they had important things to discuss.

He took a seat in the red-and-white-striped armchair opposite her desk, and when she looked aghast, he draped a leg over one of the arms. She was so easy.

“We need to talk.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it immediately. Surely, she wasn’t going to protest a civil conversation about their situation?
The
situation.