Lissa- Sugar and Spice 1.6 - Final (3 page)

Even her father had phoned from wherever he was. Well, not exactly. An aide had placed the call for him. “Hold, please, for General Wilde,” an impersonal voice had intoned, and then her old man had said
Hello, Lissa, how are you, happy birthday, did you get my present?
and she’d said
Hello, father, I’m fine and yes, I got the Tiffany’s gift certificate, thank you very much
, and she figured she deserved bonus points for not telling him precisely what he could do with that certificate and all the personal warmth it brought with it.

Brring brring.

Where had she left her cell phone? It was right where it should have been, in the rear pocket of her jeans. She grabbed it and glanced at the screen.

Talk about coincidences…

“Marcia,” she said brightly, “you must be telepathic! I was just thinking about you.”

“Haven’t heard from you in a while,” her agent said briskly.

“I know. Well, the last time we spoke—”

“Listen, I know it’s late, but I have something for you and I need a quick yes or no.”

Lissa sat up straight. “Something good?”

“You want some blunt advice, toots? You’re not in any position to be asking me questions like that.”

“Meaning this isn’t something good?”

“Meaning, how about if I ask the questions? Did you ever do any real cooking?”

“What are you talking about?”

“See, you’re approaching this the wrong way. What’s with the attitude? It gets you in trouble all the time. Mouthing off to Raoul What’s-His-Face like you did—”

Mouthing off was precisely what she had not done, Lissa almost said, but it was too late for the truth.

“Never mind. It’s all water under the bridge. Just answer the question. Can you do everyday stuff? Forget the edible flowers, the sprigs of rosemary, the goat cheese tarts.”

“I have never done a goat cheese tart in my—”

“Lissa. Answer the question. Can you do roasts? Stew? Stuff like that.”

Recipes danced through Lissa’s head.
Poulet rôti aux herbes. Pot-au-feu.

“You still there?”

“Yes,” Lissa said quickly, “of course I can.” She cleared her throat. She could feel hope rising within her, but she wasn’t going let it get to her until she knew more. “What are we talking about here? An American-style restaurant?”

“American food. Exactly.”

“Upscale, right? Because, you know—”

“Because you attended
Le Cordon Bleu.
Trust me. I know. The thing is, this place needs a cook who can do things with locally-produced ingredients.”

Oh God!
Lissa felt her pulse beat quicken. Alice Waters. Wolfgang Puck. Tom Colicchio.

“Can you do that? Cook natural?”

“Absolutely!”

“OK. Fine. I’ll tell them you’ll take the job.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like what? They need a cook. You need a job. Put ’em both together—”

“No tryout? No interview?”

“They need a cook, fast. You need a job, fast. You wanna waste time with nonsense?”

Like most good agents, Marcia knew how to get to the point. It was just that this was so far from Lissa’s past experiences…

In the exalted world of haute cuisine, meaning meals that cost what some people paid in rent, you met the restaurant’s owner or his rep, you sat for an interview, talked food, talked finances and recipes and customer tastes and management expectations. Then you cooked a meal for the owners, perhaps for a small, exclusive group of steady patrons.

“I need an answer. Yes? No? What’s it gonna be?”

Lissa rolled her bottom lip between her teeth.

“What about money? Contract terms?”

“Month-to-month contract.”

“Month-to-month? That’s not standard. I don’t usually—” She didn’t usually go jobless, either, Lissa reminded herself. “OK. I guess they want to be sure they’re hiring the right person. See, that’s why an interview would be—”

“I’m waiting. You in or out?”

A long breath. “What are they paying?”

Marcia snapped out a number. It was a decent one.

“Lissa? I’m still waiting.”

“Yeah. OK. I guess that’s the good thing about working month to month. We can renegotiate at the end of thirty days. What about bennies?”

“Standard stuff. Medical. Dental. Sundays off.”

“They’re closed Sundays?”

“You could say that. One other weekday, you’ll work it out with the boss. Two weeks of vacation after six months if you last that long. Plus room and board.”

“Huh?”

Marcia gave a gusty sigh. “Didn’t I mention? This is a ranch.”

“A what?”

“A ranch. Horses. Cows. Whatever the fuck wanders around on a ranch.” There was a tiny pause. “In Montana.”

“Forget that. I’m not—”

“It’s a big place. Several thousand acres. You grew up in ranching country, right?”

Lissa had grown up on El Sueño, a ranch the size of a small nation that had belonged to Wildes for generations, and she’d left it as soon as she could because ranching and ranches were definitely not her thing.

“I did. And I don’t like—”

“Nobody’s asking you to ride the range.”

Lissa chewed on her lip again. “What is this place? A dude ranch? A resort?”

“Listen, I don’t have time for Twenty Questions. I got to get back to these people. I promised them an answer tonight.”

Lissa had never been to Montana, but she knew a lot about it. Montana was the western state where the mega-rich played at being ranchers. They bought enormous spreads of land, spent fortunes duding them up, visited once in a blue moon and pretended they were cowboys.

And they entertained.

Hollywood glitterati. Directors. Producers. People who could afford to play at being John Wayne for a long weekend. That explained the question about basic cooking. She’d be expected to provide supposedly down-home meals that were actually elegant ones in disguise, and she’d have the pleasure of using mint and haricots verts and kale straight from the garden, eggs fresh from the henhouse.

Best of all, she could make contacts, maybe even connect with guests who’d be so taken with the idea of basic elegance that they’d want to fund a restaurant— and that would be what she’d call it,
Basic Elegance
…

“Lissa? I’m waiting. You in or not?”

“What about staff?”

“What about it? You’ll work that out with the owner.”

Lissa drew a long, steadying breath.

“OK. I’m in. Just tell me where to be and when.”

“They’ll send a plane for you. Seven tomorrow morning, at LAX.”

“I’ll take my car. I’ll need wheels once I’m there, Marcia.”

“It’s a sixteen-hour drive.”

“But—”

“I’ll have them add a car to that list of bennies. You good with that?”

A decent salary. A roof over her head. A car. A chance to establish herself. And no more I-adore-myself actors littering her life.

“Yes. I’m fine with it. Where at LAX?”

Marcia told her. Gave her the details. And then, just before she hung up, she said something completely out of character.

She said, “Good luck.”

* * *

The phone at the Triple G Ranch rang at the same time the wheezing grandfather clock in the hall struck half past eleven.

Nick Gentry, sprawled on his belly on an ancient leather sofa, groaned in his sleep, felt blindly for a throw pillow and jammed it over his head.

The phone and the clock pealed again.

“Goddammit,” Nick snarled, rolled over—and landed on the floor.

He cursed again at the sharp pain that radiated through his leg.
It’ll get better,
the physical therapists said. Yeah. Right. Maybe in a century or two.

Where the fuck was he? He opened one eye, saw the moose head hanging on the wall, the glassy-eyed grizzly pawing the air in the corner, the mounted bass that had to have been on steroids doing its eternal swim beside the moose, and groaned again.

He was in the den at the Triple G.

Jesus, how he hated this place!

A big wet tongue slobbered across his face.

Nick shoved aside the big-as-a-pony black Newfoundland that went with the tongue. He struggled up on his ass, then felt in the pockets of his jeans, his quilted vest, his plaid wool shirt, and finally found the phone.

“This better be good,” he said as he put it to his ear.

“It’s Marcia Lowry, Mr. Bannister.”

The dog licked at him again. Nick grabbed the huge muzzle and moved it aside.

“Who?”

“Marcia Lowry. The agent. From Cooks Unlimited?”

Nick closed his eyes, then blinked them open. What he’d meant was, who was Mr. Bannister? For a minute there, he’d forgotten the name he’d used when he’d phoned Cooks Unlimited. Hell, he’d more or less forgotten he’d phoned Cooks Unlimited to start with.

“Yeah. Right. So, you have somebody for me?”

“I do, Mr. Bannister. In accordance with your instructions, I told her your plane would pick her up at LAX tomorrow.”

Nick grabbed a crutch and staggered to his feet. Bad move; it made his head feel as if it might explode, never mind what it did to his leg.

“What’s with the ‘she’ business, Lowry? I told you, I wanted a man. This isn’t a place for a woman.”

“I made several calls on your behalf, sir. I’m afraid this was the best I could do on such short notice. If you’d contacted me sooner or if you could just give me another week—”

“I have half a dozen men to feed here. I gave you the same notice my last cook gave me.”

“I understand that, Mr. Bannister. And you have to understand that the only person who showed any interest in this job was Ms. Wilde.”

Nick found his way to the kitchen, hobbling, bumping against things in the dark, the Newf damn near plastered to his side.

Coffee. He needed coffee, black and strong.

The coffeepot was empty.

He tucked the phone between his shoulder and his ear—that was one of the things he hated about cell phones, how tough it was to tuck the fuckers between your shoulder and your ear and what in Christ was he supposed to do with the crutch? It took a few seconds before he managed to juggle the crutch, the phone and the kettle, but finally he turned on the water and filled it.

“She knows we’re in the mountains?”

“She knows you’re in Montana, sir, of course.”

“She knows she’ll be cooking for a bunch of misfits?”

“She is a trained and experienced chef, Mr. Bannister.”

“I need a cook, not a chef.” Nick plugged in the kettle and reached for the coffee canister. The Newf nosed his thigh and Nick sighed, dug his hand into a tin of dog biscuits that stood on the counter and held one out.

Slurp
.

The biscuit vanished into a wet, eager maw.

“She’s up for this job?”

“She is.”

“Why?”

“Why what, sir?”

“You said she’s a chef. So why does she want to work here?”

“She needs a new position.”

“Meaning what? Nobody else will hire her?”

“Meaning,
sir
, you need a cook and Lissa Wilde needs employment.”

Nick started to measure out the coffee, thought the hell with it and dumped the coffee into the Chemex straight from the canister. The pot was the one affectation he’d held on to, the one link he still maintained between the man he’d been and
—let’s be blunt, Gentry—
the cripple he’d become.

“Bravely spoken,” he said. “But I’m telling you right now, if this Liza Wile doesn’t work out, I’m going to drag your sorry ass up here and hand you a frying pan and a spatula.”

“It’s Lissa, sir. Lissa Wilde.
W-i-l-d-e
.” Marcia made a sound that might have been a chuckle. “And, believe me, Mr. Bannister, with all due respect, I’d sooner labor in the fires of hell than go to the ass-end of nowhere and cook for a bunch of cowboys.”

Nick laughed. The sound was rusty, but he hadn’t been doing much laughing lately.

“I told her you’d provide her with an automobile.”

“Do I sound like a car dealer?”

“You sound like a man who needs a cook. I thought we’d already established that. Sir.”

Nick ran his hand through his hair. What the hell. There were half a dozen vehicles parked around the ranch. Giving the new cook the keys to one of them wouldn’t be a problem.

“Yeah. Right. OK, Lowry. I’m gonna hope this works out.”

“The same here. Good night, Mr. Bannister.”

Nick disconnected. The kettle gave a thin whistle and he picked it up and poured boiling water into the Chemex.

The last cook had simply up and left two days ago.

“This ain’t no ranch,” he’d said, “it’s a hellhole. And you is one nasty son of a bitch to work for, Gentry.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” Nick had said, “and the name is Bannister.”

“The hell it is, but frankly I don’t give a crap what you call yourself. I ain’t workin’ for you no more. I’d rather go to Billings and put in time at a McD’s.”

Nick looked for a clean mug and found none. No problem. He grabbed one from the sink, gave it a quick rinse, then depressed the plunger on the Chemex.

The woman flying in tomorrow had to be desperate for job. That was pretty obvious. Well, he was desperate for a cook. If she could fry eggs and grill steaks, they were halfway to success.

He’d been away from this part of the country for years, but he’d grown up here. Cooks who worked this kind of itinerant life tended to be old or ugly or drunks, or maybe all three.

Nick poured the coffee, jammed the crutch under his arm, picked up the mug and somehow made it back to his office. The night’s bottle of bourbon was on a lamp table. He put the mug on the table, picked up the bottle and added a hefty slug to his coffee.

This Liza or Lisa or Lissa Wilde could be homely enough to scare small children. She could be old enough to have mothered Methuselah. What she couldn’t be was a drunk because one drunk per falling-down ranch was enough.

And wasn’t that a laugh?

Nick sank onto the sofa. The Newf sank down at his feet and laid his massive head on Nick’s foot.

“You’re a stupid dog,” Nick said, “you know that? Hanging around me. You’d be better off picking on some other sucker.”