On the Steamy Side (18 page)

“I think the salmon roe was maybe a bit adventurous for someone his age,” Lilah said apologetically.

Devon added the scraped plate to the dishwasher with a clatter. “Doesn’t matter,” he said with that wide, fake smile she’d last seen on the television screen. “No big shocker, I suck at figuring out what would sound good to a kid. I’m just glad you were here to fix him something he’d eat.”

“Do you want a biscuit?” Lilah asked, her heart squeezing tight.

He shook his head without looking at them. “I’ve got to get to the restaurant. See you later. Or not, if you’re asleep when I get home. Let Paolo know if you want to go out, he’ll drive you anywhere you need to go.”

With that, Devon was out the door. Lilah didn’t want to read defeat in the slope of his departing shoulders, but she couldn’t help but wonder if the first step of Operation Fatherhood had done more harm than good.

Luckily, family breakfast was only the beginning.

The Tosser was on a right tear this morning. Frankie watched as Devon hissed a few choice words to Milo that nearly had the tough young buck in tears.

Their absent and much-lamented boss, Adam Temple, knew how to skin a man with the sharp side of his tongue, no question, but there was an underlying sweetness of temper to the man that Devon Sparks absolutely lacked.

Frankie knew they were in the shit from the moment he arrived at Market, yawning and cursing the breaking dawn, to find Devon already there, hassling the jolly old geezer who delivered the whole ducklings from up the Hudson River Valley. It weren’t the executive chef’s bailiwick to check in produce deliveries—that was one of Frankie’s despised souschef jobs—but there the Tosser was, waving a clipboard around and looking incensed.

Maybe the arse didn’t think forty pound of duck breast would see them through the night’s service; maybe he didn’t like the cut of the poor delivery knob’s trousers. Either way, he was making a right git of himself.

Frankie shook his head and went inside. After all, if the visiting exec chef wanted to check in deliveries, that was his lookout. Frankie was happy enough to ditch the chore.

He hung up his battered black denim jacket in the employee locker room and took the stairs to the kitchen two at a time.

Nodding to Violet, who was rolling out what looked like a nice pâte brisée at the pastry station, Frankie bounded over to his beloved wood-fired grill and ducked his head into the lowboy to check his prep.

He had plenty of the hand-mixed spice rub for the rib-eye, but he needed to chop and blanch buckets of watercress to be tempuraed later and then plated beside. He also seemed to be low on chopped rosemary and mint.

Ticking off tasks in his mind, Frankie nearly didn’t notice Grant doing his stress dance on the other side of the open pass into the dining room. Grant had been on a hair-trigger ever since Devon Sparks showed up. Not that Frankie was elated to be back under the Tosser’s thumb, but Grant looked close to nervous collapse.

Frankie suppressed an eye roll. Grant was a good mate, and a better manager, but the man could whip himself into a strop faster than anyone Frankie knew. As it usually all came to nothing, Frankie debated whether or not to put his oar in, but a particularly vigorous hand-wring from Grant decided the issue.

“Oi there, Grant. What’s the crack?”

Turning an aggrieved face on Frankie, Grant ground out, “That . . . that . . . overbearing, arrogant, unfeeling bastard of an executive chef hired a new bartender.” Frankie blinked. “Well. How sodding dare he? That’s just not on.”

“Oh, shut it,” Grant said disgustedly. “I know I’m being ridiculous. It’s more about who he hired.” Grant blew out a sigh that ruffled the wheat-colored hair lying across his forehead. With his cornflower-blue eyes and clear-skinned good looks, Grant was the poster boy for clean living and personal responsibility. It was amazing he and Frankie were such good mates, when you came to think about it.

“Who’d he hire, then?” Frankie asked soothingly.

Everything about Grant’s expression and tone conveyed deepest tragedy. “Christian Colby.”

“Chris?” Frankie was surprised. “From Chapel?” The Lower East Side pub was a favored late-night hangout with their crew, partly due to the grotty appeal of its hardcore punk music scene, and partly due to Christian Colby’s undeniably fantastic cocktails.

“Yes,” cried Grant. “And the worst part is, I know he’s going to be brilliant, and when Adam gets back he’ll want him to stay on, and then . . .”

“What?” Bloody hell, but this was fascinating.

“Then,” Grant intoned solemnly, “he’ll always be around. Where I work. Every day.” Frankie started to point out that Grant saw Chris nearly every day after work, when the whole crew staked out the bar at Chapel until the wee hours of the morning, but then he paused. More often than not, he realized, Grant went home instead of out, pleading exhaustion.

It was believable; after a hectic dinner service with a fully booked restaurant, they were all knackered.

For Frankie and his fellow line cooks, that often manifested as being wired, too high on the adrenaline rush of finishing tickets and banging out a complete service to go straight home to bed.

Especially when that bed was empty.

Frankie sighed. Jess had started cutting back on his hours at Market and getting involved with summer classes and photography clubs and other school-related things. NYU started in a little over a month, and the closer it got, the more Frankie was uncomfortably aware of the incongruity between the way he lived his life, and the life unfolding in front of Jess.

This was only a problem when they were apart. When they were together, Frankie was generally too happy to bother much about the future. But when Jess was off with his college friends, being an upstanding young member of society somewhere out of Frankie’s sight, well, that was when Frankie started to think.

Thinking was a pisser. He tried to avoid it as much as possible, but in the early morning hours before daylight filtered through the grime-coated skylight in his tiny one-room attic loft, jokingly called the Garret, Frankie couldn’t help but wonder how much longer he’d have with Jess before the younger man sussed out that there were legions upon legions of better men than Frankie with whom to dally.

For instance, Wes Murphy, the kitchen’s new extern who was about Jess’s age, single, and charming.

Wes and Jess had struck up an aggravatingly fast friendship.

When their schedules meshed and both Jess and Frankie worked the same night, more often than not, they hit Chapel afterward. Those nights, Jess spent half his time with Wes. Granted, Frankie was usually on stage with his punk band, Dreck, and Jess was in the audience being a right fanboy, but still.

Wes was there beside him, close enough to touch.

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Grant demanded, shocking Frankie back into the here and now.

“I am,” Frankie lied. “You’re on about Christian and why it’s a bad thing to have a bloody fantastic bartender coming to work here.”

Grant threw up his hands. “Never mind. I know you think I’m being stupid. Just . . . whatever. Forget about it, Frankie.”

With that, he stalked off, still shaking his head. Frankie watched him go with that squirmy feeling in his gut that told him he could’ve handled that better. Ah, well, you can’t win them all, as Frankie’s da used to say.

Shrugging it off, Frankie pointed himself toward the kitchen, intending to take care of the rest of his mise en place. A happy voice calling his name stopped him.

“Frankie! Hey!”

Joy bloomed in his heart. “Jess! Didn’t know you were on today,” Frankie said, turning in time to catch the bundle of slender, long-limbed young man that barreled into his arms.

“I wasn’t,” Jess mumbled into Frankie’s neck. “I switched with Kristen. Just felt like I hadn’t seen you in forever. You’re out when I get home, or I’m asleep already when you come in.”

“It’s been a bad run,” Frankie agreed, letting his arms relearn the wondrous heft and weight of Jess’s warm, wriggling body.

“I’m thinking about quitting the photography club,” Jess admitted. “It takes up so much time.” Time I could be spending with you. Jess didn’t say it, but Frankie heard it on the air as clear as a bell.

Pulling back gently, he said, “Might want to think twice about that, Bit. Making friends in your club, aren’t you?”

Jess refused to be pushed away, nudging back into Frankie’s arms with a contented sigh. “Sure, but they won’t stop being my friends if I quit the club. We’ll have classes together once the semester starts, probably have to do projects and stuff.”

In other words, they’d only be postponing the inevitable.

“You’re here now,” Frankie said, taking the coward’s way out and avoiding the conversation. “Want to come out back and keep me company while I have a smoke?”

Jess gave him a stern look. It was ridiculously adorable on his gorgeous young face, all narrowed blue eyes, sweet mouth, and floppy auburn hair.

“That depends. On what number cigarette this is for you.”

Frankie groaned. “It’s not gone ten in the morning. Can’t the mothering wait till I’ve at least had a nice cuppa?”

“No. You promised you’d cut back. So how many are you up to?”

“Three,” Frankie confessed grudgingly. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

“At ten o’clock?” Jess looked highly skeptical.

“Fine, don’t come,” Frankie said. “Best go check in with Grant, anyroad. See if anything wants doing.” Unworthy of him, perhaps, but Jess was after him all the time about the smoking. Maybe dealing with a stroppy Grant would remind him that there were worse fates to befall a young server than standing by the loading dock watching a sous chef smoke a fag.

“Fine,” Jess echoed, sticking out his tongue. “Hey, is Wes here? I want to say hi before I find Grant.” Frankie couldn’t help the torrent of jealousy that sluiced through his veins at the mention of the younger, closer-to-Jess’s-age chef, but he could damn well keep it from showing on his face.

“Don’t know, Bit, may as well see. I’m off to worship the nicotine goddess.” Without waiting to see if Jess found his new best friend, Frankie headed for the great outdoors. Devon was still loitering in the alley, Frankie was surprised to see, though the duck deliveryman had long since scarpered.

“All right, there, boss?” he asked, feeling his way.

The man startled out of a deep reverie, seeming to come back to himself from far away. “Oh! Yes. Fine.

I’m fine.”

“You look it.”

“Shut your cake-hole.”

“Erudite. Is that the sort of talk that goes over well at your big la-di-dah parties and red carpet soirées?”

“If I didn’t need you on the line today, you piece of shit, I’d . . .”

“What? Toss a few swear words at me? Get in line, Sonny Jim, you wouldn’t be the first nor the last nor the best.”

Without meaning to, Frankie had moved into Devon’s personal space so they were standing toe-to-toe, breathing hard, neither one wanting to back down.

Devon eyed him with loathing, but when his shoulders slumped minutely, Frankie took it as his signal to relax against the brick wall and light up. Confrontation over. Winner? Unclear.

“Heard about Christian Colby,” Frankie offered, pulling in a drag of sweet, dark smoke.

“And I suppose you want to give me shit about it,” Devon said, tensing. “If you think you can do so much better with the hiring, you should’ve told Adam to leave you in charge.”

“No shit here, mate,” Frankie denied, alarmed. “Chris is the best. Adam’s been trying to get him back into a restaurant for years, but he’d never leave Chapel. How’d you convince him?”

“Called in a favor,” Devon said. “After the disaster that was yesterday’s service, I figured we’d need every advantage we could muster going into tonight.”

“So you brought in a ringer. I like it,” Frankie said, flicking ash into a puddle at his feet.

“This is the way we came in last night,” piped a voice from the entrance to the alleyway, near the street.

Frankie looked up to find Devon’s attention riveted on the woman and child outlined against the brightening daylight at the alley’s end.

Squinting, he could just make out a cloud of curly dark hair on the woman, who was clutching the hand of a smallish boy. Bugger, must be Nanny Lilah with Devon’s son.

“Are you sure?” came the sweet voice of Grant’s childhood friend. “Hello?” she called. “Is this the back entrance to Market?”

A swift glance at Devon confirmed that the man was still paralyzed from the hair down, so Frankie called back, “It is! Welcome back, Lolly!”

“Don’t call me that!” she yelled, but she was laughing and pulling the boy by the hand toward them.

“I’ve told you and told you, Frankie, I . . .” Lilah broke off when she realized Devon was standing there, staring at them.

An awkward silence fell. Frankie broke it by stubbing out his cigarette and folding himself down to the kid’s level. It wasn’t easy; Frankie was built like a giraffe, all awkwardness and height, but he managed.

“Have you come to mess about in a real restaurant kitchen, then? Good on you. If you want, I’ll show you around, introduce you to the gang.”

Frankie was asking the kid, but he shifted his eyes up to Devon and Lilah, who looked like they could use some serious alone time.

Devon, interestingly, appeared to pass the question on to Lilah, who flushed and said, “We don’t want to get in the way, but well, yes, okay, thanks, Frankie, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” Frankie pulled out his best gallantry before offering his hand to the kid. “My name’s Frankie.”

“Tucker,” the kid said, almost too quiet to hear. Nothing much like his da, as far as Frankie could tell.

Less of a shouter, anyway. They shook on it.

Frankie stood up and prepared to lead the way into the restaurant, but a small hand on his arm stopped him. He looked down into Lilah’s serious green eyes.

“No knives,” she said firmly. “No cussing, no fire, and no letting him out of your sight. I learned that one the hard way, right, Tuck?”

Surprisingly, the kid grinned. It was shy and a little gaptoothed, but there was a spark of mischief there just waiting to be fanned into flame. Frankie put on the most responsible, upstanding expression he could manage and nodded. “No worries. There’ll be no cocking about, I promise.” Her eyes grew big as Frankie smirked and whisked the kid into the kitchen.