On the Steamy Side (27 page)

I’m weeded bad here, Simon. The rumors are right, we’re in the shit every night. I’m messing this up like a first-year culinary school grad. Worse! We’ve got an ACA extern who’s doing way better than me.”

Devon heard Lilah’s quiet intake of breath. She was probably in shock that he’d admitted it, but shit, what was the point of fooling himself? If he’d really lost his palate, he was done for. That was a career killer, right there.

“Not so loud,” Simon hissed. “Have I taught you nothing about public perception? You project total confidence at all times, period. Nobody wants to see the man behind the curtain, Dev. You know that.” This time Lilah snorted, and it wasn’t quiet.

Ignoring her, Simon went on, “Now, Dev, it’s simple, really. All you have to do is hire me back. I’ll arrange everything. You’ll give a public statement with a credible reason for the downturn in Market’s popularity—like alcoholism, for instance.”

Devon winced, eyes zooming to Tucker, laughing at some damn face Frankie was pulling. “Shit. I don’t have a drinking problem.”

“Drugs, then,” Simon said, waving the details away as inconsequential. “Doesn’t matter. Oldest story in the world. You’ll have to go away for a while, of course, for ‘rehab’—it’s a nice opportunity for a vacation, a break from everything, and really, I think it’s the best thing for you. When you come back from vacay, I bet everything will look different.”

It was nothing Devon hadn’t heard before. In the four years since he’d hired Simon to handle public relations for the growing Sparks brand, Simon had engineered countless publicity opportunities for Devon. In the past, Devon had followed Simon’s advice without a second thought—because he knew that he and Simon were driving hard toward the exact same goal.

Yet somehow, standing here with sweet Lilah Jane at his side, Devon wasn’t so sure anymore.

Devon opened his mouth to tell his publicist where he could stick it, but Lilah stopped him with an imploring hand.

She undoubtedly meant to grab his elbow, but he shifted at the last second and her palm landed against his lower ribs. The touch jolted his system like a shock, the intimacy of it warm and welcome in the strange crossroads moment where Devon now found himself.

Lilah looked down at the hand on Devon’s side as if surprised to find it attached to her wrist, but she left it there.

If she thought the weight of it would add to the strength of her imploring gaze, she was right. Lilah turned those big, baby-doll eyes on him and Devon was ready to do almost anything to keep her looking at him like that.

“Don’t do that,” she urged. “Oh, please, Devon, don’t say you’re going into rehab. You can’t! What will happen to Tucker?”

A spike of annoyance shot through him. “Why do you assume I would?” he demanded, ignoring the fact that up until a week ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated for an instant.

“Oh. I just thought . . . I know how much your reputation means to you.” It was satisfying, the way her gaze slid down and to the side. Her hand dropped, too, though, which wasn’t as good.

He backed away from both Simon and Lilah, tucking his hands under his arms and mustering up the biggest, cockiest smirk he could manage.

Reckless exhilaration swept through him. If Devon Sparks was going down, he was going down swinging.

“Damn straight,” he said. “I worked too long and hard building this reputation to let it all go to shit over one misguided favor for a friend.”

“So you’ll do the press conference?” Simon put in, all eager beaver.

“Bet your ass I will,” Devon said. He savored Simon’s gloating face and Lilah’s disappointment for five deliciously cruel seconds before finishing, “But I won’t be announcing a stay at Betty Ford. I’ll be inviting them all to cover my first annual charity fundraiser—to be held in one week, right here at Market.”

Jaws dropped in tandem. It shouldn’t have given him such a lowdown, delighted tickle, but it did.

If assholery were an Olympic event, I could go for the gold.

“Crank up the PR machine,” he told Simon. “I want everybody who’s been preemptively dancing on the grave of my career here next Saturday for the best dinner any of them have ever tasted.” Simon pressed his lips together so hard they were just a thin white line in his pink face, but he produced his beloved PDA from an inner jacket pocket and started tapping away at it furiously.

“We’re going to fill the place up,” Devon went on, “one hundred and ten spots, let’s say eight courses, fifteen hundred dollars a plate. Proceeds to go to . . .”

He stopped. Thought for a second, then looked right into Lilah’s too-bright eyes, drinking in the tremulous smile on her rosebud mouth.

“All money raised at the event will go to support the Center for Arts Education of New York. Every kid in this city deserves to go to a school with programs like theater and fine arts.”

“Devon Sparks,” she breathed. “You dark horse, you.”

Rocking back on his heels, Devon reveled in the moment. He intended to milk it for everything it was worth.

“Yeah, I’ve been reading up,” he said smugly.

Lilah shook her head slowly, as if to clear it from a disorienting smack.

“Since when? How? Devon, this is so . . .”

“Do you know how many charity events I get asked to cook for? A celebrity chef bumps up the fundraising power of any nonprofit quite a bit. I have stacks of requests on my desk. After that day at the Met, I had Daniel flag any charities that had to do with the arts and public schools. I was just gonna donate money or something, but this will be so much better.” Satisfaction spread through Devon like the warmth from swallowing a shot of good bourbon. “We’ll raise awareness for a good cause, redistribute the wealth of some people who can definitely afford it, and I’ll have the chance to show all the two-bit critics and haters out there what I’m made of. It’s perfect.”

He ignored, for the moment, the question of his possibly corrupted palate, his uncooperative kitchen brigade, his apparently unappealing menu.

No one ever succeeded by focusing on the obstacles.

“I could kiss you right now,” Lilah said in a low, intense voice.

“What’s stopping you?” Devon asked, reckless with anticipation of the upcoming battle.

With a grin and an answering recklessness in her eyes, Lilah threw her arms around Devon’s neck and gave a little hop, forcing him to catch her.

He got her laughing mouth under his and kissed her hard enough and long enough that by the time they were done, every cook in the kitchen was whistling and stomping, cat-calls filling the air like a standing ovation.

Lilah closed the door to Tucker’s room and hurried back to the gleaming kitchen, where Devon was uncorking a bottle of wine.

He looked up at her with an easy smile. “He asleep?”

The chardonnay was pale gold and pretty in the fragile wine glass. “Before his head hit the pillow. Poor boy, we kept him out late tonight.”

They’d stayed until service was over so Devon could talk to the cooks and servers about his amazing new plan, and now it felt good to be home.

Her heart was so full right now, Lilah was sure everything she felt must be spilling out of her eyes, her pores, the ends of her fingers and toes.

She was awash in love. And it was dangerously tempting to let the whole world know it.

Lilah took a sip of wine to keep her mouth occupied. She was afraid she’d start babbling her feelings any second.

“Hey, you didn’t wait for the toast,” Devon said, smiling.

Lilah swallowed quickly. “Sorry! Oh, hey, that stuff’s really good. But sorry! What do you want to toast to?”

Looking amused, Devon held out his glass and said, “How about to the future?”

“To good food, good friends, and good weather,” Lilah said. “That’s my Uncle Roy’s favorite.”

“Then it’s good enough for me,” Devon replied, touching his glass to hers. The melodic chime that rang out made Lilah think their glasses, thin and delicate as they were, were actually crystal. She immediately shifted her fingers to hold the stem more gingerly.

The wine tasted even better now, probably because she wasn’t gulping it down. It had a citrusy bite that shocked Lilah’s tongue before it mellowed into a soft, peachy after-taste.

Shoot. She might end up gulping the rest of it yet.

“I don’t think the weather will be an issue,” Devon mused. “At least, I don’t think there’s a chance it’ll be anything other than muggy and scorching hot. August isn’t New York’s best month. But the other two parts of the toast—they could give me some trouble.”

“Good food and good friends? I hope not.”

There was a wry twist to Devon’s mouth. “I haven’t exactly been Mr. Popular with the Market staff.”

“You’ve got me,” she said, and her heart started pounding. “As a friend, I mean. Well, as more than a friend, but . . . well . . . you know what I mean.”

Slow, lazy cat smile from Devon.

“And the food,” Lilah babbled. “That’s no problem, I mean, I’m sure you’ve got tons of dishes you’re famous for at those restaurants of yours. Cherry-pick a few of those and you’ll be ready before you know it!”

Devon sank down onto one of the bench seats in his breakfast nook. “No. I don’t want to do something I’ve done a million times before. I want to prove—to myself,” he emphasized, “that my palate’s not gone. I can still come up with a great menu.”

Best to be delicate about this. “How, exactly, do you mean to go about it?” she asked.

Devon gave her a look that said he knew she was trying to handle him.

“I think we’ll start with a blind taste test.” He set his glass on the table and cracked his knuckles like a man about to embark on a difficult task. His eyes, though, were shining with the challenge, which was such a beautiful change from the agonized loss that had filled his whole body earlier. Lilah was so caught up in enjoying the difference that she almost missed what he’d said.

“Wait. A blind taste test?”

“Oh, yeah. My brigade and I, back when I was first starting out in the restaurant business, we used to play this game all the time after service.”

Devon hopped up from the table and started rooting around in one of the drawers until he pulled out a black linen napkin with a triumphant grin.

“We tie this on, like so.” He mimed covering his eyes with the cloth. “And you put out a variety of different foods for me to taste. You time me, see how many I get right in one minute. I used to be able to do fifteen.”

“That’s it?”

“I valued accuracy over speed; it was always fifteen out of fifteen correct. And it’s harder than you think. You don’t realize how much you rely on your sight to give you information about what you’re tasting until it’s taken away. Then it’s all about your palate. Nothing else.” Lilah licked her lips. It was probably stupid, but she was nervous for him. Devon was nothing if not mercurial; he was so energized and positive right now, she’d hate to see him fail and tumble back into the doldrums.

“Come on, Lilah Jane,” he coaxed, as if sensing her reluctance. “I can do this, I know I can. I need to get back to basics. Help me wake my taste buds up.”

“Can you see anything?”

Devon felt a shift in the air in front of his face, as if Lilah were waving her hand before his blindfolded eyes. He shook his head. “It’s black as night under here.”

“Okay. Boy, you’ve sure got some crazy stuff in this kitchen. Even with both eyes open, I’m not sure what some of it is or how the heck you’d cook it.”

Devon could hear her moving around the kitchen, gathering things from the fridge, the pantry. At least one item required chopping; another, mixing. She spent some time at the stove, made multiple trips back and forth across the kitchen. It was the auditory equivalent of spinning a kid in a circle before a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.

Except this wasn’t child’s play to Devon. As the knotted tension in his neck and the clammy palms of his hands could attest, this was deadly serious.

If he couldn’t do this taste test anymore, if he couldn’t recognize the flavors Lilah put in front of him, he might as well pack it in right now. He’d do the fundraiser with old, well-tested recipes, and that would be it. He’d retire.

Unwilling to confront the terrifying question of what he’d do after he retired, Devon shifted on the bench, making the leather creak loudly. He rubbed his hands dry on his pants and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth.

He’d had plain crackers and a glass of water to bring his palate back to neutral after the wine. He was as ready as he’d ever be.

Lilah kept his jitters from escalating by placing something on the table in front of him with a quiet clack.

“Here we go,” she said, and guided his hand to the rim of what Devon recognized as one of his glass nesting bowls.

He breathed out through his nose and dipped his fingers into the bowl. The roughly diced contents were slightly wet and cool to the touch. Vegetable, his mind immediately supplied.

Devon popped a couple pieces into his mouth and crunched down, releasing a sharp, almost licorice flavor.

With a burst of relief, Devon recognized it. “Raw fresh fennel root,” he said.

“Right!” Lilah sounded so thrilled for him, Devon had to grin.

“Next,” he reminded her. “Clock’s ticking.”

“Shoot, okay, sorry. Here you go.”

This time his hand found the chill, matte edges of one of his small French stoneware plates. He knocked his fingers against a mound of tiny spheres that scattered and rol ed when he touched them.

He captured a few and brought them to his lips. They were smooth and very fragrant, the scent herbal and lemony. The taste was the same as the smell, only sharper, the little balls dry and almost powdery against his tongue.

Devon dabbed up a few more and tasted again, frowning. Something about it reminded him of traveling through India. “Dried coriander seed?”

“Right again! This is fun. I can see why you and your cooks liked doing it. Okay, try this.” The next few items went quickly; he easily identified Hawaiian acacia honey, coconut milk, chopped hard-boiled egg, pomegranate juice, smoked Scottish salmon, tamarind paste, and minced chives. He wasted precious seconds on a spicy-sweet powder that smelled like Christmas—allspice? Ground cloves? Grated nutmeg?—and eventually got it right with ground mace.