The Chef's Choice (2 page)

“Hello?”

“Just a minute.” Suppressing the urge to snap, Cady walked to the opening. “What do you—”

And her voice died in her throat.

His was the face of a sixteenth-century libertine. Lean and angular, with razor-sharp cheekbones, it was a face that knew pleasure. She could imagine him dueling at dawn or seducing high-born ladies. She could imagine him slashing paint over canvas in an artist's garret or bending over a keyboard, pounding out impassioned blues in a smoky, late-night club.

His dark, straight brows matched the wavy hair that flowed to his shoulders. He hadn't bothered to shave that morning and the shadow of a beard ran along the bottom of his face like the artful shading of a charcoal sketch, drawing attention to the line of jaw, the strong chin, framing his mouth.

His mouth.

Temptation and mischief, fascination and promise. It was the kind of mouth that offered laughter, the kind of mouth that offered an invitation to decadence.

And delicious, lingering kisses.

Sudden color flooded her cheeks. Look at her, standing there staring at him like an idiot.

Get it together, Cady
.

She cleared her throat. “Welcome to the Compass Rose. Are you here to check in?”

“Kind of. I'm looking for Amanda or Ian McBain.”

“They're not around just now, I'm afraid. I'd be happy to help you, though.”

The corner of his mouth curved up a bit. “My good luck.”

It was said with the casual ease of a guy who turned every woman he met into putty, the kind of guy who charmed as second nature. Her eyes narrowed. She wasn't big on good-looking guys in general, and she was in no mood to be charmed, not after the morning she'd had. “Your room's probably not ready this early, but I'll check with housekeeping.” When she got around to it. “Here's your paperwork, anyway. It's Donnelly, right? Scott Donnelly?”

“Hurst,” he corrected. “Damon Hurst.”

“Welcome to the Compass Rose Guest Quarters, Mr.—” Cady stopped. Stared at him blankly. “Damon Hurst?” she repeated. “
The
Damon Hurst?”

“The same.”

She saw it now—the famous cheekbones, the Renaissance hair, the face that had graced a hundred magazine covers.

And a thousand tabloid stories over his half decade of infamy.

Damon Hurst, the enfant terrible of the Cooking Channel, the charismatic star who'd sent the upstart network soaring against its entrenched rival before he'd flamed out the year before. Known more for his baroque personal life and volatile kitchen persona than for his undeniably brilliant cuisine, he'd been the subject of speculation, rumors, spite and stories too outrageous to be believed.

Except that they were true.

Cady cleared her throat. “Yes, well, welcome to the Compass Rose, Mr. Hurst,” she said. “It'll take a little time to get a room put together for you but we do have a vacancy. If you'll just fill out the registration form, please?” She put the paper on the little counter that topped the lower half of the door.

“I'm not checking in.”

Cady frowned. “I'm not sure I understand.”

“The restaurant.”

“Ah. I see.” She hadn't realized that the Sextant, the Compass Rose's restaurant, had a reputation that stretched all the way to Manhattan. Then again, with his shows very publicly canceled and his restaurant doors shuttered, maybe Damon Hurst had little else to do than run around obscure eateries in Maine. She dredged up a faint smile. “The Sextant is just across the parking lot. I believe they're still serving lunch.”

“I'm not here for lunch, either,” he said. He was laughing at her, she realized, and she felt her face flame.

“If you're hoping for a tour of the restaurant, I think you're out of luck.” Even she could hear the tartness in her voice. “We're shorthanded and I doubt our chef has any interest in letting you go traipsing around his kitchen.”

“My kitchen, now,” Hurst corrected. “I guess you haven't heard. I'm the new chef.”

H
e was used to having a strong effect on women. Attraction, arousal, jealousy, anger.

Rarely horror.

“Our new chef?” She stared at him, dismay writ large on her features, as though he were a fry cook from some seaside clam shack, Damon thought in irritation.

“The restaurant's new chef,” he corrected. And tried not to wonder yet again what the hell he was doing.

“You want to get your life back in gear?” his mentor, legendary chef Paul Descour, had demanded over port at his landmark Manhattan restaurant, Lyon. “Make a fresh start. Go away from here. Find a good restaurant with room to grow and turn it into something. Remind yourself that you're still a chef, instead of a…” He'd waved at the air in disgust and dismissal.

Dismissing what? A top-rated cooking show four years running? A bestselling cookbook? A
Michelin
-starred restaurant, Pommes de Terre, deemed the best of Manhattan by the
Times?

And a very public firing, the voice in Damon's head reminded him. A restaurant backer who'd walked away from those Michelin stars and left him hanging. The wreckage of a dozen friendships that littered the wake of his career. The hundred meaningless liaisons that had been poor substitutes.

And the morning he'd woken and looked back at himself in the mirror, knowing there needed to be more.

“You're our new chef?” the feisty-looking redhead before him repeated incredulously. “I don't believe it. This is a family business. I can't imagine they'd do something so…so…”

“So?” he prompted, letting the annoyance show. He topped her by more than a head but she stared back at him, not giving an inch. It was the eyes that did it, a hazel that wasn't quite green, wasn't quite brown, eyes that stared back at him unimpressed, daring him to justify himself.

He didn't need to justify himself to anyone.

Descour and his big ideas. Nathan Eberhardt, the new sous chef at Lyon, had left the Sextant minus an executive chef. The perfect opportunity, Paul had said. Sure. The perfect opportunity to come up to the sticks and get dissed at the front desk by some clerk in a dirt-smudged work shirt and shaggy hair.

Find a good restaurant with room to grow and turn it into something.

“Look, whether you believe it or not, it's happening,” he said shortly. “They probably just forgot to tell you.” Or didn't bother, he thought, diagnosing her as a troublemaker on sight.

“Oh, trust me, they didn't forget.” Temper snapped in her eyes. “So let me get this straight. You're Nathan's replacement?”

“Looks that way,” he agreed. “And you are?”

“Cady McBain. Amanda and Ian are my parents.”

“Ah.” He raised his eyebrows.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

She was ticked because she'd been blindsided. “I guess they forgot to run it by you.”

“I don't think that's any of your business.”

“Maybe not,” he said, “but it's bugging you.”

She scowled at him. “Does Roman know?”

“Roman?”

“You have met Roman, right? Your sous chef?”

“Oh, right.” He shrugged. “I haven't met any of the staff yet. I was down in New York.” None of her business that he'd taken the job sight unseen, and happy to get it. He hadn't been foolish, exactly, with the money he'd made. At least not all of it. The problem was, you couldn't eat a TriBeCa loft or a Le Corbusier sofa. For form's sake, he'd taken a few days to think over Amanda and Ian McBain's telephone offer, but he'd already begun making arrangements to be gone for however long it took to fight his way back.

The hazel eyes were narrowed at him. She might have had lashes that a few of his model-actress ex-bedmates would have killed for, but they did nothing to soften that stare. “Listen to me. Roman Bennett is the most talented, hardworking line cook you'll ever meet. He's been killing himself twenty hours a day since Nathan left to hold this place together. You give him a hard time, you'll answer to me.”

His lips twitched; he couldn't help it.

She glowered. “Don't laugh at me.”

It took all he had not to. Here she was, a head shorter than he was and she was threatening him. And she was dead serious, he realized, the smile fading.

“I'm not a jackass,” he said.

“You'll pardon me if I prefer to wait and see on that one.”

The snap in her words stung. Now it was his turn to step a bit closer. “Wait and see about what?”

“Whether you live up to your reputation.”

Taking his time, keeping control of the irritation, he leaned down to rest his elbows on the counter so that they were eye to eye, lip to lip. She smelled faintly of apples. And he could see her decide not to budge. “It's a good thing we'll have lots of time, then.”

For a minute, neither moved. And he couldn't help wondering what she would do if he shifted just a bit closer, tasted that mouth of hers while it was open and soft with surprise. He saw her shoulders rise slightly as she took a breath, saw those hazel eyes darken to caramel brown.

And flicker with alarm.

She did move then, abruptly. “Stop playing games.” Her voice was sharp.

“Stop playing hardnose.”

“I'm not playing anything.”

“Really?” He watched the pulse beat in her throat. “This could get interesting.”

Just then, the door behind him jingled. “We're back,” a voice announced from the door and he turned to see a woman with Cady's eyes walking in.

He could almost hear Cady's sigh of relief. “This has been fun, but here are my parents. I guess it's time for you to finally meet your staff.”

“I guess you're right,” Damon said. “See you around.”

“Not if I see you first.”

“Do you have any idea what you've taken on here?” Cady stared at her parents across their kitchen.

“Of course,” Amanda said pleasantly, glancing over her shoulder as she stood at the counter with bread and cold cuts. “Do you want me to make you a sandwich, too?”

“No thanks,” Cady muttered.

“You can give me hers,” Ian said cheerfully. “There's nothing like fasting for a couple of days to make a guy appreciate food.”

“You're changing the subject,” Cady returned, although a sandwich was starting to sound increasingly good for someone who'd skipped lunch. “Why Damon Hurst, of all people? There have to be tons of qualified cooks out there.”

“Cooks, maybe, but not chefs, and not as many as you'd think. At least not who'd move up to Grace Harbor.”

Okay, so a tiny tourist town, even one an hour from Portland, wasn't for everyone. Still…“There has to be someone. Why Hurst? Why him, of all people?”

He'd leaned in and stared at her with those eyes and she'd almost forgotten how to breathe.
This could get interesting
. Just thinking of it made her furious.

Just thinking of it made her shiver.

“We hired him because he was recommended by Nathan, for one thing,” her father said, pulling a bowl of potato chips toward himself.

Cady blinked. “Nathan knows him?”

“Well, the chef Nathan works for now does. He told Nathan, Nathan told us.”

“He said he hadn't even been here. What, he couldn't even be bothered to come interview? He made you go there?”

Her father coughed. “Not exactly.”

“You took him on sight unseen?” she asked incredulously.

“We took him on recommendation. We talked to him by phone, several times. We'd seen him cook on
Chef's Challenge,
where he has a winning record, I might add. What more did we need to know?”

“I don't know, chemistry? See if it feels right?”

“Chemistry?” Ian repeated in amusement. “We don't want a date, we want a chef. I don't see the problem. He needs a job and he can give us what we need, which is visibility.”

“Or notoriety.”

“You know what they say. There's no such thing as bad publicity,” Amanda put in mildly as she set the sandwiches down on the table and sat.

“Mom, you know the stories. I mean, he used to throw customers out of his restaurant, for God's sakes. He gave one of his chefs a black eye. Do you want that happening at the Sextant?”

“Of course not. But he says that's over. He wants to build something here.”

“Sure, until he finds something bigger and better and walks out on his contract.” There was a short silence while her parents suddenly became very interested in their napkins. “You do have him under contract, don't you?” Cady asked with dawning dismay.

Ian met her eyes. “We thought about it but we decided it was smarter not to. A contract is a double-edged sword, you know. This way if he doesn't work out, we can walk away.”

“You do admit there's a chance of that, then?”

“Of course we do,” Ian said impatiently. “It's a calculated risk.”

“I agree with the risk part.”

“No matter what, we'll get a lot of exposure from him. People know Damon Hurst. They'll want to know why he's here. They'll come to see if he's still got the magic. I mean, think of it, even you've heard of him and you barely pick up a paper or turn on the TV.”

“Cable's too expensive,” she muttered, moving to sit at the table with them.

“Our occupancy is down. It
has
been for the past two years. We need to get publicity and we can't afford ads right now.” Ian picked up his sandwich. “Hurst's our answer. We send out a few press releases, maybe get a review or two in the papers or magazines.”

And start a media feeding frenzy. “That publicity's not going to be worth much if your line staff quits and your diners start staying away.”

“I think that's unlikely.”

“I don't trust him.” Cady reached out for a chip. “Why would a guy like him come all the way up here to work? You know the stories—he dates fashion models and pop tarts. I can't imagine Grace Harbor's going to thrill him.”

“Maybe he's grown up. It can happen, you know.” Amanda gave her a bland look.

“All right, all right, I get the point,” Cady grumbled. “But he's got to be costing you a fortune.”

“Not as much as you'd think. We've caught him at a good time. And he's got big plans for the Sextant.”

“For now, anyway.” Then again, as much as she desperately wanted her parents' inn to succeed, Damon Hurst couldn't be gone soon enough for her peace of mind.

“We need him, Cady.” For once, there was no humor in her father's voice. “We're in a deep hole. We need all the bounce we can get from him and if you don't trust him you'd better hope that you're wrong and Nathan and Descour are right. We need you to do everything you possibly can to make this work.”

“But—”

“We're not asking you to marry the man, just keep a civil tongue in your head,” Ian shot back, temporarily silencing her. “If you can't do that much, then just stay away.”

Cady looked at them both and sighed. “Of course I'll help however I can. I think you're both nuts but if Damon Hurst is what you want, Damon Hurst is what you'll get. God help you,” she added.

“Tell me again why having a gorgeous man who's a fabulous chef and a celebrity working at your parents' restaurant is a bad thing?” Cady's best friend since childhood, Tania Martin, peered at her from the other end of the couch.

Cady scowled and scooped up some sesame chicken from one of the myriad takeout containers that littered the crates-and-boards combination that could charitably be called her coffee table. It was their weekly movie/gossip/junk food night, or at least Tania's.

Cady believed in eating junk food as often as possible.

In a crowded room, nobody would ever have picked the two of them to be friends. Unlike tomboy Cady, who pretty well lived in jeans and a T-shirt, Tania kept on the cutting edge of hip with her black spiky hair and tinkling silver jewelry and her scarlet—or sometimes blue—nails and lips. They'd known each other since second grade and were as close as sisters.

“Why is Damon Hurst a bad thing?” Cady repeated, sprinkling soy sauce over her chicken with a free hand. “He's irresponsible. He's temperamental. He got fired from his TV show
and
from his restaurant for not taking care of business. He makes scenes. You, of all people, should know because you're the one who told me about all of it.”

“Besides all that.” Tania crunched into an egg roll.

“Besides…Tania, the guy got caught boinking one of his customers in his office—by the woman's husband. You want to tell me again how you think him being here could in any way be a
good
idea?”