The Chef's Choice (18 page)

Instead, she smiled and stroked his forearm with her finger. “You know what they say about all work and no play. I think we need to do something about that.”

He jerked his arm away. “No, all right?”

She stared. “Excuse me?”

“Francesca.” He let out a breath. “Look, I appreciate you coming up, I appreciate the story. It was good to see you, but let's leave it at that.”

For an instant, the look in her eyes was absolutely murderous. An instant later, it was masked so completely that he couldn't be sure he'd seen it. “You always take things so seriously.” Her voice was chill. “I was only joking. We're leaving tomorrow at an ungodly hour.”

“I'll walk you to your guesthouse.”

“Don't bother.” Just for an instant, the anger flashed, then it was gone. “After all, you've got lunch service.”

Perfect, Damon thought as she stalked away. Now she was ticked at him and it was anybody's guess what would happen to his cover story. Probably a nice little visit to the round file. There had to have been a better way to handle it.

It didn't make him any less irritated with himself to realize that none of it would have happened if he'd never been stupid enough to sleep with her in the first place. Of course, he could as easily kick himself for playing the field or for deciding to become a chef in the first place.

He sighed. What was done was done. With luck, Francesca would cool down and find the humor in it and everything would be okay. And he went back to the restaurant, trying to ignore the little knot of uneasiness in his gut.

It wound up being easier than he'd expected, courtesy of a couple of runners who collided during the lunch rush, sending food flying into the lane between stoves and counter. There wasn't time in the middle of firing orders to clear the line, so they let Denny mop around them, a mistake Damon recognized only after Rosalie slipped on a missed bit of sautéed pearl onion and fell to sprain her wrist.

He'd never expected to see the day when he was sorry that the restaurant was now packed the better part of the time. They always had to work fast. Being minus a cook, though, meant working at the speed of light, without letup until close. Even if he had planned a liaison with Francesca at the end of the night, Damon reflected sardonically, he wouldn't have had the energy for it. He barely had time to look up, let alone stop.

Or find any time to see Cady. But he couldn't keep himself from stealing a couple of minutes during a lag in dinner service to give her a quick call.

“Hello?”

Just hearing her voice gave him more energy. “Hey,” he said as the nearby printer chattered. “I hope your day's going better than mine.”

“It's been all right.” She sounded remote, tired.

“Sorry I didn't get over to say hello today. We kind of had a disaster here. Rosalie got hurt and we've been in the weeds ever since.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” She paused. “How did your interview go?”

He thought a minute. He'd probably be smart to tell her about Francesca but not while he was standing in the kitchen with an audience. “It was…interesting, I guess you could say.”

“Interesting?”

“In a manner of speaking. I'll give you the scoop later. Maybe tonight after I get off? Although I can't guarantee I'll be of much use.”

“Why don't you just stay at your place? You'll get more sleep that way.”

It made sense on the face of it, but somehow it felt like being pushed away. “All right.” He frowned. “Hey, are you feeling all right? You sound a little off.”

“Rough afternoon, same as you. I left early.”

“Well, get some sleep. You can tell me about it tomorrow. We'll definitely make some time to get together.”

“Sure,” she said, “we'll do that.”

And he disconnected, feeling distant from her in some indefinable way.

The snatch of music from his cell phone dragged him up out of sleep at dawn. He woke sprawled out across the bed. A bed he'd been in too short a time. Blinking groggily, he fumbled for his handset as it rang again.

“'Lo,” he mumbled.

“We've got a problem.”

Damon rubbed his eyes. “Jack?”

“Yeah, it's Jack. What the hell did you say to Francesca?”

“Huh?” He fought to get some of the cobwebs out of his brain. “Francesca? What are you talking about?”

“What did you tell her?”

“Let me wake up here, for chrissakes.”

There was a pause. “You haven't seen, then.”

“No, whatever it is, I haven't. We got slammed last night. I didn't get home until late.” His alarm started to chirp and he jabbed it. Six o'clock, he saw. Joy. “All right, what's the deal?”

“Her blog.”

The back of Damon's neck began to prickle. He vaguely remembered hearing something about a blog six or eight months before, but by then he'd been too far into his own free fall to care. “What does it say?”

“Start up your computer and read it for yourself.”

He rose to go into his home office. It gave him time to become fully awake. At the Web site, he watched a photo of Francesca unfurl on the page. And was it just his imagination or was there something subtly predatory about her smile?

Her blog was a combination of industry gossip, reviews and sneak peeks of what was ahead in the magazine.

The problem was, one of those peeks was him.

“Well?” Jack said.

“Jesus.”

“That's one way of putting it.”

“I told you we were slammed last night. We were minus a cook. Maybe she got a bad meal.” That wasn't what it was about, though, and he knew it.

“What does she know that I don't know, Damon? What have you been up to?”

“Nothing. It wasn't about what I did.” Damon rubbed his temples. “It was about what I didn't do. After service.”

There was a short silence. “Ah.”

“Yeah, ah.”

“The lady doesn't take rejection well.”

“Who does?”

“In this case, she can do a lot of damage.” Jack blew out a breath. “You're lucky I know Francesca. Plenty of people don't, people in a position to make decisions.”

“Like your friend Stephanopolous?”

“Like him. He's not going to follow a food blog, but I guarantee you he's got a clipping service or a couple of bright boys who keep an eye on the press. She's going to try to bury you with that article. It could be a problem.”

“Weren't you telling me you had complete control?”

“The man believes in delegating, not giving the store away. The minute he hears that you're a discipline problem, you'll be history. If you want in on this deal, you need to have a track record with him before Francesca's little hatchet job sees the light of day. Are you in or out?”

In or out. “I can't just give you an answer, Jack. I've got to at least see the place.”

“Do you not get the scope of this operation? The place isn't an issue. You don't like the kitchen? We redo it. Problems with the dining room? We bring in a designer. As long as we're making money within six months, he won't care. And we can do that if we've got you in place and branded.”

Damon stared at Francesca's smirk. Everything he ever wanted.

Except Cady.

“I need to think about it.”

“Well, guess what? This fiasco with Francesca just took away that option. You've got to decide now. We've got two months, max, to get our own PR spin in place before her issue hits the newsstands.”

“The best defense is a good offense?”

“The best defense is making money. This is a big job, Damon. And you're the right guy for it, no doubt. But the window's closing. And if you're in, I need you here tomorrow.”

“I'm not going to take a job sight unseen, Jack.” Even if he had done just that with the Sextant, a sneaky voice in his head reminded him.

“Fine,” Jack snapped. “Call it an interview, if you want. There'll be a ticket waiting for you at the airport in Portland. Just get your butt on that plane.”

Part of him couldn't understand why he was hesitating. Part of him couldn't understand how he could possibly go. The stakes were huge and there was no right choice. There was only the path of least regret.

“Come on,” Jack urged, “isn't this what you've been waiting for, the right opportunity? It doesn't get any more right than this, buddy. Think about it, restaurants in Tokyo, Dubai, London. It's what we always talked about, only bigger. We can do everything we've ever wanted to, everything we've ever thought of. So tell me, are you in or are you out?”

Damon hesitated.

“Are you in or out?”

Grace Harbor…Vegas…Stephanopolous…the Compass Rose…the Sextant…an empire…Cady…

The world.

He swallowed. “I'm in,” he said.

He caught up with her in the greenhouse. She looked tired, he saw when he leaned in to kiss her, as though she hadn't slept well.

“Hey,” he said and closed the door behind him. “Got a couple of minutes? I need to talk to you.”

It would be okay, he told himself when she nodded. They could make this work. They would make this work.

He took a breath. “You remember my buddy Jack Worth? The guy you met last week?”

“The ex-partner, right?” She kept working, stacking plants together in carrier trays on a table by the door.

“Yeah. The thing is, he wasn't just stopping by. He came to talk to me about a job.”

Her hands stilled.

“There's a casino in Las Vegas put up by Dimitri Stephanopolous, the biggest one in town. He's dumped a bundle into it. They're having problems with the restaurants, though, and they've brought Jack in to manage them.” Damon paused. There was no easy way to say it. “He wants me to be the executive chef.”

It was like having all the breath punched out of her. Whatever she'd expected, it wasn't that. “Las Vegas?” Cady echoed. “What did you tell him?”

He didn't answer right away. “I agreed to come out,” he said finally. “I want to see the place, meet the people. After that, we'll see.”

He hadn't even bothered to visit the Compass Rose before taking the job at the Sextant. Because he'd known all along that it didn't matter—he was going to leave. Anger set her blood simmering. Without thinking about it, she started to pace.

“Cady, it's a great opportunity.”

“Funny, I thought this was supposed to be the big opportunity. Whatever happened to the line you fed my parents about building something here? Of course, Grace Harbor can hardly compete with Vegas.” And she couldn't compete with any of it.

“You don't understand. The Stephanopolous operation, it's a lot more than just the casino. He's one of the biggest developers in the world. We do this right, the sky is the limit.” He shook his head. “I can't turn this down. I have to at least look.”

Her jaw felt stiff. “You're not looking. You've already decided.”

Now it was his turn to get angry. “I'm just talking to them, that's all. I just wanted to tell you. And your parents.”

“Why, so they can have a day's notice? Dammit, Damon, it's not fair,” she burst out, whirling toward him. “They
trusted
you. They gave you a chance. They thought you meant it when you said you wanted to stay.”

“I did mean it. I never expected this.”

“Oh darn, tough times for you, huh? And you can walk out without looking back because you never even bothered to sign a contract.”

“Your parents didn't want one.”

“That's because they're the kind of people who keep their word without paper.”

“And I keep mine,” he shot back. “Look, I don't know why we're arguing. There's a way to make this work. I've already talked to Jack about it. If I do take the Vegas job, I need to start as soon as possible but one week out of the month I'll be out here. That means I can work with Roman until your parents find a new executive chef. And that means we can see each other.”