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“Well, from the look on Gabe’s face, I guess we still don’t have a chef,” Max said, sliding his sunglasses into the neck of his shirt.
“No,” Gabe growled. “We don’t.”
Now Max, his beloved brother, his best friend, stretched his arms over his head and laughed. “Never seen you have so much trouble, Gabe.”
“I am so glad that my whole family is getting such pleasure out of this. Need I remind you that if this doesn’t work, we’re all homeless. You should show a little concern about what’s going on.”
“It’s just a building,” Max said.
Gabe couldn’t agree less, but he kept his mouth shut. Going toe to toe with his brother, while satisfying on so many levels, wouldn’t get him a chef.
“I’m going to go make us some lunch.” Patrick stood and Max groaned. “Keep complaining and you can do it,” he said over his shoulder and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Cheese sandwiches. Again,” Max groused.
“It’s better than what we had, trust me.”
“What happened?”
“Ah, she fed us terrible food and then said I was crazy for trying to build an inn in the middle of nowhere and get a chef to come out here for little pay in a half-finished kitchen. Basically, what all the chefs have said to me.”
Gabe paused, then gathered the courage to ask the question that had been keeping him up nights.
“Do you think they’re right? Is it nuts to expect a high-caliber chef to come way out here and put their career on the line and their life on hold to see if this place takes off?”
Max tipped his head back and howled, the sound reverberating through the room, echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “Brother, I’ve been telling you this was nuts for over a year. Don’t tell me you’re starting to agree now!”
Gabe smiled. He was discouraged, sure. Tired as all hell, without a doubt. Frustrated and getting close to psychotic about his chefless state, absolutely. But his Riverview Inn was going to be a success.
He’d work himself into the hospital, into his grave to make sure of it.
He had been dreaming of this inn for ten years.
“It’s not like I’ve got no credentials.” He scowled, hating that Melissa had gotten under his skin and that he still felt the need to justify his dream. “I worked my way up to manager in the restaurant in Albany. And I owned one of the top ten restaurants in New York City for five years. I’ve had reporters and writers calling me for months wanting to do interviews. The restaurant reviewer for Bon Appetit wanted to come out and see the property before we even got started.”
“All the more reason to get yourself a great chef.”
“Who?” He rubbed his hands over his face.
“Call Alice,” Max said matter-of-factly, as though Alice was on speed dial or something.
Gabe’s heart chugged and sputtered.
He couldn’t breathe for a minute. It’d been so long since someone had said her name out loud. Alice.
“Who?” he asked through a dry throat. Gabe knew, of course. How many Alices could one guy know? But, surely his brother, his best friend, had not pulled Alice from the past and suggested she was the solution to his problems.
“Don’t be stupid.” Max slapped him on the back. “The whole idea of this place started with her—”
“No, it didn’t.” Gabe felt compelled to resist the whole suggestion. Alice had never, ever been the solution to a problem. She was the genesis of trouble, the spring from which any disaster in his life emerged.
Max shook his head and Gabe noticed the silver in his brother’s temples had spread to pepper his whole head and sprouted in his dark beard. This place was aging them both. “We open in a month and you want to act like a five-year-old?” Max asked.
“No, of course not. But my ex-wife isn’t going to help things here.”
“She’s an amazing chef.” Max licked his lips. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve woken up in a cold sweat thinking of that duck thing she made with the cherries.”
Gabe worried at the cut along his thumb with his other thumb and tried not to remember all the times in the past five years he’d woken in a cold sweat thinking of Alice.
“Gabe.” Max laid a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “Be smart.”
“Last I heard she was a superstar,” Gabe said. He tried to relax the muscles of his back, his arms that had gone tight at the mention of Alice. He tried to calm his heart. “She wouldn’t be interested.”
“When was the last you heard?”
It’s not as though she’d stayed in touch after that first year when they’d divvied up all the things they’d gathered and collected—the antiques from upstate, their kitchen, their friends. “About four years ago.”
“Well, maybe she’ll know of someone. She can at least point you in the right direction.”
Gabe groaned. “I hate it when you’re right,” he muttered.
“Well, I’d think you’d be used to it by now.” Max laughed. “I think I’ll skip lunch and get back to work.” He grabbed his tool belt. “The gazebo should be done by tomorrow.”
“What’s the status on the cottages?” Gabe asked.
“You’ll have to ask Dad.” Max shrugged his broad shoulders and cinched the tool belt around his waist, over his faded and torn jeans. “As far as I know he just had some roofing and a little electrical to finish on the last one.”
Gabe’s affection and gratitude toward his brother and dad caught him right in the throat. The Riverview Inn with its cottages, stone-and-beam lodge and gazebo and walking trails and gardens had been his dream, the goal of his entire working life. But he never, ever would have been able to accomplish it without his family.
“Max, I know I don’t say it enough, but thank you. I—”
Max predictably held up a hand. “You can thank me by providing me with some decent chow. It’s not too much to ask.”
He took his sunglasses from the neck of his fleece and slid them on, looking dangerous, like the cop he’d been and not at all like the brother Gabe knew.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Max said, poised to leave. “Sheriff Ginley has got two more kids.”
“Can either of them cook?”
Max shrugged. “I think one of them got fired from McDonald’s.”
“Great, he can be our chef.”
“I don’t think Sheriff Ginley would smile upon a juvenile delinquent with such easy access to knives.”
The after-school work program for kids who got in trouble in Athens, the small town north of the inn, had been Max’s idea, but Gabe had to admit, the labor was handy, and he hoped they were doing some good for the kids. “They can help you with the grounds.”
“That’s what I figured.” Max smiled wickedly and left, his heavy-booted footsteps thudding through the nearly empty room.
Gabe sighed and let his head fall back. He stared up at the elaborate cedar joists in the ceiling, imagined them with the delicate white Christmas lights he planned on winding around them.
The ceiling would look like the night sky dotted with stars.
It had been one of Alice’s ideas.
He and Alice used to talk about opening a place out of the city. A place on a bluff. He’d talked about cottages and fireplaces and she’d talked about organic ingredients and local produce. They’d been a team then, she the chef, he the consummate host, producer and manager. He’d felt invincible in those early days with Alice by his side.
But then the problems came and Alice got more and more distant, more and more sad with every trip to the doctor, every failed effort that ended in blood and tears and—Well, he’d never felt so helpless in his life.
“Lunch, boys!” Dad called from the kitchen the way he had since their mom walked out on them more than thirty years ago.
Gabe smiled and stood.
Nothing to do but eat a cheese sandwich and get to work. His dream wasn’t going to build itself.
THE HANGOVER POUNDED behind Alice’s eyes. Her fingers shook, so she set down the knife before she diced up her finger along with the tomatoes.
“I’m taking a break,” she told Trudy, who worked across from her at the long stainless steel prep table
Trudy’s black eyes were concerned. “That’s your second break since you’ve been here and it’s only three.”
“Smoker’s rights,” Alice croaked and grabbed a mug from the drying rack by the industrial washer and filled it with the swill Johnny O’s called coffee.
“You don’t smoke,” Trudy pointed out, trying to be helpful and failing miserably. “If Darnell comes back here, what am I supposed to tell him?”
“That he can fire me.” Alice slid her sunglasses from her coat hanging by the door and used her hips to push out into the bright afternoon.
Even with her dark glasses on, the sunshine felt like razor wire against her eyeballs, so after she collapsed onto the bench that had been set up by the Dumpsters for staff, she just shut her eyes against the sun.
The hangover, the sleeplessness, this mindless menial job that paid her part of the mortgage, it all weighed her down like sandbags attached to her neck.
Tonight no drinking, she swore.
She couldn’t change the fact that she’d fallen from chef and owner of Zinnia’s to head line chef at one of the three Johnny O’s franchises in Albany. That damage was already done and she’d come to grips with it.
But she could control the drinking.
A small voice reminded her that she made that promise almost every night.
Sometimes she wanted to punch the small voice, but instead she breathed deep of the slightly putrid air and tried to get Zen about the whole situation. She took a sip of her coffee, and listened to the sound of traffic.
The parking lot was pretty empty, but soon the hungry folks of Albany would be getting off work and looking for a sunny patio and drink specials and a lot of them would head to Johnny O’s. The kitchen would be loud and on fire for about eight hours and in those eight hours, while arranging plates of pasta and firebaked pizzas and grilling steaks and fish specials, she would forget all the reasons she had to drink.
Maybe she’d help the cleaning staff tonight. Work herself into a good exhaustion so she wouldn’t need the red wine to relax.
She tilted her face up to the sun and stretched out her feet, pleased with her plan.
A black truck, mud splattered and beat-up, pulled in to the lot and parked directly across from her. She thought about heading back inside, or at least opening the door and yelling to warn Trudy customers were arriving and the kitchen was on demand. But Trudy had been in the business as long as she had and could handle cooking for a truckload of guys.
But only one guy got out.
One guy, holding a droopy bouquet of yellow roses.
One guy, whose slow amble toward her was painfully, heartbreakingly familiar.
Coffee sloshed onto her pants, so she set the cup down on the bench and clenched her suddenly shaking hands together.
Spots swam in front of her eyes and her head felt light and full, like a balloon about to pop.
The man was tall and lean, so handsome still it made her heart hurt.
He stopped right in front of her and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, displacing his dark blond hair. The sun was behind him and he seemed so big. She used to love his size, love how it made her feel small and safe. He’d wrap those strong arms around her and she felt protected from the world, from herself.
He smiled like a man who knew all the tastiest things about her.
That smile was his trademark. He could disarm an angry patron at four feet with the strength of his charming smile. He could woo frigid reviewers, disgruntled suppliers…his ex-wife.
“Hello, Alice.” He held out the roses but she couldn’t get her hands to lift and take them.
She left her shades on, so shattered by Gabe’s sudden appearance in front of her, as if the past five years hadn’t happened.
“Gabe.” Her voice croaked again and she nearly cringed.
He took a deep breath, in through his nose, no doubt hoping for a bit more welcome from her, some reaction other than the stoic front that was all she had these days.
His hand holding the roses fell back to his side.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She sounded accusatory and mean, like a stranger who had never known him at all.
And she felt that way. It was why, in part, the marriage had ended. Despite the late-night talks, the dreams of building a business together, the sex that held them together longer than they should have been, in the end, when things got bad, they really never knew each other at all.
“I could ask you the same thing.” His eyes swept the bench, the back door to Johnny O’s. The Dumpsters.
Suddenly, the reality of her life hammered home like a nail in her coffin. She worked shifts at a chain restaurant and was hungover at three on a Friday afternoon.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she thought bitterly, hating herself with a vehemence she usually saved for her dark drunken hours.
“I work here,” she said, battling her embarrassment with the sharp tilt of her head.
He nodded and watched her, his blue eyes cataloging the differences the five years between them had made. And behind her sunglasses, she did the same.
Gabe Mitchell was still devilishly easy on the eyes.
He’d always had her number. One sideways look from him, one tiny grin and she’d trip over her hormones to get into his arms. There was just something about the man and, she surmised after taking in his faded jeans and the black T-shirt with the rip at the collar, the work boots and his general allaround sexiness, there still was something about him.
But, she reminded herself, underneath that lovely candy coating beat one cold, cold heart. She’d learned it the hard way, and she still hadn’t recovered from the frost burn her five-year marriage had given her.
Call it fear of commitment, call it intimacy issues, whatever it was, Gabe had it bad. And watching him walk away from her and their marriage had nearly killed her.
