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Her laughter sounded like ice breaking. “Really? And here I thought you finally wanted to sit down and talk—” She pretended to be surprised when he stood.
“This isn’t going to work.” He slammed the serrated knife onto the small cutting board. “Coming here was a mistake.” He grabbed his keys and headed for the front door.
“Ah, the infamous Gabe Mitchell cold shoulder as he heads for the door. How I have missed that.” Her sarcasm raked him and suddenly he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
He put his hand on the doorknob and at the same time, she tentatively touched his elbow and a spark of electricity shot up his arm.
“No. Stop. Please, Gabe.” Her tone held a certain honesty that he couldn’t walk away from. He could walk away from her anger and sarcasm, her lies and evasions. But when she was vulnerable—he just couldn’t walk away.
He stopped, his shoulders hunched as if to protect himself. He noticed and immediately straightened.
“I’m—” He could hear her swallow around the words. “I’m sorry. I…forget I said anything.”
He weighed the cost of turning around. Of sitting back at that kitchen table, the one from her grandmother.
He needed a chef and she was the best.
He turned and looked right into her liquid black eyes. “No more talk about the marriage or the miscarriages.” He shook his head. “It’s counterproductive. For both of us.”
She huffed a little laugh and licked her lips. “Okay. You’re right.”
He sat down in the midst of the awkward silence that breathed between them, but he was satisfied that the past wouldn’t leap out at him anymore, ambushing his plans for the inn.
“You want something to drink?” she asked, heading for the cabinet above the fridge. She stood on tiptoe and pulled down a bottle of red wine.
And, despite himself, he watched her move. Her pale skin glowed in the half light. She’d lost some of the lush curvy weight she’d carried in happier days. Her arms were muscled from the hard work of running a kitchen, but the rest of her was a whipcord.
She looked as if she’d missed too many meals. She looked tough.
“I thought you might be hungry,” he said. She hadn’t even glanced at the stove even though he knew she could smell the tomato soup.
“I ate at work,” she said and he didn’t force the issue. He’d bet the inn she was lying.
“Wine?” she asked, holding up a bottle.
“I’d love some.” He forced himself to be warm to her, cordial. Due to years of practice, he could slip into gracious without batting an eye. It was a suit he donned when he needed it. “I’ve got Oreos.”
That made her smile, and the tension in the room cracked and he could breathe again.
“I met your roommate,” Gabe said, watching her uncork the bottle like a professional. “Nice guy.”
He tried to steer the conversation toward her situation, remind them both, no matter how unsavory, they needed each other.
“He’s clean and pays the rent on time.”
“Sounds like the proper arrangement. How was work?”
“Why don’t we just cut to the chase here, Gabe.”
She popped the cork, poured a perfect four ounces in each glass, grabbed a cookie from the package on the table, then retreated across the kitchen. She hoisted herself onto the counter, sitting in the shadows. He could only see the gleam of her skin, the shine of her eyes and her shaking hands as she lifted her glass to her mouth and drank like a woman in need.
Again, his gut told him to get out of that kitchen, away from the quicksand of Alice’s pain.
“Go ahead, Gabe,” she said. “Give me your pitch.”
He rubbed his face, wondering how he’d ended up here, of all places.
“Having second thoughts?” she asked, her voice a sarcastic coo from the darkness by the stove. “Wondering if your ex-wife might be drinking a bit too much? Thinking maybe she’s just a little too much trouble?”
“Yep,” he told her point-blank. She poured herself another glass, not even trying to assuage his fears.
“Well, you had to be pretty damn desperate to come find me. So unless things have changed since this afternoon, you’re still pretty damn desperate, right?”
He nodded.
“Let me tell you, drunk or not, I’m still the best chef you know. So, give me your pitch.”
“I can’t ask you to do this if you’re…not stable.”
“I’m plenty stable, Gabe. I just drink too much after work. I drink too much so I can live in this house and not go crazy.”
He understood that all too well, but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t jeopardize the Riverview Inn with a bad decision, and Alice could be a very bad decision.
“But Zinnia? What happened there?”
“I didn’t realize I was applying for a job. You came to me.”
“Yeah, I came to you in a parking lot at Johnny O’s. You’re the best chef I know, but something’s happened to you and I think I need to know before I make you an offer.”
“I’ll worry about me, you worry about your inn.” She stared unflinchingly into his eyes and he knew from years of hard experience that he wouldn’t get any more from her.
“I could leave,” he said, a warning he knew he really couldn’t follow through on.
“You have before,” she said. “But I think you’re too desperate to walk out that door and—” her smile was wan “—I’m too desperate to let you. Tell me what the job is.”
Honesty again, when he’d least expected it, and as usual when she was real with him, he couldn’t refuse.
“The position is executive chef at Riverview Inn. Opening day is May 1.”
She choked on her Oreo. “That’s a month away. Cutting it close, don’t you think?”
“No one knows that better than me right now.” He smiled ruefully. “As bad as that sounds it’s actually worse. I have the Crimpson wedding in June and—”
“Crimpson? Crimpson frozen foods?” she asked and he nodded. “Well, that’s quite a feather in your cap.”
“Right, so it’s pretty important that the event be flawless.”
“Two months?” she asked. She leaned over the stove and waved the scent of the soup up to her nose. “Opening day in four weeks and a wedding in eight?”
“After the event you can walk away,” he told her. “And I imagine it would be best if you did.”
She dipped her pinkie in the red liquid and touched it to her tongue. “I imagine it would, too.” She hopped down from the counter and opened the cupboard to the left of the gas stove. She sprinkled the soup with balsamic vinegar and a couple of twists from the black-pepper grinder and tasted again. She nodded, so he guessed it was better.
“Staff?” she asked.
Gabe didn’t answer and her black eyes pinned him to the wall. “Staff?” she repeated.
“A young guy with some excellent past experience.” Gabe watched the wine in his glass instead of meeting her eyes and hoped that kid who’d been fired from McDonald’s could be trusted around knives and headstrong chefs.
“I’ll need more,” she said.
“You going to take the job?”
“Not so fast,” she said, pulling down the kosher salt from the cupboard and giving the soup a few hefty pinches. “What are you going to pay me?”
He braced himself. “Twenty—”
“Nope.”
“You’ll only be there two months.”
“I won’t be there at all for twenty grand.”
“Okay.” He sighed, having expected that. His budget for a far less experienced chef was forty grand for the year. He was blowing everything on this gamble—he’d have to take money from the landscaping funds to pay another chef when she left. “Thirty. For two months’ work, I won’t give you more.”
She tasted the soup again, nodded definitively and took it off the burner.
“Are you going to have any?” Gabe asked, gesturing to the heavy pot.
“Nope. And I won’t go to your inn for thirty grand, either.”
“Thirty-five and some shares in the place.”
Her eyes burned fever bright. He knew what shares represented. Income. Success. And after two months she wouldn’t have to work for it.
It would help, maybe after they split ways again. Make it so she wouldn’t have to work at a terrible job or share her house with a stranger.
“You know it’s a good deal. I’ve never had a restaurant not turn a profit.”
She rubbed her forehead and he knew he had her. It was just a matter of sealing the deal.
“It would be a fresh start, Al.”
Her nickname warmed the air.
“It hardly seems fresh.” She laughed. “You’re my ex-husband and this is an old plan of ours. It feels like trouble.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” He laughed, too. “But you’d have total run of the kitchen.”
She scoffed. “Right.”
“I’m serious, I’ll be very busy—”
“Getting in my way.” She looked at him for a brief moment and all the problems in their relationship—the fights and clashing egos—for some reason, in this room with the wine, he felt…nostalgic for them. Those nights when he made her so mad she threw things at him, broke plates against the floor and ruined meals with her temper. The long days when he wouldn’t talk to her, giving her a silent treatment so cold and deep that the only way to thaw both of them…
She cleared her throat, seeming uncomfortable, as if she’d been thinking the same thing. “I’ll do it.”
Gabe felt both jubilant and wary. Is this the right thing? Am I making a deal with the devil? “I’m so glad.”
“But—” she held up a finger “—I’m out of there the second that wedding is over and I run the kitchen. Not you.”
He nodded, stood and held out his hand.
“I’m serious, Gabe. I won’t have you trying to take things over. You hired me to be executive chef—”
“I promise.” He put his hand on his chest and bowed his head slightly. “I absolutely promise to stay out of your way as long as you promise to try to be a team player. My dad and Max—”
“Your dad and Max are there?” she asked, bright joy filtering through the dark clouds on her face.
“They are and they’ll be very glad to see you.”
She smiled and held out her hand. “I can be a team player.”
“And I can stay out of your way.”
They shook on it and Gabe had to wonder who was going to break their promise first.
PATRICK MITCHELL watched his oldest son walk away whistling.
Whistling! And after the bomb Gabe had just laid on them, watching him whistle was akin to watching him hit himself in the head with a ball-peen hammer.
“Alice?” Patrick, incredulous, turned to his youngest son. “Max? Alice was your idea?”
Max ignored him, or pretended to, and poured more eggshell paint in the trays. He practiced being oblivious as though there was a contest.
“Son.” Patrick tried again as Max dipped his roller in the paint and began applying their last coat on the last wall of the kitchen. “I leave you alone with him for ten minutes and this is what you do? Are you trying to ruin this inn?”
“He needed a chef.” Max shrugged, but there was a smile on his lips. “Alice is a chef.”
Patrick nodded. “She is, sure. But she’s also pure trouble for that boy.”
“I thought you liked Alice,” Max said.
“I do. I love her like a daughter but they are trouble for each other and she is the last thing your brother needs.”
“Please.” Max looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but still that devil’s smile was on his lips. If the situation weren’t so dire, Patrick would be happy to see Alice. “They’re grown-ups. They can make it work. At least we’ll eat well while she’s here. I’m about a week away from liver failure after eating your cooking for the past few months.”
Patrick’s mouth dropped open. “Where did I go wrong?” He pretended to be upset, when really these past few months had been the happiest of his life. This teasing was their old shtick. Kept them from ever having to address anything head-on—such as emotion. Such as the past. “I’m supposed to be growing senile on a porch somewhere with grandkids on my knee. Not working manual labor for one son and roommates with the other.”
