“Hey, Dad,” she greeted, idly watching crowds of festivalgoers wander from one vendor to the next.
“Parker, honey,” he responded, “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
Parker loved her dad. But she spent most of her time at home making sure he went to work, making him dinner, generally being kind of a mother to him. All because her own mom had run out on them.
“How’s Vegas?” her dad rasped, his voice sounding like he’d just woken up. It was a bad sign that he was sleeping so late in the morning. She knew from experience that it was usually when the depression crept in. “You put my money on twenty-seven?”
She forced a laugh she didn’t quite feel. “No, not yet,” she told him. “I haven’t really had a chance to gamble yet.” Because on my only free night I gave a former NFL quarterback turned restaurateur a hand job in public was what she didn’t say. Her dad was a football fan, sure, but obviously not that much of one.
“I will before I come home, though,” she promised. “How’s everything up there?”
She thought she heard a sound in the background and then her dad was clearing his throat. “Everything’s good up here,” he assured.
“Is someone there?” she asked, putting a hand on her other ear to block out the music being pumped in from the overhead speakers.
Her dad coughed. “Nope, just me here. Probably hearing the television or something.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Well, just remember to get to work soon and call me if you need anything, okay?”
“Will do,” her dad said. “Miss you, sweetheart. Hope you come back soon.”
“Miss you, too, Dad,” Parker returned, holding back a sigh. Her dad never outright asked for her help, but he had a way of making her feel like she needed to be home. It was why she loved her job so much. Sometimes she just needed space from her dad to be herself instead of the good daughter who took care of her father and didn’t make questionable decisions. Her life on the road involved a lot of decisions the Parker at home wouldn’t make, but ones that kept her sane. Her mom had run out on her, too, something her dad often forgot. Parker wasn’t going to be like her and leave her dad alone, but sometimes she had to admit that she thought about it. Fantasized about being free to do what she wanted.
Parker ended the call to her dad and shoved the phone into her purse, glad that everything was okay at home.
Leaving her spot on the tree, she went in search of Karen, the fiercely competent organizer who’d contacted her about the festival in the first place. When she found her, juggling a tablet and two clipboards, she checked Parker in and led her to the judging tent. Set up with five chairs at a long table covered in white linen, the tent was dark and cool, and Parker couldn’t have been more thankful if someone had also handed her a cold beer.
“Thank you again, Karen,” she said when the woman showed her to her seat, which happened to be next to one of her personal heroes, Michael Barton. He’d been at the forefront of the farm-to-table food scene that was now exploding on a national scale and they’d become close acquaintances over the years. “I really love being a part of these festivals.”
Karen smiled, her brown eyes warm as more judges entered the tent. “No problem, honey. I love the magazine. And Michael recommended you himself, in fact.”
“I appreciate that,” she told Karen. “I’m looking forward to the food. I feel like I should be paying someone for the opportunity instead of the other way around.”
Karen laughed, her eyes drifting over Parker’s shoulder to where Michael was making his way toward them, his pace speeding up when he saw her. But it wasn’t Michael who caught Parker’s attention; it was the man who appeared in the open doorway that had effectively shoved her heart in her throat.
“Fuck,” she whispered under her breath. Of course Hugh would be a judge for this kind of event. He was a local celebrity. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. She should fake an illness and bow out. That was the only option.
Michael’s brow furrowed. “Here I thought you’d be happy to see me, darling,” he pouted, kissing the top of Parker’s hand. It was shocking how little chemistry or attraction there was in the gesture, considering the man who was now checking in with a festival employee could inflame her with a single brush of his finger.
“I am so glad to see you, Michael,” she apologized, the words coming out on top of each other as she gave him an air kiss on the cheek as was their custom. “But I need to use the little girls’ room before we get started. Please excuse me.”
Then she booked it out of the tent, giving Hugh her back before he could have possibly seen her. She kept moving, past Michael’s seat to the other end of the table, nearly tripping in her haste to escape.
She pretended to go to the restroom she didn’t need and then wound her way back to the judge’s tent, peeking inside to see if everyone had been seated yet. Her plan, if it could be called that, was to wait until everyone was in place and then surreptitiously take her seat. With any luck, his chair would be far away and she could completely avoid him. Then she could sneak off afterward and never talk to him again.
She watched as everyone took their seats, Karen standing in the middle of the tent scanning the area for Parker. Her time was nearly up.
Spotting her name card on the table, she bit back an audible curse. The whole bathroom charade had been for naught because on the other side of her empty chair sat Hugh Matteson, looking like an Adonis in his matching baby-blue pants and vest with white shirt and navy tie. There’d be no stroke of luck for her this time. She’d be sitting next to not only the very guy she’d walked out on after a public sexual indiscretion, but the guy who owned the restaurant she’d reviewed only days earlier.
Basically, it was going to be a really bad afternoon. Because while she’d sat beside plenty of people she’d given bad reviews to and not batted an eyelash, she hadn’t almost slept with any of those people. Nor had she lied to them about what she did for a living.
With exaggerated slowness, as if she were going to face her execution squad, she slithered to her seat like the serpent-ish creature she was, nodding to Karen on her way.
She pulled out the folding metal chair beside him, but Hugh didn’t even glance her way. He’d obviously figured out who was sitting beside him, considering the big white placard with her name printed on the front and back sitting on the table. Which meant the anger she could feel pouring off him as tangible as the chair in her hand was not imagined.
Luckily, Michael hopped up to help her get seated before she could even acknowledge Hugh. Small blessings and whatnot.
“Darling,” Michael began, the warmth in his voice reminding her that she wasn’t a completely horrible person. “Where are you staying? Let’s go out after this. It’s been too long since we caught up.”
Crap. If she told him, she was going to have to switch hotels again. A fact that was driven home by the fact that Hugh cleared his throat ever so slightly beside her. The heat of him was radiating outward in waves and she was disturbingly aware of every single bit of him, from his putty-colored suede shoes to the way he’d rolled back the sleeves of his dress shirt to show off the finest forearm to ever grace certainly a food and wine festival, if not the universe itself.
“Let’s definitely catch up,” she told Michael, trying to focus but feeling like she was failing. “And I still need to review Toast and Jam. You know I live for a good lunch spot,” she said, changing the subject from her hotel for obvious reasons.
Michael waved his hand as if dismissing the idea. “I would love it, of course, but it’s very casual and probably not worth the travel time. But my new place will be opening in Chicago by the end of the year, so you will be the first on that, I hope.”
“Oh.” She involuntarily clapped her hands together, her voice a little too squeaky from the shredded nerves of sitting by Hugh with so much unsaid. “Th
at’s so exciting! Chicago has an amazing food scene, but it’s light on that magic you make with vegetables. I didn’t even like artichokes before I had your soufflé and now I sometimes find myself daydreaming about them.”
She could have sworn she heard a snort coming from Hugh’s direction, but Karen took to the microphone to announce that judging would begin and the conversation with Michael was cut short. Karen went down the table introducing each judge, one of whom was a local food critic and another a local famous chef. She and Michael were the outsiders of the group.
When she was finished and Michael was distracted by the judge on the other side of him, Hugh finally spoke.
“You’re a good writer,” he said, his voice deep and only loud enough for her to hear. She could feel his eyes on her but refused to look at him. Could not look at him, in fact, due to crippling mortification the likes of which no mortal person should ever have to experience. “Maybe you should try your hand at fiction, too, since you’re so good at lying.”
“I didn’t lie,” she gritted out of the corner of her mouth so that Michael couldn’t hear.
“You have got to be shitting me. You told me you wrote for a lifestyle magazine. Gastronomic is a food magazine. Food is right there in the damn title, darling.” He bit off the word like an insult, clearly mocking Michael’s earlier familiar endearment.
“Food is part of life,” she threw back, but knew it was lame. Knew all of it was futile. She deserved whatever he gave her, which taking in his tense shoulders and locked jaw was going to be even more unpleasant than she’d anticipated.
He was fully glaring at her now, but she ignored him and kept her gaze straight ahead.
“For all I knew, you could have been dead,” he growled as Karen finished up and the first contestant plates were passed out. “I almost called the police until the hotel told me you’d checked out.”
“I’m sorry for scaring you,” she admitted, her tone low and earnest. “But surely you realize now why I had to leave. It was a conflict of interest.”
His snort was 100 percent real this time. “Yeah, so you could write your shitty review about my restaurant?”
“If anything, my review was more complimentary because of what happened between us,” she said, knowing how idiotic the words were as soon as they left her mouth. What had been her purpose? To curry his favor by insulting his livelihood but giving a backhanded compliment to his sexual prowess? Had the situations been reversed, she would have punched him in the face. “I don’t mean that,” she backpedaled, finally turning to see his face.
It was a mistake. A big one. The revulsion in his eyes was so naked that her breath caught. Running out on him had really hit a nerve with him, she realized, then understood, duh, it was pretty much what his fiancée had done to him. Unfortunately, it was pointless to try to explain to him that she actually resented how loyal a person she was, so instead she would stop being such a whiny baby and simply atone for her behavior.
“Hugh, I really am sorry. I know what I did was shitty,” she entreated, still whispering so that Michael wouldn’t hear. “But I had no idea you would be at the restaurant that night, had no idea you’d talk to me or that we’d have a connection. I tried to end it before we left your restaurant, but you were persuasive and I liked you so I went along with it and by then it was too late to tell you about the article without looking like an asshole. I don’t think either of us expected it to go longer than one night, so I went for it.”
A little anger did clear out of his hazel eyes, but they were still wary and not at all happy. Instead of feeling like an unwanted rodent in a sewer, she’d at least graduated to a well-regarded lab studies rat. She’d take it. Anything to get through the rest of this day. They had over fifty barbecue entries to sample and she’d never had less of an appetite.
Michael must have heard them talking because he craned his neck over the table so he could see both of them.
“Hi there, Hugh,” Michael said. “Congratulations on your restaurant. I’m hearing great things, which isn’t always the case for celebrity places.”
“Thank you,” Hugh said, his voice subdued as he watched Michael with hooded eyes. “I appreciate that.”
“You know, Parker here knows barbecue inside and out,” Michael informed Hugh, unable to read a room, or tent, apparently. “She quite literally wrote the book on it. You should have her check out Blue Smoke.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Oh, she came,” Hugh said, leaning into the double entendre with a pointed look in her direction. “But apparently wasn’t impressed.”
“My review for Blue Smoke came out a couple of days ago,” she informed Michael, whose kind green eyes widened with understanding.
“Ooh,” he finally said, leaning back to mouth the words I’m sorry to her.
She shook her head. It wasn’t his fault the tension between her and Hugh was a living, breathing monster, slobbering its displeasure all over the judging panel.
Suddenly Michael stood up, hastily tucking his scorecard under his arm. “I’m going to go speak to Karen about...” he started. Paused. Then, “Something. See you two in a jiff.”
She watched as Michael took his plate to a seat farther down the table and away from the two of them. She didn’t blame him and would have done the exact same thing.
Instead of sparring with Hugh, she took a bite of the rib Karen had put in front of her. After another bite, she started scoring.
“Your review was wrong,” Hugh grumbled, finally breaking the tense silence. She pushed her rib to the front of the table, where there was an industrial-size garbage can waiting for it.
“Hugh, maybe it was, but I’m entitled to my opinion. It’s my job. And Michael is right—barbecue is my specialty.”
“I’m from Texas. I think I have the upper hand in barbecue,” he challenged, voice snide.
“If you’d bothered to read my bio or book, you’d know that I grew up working in barbecue restaurants. Then I spent an entire year traveling across the country learning barbecue from the most renowned and decorated pit masters. I got my first job as a writer calling out other magazines for not giving barbecue its due, so if I know anything about food, it’s what goes on a grill.”
Hugh’s hazel eyes narrowed, and she looked away again because he was too intense and she was too on edge. She had angered a beast and had no idea what to do. She was from a family who didn’t talk about their feelings, just bottled them up and pretended they didn’t exist. So being on the receiving end of Hugh’s out loud and proud ones was like trying to navigate a map in a foreign language.
“If you know so much then why don’t you open your own restaurant instead of crapping all over everyone else’s hard work?”
“First of all, I did not crap on your hard work. And I like this job because of the travel and the writing. I get to try the best food in the nation. It’s an amazing opportunity. I have no desire to run a restaurant where I’d be burned out and miserable within a year.”
Hugh wasn’t impressed with the answer, but she didn’t care.
One of the contest employees set another plate in front of them and she tasted and rated.
“No one else has given me a bad review,” Hugh finally responded. “I can’t help but think it was retribution for what happened between us. Maybe you were embarrassed or something.”
That got her back up. “What would I have to be embarrassed about? We got each other off in a club. It was probably one of my poorer decisions in terms of possibly getting arrested for public indecency, but I’m not embarrassed by it. We were hot as hell for each other. It happens.”
He laid a hand on the back of her chair, that long arm and tan hair-dusted forearm catching her attention as he leaned in so no one else could possibly hear what he said. “It doesn’t always happen and you know it. We went at each other like animals, you ghosted me, and then st
abbed me in the fucking back. If we weren’t already over, I would drop you so fast your head would spin.”
She could feel his breath on her bare neck, goose bumps lighting up her skin as she sucked in a breath at the insult.
“I didn’t stab you in the back,” she whispered, but it was faint and sounded lame even to her own ears.
“Why did you run?”
“I told you. It was a conflict of interest.”
“It was already a conflict of interest before you ran off. Try again.”
He eased up when someone came by with the fourth sample, but when they left again he leaned in close enough that her ear grew damp under his breath.
“Try again, Parker Jones. I knew your name was familiar. I’ve even read your book, you know? Granted, I revisited it again this week just to make sure it was the same person, but there was your picture right on the jacket.”
“I didn’t lie,” she insisted weakly.
“No, you’re right, I should have put it together just by the amount of food you ordered, but I liked you so I ignored it. Why did you run?”
She desperately tried to think of an answer.
But then he decided to continue. “I’ll tell you why I think you did. It’s because you’re a coward who hides behind her little computer and judges everybody else before anyone judges her. When have you ever had anything you’ve made judged?”
She rolled her eyes. “Every day for two years in culinary school and then every day for three more years in Manhattan working for some of the best chefs in the country. I’ve been judged, Hugh, and I know how to critique food fairly and honestly. If you have a problem with my article, take it up with my boss.”
Turning, she met his eyes, soul-deep irritation replacing her embarrassment. “You know what really bothers me? In fact, it pisses me off. That I had to go through years of grueling training, both physically and mentally, and still have my expertise constantly questioned by restaurateurs who don’t know a damn thing about food. You’re just some ex-jock who thinks he can throw anything together and call it barbecue just because he’s from Texas and has grilled out for Sunday dinner. The rate of failure for celebrity-owned restaurants is incredibly high for one reason: people come initially for the novelty and then they don’t come back because the food is shitty. Maybe people have told you your barbecue is good because they want to kiss your ass, but that’s not really my thing. So maybe you need to check yourself before calling out real professionals.”
Sin City Seduction Page 4