‘Understand you got a complaint, missy,’ the man sneered in a whiny, abrasive voice.
‘I have,’ she nodded, then gestured for Armand to place the cartons in the back of the van for inspection.
As he did so, the butcher ignored him entirely, focusing his piggy little eyes instead on Justine. She felt as though a thousand insects were walking on her skin as the man not only mentally undressed her, but committed unspeakable indignities on her as well.
His attitude changed immediately, however, once she had staved off his leer sufficiently to begin her lengthy dissertation on the lack of quality in his products. His eyes grew hard and angry, his cheeks flushed defensively.
. . and therefore I’ve changed butchers,’ she concluded, meeting his eyes with her own filled with anger and contempt.
‘You just hold on there, missy,’ he raged in an ugly tone. ‘We got a contract and I’m going to hold you to it. You take my meat or I’ll be seeing you in court! Is that clear?’
Justine glared back at him, repulsed both by his manner and his slovenly appearance.
‘I doubt very much if your shop could stand a health department examination,’ she said calmly, ‘and certainly this van could not. I have a friend there whose advice I’ll be seeing on that subject first thing in the morning. But it really isn’t important anyway, from the point of view of any legalities between us, since I’m assured that your ... contract was on a week- to-week basis in any event.’
‘The hell it was,’ he began, but she cut him off.
‘And since I have no intention of ordering another thing from you, I think that about sums it up,’ she said haughtily. ‘If you wish to sue, of course, that’s your privilege.’
The butcher’s face was livid, heavy drinker’s veins flushed with anger and the whisky she could smell on him under the sour odour of his clothing.
‘Listen, you great cow ...’he began, only to cut off the insult abruptly as Armand stepped suggestively closer, his stocky frame alert and his eyes wary.
‘Don’t, Armand; you’d only get your uniform dirty,’ Justine snorted, noticing the immediate retreat in the butcher’s tiny eyes. ‘We wouldn’t want to have to decontaminate you.’
The butcher took the hint; he abandoned the affair and sauntered insolently back to the driver’s seat of his van after slamming the rear doors.
‘I’ll be having words with Miss Calder about this,’ he jeered. ‘And then you’ll see what’s What!’
CHAPTER FOUR
Scalding tears of pure nervousness flooded Justine’s eyes as the butcher’s van squealed out of the driveway. She turned, stumbled, and would have fallen but for Armand catching her in his arms.
There were no sexual overtones to his support as he helped her over the threshold and back into the kitchen area, and she strove to thank him warmly, shaking away the tears as best she could.
Her eyes cleared, he released her immediately, but as Justine looked up, she realised only too quickly just why.
‘Interesting,’ drawled Wyatt Burns in a voice so chilling, so alive with bitter sarcasm that Justine winced at the force of it. ‘I suppose this is some new kind of French provincial cooking,’ he continued, his eyes thrusting Armand away and back to his duties, ‘but let me remind you that this restaurant specialises in English delicacies. And that there are customers waiting.’
‘I ... but ... I ... oh, you don’t understand,’ Justine fumbled clumsily. Armand had prudently followed the orders in Wyatt’s look, but she couldn’t avoid the anger and the bitter accusation he was insinuating.
‘Obviously,’ he sneered. ‘It’s because I’m old, you see, and my eyes play tricks on me.’
‘Well, they obviously do,’ she snapped. ‘If you’d just give me a chance, I could explain.’
‘I shall. And you’d damned well better,’ he snarled. ‘But first, I suggest you attend to your work, which involves ensuring that the customers have the food they’ve ordered in a reasonable time. Or is that too much to ask. Miss Ryan?’
‘No, it is not.’
‘Fine. Then I suggest you get to it,’ he snapped, and turned on his heel to storm away, the swinging door to the restaurant almost smashed from its hinges at his passing.
Justine got through the remainder of the evening somehow, but it was on pure reflex, intuitive knowledge. She didn’t understand Wyatt’s attack, felt sure she could straighten it out quickly and easily, but felt much less confident about having to explain the situation about the butcher.
Also, she had a scheme involving her junior chefs that she wanted desperately to initiate, having promised to do so provided he would approve, and tonight would be her best opportunity before the two- day closing to broach the subject. Hardly an auspicious moment for it, she thought.
Once the last of her own work was done in the kitchen, she left Armand to supervise the final desserts and cleaning up, slipped out of the smock she had taken to wearing instead of the more customary white trousers and blouse, and slipped up the back staircase to her room.
She felt grubby, smelly and genuinely fagged out, and determined that she would take time for a quick shower and change of clothes before obeying Wyatt’s summons to his illustrious presence.
Refreshed, and comfortable but casual in tight-fitting jeans and a T-shirt, she was nonetheless trembling with nervousness when she knocked on his office door and opened it to his gruff command.
She stepped through, then stopped abruptly at finding herself face to face with a slim, elegantly-dressed brunette whose snapping dark eyes scoured over Justine and her casual clothing like an abrasive scrub- brush.
Justine nodded a welcome without waiting for an introduction, but found her nod unreturned as the brunette stared right through her before turning back towards where Wyatt lounged on the window seat.
‘I’ll see you ... later, then, darling,’ the woman drawled, every word a sensual, sexual display that matched the body language she was telegraphing at the same time.
Wyatt didn’t reply, didn’t have to. The look in his eye, Justine thought, would have been quite sufficient. The brunette smiled, first at him and then, scornfully at Justine as she turned and shouldered her way past her.
‘Sit down.’ Wyatt’s voice held no welcome for Justine. ‘Do you want a drink?’
‘I’ll get it,’ she replied, stepping towards the drink cabinet without waiting for his approval. Before she realised he had moved, strong fingers clamped above her elbow and she was steered across to where he had been sitting.
‘Brandy and lemonade, I presume?’ he said with a raised eyebrow. ‘Or would you prefer something ... French, perhaps?’
‘Actually, I’d prefer something with a little less sarcasm in it,’ she retorted, eyes blazing with sudden anger. Who the hell did he think he was ... God? The nerve of the man! He was deliberately setting out to get her goat, and, she realised as she met his eyes defiantly, he’d succeeded and knew it only too well.
‘Well, it’s French brandy, anyway,’ he mused almost to himself, quite ignoring her remark.
His back was turned as he poured out the drink, but to Justine’s eyes he was fairly shaking with laughter. She wished she had something to throw at him, and for an instant actually considered flinging the cushion beside her.
When he finally placed the drink in her fingers, she almost threw that back in his face, but thought better of it immediately. A waste of good drink, she thought, but oh, it would have been satisfying.
Wyatt picked up his own drink and settled comfortably on the other end of the settee, leaning back into the comer of the structure in the casual attitude of a man who knows he is totally in control of the situation.
‘Cheers!’ he said, lifting his glass in salute but showing no facial expression to match.
Justine lifted her own glass in silence. She was too busy sifting through what she intended to say to this arrogant, haughty figure. She took one sip of the drink, then another, but Wyatt made no move to start the co
nversation. He was, she decided, waiting for her. And it’ll be a long wait, she vowed silently.
She had almost finished her glass, sipping slowly under his hooded, watchful gaze and desperately wishing herself somewhere, anywhere else, before he finally broke the silence with a question that exploded out of nowhere.
‘Where the hell do you get off firing the butcher? On whose authority?’
‘On yours,’ she replied simply after taking a moment to rearrange her thoughts.
‘Oh?’ It was question and disagreement in a single word.
‘Yes ... oh,’ she retorted. ‘Or did I misunderstand when you told me to run my kitchen with full authority — and responsibility — for the results?’
‘I said that.’ Not an argument, but not quite the admission she would have liked. Damn the man for his bland, unreadable voice.
‘His meat was unacceptable. I found a better supplier and I fired him. End of story.’ And make what you want of that! she thought.
‘You didn’t think it might be advisable to consult me first?’
‘I didn’t think it was necessary. It might very well have been advisable, but there wasn’t really time,’ she replied.
‘You seemed to have plenty of time for other things.’ The sarcasm was a steady, venomous shroud around those words.
Justine took several slow, deep breaths. When she finally spoke, her voice, she hoped, was as impassive as his own.
‘The man was nasty. I was upset, I stumbled, Armand kept me from falling and helped me inside. That’s what you saw. Whatever you thought you saw, I have no control over,’ she replied slowly.
‘Maybe the man had a right to be nasty.’
‘That man was born nasty! He’s a foul, rancid little man, and what’s more, he was cheating you. I’d stake my reputation on it,’ Justine replied hotly.
‘He was.’ And what the hell is that, she wondered, an agreement, or what?
‘He was?’ she finally queried, head cocked suspiciously to one side.
‘He was, with a lot of help from my chef; make that former chef,’ Wyatt replied grimly. ‘But I’m sorry you fired him.’
‘I don’t understand.’ And that, she mused, was the understatement of the week.
‘Let’s just say I’m pretty sure he had help.’
Armand! That was her first thought, but she rejected it immediately as unfair, and very likely unjust as well. Or was it? Could her second-in-command’s quick about-face have been aimed more at saving his own skin than anything else?
‘And I’ve queered your pitch,’ she replied finally. ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t know. And it was my responsibility to ensure that the quality of meat is ...’
‘Nobody’s arguing about that.’ Brutal, his voice. Cutting and abrupt. But why?
‘Have you got anything else you plan on changing around here?’ he asked abruptly. And the tone said very clearly, ‘You’d better not.’
‘Actually ... yes,’ Justine said cautiously. ‘There’s one thing I’d quite like to try, provided of course you agree. It’s about Monday nights.’
‘We’re closed on Monday nights.’
‘Well, I know that,’ she retorted. Damn the man; did he think her entirely stupid? Gamely, she resolved to continue. ‘We’re closed, which means the staff must either cook their own meals in their quarters, or else go out to dinner. What 1 have in mind is to make Monday nights the sole province of the junior chefs — they have to be back anyway from their days off — and let them cook for the rest of us as a sort of training programme. We would all throw in to cover the costs, except for the one chosen to cook, of course, and it would give each of them an opportunity to really show what they’ve learned.’
‘Which means, I presume, that I also would be expected to partake. What have you been doing, teaching them every mushroom dish you know?’
Justine looked up in frank amazement. Was he trying to be funny? Nothing in his facial expression said so. Nor in his eyes, those fathomless, brooding black eyes that seemed to consume her every time he focused her with his haughty stare.
‘I had thought to let each of them choose for themselves what they’d like to exhibit,’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve got four in various stages of apprenticeship, which means nobody should get hit with the job too often. Are they all willing?’
‘Yes. And there would actually be five, because Possum’s expressed an interest as well,’ said Justine, bracing herself for the explosion.
‘Possum?’ And for the first time, his face cracked from its stolid expression; he fairly dissolved in a burst of laughter. ‘My God!’ he said finally. ‘You expect to feed the entire staff on boiled water ... and probably undercooked at that?’
‘That’s horrid,’ Justine accused, eyes flashing as she leapt to her friend’s defence. During the past week she’d finally — she hoped — got Possum and her tall tales in some kind of perspective, and she liked her more each day.
‘But true!’
‘It is not true, and I don’t know how you can justify saying such a thing,’ Justine snapped in reply. ‘Or do you presume, perhaps, to know my staff’s capabilities better than I do?’
‘My staff, I might point out,’ he said unequivocally. ‘And certainly, my dear Justine, I can presume to know my own sister better than you ever will — I’ve been saddled with her long enough.’
‘Your sister!’ Justine was dumbfounded. It sounded all too much like one of Possum’s elaborate little tales, although even more ridiculous than when Possum had claimed her husband to actually be her father.
Wyatt grinned, a wicked, wolfish, the-better-to-eat- you-with grin that was so close to being a smirk it might well have been. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘With Possum, I’m never sure what to believe,’ Justine admitted. ‘And with a real name like Parthen . . .’ Her voice droned off when she saw the look in his eyes, definitely humorous this time.
‘That,’ he said quite seriously, ‘is what Sebastian calls her. His sweet virgin. Very likely because her real name is Pomona, which is Latin for fertile, which is about the only damned thing dear Possum hasn’t yet managed. When she does, I’d be amazed at anything less than triplets, and I can only hope and pray that Sebastian’s got his Greek taverna totally under control by then so I don’t have to put up with being uncle- cum-babysitter for them all.’
Justine was honestly astounded. It simply didn’t make any sense, and therefore was undoubtedly true.
That, she’d discovered, was the way with Possum. She had already found out that the girl was actually three years older than herself, and that she had been married to Sebastian for the last seven years, almost since he’d first come to Wyatt’s as a head waiter. There had also been a number of other confidences ... but this
Wyatt seemed to be reading her mind. Abruptly, he rose and strode to his desk, stabbing at the intercom. ‘Send Possum up here, please,’ he directed whoever was at the other end.
‘Oh, but ...’ Justine’s objections were overridden.
Wyatt merely pointed his finger at her in a distinct order for silence, then strolled over to refill their glasses. He was sitting across from Justine when a light knock sounded at the door and Possum sauntered in without waiting for his call.
‘You rang, master?’ she queried, dipping in a flourish of curtsey.
‘Why haven’t you told Justine you’re my sister?’ he demanded without preamble.
‘Humph! You surely wouldn’t expect me to admit it?’ she countered haughtily, swinging easily into the role of astonished innocent.
‘And why not? Ignoring, of course, that I keep you and your asinine husband in jobs, give you a place to live, and have probably paid for most of that Greek chophouse with what you steal from my kitchen.’
Possum blithely ignored both the accusation and the tone, which to Justine’s ears sounded menacing in the extreme.
‘You have no sense of humour,’ she retorted, flinging back
her shoulders and tossing her head to one side in a gesture that should have reminded Justine of some movie star or another, but didn’t.
‘Why do I bother?’ Wyatt asked in apparent disgust. ‘Take yourself back to your scullery, wench, before I lose my temper.’
‘Certainly, master.’ Possum repeated her curtsey, this time to Justine as well, and withdrew.
Wyatt shook his head. ‘Sense of humour? How the hell could anybody have a sense of humour with that for a sister? And Sebastian’s at least as bad. I’d run them both off in a minute if he wasn’t so damned talented and she wasn’t my only sister.’
Justine said nothing. She didn’t, in fact, dare to open her mouth lest the laughter she was so desperately trying to throttle break free and fan Wyatt’s anger to even greater fury.
She tried to take a sip of her drink, and almost choked as it met the laughter and tried to change direction in mid-throat. Wyatt’s scowl did nothing to make it easier. Justine wanted desperately to escape before she broke up entirely, but she couldn’t flee without a word, and to speak would be to laugh.
‘It’s allowed, you know.’ Wyatt’s voice now was strangely soft, almost caressing. Then his lip curled into something approaching a grin before he literally shouted at her: ‘Go ahead and laugh, damn it! I would, if I were you.’
Justine barely managed to set down her nearly empty glass before she exploded, her eyes filling with tears as the laughter welled up in her throat, choking off any possibility of a quick return to sanity. She laughed so hard she almost fell off the settee, and through the tears she could see Wyatt striding over to refill their glasses yet again. He wasn’t laughing, she noticed, which somehow made it all seem even more hilarious, but eventually she got things vaguely under control and sat apprehensively facing him as she choked down her final chuckles.
‘I much prefer you laughing to when you’re angry,’ he said then. ‘You have a very open, honest laugh, without vindictiveness.’
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