On the Steamy Side

by Louisa Edwards

  He got her laughing mouth under his and kissed her hard enough and long enough that by the time they were done, every cook in the kitchen was whistling and stomping, catcalls filling the air like a standing ovation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Lilah closed the door to Tucker’s room and hurried back to the gleaming kitchen, where Devon was uncorking a bottle of wine.

  He looked up at her with an easy smile. “He asleep?”

  The chardonnay was pale gold and pretty in the fragile wine glass. “Before his head hit the pillow. Poor boy, we kept him out late tonight.”

  They’d stayed until service was over so Devon could talk to the cooks and servers about his amazing new plan, and now it felt good to be home.

  Her heart was so full right now, Lilah was sure everything she felt must be spilling out of her eyes, her pores, the ends of her fingers and toes.

  She was awash in love. And it was dangerously tempting to let the whole world know it.

  Lilah took a sip of wine to keep her mouth occupied. She was afraid she’d start babbling her feelings any second.

  “Hey, you didn’t wait for the toast,” Devon said, smiling.

  Lilah swallowed quickly. “Sorry! Oh, hey, that stuff’s really good. But sorry! What do you want to toast to?”

  Looking amused, Devon held out his glass and said, “How about to the future?”

  “To good food, good friends, and good weather,” Lilah said. “That’s my Uncle Roy’s favorite.”

  “Then it’s good enough for me,” Devon replied, touching his glass to hers. The melodic chime that rang out made Lilah think their glasses, thin and delicate as they were, were actually crystal. She immediately shifted her fingers to hold the stem more gingerly.

  The wine tasted even better now, probably because she wasn’t gulping it down. It had a citrusy bite that shocked Lilah’s tongue before it mellowed into a soft, peachy after-taste.

  Shoot. She might end up gulping the rest of it yet.

  “I don’t think the weather will be an issue,” Devon mused. “At least, I don’t think there’s a chance it’ll be anything other than muggy and scorching hot. August isn’t New York’s best month. But the other two parts of the toast—they could give me some trouble.”

  “Good food and good friends? I hope not.”

  There was a wry twist to Devon’s mouth. “I haven’t exactly been Mr. Popular with the Market staff.”

  “You’ve got me,” she said, and her heart started pounding. “As a friend, I mean. Well, as more than a friend, but … well … you know what I mean.”

  Slow, lazy cat smile from Devon.

  “And the food,” Lilah babbled. “That’s no problem, I mean, I’m sure you’ve got tons of dishes you’re famous for at those restaurants of yours. Cherry-pick a few of those and you’ll be ready before you know it!”

  Devon sank down onto one of the bench seats in his breakfast nook. “No. I don’t want to do something I’ve done a million times before. I want to prove—to myself,” he emphasized, “that my palate’s not gone. I can still come up with a great menu.”

  Best to be delicate about this. “How, exactly, do you mean to go about it?” she asked.

  Devon gave her a look that said he knew she was trying to handle him.

  “I think we’ll start with a blind taste test.” He set his glass on the table and cracked his knuckles like a man about to embark on a difficult task. His eyes, though, were shining with the challenge, which was such a beautiful change from the agonized loss that had filled his whole body earlier. Lilah was so caught up in enjoying the difference that she almost missed what he’d said.

  “Wait. A blind taste test?”

  “Oh, yeah. My brigade and I, back when I was first starting out in the restaurant business, we used to play this game all the time after service.”

  Devon hopped up from the table and started rooting around in one of the drawers until he pulled out a black linen napkin with a triumphant grin.

  “We tie this on, like so.” He mimed covering his eyes with the cloth. “And you put out a variety of different foods for me to taste. You time me, see how many I get right in one minute. I used to be able to do fifteen.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I valued accuracy over speed; it was always fifteen out of fifteen correct. And it’s harder than you think. You don’t realize how much you rely on your sight to give you information about what you’re tasting until it’s taken away. Then it’s all about your palate. Nothing else.”

  Lilah licked her lips. It was probably stupid, but she was nervous for him. Devon was nothing if not mercurial; he was so energized and positive right now, she’d hate to see him fail and tumble back into the doldrums.

  “Come on, Lilah Jane,” he coaxed, as if sensing her reluctance. “I can do this, I know I can. I need to get back to basics. Help me wake my taste buds up.”

  “Can you see anything?”

  Devon felt a shift in the air in front of his face, as if Lilah were waving her hand before his blindfolded eyes. He shook his head. “It’s black as night under here.”

  “Okay. Boy, you’ve sure got some crazy stuff in this kitchen. Even with both eyes open, I’m not sure what some of it is or how the heck you’d cook it.”

  Devon could hear her moving around the kitchen, gathering things from the fridge, the pantry. At least one item required chopping; another, mixing. She spent some time at the stove, made multiple trips back and forth across the kitchen. It was the auditory equivalent of spinning a kid in a circle before a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.

  Except this wasn’t child’s play to Devon. As the knotted tension in his neck and the clammy palms of his hands could attest, this was deadly serious.

  If he couldn’t do this taste test anymore, if he couldn’t recognize the flavors Lilah put in front of him, he might as well pack it in right now. He’d do the fundraiser with old, well-tested recipes, and that would be it. He’d retire.

  Unwilling to confront the terrifying question of what he’d do after he retired, Devon shifted on the bench, making the leather creak loudly. He rubbed his hands dry on his pants and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth.

  He’d had plain crackers and a glass of water to bring his palate back to neutral after the wine. He was as ready as he’d ever be.

  Lilah kept his jitters from escalating by placing something on the table in front of him with a quiet clack.

  “Here we go,” she said, and guided his hand to the rim of what Devon recognized as one of his glass nesting bowls.

  He breathed out through his nose and dipped his fingers into the bowl. The roughly diced contents were slightly wet and cool to the touch. Vegetable, his mind immediately supplied.

  Devon popped a couple pieces into his mouth and crunched down, releasing a sharp, almost licorice flavor.

  With a burst of relief, Devon recognized it. “Raw fresh fennel root,” he said.

  “Right!” Lilah sounded so thrilled for him, Devon had to grin.

  “Next,” he reminded her. “Clock’s ticking.”

  “Shoot, okay, sorry. Here you go.”

  This time his hand found the chill, matte edges of one of his small French stoneware plates. He knocked his fingers against a mound of tiny spheres that scattered and rol ed when he touched them.

  He captured a few and brought them to his lips. They were smooth and very fragrant, the scent herbal and lemony. The taste was the same as the smell, only sharper, the little balls dry and almost powdery against his tongue.

  Devon dabbed up a few more and tasted again, frowning. Something about it reminded him of traveling through India. “Dried coriander seed?”

  “Right again! This is fun. I can see why you and your cooks liked doing it. Okay, try this.”

  The next few items went quickly; he easily identified Hawaiian acacia honey, coconut milk, chopped hard-boiled egg, pomegranate juice, smoked Scottish salmon, tamarind paste, and minced chives. He wasted
precious seconds on a spicy-sweet powder that smelled like Christmas—allspice? Ground cloves? Grated nutmeg?—and eventually got it right with ground mace.

  “Sneaky,” he told Lilah. “I’m impressed.” He was—she’d managed to put together a great test with widely varied textures and flavor profiles. She hadn’t taken it easy on him. Devon loved that about her.

  “I can’t believe you got that last one.” She sounded faintly grumpy. “I thought I’d stumped you for sure.”

  “Mace is tough,” Devon agreed. “It’s actually the lacy shell covering the nutmeg seed, dried and finely ground. Extremely similar tastes, obviously—mace is a tiny bit more delicate.”

  Lilah made a “hmph” sound. “There’s not a thing wrong with your taste buds, Devon. What have you been playing at over in that Market kitchen?”

  Devon shrugged, the growing sense of frustration and confusion a nearly physical weight on his shoulders. “Hell if I know. My menu should be working; obviously my palate isn’t dead.”

  It all boiled over in an instant, like scalded milk frothing out of a hot pan. The self-doubt, the humiliation, the knowledge he was letting his friend down—Devon banged his open hand down on the breakfast table, rattling the discarded tasting bowls.

  “Damn it,” he snarled. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

  For a long moment, the only sound in the kitchen was Devon’s harsh breathing. Lilah was so quiet, Devon wondered if he’d finally managed to scare her off, but then she said, “You’ve got about fifteen seconds left on the clock. You want another taste?”

  Devon swallowed the bitter, acrid fear and cleared his throat. “Hit me.”

  The last item was warm; it must have been one of the things Lilah made a trip to the stove for. The smell tickled his brain, almost familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

  “Need a fork for this one,” she said. “Open up.”

  He opened his mouth and let her feed him. The taste burst over his tongue, smoky, salty, mysterious—

  Devon chewed quickly and opened his mouth for seconds.

  The second bite was even more delicious. It had a firm give when he bit into it, and there was enough liquid and enough of a leafy green texture to remind him of sautéed spinach, but it was nothing so simple as that.

  He scowled; it was next to impossible to parse individual ingredients when they married together so well. But he thought he read bacon in the meatiness of the smoke flavor and he was almost sure he tasted the savory caramel of slow-cooked diced onion and the subtle heat of red pepper flakes. And then there was a bright tang of something acidic that brought the whole thing together.

  “Oh, my God,” he finally said, the last piece of the puzzle jigsawing into place. “I know what this is.”

  The timer dinged and Devon tore off the blindfold to stare down at the bowl of braised collard greens on the table in front of him.

  “You tricky little witch,” he said, admiration clear in his voice. “I didn’t even know you brought that stuff home.”

  “When you go to the trouble of cooking up a mess of greens, you don’t leave them sitting around a kitchen full of hungry cooks overnight. I wanted to have some left for family meal tomorrow!”

  “I can understand your concern,” Devon said, dipping the fork back into the dark green mound. “This stuff is addictive. Oh, my God.”

  “All right,” Lilah laughed. “Enough with the commandment-breaking. You keep taking the Lord’s name in vain, I’m going to have to stand across the room in case He decides to smite you.”

  “No,” Devon said, going back to the bowl for more of the warm, comforting, complex braise. Every bite filled him with a kind of cozy happiness he couldn’t recall ever experiencing before. Or at least, not in too many years to count. He felt dazed with contentment. Blinking down at the bowl, Devon was shocked to see how much of the greens he’d put away.

  “I mean, it’s not a curse or anything—I’m really … this is unbelievable. What did you put in this stuff?”

  No doubt responding to the helpless bewilderment in his voice, Lilah raised both brows in indignant concern. “Nothing bad! It’s my Aunt Bertie’s recipe. Well, really, it’s my grandmother’s, or maybe her mother’s. It’s been passed down in my family for a long time. And I come from a very old Virginia family! Which might not be a big deal to you, but let me tell you, it’s a big deal back home.”

  “Christ.” He started laughing, rusty and hoarse enough to be just around the corner from tears.

  Snatching up his bowl, Lilah said, “Hush that laughing. You’re the most aggravating man, I swear. Why did you eat it all if you hated it so much?”

  Devon sat back. He met her eyes, allowing all of the weird, vulnerable emotion to be visible on his face.

  “No. Lilah Jane. I loved it. I think it might be the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

  She gazed at him, then down at the empty bowl in her hand, then back again, her, strawberry pink mouth curving in a slow smile. “When I first moved up here, I saw signs for restaurants that served something called ‘soul food.’ Grant explained that what y’all call ‘soul food’ is what I always thought of as regular home-cooking: fried chicken, cornbread, barbecued ribs, pecan pie.” She tilted the bowl a little. “Collard greens. I never heard it called ‘soul food’ down South; to me, it was just the way food always was. But up here, so far from where it originated, I think the name works pretty well.”

  Still feeling sleepy and dim from the aftereffects of a good food coma, Devon shook his head. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, sugar,” Lilah said, setting down the bowl and sliding the table back so she could crawl into Devon’s lap. She straddled his thighs and crossed her arms behind his neck, her pretty, round-cheeked face mere inches from his.

  Devon moved by instinct to clasp her hips in his palms and hold her steady, a warm, exciting weight against him.

  “Don’t you get it?” Her voice was soft but intense with joy. “Your food hasn’t been missing taste. It’s been missing that something extra, that indefinable oomph, the secret ingredient that makes those collards so yummy. We didn’t need to wake up your taste buds. We had to wake up your soul.”

  The truth of it resonated down to the marrow of Devon’s bones. And when Lilah leaned forward and gave him her mouth, he felt the kiss like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, chasing away all the shadows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Devon Sparks—the tosser so egregious that the rest of the tossers wouldn’t have him at their New Year’s Eve party—had gone potty. Screwy. Off his trolley. ’Round the twist.

  Abso-bloody-lutely mad.

  An eight-course meal for more than a hundred guests. In less than a week now.

  Not nearly enough time to plan, and when it bombed, which it certainly would, Market’s reputation would go down the drain along with Devon’s. It was a disaster in the making, but Frankie couldn’t get anyone else to see it.

  He felt like that bird who was cursed to know the future but unable to get a single bloody person to listen to her. Cassandra something. Whatever became of her? Probably she was killed in some gruesome manner. Those ancients always seemed to be killing each other off in the most creatively nasty ways.

  No use musing on Greek women who came to a sticky end, he told himself. Things are going to be sticky around here, soon enough.

  Worse than the Tosser’s mental breakdown was the fact that it seemed to be catching. When Devon first sprang the news on the crew two days ago, after Friday night’s service, Frankie felt himself blanch in horror—but the rest of the crew nodded like it was the best idea since lace-up leather pants.

  Even Grant, who could usually be counted on to inject a dollop of gloom and doom into the proceedings, just shrugged his shoulders and gave a fatalistic “At least it’s for a good cause.”

  Frankie snorted. “Right. Your Lolly got sacked by her school when they ran out of money for her drama program—you see no connection betwe
en that and Devon’s choice of charities? He’s only trying to get into her knickers!”

  Grant shrugged. Infuriating.

  “Come on, mate,” Frankie complained. “Used to be you were always first in line to slag off the Tosser. Fuck me, you practically arm-wrestled Adam and me into leaving Appetite.”

  “I’m trying to give Devon the benefit of the doubt,” Grant said, but he couldn’t look Frankie in the eye. Something off, there.

  Frankie didn’t have time to puzzle out Grant’s drama, though. Not when he was consumed by the need to suss out exactly what form of insanity Devon Sparks exhibited.

  And speaking of exhibitionism, that kiss! In front of everyone, the kidlet included. Full-on, sweep-heroff-her-feet movie kiss, it was. No one could accuse the Tosser of subtlety.

  Jess said Frankie was overreacting. Actually, Jess called him a paranoid, grudge-tastic cynic. Frankie grinned, thinking of it.

  The grin faded, though, as his wayward thoughts moved on to the rest of that conversation, which consisted mainly of yet another attempt by Jess to bring up the subject of how things were going to change when he started NYU in a few weeks, followed by yet another artful dodge by Frankie.

  He didn’t want to think about the future he could feel breathing down the back of his neck like a bouncer at a posh club, just waiting for one false move to throw Frankie out on his arse.

  Glowering down at his beloved grill, Frankie rubbed a thumb over the blackened edge of the seasoned cast-iron slats.

  The future was coming, whether he liked it or not, he brooded. Did they have to talk it to death before it ever happened? Like living through it twice, that was.

  He expected it would be bad enough just the once.

  Loud footsteps banged up the back staircase. “No, the menu’s not ready yet! Tell them it’s a surprise. Spin it! That’s your damned job!”

  Frankie jerked around to see Devon stab viciously at the “off ” button on his cell.

  “I miss the good old days when you could crash the receiver into the cradle when you wanted to hang up on someone obnoxious,” Frankie said.