by Zara Chase
“But what if Chef Ty doesn’t like the idea?” Consuela asked anxiously.
“We don’t have to tell him,” Jodie replied. “He needs to agree to the meal we’ll serve to the judges in his precious restaurant, but he doesn’t need to know about this.”
“He won’t like being excluded,” Hans warned.
“Refer him to me. I volunteer to co-ordinate the project if we all agree to do it.” She grinned at her new friends. “I’m not afraid of the big bad chef.”
Actually, she was. And she was even more afraid of her inappropriate attraction toward him, but she wouldn’t allow that to get in her way. Coordinating preparations for the finale would give her an excuse to connect with him on a one-to-one basis. Jodie had decided she needed to get through that locked door and see what he was hiding in his rooms behind it. It was the only way to get the proof she needed, if indeed any proof existed. And Ty Vaughan was arrogant enough to have kept some, she was absolutely sure of that.
“I’m hungry,” Hans said, stretching his arms above his head. “Chef said to cook for ourselves whenever we felt like it.”
“We should cook for them as well,” Consuela said. “Chef said there were six of them here and four women. It would be a nice gesture to make enough for everyone.”
I definitely love this woman. “Good idea, Consuela.” Jodie jumped to her feet. “Come on, let’s see what’s inside those massive fridges.”
Chapter Three
Ty’s minions reported for prepping duty promptly at ten the following morning. He’d been impressed with the meal they’d knocked together for themselves the previous evening, making enough for everyone. Usually on the night the restaurant was closed, Hadleigh’s residents made their own arrangements to eat, giving Ty a night off. Their gesture meant they got to meet all Ty’s buddies and their partners. That was good since the four ladies would be acting as waitresses for the month while the regular waitstaff were on holiday.
Unsurprisingly, Consuela bonded with them immediately. Even Jodie seemed less frosty when she had a couple of glasses of wine in her. Even so, her attitude was starting to rankle. She had been appointed as coordinator for the finale, a move that surprised Ty. He wasn’t sure she was the best person to handle it, especially when she refused to tell him what they had planned, insisting that it was to be a surprise to everyone except the four of them. It irked him to be excluded, especially since he could probably give them valuable advice without breaking the contest rules. Still, if she was determined to be independent—and Ty was convinced it was her idea to keep him in the dark for some reason—and the others were prepared to risk their chances by going along with her, then it was their dreams that would be dashed, not his.
“Good morning,” Ty said as they trouped into the kitchen, stifling yawns. “Glad to see you all looking so alert. There are changing rooms back there and chef’s white for all of you. Word of advice, it gets very hot in here once we’re going full pelt and the air conditioning struggles, so I would recommend wearing as little as you decently can beneath your uniforms.” He demonstrated by giving them a twirl. “His jacket had gone on directly over his bare chest. He wore denim shorts beneath his chef’s apron and a colorful do-rag kept his hair away from the food. “Right, go get yourselves sorted.”
They came back a short time later. His eyes zeroed in on Jodie, curious to know if she’d followed his advice. Her jacket was buttoned to the neck and he couldn’t tell if she’d shed her bra. Probably not. The jacket was tight and those full tits of hers were straining against the buttons. Definitely not unfettered. Pity.
Just as well.
She saw him focusing on her chest and sent him a defiant scowl. Ty allowed his gaze to linger for a fraction longer, just for the hell of it, watching as her nipples hardened. Her reaction probably bugged the heck out of her, but it pleased Ty to no end to know she wasn’t quite so uptight as she liked to make out. Ms. Norton might have decided she didn’t like him, but her nipples told a different story. Why he should give a fuck what she thought of him, he had yet to decide.
“Okay, grab a coffee and let’s go through the menu you’ve come up with for your special dishes for the contest. We’ll be serving it all month, once I agree to it, and we need to keep a close eye on the cost of ingredients. We’re in business to make a mark with our food, but we can’t do that if we price ourselves out of the market. Oh, and just because the judges don’t officially get to taste your menu until the last week, there’s nothing to stop one or more of them popping in unannounced before then.”
“That’s cheating!” Marcel protested.
“That’s life,” Ty replied. “Welcome to the cut and thrust of the restaurant business.”
They sat around the same table as the previous day and Marcel handed over a neatly typed menu. They’d come up with a clever meze of appetizers, giving a taste of each of their countries. The main course featured braised beef shank bourguignonne with a choice of English duchess potatoes or Spanish paella rice and a selection of German breads. The desserts were a quartet from each country.
“I like the idea of the braised beef,” Ty said, nodding his approval. “Something that can be slow cooked and kept moist is always a good plan. But, just remember, the jus is the key. Get that wrong and you ruin the entire dish.”
He made a few suggestions and alterations, then approved the menu.
“It’s a lot of work, but if we get ourselves organized, we should be able to pull it off. Who’s doing what?”
“Jodie’s our pastry chef,” Marcel said. “Hans will make the bread. Consuela and I will do the appetizers, and we’re all involved with the main.”
Ty focused his gaze on Jodie. “That’s an ambitious selection of desserts. Can you manage them alone?”
“I can make them,” she replied defiantly.
“That isn’t what I asked. You’ll have to pull your weight with the regular restaurant menu as well. It’s a lot to take on.”
When she said nothing. Ty simply shrugged. He’d tried to warn her she was being overly ambitious. Obstinacy didn’t impress him and her entire attitude rankled. Even so, there was something about her—something beyond her physical attributes—that held his interest. Without attempting to be, the guys living at Hadleigh’s had become babe magnets over the years. Ty’s quasi-celebrity chef status—an accolade he hadn’t sought—had increased his popularity. Jodie showed zero interest in him, which Ty found…well, challenging. Not that he planned to do anything about it, but he did wonder what he’d done to piss her off.
“Do you have a list of ingredients that you’ll need?” he asked Marcel.
“Of course.”
It was Hans who passed it over. Ty studied it, crossing off a few items that he already had in stock. “Okay, I’ll get this order put in. Seems like you have a handle on it all.” Ty stood. “Right, let’s get to work.”
For the next three hours he set them to chopping, marinating ingredients, and preparing everything that could be done in advance. As he had warned them to expect, the air conditioning struggled to keep the temperature bearable and more than one brow was in need of constant wiping. He watched Jodie swipe hers with the back of her hand and amused himself with thinking about ways to help her cool down. Except what he had in mind would most likely get her even hotter. Just thinking about it wasn’t doing his own core temperature any favors.
He watched her for a moment, still unable to get a handle on what it was that made him want to self-destruct when he was anywhere near her. She’d made the crème brûlées they’d had the night before. She’d glanced at him when he tasted his, anxious for his approval. It had been the perfect opportunity to fix their rocky start by telling her what she wanted to hear. But some insanity made Ty say that her caramel coating wasn’t hard enough.
It had been goddamned perfect.
The others had protested that the dessert was to die for, but Ty knew it wasn’t their reaction she cared about and that his unfair criticism had ups
et Jodie. It annoyed the hell out of him as well. He was never anything other than brutally honest when it came to his passion for food. Irrationally, he blamed Jodie for making him ultra-critical but that didn’t mean he liked himself for what he’d done to her. Geez, perhaps he needed a vacation. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken one. Not keeping busy gave him too much time to think, and when that happened it was always regrets about Flavia’s untimely death that flooded his brain, filling him with a combination of anger and sadness for what might have been.
“Come on, people,” he said, clapping his hands as he looked at the piles of vegetables still to be chopped. “We’re falling behind. Jodie, those cheesecake bases should have been finished by now and you need to be helping Consuela with that stack of potatoes.”
Instead of barking, “Yes, Chef,” as the others did whenever he told them to do something, Jodie simply glowered at him. Aware that he’d been picking on her all the morning, not always with justification, he figured he deserved to be glowered at and turned away to hide a smile. He loved the way her eyes flashed liquid fire when she was mad at him, the way her chest heaved and her nostrils flared. The sassy sway of her hips as she turned away from him with a look of disdain and crashed pans into the sink with unnecessary force got his motor running, too.
It was a long time since he’d allowed any female to get under his skin the way Jodie Norton had unconsciously managed to do. The only question was, what the hell did he plan to do about his growing awareness of her?
* * * *
Jodie lay on her bed, too tired to sleep. They had a precious two hours off before they had to return to the restaurant for the evening’s trade, and she was dreading it. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand by and let Ty Vaughan pick on her without fighting back. She hadn’t made any more mistakes than anyone else, but it always seemed to be her that caught the sharp end of his tongue.
She’d seen a very different side of him the previous evening when he and his buddies sat down to the meal her group had prepared for them. Four of the six guys were hooked up with females. It was just Ty and Leo Hadleigh who flew solo. That surprised Jodie. All the guys were astonishingly good looking, but Leo was in a league of his own. She imagined he had women clinging to him like marinated stuffed vines. Still, she figured, why settle for one when you can play the field?
Ty was totally laid-back, even when the women teased him mercilessly about having his cooking abilities shown up by his new charges. Astonishingly, he flashed that annoyingly hypnotic smile of his and said they weren’t as bad as he’d feared. This softer side of him made Jodie wonder if she’d somehow gotten it wrong and he wasn’t responsible for Flavia’s murder after all. But who else could it have been? Why had he turned his back on a flourishing business, selling it at a fraction of its worth, if he didn’t have a compelling reason? Besides, there was nothing to say murderers couldn’t be good looking charmers, was there?
She liked the women a lot. Tania, in particular, seemed friendly. She was with Ward, the ski’s school’s chief instructor, and had been at Hadleigh’s the longest. Like Jodie, her body wasn’t exactly skinny but Ross was a hunk and he appeared to love the way she looked. The girls were going to be waitressing because Ty had let his regular servers take the month off. If she could get a moment alone with Tania, perhaps she’d be able to shed some light on Ty’s background, help Jodie decide where to go next with her quest for justice for her friend.
With such thoughts plaguing her mind, she could have sworn she’d only closed her eyes for five minutes maximum before someone pounded on her door.
“Jodie, wake up, we’re running late!” Consuela yelled.
“What the heck…” She blinked sleep from her eyes, squinted at the clock, and swore. They really were in danger of being late! “Just give me a minute.”
She splashed water on her face, pulled her hair into a ponytail, fell into her clothes, and joined Consuela in the corridor.
“Thanks for waking me. Where are the guys?”
“Oh, they went on ahead.”
Jodie just bet they did. People said you shouldn’t stereotype nationalities but she’d had plenty of opportunity to study peoples’ characteristics during her time at the European Union headquarters in Brussels, and the Germans really were…well, Germanic when it came to timekeeping. It would kill Hans to be late, or to be anything other than organized and methodical in his working life. Consuela, on the other hand, would think nothing of turning up half an hour late for an appointment and assume she was more or less on time. Jodie loved the Spanish laissez-faire approach to life—unless she had to pin one of them down to a specific commitment.
“It’s just what the Fuhrer would like,” Jodie groused as she and Consuela scurried along to the restaurant. “Me being late for our first shift so he can really tear me a new one.”
“He’s not so bad.”
Jodie made a sound that was a cross between a sigh and a laugh. “Do you ever see the bad side of anyone?” she asked.
Consuela shrugged. “I try not to but sometimes…my uncle, well, he can be so pig-headed.”
Jodie laughed. “Attagirl?”
“Como?”
“Never mind.”
“The chef is quite cute though, and he likes you.”
“Likes me! He’s been on my case ever since we got here.”
“Ah, love and hate.” Consuela sighed dramatically. “Such a thin dividing line.”
“I don’t see a lot of hate going down between you and Marcel.”
“Ah, he thinks anything not French is inferior.” Consuela’s lovely eyes flared. “I will show him the error of his ways.”
Jodie chuckled, thinking that wasn’t all she was likely to show the charismatic Frenchman. “I’m sure you will.”
Ty was tapping his watch face when Jodie and Consuela burst through the kitchen door, only five minutes late. Consuela apologized, placing the blame on herself, saying she’d overslept.
“We Spaniards do like our siestas, Chef,” she said with a cute little smile.
Jodie said nothing as she took up her place at her station and got down to work. But she was acutely conscious of Ty, moving with athletic grace, seemingly everywhere at once, stirring, tasting, giving his verdict, chivying people along. He never raised his voice, threw tantrums or hurled knives about. Nor did he swear up a storm, like celebrity chefs were supposed to. His voice was low, velvety, controlled, but he had a way of making his displeasure felt that seemed worse than if he’d resorted to the stereotypical behavior she’d expected.
Several times his hip bumped against her as he passed her station. Jodie couldn’t think why. He didn’t seem like the clumsy type, there was plenty of space, and she hadn’t noticed him make physical contact with anyone else. She wanted to tell him to quit it, but that would imply she’d noticed, that it bothered her, or that she gave a damn. Worse, he might guess that shivers of acute awareness spiraled through her at every contact, making her lose concentration—infuriating her because she most definitely didn’t want to feel anything for the guy, other than contempt.
The restaurant was filling up with hungry paying customers, and Jodie, peering through the door, was filled with apprehension. Was she insane, thinking she could satisfy these people’s expectations? She didn’t belong here and hyperventilated, feeling an urgent need to flee.
“Out of things to do, Jodie?”
Damn it, she’d only stopped for a second. She ignored Ty’s taunting voice and returned to her station, calm again, and determined to show him what she was capable of.
“You’ve let that custard curdle,” he said, coming up behind her as quiet and stealthy as a large, predatory cat. He removed the pan from the heat and poured its contents down the sink. “Make it again.”
She wanted to accuse him of bullying her, but in her heart she knew she’d gotten distracted at the vital moment and had let the custard curdle. She could have strained it but she figured Ty wouldn’t accept
compromises in his kitchen. Reluctantly she started again, which meant someone else had to take up the slack on the vegetable section, where she was supposed to be.
Finally getting the custard right, she relieved Hans with a nod of thanks and picked up a paring knife. They’d run out of zucchini and she quickly washed and started chopping additional supplies.
“You’ve left your soufflés in the oven, Jodie.”
“Shit!” Distracted by Ty’s voice, she jabbed the knife at an unfortunate zucchini with particular venom. And missed her target. Argh!”
She dropped the knife and sucked her finger into her mouth to stem the bleeding.
“Get those, someone!”
Ty pointed to the oven with the soufflés in it and was at Jodie’s side in a second. She expected him to mouth off at her for being inattentive, but instead his voice was surprisingly gentle.
“Let’s see what you’ve done to yourself.” Reluctantly she removed her finger from her mouth, quelling the desire to apologize. It was his fault. He’d distracted her, so he should be the one to apologize. Ha, some hope of that! He wrapped her bleeding finger in a paper towel, his touch as gentle as his voice. Presumably he’d chew her arse later. “Over here,” he said, leading her to the far side of the kitchen. “You okay?”
She bit her lip and nodded, unable to speak. Not because she was hurt but because, suddenly, it seemed better if he was being mean to her. That way, it only reinforced her preconceived opinion of him and she could quell the irritatingly persistent attraction she felt toward him. He removed the paper towel and held her finger under a cold tap. After a minute or so, he patted it dry, smeared the wound with antiseptic cream and covered it with a blue Band-Aid.
“There, that should do it. You okay to carry on?”