Just One Taste

by Louisa Edwards

  The next words out of his mouth explained his agitation. “It’s Eva Jansen!”

  Market skidded into the big time with a sudden jolt.

  There were three kinds of guests who revved any professional kitchen into high gear: restaurant critics, celebrities, and restaurateurs. Especially restaurateurs like Eva Jansen, who was not only restaurant royalty after her father started the biggest culinary competition in the U.S., but who also had a stratospheric rate of success in her own right, and a reputation for spotting big talent early.

  As happy as most of the line cooks were at Market, every single one of them would give his left nut for a chance to make Eva Jansen notice him.

  When Eva Jansen noticed a chef, that chef got a perfectly appointed restaurant in a prime spot, and all the considerable money and power of her company, Elegant Hospitality Group, behind making a go of it.

  Grant lowered his voice, but Wes clearly heard him say, “She’s checking out 422.”

  At Adam’s blank look, Grant huffed out an exasperated breath. “Next door! The restaurant space that just opened up.”

  “Well, well, well, isn’t that interesting?” Adam mused, tugging thoughtfully at his ear. “Bet she wouldn’t have looked twice at that joint if we weren’t doing so well.”

  “Probably not,” Grant said, “but we are doing well. Well enough to expand, maybe a more casual extension of Market—more bistro-, brasserie-type food. The Market Bar. Adam, we’ve talked about this.”

  Adam’s eyes lit up with the possibilities; Wes could see it from where he stood. He could also see the exact moment doubt crept in. “I know, man, but maybe we should take what we’ve got and stick to what we know we can succeed with for a little while longer.”

  “You always do this,” Grant exploded. “We have this chance now, we have the desire, the skill, the drive— opportunities like this don’t come along every day. Hell, they don’t come along every year! Every five! Maybe the timing isn’t perfect, but will it ever be?”

  Adam looked torn. “Maybe …”

  Clearly sensing an opening, Grant pressed his advantage. “I’m not saying we make an offer today, boss. We still need more info. And it so happens we’ve got a couple of experts in our dining room right now who are probably dropping pearls of wisdom all over the bar. All we need is someone to spy on them!”

  Amusement pulled at Adam’s mouth. “What about Christian? Bartenders are supposed to be good at listening.”

  “I don’t trust him,” Grant argued.

  “Why not? I really don’t get your issue with Chris. He’s a great guy.”

  Wes watched Grant waffle over how to deal with that one for a second before he decided to put the guy out of his misery. Wes cleared his throat. “Um, I might have an alternative.”

  Two pairs of surprised eyes turned on him, making Wes fumble his chef knife. “I mean, if you want someone who can repeat Eva Jansen’s entire conversation back to you, word for word, my … friend can do that.”

  “What friend?” Adam said in unison with Grant asking, “Who, the dog lady?” All incredulous.

  “Yeah, that was actually my dog,” Wes admitted. They both goggled at him. “Sort of. Not important,” he said hastily. “The key fact here is that my friend sitting at the bar out there, Rosemary, she’s got a photographic memory. Anything she sees or hears, she remembers. So you want me to ask her?”

  Grant looked at Adam, who nodded, a mischievous grin making him look like a naughty schoolboy.

  “Worth a shot. I want to know what Eva ‘The Diva’ Jansen thinks of her lunch here, anyway,” Adam said.

  “But be subtle,” Grant cautioned as he walked Wes out to the dining room. “It could be considered, you know, tacky to spy on customers. I don’t want her to figure out what we’re doing.”

  “Not a problem,” Wes assured him. He’d caught sight of Rosemary at the opposite end of the bar from a very put-together woman in a sleek suit and a younger guy wearing black-rimmed glasses that reminded Wes of Elvis Costello, and nodding at everything the woman said.

  He studied the body language for an instant, the way the man inclined his head toward the woman, the way she looked right at him as he responded, and decided the young guy was probably an executive assistant of some kind, subordinate but valued.

  If Wes were running a con, he’d be cursing his luck right about now that the assistant wasn’t female and susceptible-looking.

  “Hey, gimme your shirt,” he said, starting to unbutton his white chef coat.

  “What? No!”

  Wes rolled his eyes as Grant clutched at the collar of his forest-green organic cotton button-down like a timid nun. “We need to swap. How else can I be subtle about hovering around the bar?”

  Grant didn’t look happy, but he did start unbuttoning his shirt.

  A few slightly awkward, clumsy moments later, Wes was putting on his best waiter face and ambling out to the bar. Luckily, Jess was already there to take the Jansen party’s order.

  This allowed Wes to sail past the ordering couple as if he didn’t even see them, his gaze trained on Rosemary’s bright blond head bent over her open laptop. The remains of her lunch sat forgotten on the bar—she’d had the charcuterie plate. The knowledge that everything she’d eaten had been prepared, sliced, and arranged into a tower by his own two hands tingled through him in a satisfying rush.

  Taking immediate advantage of the built-in reason for his presence at the bar when there was already a waiter clearly handling orders, Wes leaned past Rosemary’s shoulder and grabbed the plate, nearly bobbling the silverware. He collected everything into one hand with only a small clatter and a muffled curse.

  Rosemary looked up, her brow furrowed at the interruption. The furrow smoothed out when her eyebrows shot up to her hairline as she took in his outfit.

  “Are we playing dress-up?” she asked. “And me without my Uhura costume.”

  One part of Wes’s brain registered relief that she hadn’t spoken loudly enough to garner the attention of their target at the other end of the bar, but most of his (admittedly easily distracted) brain was taken up with imagining Rosemary in the low-cut, skintight flight suit of the Starship Enterprise’s hottest crewmember.

  “Please tell me you actually have an Uhura costume.”

  She arched a brow at him. “Maybe. If you can tell me you actually know who that is, you might just stand a chance of seeing it, one day.”

  Wes fought not to shuffle his feet. This was maybe a little revealing about how much he’d missed her. “I may have rented the original Star Trek series on DVD recently. But only because the new movie rocked!”

  “It did, didn’t it?” Rosemary said, leaning forward eagerly. “The way they reimagined the series using an alternate-universe storyline was completely brilliant. And, of course, they ensured the die-hard-fan vote by putting Leonard Nimoy in a pivotal role.”

  Behind him, Eva Jansen let out a light, tinkling laugh. Wes resisted the urge to turn around and look at her. “As much as I’d love to stand here and dissect the differences between the Star Trek reboot and the original series, I actually did have a purpose in coming out here. See the woman over my left shoulder?”

  Rosemary cocked her head to see around him. “The one with the improbably perfect coloring and the poison-apple-red lipstick?”

  “That’s the one. Her name is Eva Jansen. She’s a restaurateur, and my boss really wants to know what she’s talking about with her assistant. Think you can eavesdrop a little and give us a report later?”

  Those eyebrows went up again; they were getting a real workout. “You want me to be your spy in a game of restaurant espionage? Will I need a code name?”

  “It’s nothing morally reprehensible or anything,” Wes hastened to reassure her. “Just curiosity.”

  “I think your code name should be Tiberius,” she said decisively. “I’ll be Uhura.”

  “Tiberius? As in James Tiberius Kirk?” Wes blinked, then grinned. “Oh my God, this is y
our version of flirting. How do you say ‘I fancy you’ in Klingon?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, then narrowed her eyes. “You don’t really want to know, do you? That was a joke.”

  “Just a little one,” Wes admitted. “So does this mean you’ll do it, Uhura?”

  “Fine, but you’ll owe me. And I’m not deciding right now exactly what you owe me—that will be specified at a later date of my choosing.”

  The look she flashed him was so arch, so full of mischievous amusement, it took Wes’s breath. “I’d be glad to do whatever you decide you want,” he said around the hoarseness in his throat. “As long as it doesn’t involve giving up on the aphrodisiac project and/or never seeing you again.”

  Her face stilled. “Actually, I hadn’t thought of that.” She paused, her fingers picking at the copper linen napkin in her lap. “I wouldn’t ask that,” she said finally. “If you’re inclined to help with the project, I won’t turn you down. Sometimes a second eye is the best resource you can have.”

  Wes, who vividly remembered being told Rosemary always worked alone, simply nodded. Hope was a living thing breathing gently to life inside him—he wouldn’t choke it out by pushing too hard on it and forcing it to be more than it was.

  Of all the many, varied, and embarrassing things he wanted to say in response, he managed to pare it down to, “I think we make a pretty great team.”

  Her smile was slow, hesitant, and just about the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “That we do, Tiberius.”

  Rosemary watched him go, absently admiring the tight roundness of his posterior in those black jeans. Most of her concentration was already on the conversation a few feet away.

  Jess finished taking their order—endive salad with roasted beets for the woman, charcuterie plate for the man; Rosemary approved, she’d heartily enjoyed her country-style pâté and duck salami—and went to deliver it to the kitchen.

  Using her peripheral vision, Rosemary could see the woman fairly well. A gleaming bob of mink-brown hair slashed across the pale skin of her high forehead and cheekbones, and her frost-blue eyes snapped with intelligence.

  The man with the stylishly heavy glasses had his back to Rosemary, but when he twisted on his stool to retrieve a BlackBerry from the pocket of the jacket hanging over its back, she saw that he was younger than his companion.

  “I like the look of this place,” the young man said.

  “Nice,” Eva Jansen agreed. A wing of shiny, dark hair swung against her cheek as she looked around. “Good integration of design and space into the theme of the place—the moss-green walls, the earth-toned banquettes. And see the wall sconces? I love that copper, the twining leaves. Subtle and stylized, but it gives you a sense of warmth and character. And preps you for a meal that’s all about the food and where it came from.” She took a sip of sparkling water. “It’s all in the details, Andrew.”

  “Right, Chef Temple’s into the locavore movement,” the young man, Andrew, said after consulting whatever notes he kept on his PDA.

  “Reviews have been stellar, weekend dinner reservations are impossible to come by, and my sources tell me it’s turning a profit.” Rosemary caught the avaricious gleam in Eva’s blue eyes as she leaned toward her assistant. “What’s important about that, from our perspective, is how Market has raised the bar for fine dining in this neighborhood. Until recently, unless you wanted a great diner or a nice Sunday brunch, the Upper West Side was a culinary wasteland. Which means what?”

  “Um. Untapped potential, ripe for new businesses, less competition?”

  She toasted him with her water glass. “Exactamundo, bingo, and you got it, my young protégé. And Market’s success proves that there’s a—brace yourself— market for this caliber of restaurant in this area.”

  “But is 422 the space for it?”

  Rosemary closed her laptop and opened the book on quantum mechanics she’d brought with her. The conversation was about to get good, and she didn’t want to miss anything while she pretended to type to keep up her cover. It was easier to turn pages without reading them.

  As Eva Jansen and her assistant discussed the pros and cons of the space next door, Rosemary took careful note of everything they said. But there was part of her that was busily working on what exactly she ought to ask Wes for in return for this fascinating information.

  She smiled to herself—just a tiny curve of the lips; anything more would be suspicious, since not that many people found quantum mechanics to be a barrel of laughs—and shook the ice cubes in her empty glass at the bartender.

  Tiberius wasn’t going to know what hit him.

  Chapter 17

  “The assistant got out his PDA and Eva dictated some notes about 422 Columbus. Good natural light in the kitchen, she gave bonus points for that, and said someone with a brain designed those work stations. Plenty of space and ventilation, troughs built in for running water. The dining room is, apparently, another story. And then their meals came, which they seemed to enjoy very much,” Rosemary reported brightly. “Eva commented on the tenderness of the lettuce leaves and how it contrasted with the satisfying crunch of the bitter endive. Andrew called the duck salami ‘sublime’ and made her taste it; she agreed.”

  “Dude,” Chef Temple said, rocking back on his heels and sending Wes a pleased glance. “You nailed it.”

  Rosemary watched the play of joy and relief across Wes’s expressive face. She could read him pretty well, she realized. The thought gave her a pang. She wasn’t sure she was ready to forgive him, but it seemed as if she might not have any choice. He was just so … magnetic.

  Tearing her gaze away, she looked curiously around the kitchen. It was her first time in a professional restaurant kitchen, and it was interesting. There was an air of energy and purpose emanating from the many cooks moving past each other in the tight space between the ovens along the wall and the stainless steel countertops in the center.

  They were all so focused and intense, their eyes trained on their work, their hands moving swiftly and efficiently as they wielded their sharp knives and tongs, their spoons and side towels. It reminded her of some of the labs she’d worked in as a grad student—each person in his or her own world, but working in tandem toward the same goal.

  Then, it was the pursuit of knowledge, now it was dinner. On some level, Rosemary knew she would once have scorned the latter as trivial and superfluous when compared with the former.

  But as she watched the activity swirling around her, and saw the way Wes stood taller, his shoulders straighter, when his cooking was praised—she thought maybe there was something to be said for a pursuit that led to a pleasure as concrete as the joy people got from good food in a warm, convivial atmosphere.

  “Yes, yes, kudos all around on the food,” Grant interjected. “What else did she say about the place next door?”

  Rosemary took a deep breath and began to recite. “Andrew said, 422 Columbus appears to have many of the qualities you look for in a space. Eva agreed, noting that its proximity to Market could be a plus or a minus, and only time would tell, but that Market had raised the culinary profile of the neighborhood in general. She likened it to a luxury beach cottage going up on a street in the Hamptons, forcing the price of real estate up.”

  “Told you,” Adam crowed, thwacking Grant on the shoulder.

  “What else?” Grant asked, ignoring his friend.

  She filled them in on the dining room, the fact that Eva thought it would need to be gutted, but that the kitchen only needed to be refitted with new appliances in order to serve a full restaurant and the assistant’s responses about the other spaces on their list of potential Upper West Side acquisitions, along with the details Andrew had read from his notes on each of those properties.

  When she’d finished her recital, all three men were blinking at her.

  “What?” Did she have smoked duck stuck in her teeth?

  “That was amazing,” Wes said. “I know you told me about the memory thing
, and I believed you, but. Damn.”

  “Thank you,” Grant said, taking her hand. “That was exactly the kind of information we were looking for.”

  Adam shook his head, but smiled easily at Rosemary. “Yeah, thanks. Not sure what we’ll do with all that good info, if anything, but it was sure interesting to hear. And we definitely owe you one. Come out with us to Chapel after dinner service tonight, I’ll buy you a drink or three.”

  Grant was still holding her hand lightly when Adam started to speak, but when the executive chef shrugged off the question of how they might use her data, Grant’s fingers tightened on hers until she winced. He dropped her hand at once with an apologetic grimace.

  Flexing her fingers lightly, Rosemary said, “Oh, that’s quite all right, Chef. Wes has already promised me a favor in return for my help, and I’ll absolutely be collecting.”

  “Yeah, I got you covered, Chef.” Wes laughed. He hadn’t stopped working the whole time Rosemary was talking—his hands flew across his cutting board, knife flashing as he cut a green apple into perfectly uniform matchsticks. “My ass will probably be black and blue for a week after she gets through with me.”

  “Whoa, man. So long as you show up for work on time, I don’t care what you do with your personal life,” Adam said.

  “Corporal punishment is not on the agenda.” Rosemary’s cheeks were burning, but she refused to give in to Wes’s teasing. At least she recognized it as gentle ribbing now.

  Adam and Grant thanked her again before hurrying off to get ready for dinner service, Grant frowning at Adam the whole way.

  A passing chef said, “Behind, hot,” as he charged past, nearly braining her with a large rectangular baking sheet piled with steaming bones.

  “Heads up,” Wes said, coming to her rescue and whisking her out of the way of oncoming traffic before she was showered with hot food.

  Clearly, the kitchen was ramping up into high gear for dinner. “I guess I should leave you to it,” she said, reluctant to go. They hadn’t really accomplished anything on her project yet. “I thought we’d have time to talk about the aphrodisiac study, though.”