Guilty Pleasures

by Cathy Yardley

  Mr. Marceau stepped in. “Everything satisfactory, Nick?”

  Nick nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t ask for more.” He couldn’t ask for anything else that the man could provide, anyway.

  “I figure, six months, and we’ll be up and running. I’ve got chefs from some of my other restaurants vying for the position, and we’ll have a contest—survival of the fittest, as it were.” Charles laughed, a brittle sounding noise. “You’ll only get the best, Nick, that’s a guarantee. I want your restaurant to be the place to go in Manhattan.”

  Nick nodded absently.

  “I’ll also suggest you taking on Dan Patterson as your general manager,” Charles said, clapping a hand on Nick’s shoulder. Nick felt the urge to shrug it off, but knew it would look impolite, so he tried as best he could to seem interested. “You ever want to know what’s going on politically in your kitchen—what sous-chef is bucking for your job, what line chef is drinking too much, what prep cook is stealing from the walk-in—Dan’s your man.”

  Mari never worried about stuff like that—the political stuff, he thought. The crew would have cut off their left hands before taking anything from her. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if Paulo actually snuck ingredients into the pantry.

  He missed her crew, too, he realized. Tiny’s staunch loyalty, Paulo’s lightning-quick humor, Zooey’s naiveté were hard to forget. But most of all, he missed Mari.

  “You’re going to be the talk of the town, Nick my boy. You’re going to be famous,” Charles said, and Nick could see in his face that he had already envisioned everything that was certain to follow. “You’re going to be a star.”

  Nick thought about it. His face on the cover of magazines? Maybe on television? Women fawning over him, chefs cowering? Phillip, sneering in some second-rate venue in Omaha, eating his heart out?

  What the hell did I want all that for?

  He looked at Charles, and saw for the first time that the man wasn’t looking to showcase Nick—he was looking for glory, and saw Nick as his ticket. He saw Nick as a money-maker.

  He didn’t see Nick as a star.

  He saw Nick as a tool.

  I. Am. So. Stupid.

  Nick shook his head. “I can’t do this.”

  Charles was too deep in his monologue to notice Nick shrugging his hand off. “I’m telling you, this is only the beginning. I knew that Phillip couldn’t handle a project like this—that’s why I held back on the reins for Le Chapeau Noir. I knew that he didn’t have the talent or the vision…”

  “I said, I can’t do it,” Nick said, a little more emphatically.

  “Of course you can,” Charles said, brushing Nick’s statement away like an annoying fly. “Why do you think I insisted that Phillip have you as head chef before I set him up with the restaurant in the first place?”

  Nick stared at him, aghast. “You what?”

  “And you took up the slack. That’s why I always went to you when I wanted something done. Phillip’s my son…but business is business.” He chuckled, and the sound turned Nick’s stomach. “You understand that. That’s why you’re the right man for the job.”

  Nick leaned back against the cold metal of the countertop.

  That’s why Phillip hated me. It was so obvious, and he’d been so very, very dumb.

  He realized he had nothing else to prove. He’d get everything he thought he wanted and nothing that he needed—and he’d lose his soul daily as Charles molded him into a little wanna-be Marceau. Where the only thing more important than the food was the bottom line.

  “I am not saying that I can’t handle it,” Nick corrected. “I’m saying that I won’t do it. I made a mistake accepting this job. I thought I had something to show everyone. I don’t. Not to people like you. Not to myself.”

  “Wait a minute,” Charles stared at him like he was speaking another language. “You’re quitting?”

  Nick nodded.

  “I can’t imagine anyone else could offer you as impressive a deal as this, Nick,” he started coldly. “Has someone else..”

  “No, it’s not like that.” Nick paused. “Well, I suppose you could say that I am going to work for a competitor. But not in New York. I’m going back to San Francisco. I never should have left.”

  “You and I made a deal,” Charles said, his voice low and harsh. “You renege, and I’ll see to it that it gets very difficult—no, impossible—to work anywhere again. I don’t care what they’re offering you.”

  “What they’re offering me is loyalty,” Nick said, pleased by the way the man’s face turned baffled. “And love. And family.”

  Slowly, Charles blinked. “You’re going back to that hole-in-the-wall? That…that pornographic Denny’s, for pity’s sake?”

  Nick nodded.

  Charles laughed. “I won’t have to ruin you. You’re doing the job for me. You’d be willing to walk away from your own restaurant—from more money than you’ve probably made in your entire life—all for…” He blinked, realizing he didn’t have a conclusion for that sentence. “All for what?”

  “If you have to ask,” Nick said, turning, “then I can’t explain it to you.”

  TWO-THIRTY. MARI GLANCED at the clock. She’d been working from eight-thirty in the morning to midnight, and now for the past two and a half hours, she was working on a chocolate bread pudding with a pecan strudel topping. Maybe…she was working on variations of both. And she had three small batches, made from some of the little bit of stale bread that was left at the restaurant. She might even experiment with made-from-scratch brownies.

  Say what you will about insomnia, Mari thought, at least it makes me productive. She’d probably create at least four more dishes before the hallucinations started to kick in.

  She leaned back against her fridge, closing her eyes for a second.

  She couldn’t go on like this. That much was obvious.

  Would it be such a hardship? New York was a beautiful place. They needed all the good chefs they could get. And they had seasons, she remembered. Maybe she’d like fall.

  You’d probably hate winter.

  Well, okay, there was that. But she’d have Nick to keep her warm, and that was what was important, wasn’t it? He’d probably even hire her…turnabout was fair play.

  And what would everybody on the crew do?

  They were all talented—they could get jobs easily. Was she really worried about them, or was she using them as an excuse not to take that final risk?

  She loved them. She loved their spirit. And she loved her restaurant.

  This was the choice Nick had to make—the one you pushed, she reminded herself. She’d just have to learn to live with it…or die trying.

  “You’re burning your…what is that, anyway?”

  She didn’t open her eyes. “It’s bread pudding.” She sighed. “Okay, okay, I’ll get it.”

  She was so used to sensing Nick, the fact that her overtired subconscious had created Nick’s voice so perfectly was no surprise. She pulled the bread pudding out from the oven, then turned.

  The vision of him, however, was something of a shock.

  She dropped the pan.

  “Careful,” he said, grabbing a second pair of oven mitts and cleaning up the mess. He looked just as she remembered. Okay, a little more rumpled than she remembered. And tired—he looked tired, especially around the eyes. He had a rough days growth of beard, and he was eyeing her like a dessert he wanted to sample.

  “Obviously I’ve hit the wall,” she said, as she watched him rescue her other dessert attempts, leaving them on the butcher-block counter to cool. She shut the oven off with a click. “Normally I’m in bed before I see you this clearly.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t hear me come in.”

  She blinked. Then she walked up to him, her fingers reaching forward.

  She pinched his shoulder. Hard.

  “Ouch! Dammit,” he grimaced. “What was that for?”

  She smiled. “You’re…really here,” she
said softly.

  She threw herself into his arms.

  “I used my key,” he said. “I didn’t give it back. I was praying you didn’t change the locks.”

  “Didn’t think I’d need to,” she said. “Didn’t think you’d come back.”

  He held her against him. She could hear his heart beating strong if somewhat unsteadily under her ear. She pressed as tightly as she could to him, relishing the feel of him kissing her temples, stroking her back. “I wasn’t ready. I’m sorry.”

  She pulled back enough to look at him. “Are you back…for a visit?” She didn’t want to ask directly, but her heart was in her eyes.

  “Not exactly.” He stroked her cheek, then kissed her gently on the lips. “As it happens, I need a job.”

  She stared at him. “You gave up the restaurant?”

  He shrugged. “I figured out it wasn’t really what I wanted, after all.” He hugged her to him, and she smiled. “I worked it out that I didn’t want to be financed by a rich man who thought that being successful and prominent was more important than being a good father. And I didn’t want a bunch of back-stabbing chefs that I’d need daily reports on. And I certainly didn’t want to be written up in a bunch of magazines and idolized by a bunch of people who really didn’t matter to me, when I could be here, among people who are my friends…and loved by the woman I love most.”

  She kissed him long and hard, with all the passion she’d stored up since he went away.

  “I love you,” she said. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  She hugged him tight.

  “Besides,” he whispered, starting to tug off her shirt. “If I stay here, I can still make all the menus myself, anyway.”

  She looked into his eyes, with a mix of passion and longing.

  “Like hell,” she said, and while he was laughing she kissed him.

  Epilogue

  Five Months Later

  CHAOS REIGNED in the Guilty Pleasures kitchen. And they’d only opened their door an hour ago. Nick looked around. Leon was there, helping train the new line cooks who’d been hired. Lindsay was studying Leon’s advice diligently—she had decided to become more useful in the kitchen, and with her usual drive, she’d been practicing for the past two months. Mo was busily taking reservations for the week, smiling as he filled the book and told people there wasn’t room—they’d been doing such gangbuster business, there were lines down the block every night. Tiny, Zooey, Juan and Paulo were discussing the menu for a competition they were thinking of entering in a few months. All in all, the place was a noisy, riotous, busy conflagration.

  Nick grinned. It felt like he’d come home.

  He noticed arms around his waist, and turned to see Mari smiling up at him. “How’s it going?” she murmured, kissing him.

  He smiled, his arms going around hers as well. “We’re going to get slammed tonight,” he said, “and the line cooks are coming along.”

  “Great,” she said, tugging him toward the back room and away from the noise of the kitchen. “If we’re going to expand into more of the building, then we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  Nick shook his head. “I still can’t believe Phillip’s agreeing to lease us more of the building, and help kick in on the renovation.”

  Mari smiled, stroking his cheek. “It’s different now. Since you came back, there isn’t any rivalry.”

  He shrugged. “Since he shut down Le Chapeau Noir, too,” he said. It still felt weird. He wasn’t ready to trust Phillip completely yet, but it was nice to see a glimpse of the man he’d been friends with back in school.

  He leaned against the desk, pulling Mari against him. “I never thought I’d be this happy,” he said, kissing her neck and smiling at the little breathless gasp she made. His hands cupped her backside.

  “Door,” she said, tugging away and shutting the door they’d only had installed in the past month. She clicked the lock in place, and then looked at him, her eyes hungry. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  She stepped between his legs, brushing against him, her breasts teasing his chest.

  “I was saying,” he resumed, stroking the undersides of her breasts, smoothing his hands down her sides to her hips, “that I never thought I’d be this happy.”

  She looked into his eyes, and his hands stopped roaming for a minute. “After I lost my restaurant—my first restaurant—I thought I’d lost everything that mattered to me,” she whispered. “But if I hadn’t lost all that, I never would have found you.”

  “That’s it exactly,” he whispered, then kissed her roughly, enjoying the feel of her hands in his hair, the way her tongue rubbed against his. “I love you.”

  She smiled. “I…”

  There was a banging on the door, and the two of them turned.

  “Hey, lunch hour is coming up,” Paulo said, humor obvious in his tone. “You two aren’t going to be long in your meeting, are you?”

  Nick looked at Mari, with a slow, seductive smile. “Are we going to be long?” he whispered.

  She reached for his pants, grinning back impishly. “We’ll be out in a minute,” she yelled back.

  He could hear the whole crew laugh in the other room, and heard Paulo’s derisive snort.

  “Aw,” he said, before Nick heard him turn away, “you two say that every day.”

  “I think they’re onto us,” Nick said, tugging at Mari’s shirt.

  “Shut up,” she replied, her eyes glowing, “and kiss me. We have to hurry up and get back to work.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8121-3

  GUILTY PLEASURES

  Copyright © 2002 by Cathy Yardley.

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