by Elaine Fox
Last night, when it had become obvious that anything between him and Roxanne was most definitely not going to work. Last night, when P.B. had blown up all three of them with one traitorous bomb.
He’d considered wringing P.B.’s neck.
Then he thought about how, if he were P.B., he’d be pretty eager to wring Steve’s.
It was only when he considered how much it must have hurt Roxanne to hear P.B.’s version of the bet that he actually rose from his desk to get the portable phone to call up and lambaste P.B.
Then he thought about Roxanne and wondered if he should be calling her first. How, from her point of view, he, Steve, looked bad. Really bad.
On the other hand, it could be argued that he was the one wronged. After all, she hadn’t asked him about the bet. Hadn’t even asked him if it were true. And even if she was sure it was true, she hadn’t given him the opportunity to explain. She’d just believed the worst, right off the bat.
On the other hand, he had to concede, a hundred dollars in a hole in the wall looked bad. Really bad.
Still, it could have been anything. She didn’t know, and she didn’t ask. She just didn’t trust him. That was the bottom line.
On the other hand, something like that would hurt first, then seem suspicious later. Maybe.
But he’d never done anything to hurt her. She was the one who’d had an attitude about him from the start. To just walk in and fire him—in front of the staff—was emotional and unprofessional. She’d leaped to a conclusion, then stood on it like a pillar of righteousness.
On the other hand, she didn’t know P.B. like he did. Maybe she believed he was sincere, an injured suitor setting her straight.
But then, if P.B. was in on the bet, that made him as guilty as Steve.
On the other hand…
He groaned and lay his head down on the desk. Too many hands. He couldn’t figure this out. It was an ugly, messy situation that should never have come up. If he’d kept his hands to himself, he wouldn’t have this problem. She’d still just be the prickly new boss.
And then there was P.B. Why had he done it? Roxanne must have been canceling the symphony date and he got bent out of shape and screwed them both. Or he got cocky and told her she was just a bet between himself and Steve. It would be just like P.B. to confront rejection with some nasty jab of his own.
Had he known how far down he was taking Steve? Had Roxanne maybe even said something about what had happened between them?
He needed to talk to her.
But he knew she wouldn’t talk. Not to him. She’d made up her mind about him the moment she’d first laid eyes on him. The first day she’d said she wasn’t interested.
Well, maybe she wasn’t, but her body was. They’d proven that much.
A knock sounded at the door.
Steve’s head whipped up and he spun on his desk chair, pulling a Post-it note from his forehead.
Roxanne? he thought. Here with his final paycheck or some other confirmation of his termination? The last nail for his coffin perhaps?
Or maybe—just maybe—she’d come to discuss this in a calm, rational manner.
He strode across the living room and opened the door.
Rita stood in the hall holding a bouquet of flowers.
“Rita,” he said in surprise. “I didn’t know you cared.”
She scowled. “I don’t, you idiot, these are for her. You owe me fourteen dollars.”
“Her?” He stepped back as she pushed through the door. “Her who?”
She turned to him with a look of exasperation. “Roxanne, of course. You take them to her, you explain, and you beg for your job back.”
Steve crossed his arms over his chest and gaped at her, not bothering to move from, nor close, the front door. “Explain and beg? This is your advice? Without knowing any of the particulars, you want me to explain and beg?”
She put the bouquet down on the coffee table and shrugged out of her coat. “Yep.”
She looked even smaller out of her puffy down coat, but she put her hands on her hips and stared him down anyway.
“We both know you can be a dog with women, Steve. I’m guessing you did something stupid—like nailing the boss and then not calling her—and now you’ve got to suck it up to keep your job.”
“And this concerns you how?” Steve reached one hand out and slammed the door closed.
“Do you know how much money I made last night?” Rita glared at him as if it were somehow his fault.
“I don’t know. It couldn’t have been that bad, we were swamped.”
“Bad!” She laughed, a ruthless sound. “Bad? It was fantastic. The best night waitressing of my entire life. And I don’t want you or anybody else fucking this up for me. If Roxanne gets ditzy or we go without a decent bartender and screw up the damn good start we made last night, that’s going to affect my income. My new income. Which is only one night old but already I’m pretty attached to it. So you go and explain and beg to Ms. High-and-Mighty and make sure that this damn restaurant is a success so I can finally get out of that hellhole I’m living in.”
Steve looked at her red face and fierce eyes and couldn’t help smiling. “What makes you think she didn’t nail me?”
Rita threw her head back and sighed. “Because you’re the one who’s got no sense when it comes to women.”
She moved into the kitchen.
“That’s not true.” He followed to where she opened the refrigerator door and peered inside. “When have I ever been stupid about women?”
Rita scoffed and craned her neck sideways. “You got any soda?”
“No. And answer the question.”
She rolled her eyes toward him. “What about Lia? On-again, off-again, come-when-you’re-called Lia? I wouldn’t call that a good example of being smart about women.”
He shrugged. “It’s easy.”
She pulled out a piece of pumpkin pie on a paper plate wrapped in plastic. “Can I eat this?”
“I wish you would. It’s been in there since Christmas.”
She made a face and slid it back onto the refrigerator shelf.
“Besides,” she continued, opening up the vegetable bin, “Roxanne’s totally out of your league. I mean, look at her. She’s a beauty queen with a shitload of money. You’re just a guy with a nice smile.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She made a compromising movement with her head and added grudgingly, “I also hear you’re pretty good in bed.”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Girls talk.”
She bent forward and disappeared behind the refrigerator door.
Despite himself, Steve’s heart rate accelerated. “Roxanne told you that?”
Rita’s head popped back up, an orange in her hand and her expression gleeful. She pushed the door shut. “Would Roxanne know?”
Damn.
“No—”
She raised her brows skeptically.
“—comment.”
“Hah!” She leaned against the counter. “Okay, don’t tell me. But whether she went slumming or not, you have to admit you are now in the position of having to apologize for whatever it is she thinks you did.”
“I don’t have to admit that. And what do you mean by ‘slumming’?”
She grinned. “No comment.”
“Look, I’ll admit she’s pretty. And she does seem to have some money. But what does that mean? That she can walk all over people? That she can be excused for thinking the worst of everyone? Even after lowering herself to—to fraternize with one of us?”
Rita, with her fingernails in the skin of the orange, raised her eyes to his, their green depths alight. “Holy shit, Serrano. You have no boundaries at all. You did nail her, didn’t you?”
Her smile was straight from the devil.
Steve exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t say that.”
She widened her eyes innocently. “Oh yeah, right. Officially, sure. Gotcha.” She pulled back
the skin of the orange and the scent filled the kitchen air. “So what’d she fire you for, exactly?”
He studied her a second. Then he moved to the counter by the sink and pushed himself up onto it, resting his feet on a partly opened drawer beneath. “Okay, listen to this. You know how P.B. is.”
Rita snorted and rolled her eyes, nodding.
“One night he was talking all kinds of trash about Roxanne and…” He filled her in on the genesis of the bet. “So I took the money just to shut him up,” he finished. “Not to mention that it was fun to deprive him of a hundred bucks for a while. But I was not taking him up on the damn bet. Anybody who knows me knows I wouldn’t make a bet like that. Hell, I’d forgotten all about it.”
Rita narrowed her eyes and put another section of orange into her mouth.
Steve looked at her incredulously. Didn’t Rita know that? How bad of a reputation did he have?
“I do know that about you,” she said finally.
Steve exhaled.
“But she doesn’t,” she added. “Roxanne. Probably, I mean.”
Another knock came from the front door.
Steve and Rita looked at each other.
“Think it’s her?” Rita stage-whispered.
“Couldn’t say.” But his pulse quickened as he pushed off the counter and jogged to the foyer.
Opening the door, Steve couldn’t have been more surprised to see the rotund figure of Monsieur Girmond. Even Roxanne would have been less startling.
“Steve. Ah, good. You are home,” he said in a curiously hushed voice. His smile, however, was broad. “May I come in?”
Steve stepped back and extended a hand into the apartment. “Sure. Why are you whispering?” He peered out into the hall as the large man stepped past him.
Girmond shook his head, answering in a normal tone as soon as he entered the living room. “No reasons. Just a little frog in my throat.”
Steve gestured for Girmond to follow him. “Come on into the kitchen. Rita’s here, too.”
“Rita?” Girmond stroked his moustache quizzically.
“Waitress? Red hair?”
“Ah, yes. Mon petit chou.” He grinned and looked around the living room. “This is just exactly like Roxanne’s apartment, no?”
Steve glanced around his barely decorated space, remembering the cozy atmosphere of Roxanne’s.
“Not just exactly. But similar,” he said, leading the way into the kitchen.
Rita was throwing the orange peel into the trash when they walked in. “Oh. Hi.” She looked from Girmond to Steve with obvious curiosity.
“Mademoiselle.” Girmond gave a short bow and turned back to Steve. “You are wondering why I am here.”
“I have to say I am.” Steve stepped toward the refrigerator. “Can I get you something to drink?”
Girmond looked around the kitchen with the critical eye of a chef, no doubt seeing the derelict, half-clean space of a non-cook. “Always the bartender, eh, Steve? No, thank you. I am here to speak with you about your job at the restaurant. May I speak freely?” He inclined his head toward Rita. “Pardon me, mademoiselle.”
She shrugged. “You’re pardoned.”
Steve leaned back against the counter. “Go ahead. Rita knows most of my problems anyway.”
He wondered how much say Girmond had about the running of the restaurant and guessed he had quite a bit, considering that without him there would be no restaurant.
Girmond nodded curtly. “Excellent. I have come to ask you to reconsider leaving your job. We need you, obviously, as we have no other bartender. And I believe you would maybe rather not look for new employment?”
Steve frowned. “I don’t think it’s me who needs to reconsider. I didn’t quit, I was fired.”
The older man held his hands behind his back and made a small, deferential bow. “Of course. I know that. Still, I ask you to come back.”
Steve looked at him, perplexed. “What do you propose? That I tell Roxanne I don’t accept her offer to be fired?”
Girmond’s face was confident and he laughed. “Do not fear. She will want you back, as well.”
“She will?”
“She is a passionate woman, our Roxanne. Sometimes led more by her emotions than is, ah, prudent.” He gave a Gallic shrug. “But such is the nature of women, eh? They bring spirit to this world of ours.”
Steve glanced at Rita, who was looking torn between insult and flattery.
He turned back to Girmond. “You seem to be forgetting something. She’s also the owner of the restaurant. If she fires me, I gotta believe I’m gone.”
Girmond inclined his head. “I intend to talk with her.”
Steve looked at the floor. “Look, Mr. Girmond, I’m sure you have her best interests at heart, but generally speaking she seems to know what she wants. And what she doesn’t.”
Girmond chuckled. “Does she?”
Steve looked up. What did he mean by that?
“She is upset with you,” Girmond said. “For what reason, I know not. She was not forthcoming with me.”
“Hah! Join the club.” Steve smiled to soften the edge on his words.
Girmond held up a meaty hand. “But to me it was a heated moment. She was inflamed, not thinking clearly. All I would like to know from you is, if she were to agree, would you take your job back?”
The man acted as if he knew he had some influence on her, Steve thought. Not only that, Steve could sense in the way he talked, the quiet sureness and humor of his expression, that Girmond knew Roxanne better than any of them had realized. Even if that weren’t true, however, as the chef, the premier draw of the restaurant, chances were he could demand Steve be rehired and Roxanne would cave.
Besides, God knew they’d need a bartender tonight, if last night was any indication.
“I don’t know…” The devil in him didn’t want to capitulate so easily. “If she’s going to be this hotheaded I’m not sure she’s the ideal employer.”
Steve could feel Rita gaping beside him.
“For God’s sake, Steve,” she said. “Just tell him you’ll take the job back. You know you will anyway.”
He looked at her. “Do I? I was rather unfairly terminated, I think.” He turned back to Girmond. “No offense, but your friend is a distrustful, suspicious woman with a heart of stone.”
Girmond frowned and stroked his moustache. “She has some trouble trusting, for good reason. She should not be punished for this. She is a very beautiful woman, monsieur, and she deserves a second chance.”
Steve folded his arms over his chest. “Beauty’s only skin deep. Coldness goes all the way through.”
Rita sighed. “Oh brother.”
“She needs to stop jumping to conclusions about me,” Steve added. “She’s done that since the first time we met.”
Girmond gave him a look that cut right through his bullshit. “Roxanne is perhaps reserved, and fearful of getting hurt. The unperceptive man,” he enunciated this pointedly, “might see this as cold.” The Gallic shrug again. Nothing he could do about stupid people, it seemed to say.
Steve’s eyes narrowed. So the old guy had some manipulation in him. He’d have to remember that.
“All right,” Steve said. “I’ll come back. If she asks. But tell her she needs to stop thinking the worst of me.”
Girmond smiled, eyes twinkling. “I will tell her to strive to look beyond the obvious.”
Roxanne gritted her teeth and punched down her dough, dumping it out on the table into a mound of flour. She coughed as the cloud that ensued enveloped her.
She didn’t want to see him. Didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want to have anything to do with his ugly little world. He belonged in a bar like Charters—smoky, dirty, scented with stale beer and filled with other juvenile minds—not in her radiant temple of gastronomic pleasure.
Steve was beneath her, she told herself, devoid of common human decency and sentiment. Anybody who could place a bet on emotion, on passion,
was a degenerate of the worst sort. He did not deserve her notice.
At least Martin, for all his flaws, respected the passion that was between them. He hadn’t belittled it by turning it into a…a conquest.
Or had he? Maybe hooking up with a young woman who graced the covers of magazines was a kind of triumph for him over what he’d always termed “the stagnation” of his marriage.
She shook her head. She didn’t need to impugn anyone else with Steve’s falseness. And she certainly didn’t need to be thinking about Martin in any context. Though she had to wonder how in the world she’d managed to learn nothing from Martin’s treachery. She’d trusted Steve when she should have been at her most vigilant. After learning how selfish men could be, she had turned around and trusted another liar, all the while believing her only problem with him was their lack of common interests. What a fool she was.
She punched her dough again and began rolling it out.
She would just stay here in the kitchen. She didn’t need to see Steve. If she needed more water, she could send a busboy.
No.
No, it wasn’t incumbent upon her to hide from him. Let him be the one worried about seeing her. Let him be anxious about what to say now that she’d discovered his true character.
He was just lucky M. Girmond was able to convince her that having a lying, philandering bartender was better than having no bartender at all. Business first, he’d said. And that would be her motto from here on out.
Business first.
“No, no, no!” she heard M. Girmond say to one of the assistants—the garde-manger—behind her. “You treat asparagus like a flower, do you understand me? You do not lay it in a tub full of water to soak like a baby. You stand it up, like a flower!”
“But before I always—”
“I do not care about before. Before means nothing to me. Rien! Before you did not work for a place that respected the food, or they would have stood the asparagus up.”
“Like a flower…”
“Exactement. Now, about the fish. It should be stored in the same position in which it swims, oui?”
Roxanne smiled to herself. She couldn’t help but feel confident with M. Girmond in the kitchen. He was a master, a perfectionist, with an attention to detail unrivalled in culinary circles. And she knew, even if tonight was as busy as last night, and tomorrow night as busy as tonight, that that attention to detail wouldn’t waver in the slightest.