Finally he broke the awful silence by saying, “There’s an error on my check.”
“No there isn’t.”
His brows, thick and black, badly in need of manscaping, lifted. “There must be. It shows nothing due.”
“Correct.”
His cold blue gaze burned into mine. “I’ve been sitting here eating for hours—”
“Believe me, I’m perfectly aware how long you’ve been here and how much you’ve eaten.”
He leaned back against the leather booth, spread his hands flat against the tabletop, and examined me the way a scientist might examine a germ under a microscope. It was horrible, but I gave no outward indication how much it rattled me.
I wondered if that muscle jumping in his jaw was a sign of an oncoming murder spree.
Then he had the audacity to say—with dripping condescension—“My opinion of you and your restaurant can’t be swayed with freebies, Miss Hardwick.”
Sweet baby Jesus, I wanted to pick up the steak knife on the table next to his empty plate and stab him in the eye with it.
Instead I said, “I’m not interested in your opinion, Mr. Boudreaux. Your meal is on the house because I love your family’s bourbon and it inspired me to create this menu, which I happen to be very proud of, and which has made a lot of people happy. I would’ve comped you even if you didn’t act like the sun comes up just to hear you crow.”
For the first time I saw something other than steel in his eyes. It was only a moment, a flash of emotion that warmed his gaze, and then it was gone.
He said stiffly, “I insist on paying—”
“I’m not taking your money.”
A flush of color crept over his cheeks. I supposed he wasn’t used to hearing no. That gave me an enormous sense of satisfaction, even if I did just give away four hundred bucks’ worth of food and couldn’t afford to.
Then he stood. It was abrupt and startlingly smooth for a man so large—one swift unbending of limbs that had him on his feet and looming over me.
Again.
Looking up at him, I swallowed. It wasn’t fear I felt, but he was definitely unnerving. And hot damn, why did this crabby, beastly bastard have to smell so good? If I didn’t know better that my mouth was watering from the scent of bourbon-spiced gumbo wafting through the air, I might have almost thought it was because of him.
“Miss Hardwick,” he said, the edge in his voice rougher, his eyes burning blue fire, “You. Are being. Unreasonable.”
Boy, did he like to punctuate his words with a hammer! A laugh escaped me.
“And you, Mr. Boudreaux, are the reason the gene pool needs a lifeguard. Have yourself a nice evening.”
For the second time tonight, I turned my back on Jackson Boudreaux and walked away. Only this time I was painfully aware he might be staring at my ass.
Thanks a million, Eeny.
THREE
JACKSON
Rayford was already waiting at the curb with the car door open when I left the restaurant. That was a good thing, because in my current mood I might have torn the fucking door right off its hinges.
Seething, I climbed into the back of the Bentley. Rayford shut the door behind me without a word. When he started the car and we drove away, I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or disappointed.
I’d never met such an irritating woman in my entire life. The mouth on her! The attitude!
The incredible heart-shaped ass.
I clenched my teeth and stared out into the rainy night. I hadn’t wanted a woman in a long time. Cricket had seen to that. After that disaster, all I could see when a woman looked at me were the dollar signs in her eyes.
But this firecracker Bianca Hardwick. Christ. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss that smart mouth or put a gag in it.
“How was the food, sir?” asked Rayford, peering at me in the rearview mirror.
Still boiling with anger, I snapped, “Adequate.”
Well accustomed to my moods and knowing that was the highest praise I’d ever give anything, Rayford nodded. “Her mama was a great cook, too. Davina’s restaurant was around for, oh, twenty years I think before Hurricane Katrina blew through and wiped it out.” He chuckled. “I had many a meal there back in the day. Every time I came to visit my baby brother, I made sure to stop by. Never forgot Davina’s jambalaya. It was like havin’ a mouthful of heaven. And it wasn’t only the food that kept me comin’ back. Miss Davina Hardwick was one of the finest-lookin’ women I ever seen.”
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Even with no makeup, her dark hair scraped back into a severe bun, wearing a pair of hideous clogs, a stained apron, and a sexless white chef’s coat that covered her from neck to wrists, Bianca Hardwick was stunning. All flashing black eyes and glowing brown skin and ferocious self-confidence, she was a dead ringer for a young Halle Berry.
A young, aggravating Halle Berry.
I dragged a hand through my hair and exhaled.
It wasn’t all her fault I was on edge. I’d been on edge before I even set foot in the place. My personal chef—the fourth in six months—had left in a snit after I’d said the eggs were runny at breakfast, I was hosting a charity benefit for three hundred people in two weeks and would have to try to find a caterer since I didn’t have a chef, and Cody’s good-for-nothing junkie mother had just gotten thrown in jail on possession charges.
Again.
But it was the phone call from my father that had really put the cherry on top. The same phone call I’d been getting every week for going on four years.
When are you coming back to Kentucky? When are you going to stop this foolishness and take over your responsibilities? Boudreaux Bourbon hasn’t had a Master Distiller who wasn’t a family member in over two hundred years! You’re breaking your mother’s heart!
And on and on, until my fucking ears bled. It didn’t matter how much he begged, though. I was never going back.
Returning to Kentucky meant returning to that world of privilege and power I wanted nothing to do with, that viper’s den of genteel, well-mannered people who smiled and shook your hand, then started sharpening the knives as soon as your back was turned. There wasn’t a single person in my social circle aside from my parents I could trust.
Money makes people greedy. A lot of money makes them ruthless. I’d learned that the hard way.
Liars, schemers, and snakes, all of them. It was safer in New Orleans. I didn’t have to fend off as many bullshitters trying to befriend me so they could get their hands on my bank account.
Bianca Hardwick definitely didn’t care about befriending me. And judging by the free dinner, she didn’t give a damn about my bank account. The only thing she seemed to care about was insulting me.
You’re the reason the gene pool needs a lifeguard.
Sassy goddamn woman. No one ever spoke to me like that.
My mouth was doing something strange. It took me a moment to realize my lips were curving up, another moment to remember that meant I was smiling.
“You feelin’ all right, sir?” asked Rayford, watching me in the rearview mirror with concern.
“Of course. Why?”
“Because you look a little funny. Sick, maybe.”
When I scowled, Rayford looked relieved.
How fucking depressing. I’d better never think about Bianca Hardwick’s smart mouth or perfect ass again, or Rayford might think I was dying.
FOUR
BIANCA
Whoever coined the phrase beauty sleep had obviously never seen me in the morning.
“Damn, girl,” I said to my haggard reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Those aren’t bags under your eyes, that’s a full set of luggage.”
I splashed cold water on my face, pressed a wet washcloth to my lids, and held it there for a minute, to no effect. When I opened my eyes, I looked just as bad as I did before.
Serves me right for staying up into the wee hours of the morning working on a new menu.
; But if Jackson Boudreaux was serious about his threat to sue, I’d have to revamp everything, fast. Then I supposed I’d have to hire myself a lawyer.
Stuck-up son of a lazy-eyed catfish!
What little sleep I’d had was filled with nightmares about being chased from the restaurant by a pack of wolves, led by one particularly large and nasty specimen that was all sharp teeth and vicious growls, his black fur bristling as he snapped at my heels. I woke with my heart pounding, the sheets drenched in sweat. And now I looked like I’d been chewed up and spit out by an ornery gator.
I pinned my hair into a bun, then smoothed a dollop of pomade over all the rebellious little flyaways staging a protest around my hairline. Then I brushed my teeth and got dressed, not bothering with makeup. There was no concealer on earth that could tackle my undereye bags today, and I’d never quite mastered the art of applying mascara. Or lipstick, for that matter. The last time I wore it was at Christmas, and by the time mass was over at church it had smeared all over my teeth. I looked like I’d eaten a box of red crayons.
So it was barefaced that I appeared at my mother’s door to check on her on my way to the restaurant, as I did every morning. She took one look at me and raised her brows.
“Well,” she said, “I know you don’t look so rough because of a man, chère, so come on in and tell me the story.”
“Actually it is because of a man.”
I gave my mother a hug, then stepped past her into the small but beautiful front parlor of her home. Perfumed with vases of flowers and the scent of her Shalimar, with the low, throaty voice of Ella Fitzgerald crooning from the hidden speakers in the walls, it was a little oasis of elegance and style amid the gentle decay of Tremé.
The oldest African American neighborhood in the United States, Tremé was the musical heart of New Orleans, going all the way back to the seventeen hundreds, when slaves were allowed to gather in Congo Square on Sundays to dance and play music. Jazz was invented here. The civil rights movement started here. We have brass bands, incredible cuisine, cultural history museums, more festivals than days of the week, and famous historical sites galore.
But it’s a bad idea for tourists to take a stroll after dark. Drugs are a problem, and jobs are in short supply. And all those boarded-up houses that were abandoned after the flood still stand, flowering with toxic black mold, a daily reminder of the heartbreak of Hurricane Katrina.
Life can be good in Tremé, but it’s never been easy.
At the mention of a man, my mother got excited. “Well let me put on my glasses so I can hear you better!”
She often said nonsensical things like that. It was part of her charm. That, and her gift of making you feel welcome.
She slid her glasses up her nose and peered at me through them. Worn on a silver chain around her neck, they were her one concession to the fact that she was aging.
“It’s a long story, Mama,” I said with a sigh. “And not worth retelling.”
She squinted. Her big brown eyes were magnified even bigger through the lenses of her glasses. “No saucy bits?”
“Not even one.”
Instantly losing interest, she removed the dreaded glasses and let them dangle from the chain once more. “Did you have breakfast, chère?”
I shrugged. “Coffee and some aspirin.”
“That’s not breakfast, silly child!” she scolded. “Get your skinny behind in this house and eat!”
She turned and floated away to the kitchen in a cloud of perfume and motherly disappointment, her flowing purple robe billowing around her ankles as she moved. Barefoot and nimble, she still had her beauty queen’s graceful, gliding gait, even at sixty-four years old.
Excuse me. Thirty-nine. For a second there I forgot what year it was that she’d stopped aging.
“I made collard greens, shrimp and grits, and Cajun benedict,” she called over her shoulder. “And I’ve got okra gumbo and my famous jambalaya simmerin’ on the stove for later.”
That would’ve been a lot of food for a single woman living alone, but my mother had a steady stream of callers throughout the day, from brunch straight through to cocktail hour and beyond. There was nothing she enjoyed more than visiting. Or “holding court,” as I liked to call it.
And speaking of callers . . .
“Good morning, Colonel!” I called down the hall toward my mother’s closed bedroom door.
There was a pause, and then a muffled reply. “Mornin’, sugar!”
There was only one reason my mother’s bedroom door was closed in the morning, and the Colonel was it. Trying not to picture what might go on behind that door, I smiled.
“Leave him be, Bianca,” said my mother from the kitchen. “C’mon now, I’m making you up a plate.”
I strolled into the kitchen, dropped my knapsack on the floor next to the square wood table where I ate every meal as a child, and sat down, watching my mother put together a plate of food for me: a scoop from one pot, a ladle from another. She was more at home in front of a stove than anywhere else in the world.
I asked, “Another sleepover? Is this getting serious with you two?”
My mother looked over her shoulder and smiled. Her eyes danced with mischief. “No man could ever compete with your father, chère, God bless his soul, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop them from trying.” She fanned herself. “And my word, the Colonel is certainly trying.”
“Ugh. It’s depressing that you get more action than I do. I can already feel the emotional scars forming.”
“Please, child, you’re not that fragile. And how many times do I have to tell you to get back out there? Don’t let that fool boy put a hex on your love life. He isn’t worth it!”
The “fool boy” in question was my ex, Trace. I’d been head over heels for him, sure we’d get married, until I discovered his definition of monogamy meant he’d only cheat on me with one girl at a time. I’d been happily single for almost two years now, much to Mama’s dismay. As an only child, I was her sole hope for the grandbabies she so desperately wanted.
Avoiding that minefield, I quickly steered the conversation into safer, and more important, waters. “So what did Doc Halloran say?”
Mama turned back to the stove. There was a brief, almost-unnoticeable pause before she answered. “Just what I told you he’d say, baby. I’m right as rain.”
I frowned. “But you’ve had that cough for months now, Mama.”
Smiling brightly, she turned around again and faced me. I was struck by how beautiful she still was, her face unlined in the bright morning light spilling through the kitchen windows. I got my complexion from her—“toasted chestnuts” my milk-pale father called it—and hoped I’d age as well as she was.
Though if the bags under my eyes were any indication, I was out of luck.
“It’s nothing to worry about.” She placed the plate of food on the table in front of me. “Just a side effect of getting old.”
I laughed out loud. “Am I hearing things, or did the fabulous Miss Davina Hardwick just say the word old ? I didn’t think it was even in your vocabulary!”
“Hush, you!” My mother gave me a light, loving slap on my shoulder. “Or the whole neighborhood will hear!”
“Hear what?” said a booming baritone behind me.
I turned to find the Colonel in the doorway, grinning and pulling his suspenders over his shoulders. Trimly built and of below average height, he nonetheless had a big presence, fashioned in part from that booming voice, but mostly from twenty-five years leading soldiers in the army. As always, he was dressed in impeccable white, right down to his patent leather shoes. His eyes were an unusual, gunmetal gray, pale and arresting against the dark canvas of his skin.
My mother laughed and waved her hand at the table. “Nothing for you to be worrying about, just girl talk. Sit yourself down and eat.”
Grinning wider, he propped his hands on his hips. “I’ve already got a belly full of sweetness from spending the night with you, woman.”
Coy as a debutante, my mother pursed her lips and batted her lashes at him. “Why you silver-tongued devil. Whatever will I do with you?”
Faster than you’d think a seventy-year-old man could move, the Colonel had crossed the room and embraced my mother. He swung her around, lifting her so her feet cleared the floor, laughing in delight when she girlishly squealed.
“I can think of one or two things!” he boomed, rattling the windows. Then he set her on her feet and gave her such a passionate kiss my cheeks went red.
“Only one or two?” she said breathlessly when the kiss was over. “I thought you had more imagination than that, tahyo!”
Tahyo is Cajun French for a big, hungry dog.
I dropped my face into my hands and groaned. “Someone please kill me. Just kill me now.”
“I told you not to talk to yourself, child, you sound like one of the hobos over on the boulevard!” Mama scolded.
Into my head popped a vivid image of Jackson Boudreaux’s shocked expression after I’d told him he looked like one of the homeless panhandlers on the boulevard. It made me feel much better.
“You look a little tired this mornin’, sugar.” Finished slobbering all over Mama, the Colonel sat down beside me at the table and eyed me with concern. “Everything all right?”
Mama said, “Says it’s a man that gave her that face, but she isn’t saying who.”
With a wink, she made another plate of food and set it in front of the Colonel. She gave us forks, and we dug in.
“I just had a late night is all,” I said around a mouthful of succulent eggs.
The Colonel drawled, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your visit from a certain Mr. Jackson Boudreaux, would it?”
“Jackson Boudreaux!” Eyes wide, my mother whirled around and stared at me. “Good Lord in heaven, what were you doing with him? I hear that boy’s meaner than a wet panther!”
I shot a sour glance at the Colonel, who lifted a shoulder unapologetically.
He said, “Word gets around this town fast, sugar, ’specially when it has to do with the most eligible bachelor in the state gettin’ a tongue-lashin’ in public from the owner of the hottest new restaurant in the French Quarter.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Rumor has it you nearly snapped that boy’s head clean off.”
Burn for You (Slow Burn Book 1) Page 5