It was only there to add gravitas to the wine program; no one in their right mind would spend that much money on such a rare wine at a restaurant. He’d have no way of knowing if it had even been cellared properly. A true collector, someone with both the pocketbook and the palate to appreciate a thing so rare and valuable, would purchase it through a reputable auction house or directly from the château, ensuring the chain of care and the wine’s integrity.
Even the movie people and the rappers, who were the restaurant’s greatest consumers of fine wine with the least appreciation for it, wouldn’t go for the Latour. It would be the Moëlleux or the Screaming Eagle.
Besides, with even the most careful cellaring, a 1961 vintage was most probably past its prime—years past, in fact. It was ridiculous. It was beyond ridiculous.
Leander lifted his eyebrows. “Do I detect a hint of surprise?”
“Surprise?” she repeated, the two syllables lengthened with disdain.
He had interpreted her ridicule as surprise? As shock? As—heaven forbid—awe?
So: another egotistical, entitled jerk who liked to throw his money around like confetti to impress the unwashed masses. She guessed he treated women in a similar fashion. He probably thought her dim-witted and out of her league. Number four for the day.
With a poof that was almost audible, Jenna’s patience evaporated.
“Of course I’m not surprised. It’s the perfect choice for you,” she said, the slightest accent on the last word. She ignored the ghost of her mother’s warning voice in her head and granted him a smile, small and deliberate.
A fleeting frown crossed his features. It was quickly replaced by an expression of placid neutrality.
“For me?”
He leaned back into the soft leather of the booth and draped one arm casually over the top of the banquette, his gaze never leaving her face. The muscle in his jaw twitched once again.
The waiter materialized silently at the tableside and presented an oval platter with three mouthfuls of food nestled in tiny silver spoons all surrounded by an elaborate drizzled pattern of cucumber-infused froth.
“The amuse-bouche, sir.” He pointed out the bite-sized portions. “Kumamoto oyster with cucumber gelée, mille-feuille of smoked salmon with Osetra caviar, roulade of bluefin tuna with pickled fennel.”
He reached to set down the plate in front of Leander just as Geoffrey appeared, wearing a smile that would have looked at home on a shark.
“And how is the wine selection coming along, Your Graceful Lordship? Would you care to hear any of this evening’s specials?”
Neither Jenna or Leander acknowledged him. Their eyes were still locked together.
“Yes,” Jenna said acidly, “it suits you perfectly. The ’61 Latour is the ultimate penis wine.”
Geoffrey gasped, the waiter fumbled the plate of amuse-bouche and sent it clattering down against the table, but Leander remained taut in his chair, gazing at her, a wintry little smile curving his lips.
“Really?” he said, controlled and calm. “How very amusing. Pray do enlighten me.”
“My Dearest High Majesty, I apologize completely! Let me assure you Mélisse in no way condones this type of—”
Leander made a sharp, dismissive motion to Geoffrey with the hand that was draped over the back of the banquette and kept his wolfish gaze on Jenna’s face. “No apology needed. Leave us.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Jenna saw Geoffrey’s face turn an interesting shade of eggplant. He clutched the waiter’s arm and dragged him off toward the kitchen.
“You were saying?” Leander said.
“I call them the penis wines,” Jenna replied, keeping the same tone of lightly contemptuous civility though her blood was boiling. She knew there would be hell to pay for this, knew her job was most likely kaput, but for the moment she could not care less.
“They are the ridiculously expensive wines purchased as a show of masculinity by a certain species of men—excuse me, males—who have no real appreciation for their value but feel the pathetic need to display their tail feathers.”
Her small smile grew larger as his disappeared altogether. “I think a man secure in his masculinity would choose something a little more...substantial, shall we say. A little less showy.”
A moment passed, not long but wide and cavernous, in which neither of them spoke.
“I’ve offended you,” he finally said. His face betrayed nothing, his tone was quiet and acutely polite. Only his body revealed a hint of anything other than utter detachment. He gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. “How?”
A shade of hostility faded from her posture. She’d expected blustering, outrage, even outright yelling. Most blowhards like him were more than happy to shout at an underling if the opportunity presented itself. She’d been primed and ready for an argument, had even thought of a few more witticisms to snap at him.
But she hadn’t expected this. Not this patience. Not this...concern.
Jenna drew in a breath and shifted her weight onto her other foot. She suddenly wished to be anywhere else than here at this moment. She was tired and behaving badly.
All at once the anger drained away, leaving only a faint residue of embarrassment and the strong desire to go home, climb into bed, and pull the covers over her head.
She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Geoffrey was right, that wasn’t well done of me.” She sighed and passed a hand over her forehead. “I’m sorry, it’s been a long night. I’ll bring the Latour straightaway.”
She turned to leave the table, wondering where she was going to find her next job, when Leander’s soft voice called her back.
“Wait, Jenna, please.”
He was half out of the booth already, rising to stand before caution held him back, reaching toward her with his hand, his face shadowed by the raphis palm near the table, his eyes troubled.
She looked up at him, surprised by his height and his sudden proximity. He gazed down at her intently, his hand still reaching toward her arm. The intoxicating and eerily familiar scent of spice and night air and virile man swirled around her, filling her nose.
“The ’61 Latour was my father’s favorite wine,” Leander murmured. His eyes gleamed in the low light like polished gems. “He served it at his wedding to my mother, thirty-five years ago.”
He inhaled and lightly brushed her bare arm with his fingertips, which sent a current of heat zinging through every nerve. “They were both killed in a car accident three years past. On the rare occasion I find it on a wine list, I order it in memory of them.”
Jenna momentarily lost the power of speech. She was, however, acutely aware of his fingers on her skin, the heat and tension that ached between them, and the curious eyes of everyone in the restaurant.
“Oh—I...I’m so—I’m so sorry,” she stammered, blushing. His fingers kept a light, distracting pressure on her arm. She confounded herself by blurting out, “My parents are both gone too.”
Jenna hadn’t spoken of this to anyone in years.
In response, he simply murmured, “Yes.”
And then she was falling into his eyes, sucked into their bottomless emerald depths like a swimmer losing the fight against a riptide, a swimmer who wanted to drown. A dark, startling rush of déjà vu swept through her, so strong and clear she felt overwhelmed by it.
Yes, her mind echoed. Yes.
“Do I know you?” she whispered, urgent. “Have we met somewhere before?”
He remained perfectly still, so motionless and coiled he seemed otherworldly, like he was carved from stone, a piece of marble with incandescent eyes.
He increased the pressure on her arm by a fraction yet didn’t speak. “It was you in the parking lot at the store, wasn’t it? I saw you there...didn’t I?” she pressed, breathless. Her heart leapt as their eyes clung together.
A ripple of tension rolled through his chest. His lips parted and he stared down at her, his face blazing with heat. “We—I—�
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He seemed just about to say more, but a woman at one of the tables near the piano burst into peals of high, raucous laughter and the moment was gone.
“We have never met before tonight,” he said quietly and dropped his hand from her arm. He turned away, then stepped back, angling himself toward his table.
“But—”
“Would you mind—if you please—may I have the Latour?” he asked politely, looking down, hesitating before taking his seat once again. He folded his hands together with his forearms resting against the edge of the table and leaned over, staring down at his plate, his hair gleaming ebony as it brushed against his cheekbone, hiding his expression. He didn’t look up.
A flush of scarlet crept up Jenna’s neck toward her ears. Idiot.
“Certainly,” she murmured stiffly, “I’ll be right back.”
She willed herself to move calmly away from the table, willed her eyes to stare straight ahead to avoid meeting dozens of other inquisitive pairs directed her way as she wove through the restaurant, her legs stiff as boards.
She didn’t remember walking to the kitchen, she only knew she had arrived there when Geoffrey found her standing like a zombie in the middle of it, staring into space.
“You are finished!” he screeched, his neck veins bulging blue against the starched collar of his shirt.
“Geoffrey—”
“I knew we shouldn’t have hired a female sommelier! I knew it! Too emotional, too unpredictable, too unprofessional!”
Jenna winced and wiped away a fleck of spittle from her cheek while Geoffrey stalked back and forth in front of her, arms flailing.
“We’re ruined, you know.” He swung around and stabbed his finger into the air in front of Jenna’s face. “Ruined! What do you think is going to happen when he tells the owner about this? I’ll be held responsible for your disgusting display of feminism! And the press!”
He froze. His skin took on the pallor of a bed sheet. His beady eyes bulged out of his head until she thought they might actually be ejected from their sockets.
“The press,” he whispered, his face ashen. He lifted his hands to the sides of his head. “If word gets out to the press that you called His Holy Dignity a dick—”
“I did not —”
“Geoffrey!”
The hostess, a busty brunette in a clingy black dress with a plunging neckline, burst through the swinging steel doors of the kitchen and looked wildly around, almost panting in panic. “Geoffrey!”
“For God’s sake, Tiffany, I’m right here! What is it?” he spat, turning with a huff.
“The earl,” she breathed, pointing over her shoulder toward the dining room. “He’s asking for you.” She twirled back out through the doors with a flash of tanned leg above a platinum gold Jimmy Choo pump.
Geoffrey turned back to Jenna and narrowed his eyes. “Your employment with Mélisse is terminated, effective immediately. Get out of my restaurant,” he snarled.
Before she could open her mouth to speak, Geoffrey vanished through the kitchen doors like an angry poltergeist, leaving only the metallic scent of fury lingering behind.
Jenna drew in a slow breath, checking her anger. She looked around the open kitchen with its black-and-white-tiled floor, enormous walk-in refrigerator, stainless steel sinks, and bustling activity, and said a silent good-bye. She had only her jacket and handbag to retrieve; all the papers and files in her small windowless office belonged to the restaurant.
Once she stepped out the door, it would be as if she hadn’t spent the past two years of her life here. It would be as if she’d never existed.
In a daze, she moved through the kitchen toward her tiny office at the back. She slammed the door behind her to block out the snickering from the sous chef and picked up her handbag from the chair where she’d tossed it as she rushed out at the beginning of her shift.
She looked around one final time. The shape of the room, the bookshelves lining one wall, the master sommelier certificate framed above her small desk. The thought that she’d be able to take one thing after all—the certificate earned through her own hard work and talent—did nothing to cheer her. After being fired from Mélisse, she doubted she could work anywhere in the city again. She’d soon be bartending at the strip club near the airport.
The pounding of fists against the office door made her jump and spin around.
“Jenna!”
It was Geoffrey, hissing, probably come to take her head away on a platter.
“Give me a minute, Geoffrey, I’m just getting my—”
The door swung open to reveal Geoffrey and Tiffany looming large in the doorway, with the entire kitchen staff pressed close behind them, staring in with the look of a lynch mob.
She took a startled step back and bumped into her chair. It clattered to a stop against the desk and everything fell silent but for the faint sizzle of unwatched onions caramelizing in butter on the six-burner range in the kitchen beyond.
Geoffrey held a bottle of wine in his hands and lifted it toward her, his pale and bulbous brow beaded with a fine sheen of sweat.
“The Latour,” he rasped, his hands slightly trembling. “He wants you to serve it.”
Jenna’s gaze jumped back and forth between Geoffrey and Tiffany, who were both stiff and pasty as mannequins. No one else made a peep.
Geoffrey swallowed and held the bottle out as if it were a holy relic. There was a generous layer of dust settled over the glass, a faint smudge of mold on the label; the sign of a perfectly undisturbed, pristinely aged bottle of wine.
“Now. Please,” Geoffrey whimpered. The overhead light shone pale against his forehead.
“What is going on here?” Jenna asked.
It was Tiffany who answered. “He’s not mad. He wants the wine. You’re the sommelier.”
Jenna looked over to Geoffrey, eyebrows raised. “Geoffrey?”
He nodded, his head giving a quick up-and-down jerk.
“I’m not fired?”
His head jerked again, this time side to side. No.
“Why not?”
The breath left his lungs in a sharp puff of air as if they’d collapsed. “Please, Jenna—just go! We’ll talk about it later! Please,” he begged, bending his knees and making an odd little hop. “Don’t keep him waiting!” He waggled the bottle back and forth in front of her like a lure, sloshing the wine around.
Jenna reached out and delicately pried the bottle free from the sweaty death grip he had on it. “Gently, will you! You’re mucking up the sediment, it’ll be all cloudy—”
“For God’s sake, woman, just go!” he practically shrieked into her face.
Jenna paused, the realization dawning that somehow her fortune had turned and the balance of power had tipped to her favor. She had a sneaking suspicion she knew who was responsible for this sudden change.
“Geoffrey,” she said and looked him square in the eye.
He clapped both his hands over his face and then shook them apart over his head, a dramatic, silent What?
“Get out of my way.”
He spun around, collecting Tiffany by the arm as he went, and barged a path through the crowd of visibly disappointed onlookers. “Back to work, you dégueulasse animaux, before I fire you all!” he crowed.
Jenna looked down at the bottle of Latour. He wants you to serve it...
You want it, you got it, she thought grimly. But be careful what you wish for, Earl McLoughlin.
She squared her shoulders, raised her chin, stalked out of her office and through the kitchen, holding the Latour in her arms like a child.
Without another glance backward, Jenna strode through the swinging doors.
6
Leander watched her approach with equal parts fascination and awe.
It wasn’t her figure or her gliding walk or her regal carriage, the determined way she held her head. It wasn’t her ivory skin or the shape of her jaw or the mass of shiny golden locks cascading over her shoulders that set her
apart, that drew admiring glances from every male as she passed by.
It was simply that she shone like a flame, a flawless diamond breathing living fire among so many dead lumps of coal.
As she moved gracefully through the swinging doors of the kitchen, past the tables of diners, coming toward him through pools of warm candlelight and patches of dappled shadow, slender and lovely and tall, she blazed brighter and more brilliant than the noonday sun, illuming the air around her like a torch.
She stepped past the bar, lifting her arm with the grace of a swan to snare a Bordeaux glass as she passed. The Blood of the Ikati was clearly visible in her figure, the sensual lines of her body, the way she floated like a panther hunting its prey in the forest. She was lissome and sleek and glorious.
Her beauty made his skin prickle.
But it was those Eyes that drew him in, strange and clear and haunting, that look of something carefully hidden, something guarded. She was brittle and brash on the outside, full of poise and confidence and strength, but her every glance was oddly wounded. Even as she mocked him and called him pathetic, there was some fathomless depth of...
“I suppose I owe you both an apology and a thank you,” Jenna said primly, eyes downcast as she presented the bottle of Latour, label up, for his inspection.
Her voice, quiet and melodious, sent a fresh shiver crawling up his spine. He was glad for the stiff leather of the banquette against his back, real and grounding. He made a conscious effort to keep his body relaxed, his breathing regular.
“You’ve already apologized. And no thanks are necessary.” Leander stroked a thumb over the fine layer of dust on the Latour’s label, keeping his own eyes focused on the bottle.
He nodded toward the bottle, approving.
She set the Bordeaux glass on the white linen tablecloth and used a foil cutter to remove the foil cap over the cork. A corkscrew appeared in her hand.
“I’m sure you must have said something to the maître d’. My job has miraculously been restored.” An elegant turn of her wrist released the cork from the bottle. “Not that I deserve it,” she added, almost inaudibly.
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