At least I’m not the only woman of a certain age to find him inconveniently appealing.
“Where’s Devon?” Slater asked.
“Giving an interview to the local television station that covers New York City metro news. Which reminds me…”
She whipped out her phone and texted Lilah back.
Tell your truant husband he’d better mention the RSC competition, if he knows what’s good for him. So long as he works in a reference to Délicieux sponsoring it, all is forgiven.
It took time to thumb-type the whole message, but Claire refused to employ the ridiculous abbreviations most people used.
Another sign that you’re getting old and set in your ways, the voice in her head snarked.
“So it’s the two of us,” Slater remarked, leaning back in his chair. His lids were heavy over the ridiculously clear ocean blue of his eyes, giving him the look of a man who’d just risen from his bed, and would happily fall back into it at a moment’s notice.
Claire swallowed a mental picture of a particular woman accompanying Slater back to his bed … a woman who happened to have long, chestnut hair just beginning to show threads of silver.
“In fact, that’s exactly what I wish to speak to you about,” she told him, forcing steel into her words and gaze. “This ridiculous flirtation … it must stop, Mr. Slater.”
“You sound like my high school history teacher when you call me that.”
Suppressing a pang of horror at the comparison, Claire replied, “I can only imagine she wished to convey, as I do, the appropriate distance that should exist between people in our position.”
He blinked slowly, like a cat in sunlight. “Wow. You sound so … American.”
Claire stiffened. “I can’t think what you mean.”
Slater tore a piece off the end of his croissant, flaking buttery bits of pastry all over the table. “Prim. Proper. Puritanical. And possibly other alliterative terms I can’t think of until I finish the first cup of coffee.”
Genuinely insulted, Claire snapped back, “How typical to assume my attitude has nothing to do with the subject matter—namely, you.”
“Baloney,” Slater said bluntly, after swallowing his mouthful of croissant.
At least he doesn’t speak with his mouth full.
“If it were only about me coming on to you,” Slater continued, pointing the pastry at her, “then you wouldn’t have gotten annoyed when I smiled at that woman chef from Lunden’s.”
“And that’s another thing!” Claire leaped on the chance to redirect the conversation. “You cannot flirt with the chef contestants. Absolutely no. It is strictly forbidden, and for very good and obvious reasons.”
“I haven’t flirted with any contestants,” he protested, shredding more croissant in his agitation. At this rate, there would be nothing left for him to eat.
“Please,” she scoffed. “That question you asked, about female chefs and the Michelin stars. You targeted it directly to that Lunden’s Tavern woman, don’t pretend to me that you did not!”
“Okay, fine,” Slater conceded, abandoning his ragged croissant to blow the steam from the surface of his coffee. “I hoped she’d know the answer; she was struggling, and I felt bad for her. But it was a totally legit question. Anyone, from either team, could’ve picked it up. I didn’t feed her the answer, and you know it. Quit dodging the issue.”
“What issue?” Claire picked up her own coffee mug, pleased at the steadiness of her hand.
Kane Slater let all four legs of his chair touch down so he could lean both elbows on the table. “The issue is that we’re attracted to each other. You don’t want to be, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are. And so am I. And it’s against my philosophy to keep pretending I’m not.”
It was suddenly difficult to catch her breath. “You are … very direct, Mr. Slater.”
“Kane,” he said, tilting his head insistently, his eyes intent on her face.
She filled her lungs with air. “Kane,” she agreed without looking away. “All right. You make your point, and I won’t disagree. Yes, I find you attractive, as do most women you encounter, I’m sure. It changes nothing.”
“Are you nuts? It changes everything!” His voice had warmed and smoothed while they talked, his vocal chords waking up as the shots of espresso coursed through his body. Claire shivered. “Even if we never act on it, there will always be this electric charge between us, this knowledge, this potential. Inevitably, it will change things.”
“You accused me of sounding American,” Claire said, hiding behind her coffee mug once more. “But you’re the one who fits that description, I think. American men, in my experience, are never content to allow life to take its course. They have always to be pushing. America is a very pushy nation, as a whole.”
Truth be told, she loved that about her adopted country. Claire, herself, preferred to do rather than to sit idly by and comment ironically on the doings of others.
In romance, however … well. It wasn’t as if she had energy or desire to devote herself to attending to someone else’s fragile ego in her spare time. She did enough of that at work. No one could match a celebrity chef for ego, either in towering height or eggshell frailty.
Not that Slater was offering romance, exactly. Claire narrowed her eyes on the actual subject of her inner debate, who gave her a lazy grin. “So you’re saying, if I bide my time and let the river flow across the rocks for a while, I’ll eventually wear you down? Like the Grand Canyon.”
Claire reached into the dark green Gucci purse that had been her first gift to herself upon being promoted to editor in chief of Délicieux, and pulled out her wallet. Tossing a twenty onto the table, she pushed back her chair and stood, intentionally positioning herself above him.
“What I say is that while I don’t consider myself sexually inhibited, and I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with sex, it doesn’t mean I make myself available to every man who catches my eye. You’re attractive, certainly. I don’t dispute this.” She shrugged; it was more of an effort than usual to give the lift of her shoulders that perfectly casual, Gallic air. “But am I likely to lose all control of my body and my senses over you? No.”
“No one has complete control of their senses,” Slater said, tipping his head back to gaze up at her. “That’s what makes life such a kick.”
He seemed perfectly at ease looking up at her, and Claire had the uncomfortable feeling that even leaning back in his seat, legs kicked out in front of him and arms curled up behind his head, Slater still managed to command the entire room. There was no denying his presence.
“Perhaps you’ve never dealt with an adult, experienced woman before,” she said, “but I assure you, the choice is mine as to what I do with my desires, and I do not choose lightly.” Drawn closer as if by the gravitational pull a planet had on one of its moons, Claire leaned in, placing one hand on the table for balance. “And I choose not to indulge myself with you. Do we understand one another, Mr. Slater?”
This close to him, she could see the glint of red in the short blond stubble sandpapering his cheeks. He was almost too pretty to be real—that lush mouth!—but the hardness of his jaw and the strength of his high, intelligent brow saved the masculinity of his face, giving him a rough-and-tumble look Claire never would’ve imagined could appeal to her.
“I understand,” he said. “That you’re worried about how it might look. So I’ll swear to be the picture of decorum in public … if you promise to call me Kane from now on.”
“Done,” Claire said swiftly, holding out her hand to shake on the deal. She’d worry about the rest of his interpretation of her concerns later.
Slater—Kane—took her hand, but instead of shaking it or bending to kiss it as Devon Sparks had done, he turned it so that her palm was facing up. He traced one long, callus-tipped finger down the center of her palm, and smiled to himself. “A fire hand,” he murmured. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Excuse m
e?” Claire said frigidly. Her hand was ablaze with tingling sensation everywhere he’d touched it, and her fingers twitched spasmodically, desperate to curl around her buzzing palm. But she held perfectly still, determined not to get into some sort of ridiculous tug-of-war over her own limb.
“A fire hand,” he explained, still studying her palm. “Long palm, firm, warm skin … hm, very warm.” He looked up at her, and his blue eyes seemed to gaze right into the center of her. “You’re ambitious and creative—you see the world around you in all its beauty, and you want to conquer it and bend it to your will. To do that, you’ve repressed your true passionate nature, forcing the river of your desires into neat, tidy channels of pragmatism and practicality. You’ve denied your inner danger junkie way too long … and that’s why you’re attracted to me. I’m everything you think you shouldn’t want and can’t have.”
Claire swayed on her feet, transfixed. His voice was like the beat of her own heart, pounding in her ears, drumlike and entrancing.
“But I’m telling you, Claire Durand,” Kane said, letting go of her hand, “you can have me.”
She blinked and the world rushed back in a cacophony of coffee orders, clattering china, and customers chatting. The strange spell was broken the instant he stopped touching her, and without hesitating, Claire scooped up her purse and made her escape.
* * *
“It’s sort of like Grand Central Station,” Winslow marveled, “but with fewer trains and more yummy free samples. Why, yes, ma’am, I would absolutely love to try your house-cured duck sausage!”
While Winslow chowed down, Max looked around to see if he could spot the rest of their crew.
The sea of people surging around in the high-ceilinged warehouse space made Max nostalgic for the open-air markets of Asia, where he almost always stood head and shoulders above the crowd.
There! He caught a glimpse of Beck, the other tall member of the team, over by the huge case of cheese in front of Formaggio Essex. The dark head, hair half pulled back from his face in a short ponytail, bent down, presumably to examine some interesting brie more closely, and Max lost sight of him.
But with a whistle and a head jerk to Winslow, Max was already on the move.
They’d split up on entering the Essex Street Market, scattering in different directions like sparks from the fireworks on Chinese New Year. There was a lot to see and explore down the aisles of food vendors—cheeses from around the world as well as specimens from local dairies; organically grown peaches and tomatoes from farms in upstate New York nestled side by side with cassava melons and yucca roots flown in from Mexico.
Every aisle was crammed with shoppers, who were as eclectic a bunch as the produce they haggled over.
Max dodged a guy with a toxic green mohawk and skinny black jeans just in time to push through a crowd of squat, gray-haired women with pushcarts and loud voices. On the other side of their chatter—was that Portuguese?—Max finally found his quarry.
Behind a pallet heaped with handfuls of glossy red cherries, Jules was in deep consultation with a broad-chested man in a weathered green baseball cap. When Max got closer, he could see that the cap read WILDMAN FARMS in darker green lettering.
Sneaking up behind her, Max dared to sling an arm casually over her shoulders as he said, “What’s up?”
He wondered what it said about their relationship that it made him so freaking gleeful when she didn’t tense up, just glanced over at him with her eyes shining deep amber.
“Zach thinks he’s going to have plums tomorrow. We could really do something cool with that, don’t you think?”
Max’s brain spun with the possibilities. “Wow, yeah,” he said. “Are you sure, man? I haven’t seen any around today at any of the other stalls.”
Zach shrugged. “They weren’t ready yet this morning, my brother said.” He gave a quick smile, blindingly white against the deep tan of his face. “Jon’s the farmer—he was born with a whole green hand, and part of his arm, too, maybe. If he says they’ll be ready tomorrow, they’ll be ready.”
“Shit, that’s exciting,” Max said, rocking on his heels. “We could do a plum gastrique, or there’s a tart with plums and honeyed crème fraîche that I learned how to make in Avignon…” He wanted to jump up and down like a little kid, the fever of the competition heating his blood like a dip in a hot spring pool. “Good detective work, Jules.”
“Know your purveyors,” she said as they waved good-bye to Zach Wildman and started moving toward Beck and the cheese counter. “It was one of the first things Gus taught me.”
Max felt a pang at the downward curve of her mouth. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to choose between us—that was unfair.”
“Was it?” Jules hooked her thumbs under the straps of the backpack she used instead of a purse. “We never would’ve been able to plan on those plums if we hadn’t come down here. I didn’t even know Wildman Farms had a stall here; I’m used to seeing them at the Union Square Greenmarket.”
Inside Max’s chest, it felt as if a bowl of warm clarified butter that he’d been holding on to very tightly with both hands suddenly tipped, spilling a big splash of rich, buttery happiness all through him. “That’s good, then,” he said, hoping the general din of the market would mask the way his voice scratched out of his constricted throat. “Guess my work here is done.”
“Not so fast, stud,” Winslow said, catching up to them. His shaved head was shiny, green eyes bright, and he was clearly juiced on about twenty-five different varieties of cured meat. “We’ve still got to come up with a whole menu with a dish for each of us, and then, you know, cook it. For the judges. One of whom is the God of Rock, Kane freaking Slater!”
Max lifted his brows. “Win. Man, you know you squeaked a little there, right?”
Raising his voice to be heard over Jules’s laughter, Winslow said, “Oh sure. Mock me for my beliefs. How would you feel if it were the Dalai Lama judging our food, and I was all, ‘Oh, Max. He’s only the embodiment of the Buddha on earth, or whatever. Be cool.’”
They were still laughing, all of them, excited and energized and nearly running down the street on their way back to the restaurant, when they turned the corner of Barrow and Grove … and saw the ambulance parked directly in front of his parents’ building.
Chapter 23
Max wasn’t aware he was running until he felt the slap of his feet on the pavement, the vibrations shuddering up his legs as he pounded forward as fast as he could push himself.
A million scenarios flashed through Max’s head, jumbled and jerky like a horror movie reel on fast-forward, images of everything from a pregnant lunch guest going into labor in the middle of the dining room to awful, stomach-roiling thoughts of his mother losing her balance and hitting her head on the hostess stand.
But even with all those fevered imaginings, he wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted him when he burst through the Lunden’s Tavern door, the rest of the kitchen crew hard on his heels.
His mother stood at the back of the dining room beside the kitchen door, white as salt and covering her mouth with both hands. She didn’t even see Max until he was right next to her, putting his hands on her shoulders to feel the tremors working through her.
The moment he touched her, all the steel went out of her spine and knees, and she crumpled in his arms.
“Mom,” Max said, aware of the others gathering around them, helping him to support her weight. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
She shook her head, but said nothing, her breath starting to come in quick gasps punctuated by coughing sobs that sounded painful enough to make Max’s chest twinge in sympathy.
“It’s not her.” Jules’s voice was odd, almost distant. Max lifted his head and looked for her. She stood by the swinging metal door that led into the kitchen, peering through the oval glass window at something inside.
Sick fear clamped down on Max’s gut, but when Beck laid a big hand on Ni
na’s shoulder, Max transferred her to the larger chef as gently as could. He had to force himself to step over to Jules, some part of him knowing already what he was about to see.
Danny was at his side, a silent, bolstering presence, as they pushed open the kitchen door.
Dad.
Two paramedics were working over him, swift and efficient and frighteningly calm as they strapped Max’s father to a collapsible stretcher. Gus’s face was partially obscured by an oxygen mask, but beneath it, Max could see that his father’s skin was papery and pale. His eyes were closed, and tufts of gray hair stuck out oddly around the rubber strings holding the mask to his nose and mouth.
When did his hair go gray? Max wondered.
“What happened?” Danny’s voice made Max flinch. It was too loud, grating and rough, like trucks grinding their gears as they barreled down the dirt mountain roads in South America.
One of the paramedics spared them a brief glance, fingers never ceasing their quick, methodical movements. “Severe chest pains, dizziness, loss of consciousness,” she said, removing the stethoscope from her ears and draping it around her neck.
“It’s his heart,” Jules murmured in a low, shocked voice.
Danny made a harsh noise in his throat; Max wrapped an arm around his shoulders and leaned into him. They could help each other stay on their feet.
“If you’re going to freak out, do it somewhere else,” the paramedic said tersely, reaching underneath the stretcher to elongate the legs so they could roll Gus out to the waiting ambulance. Danny started forward at once, following the stretcher, but Max’s feet were nailed to the floor.
Oh my God. They’re rolling my father out of here on a stretcher.
Too Hot to Touch Page 20