“Just keeping you away from John.” He winked at her. “Let’s go, Gracie.”
She should have nipped the name in the bud, told him right then and there that it brought back murky memories that confused and confounded her. She also should have let go of his hand and kept her distance and stopped flirting with him. She should have stopped letting him soften her heart and touch her soul and make her want to kiss him.
But she just smiled, gave his fingers a squeeze, and let him lead the way.
Chapter Seven
Based on her questions, Alex realized that Grace had seriously underestimated his culinary skills. Although he answered everything, he downplayed his work, always a firm believer in “show, don’t tell” when it came to cooking. She hadn’t yet offered him the assignment he wanted so much, but she would. She had to once she tasted his food.
Back at Overlook Glen, he allowed her to give a quick tour of the large house that was at the center of the winery, even though he really only wanted to see the kitchen. But he walked through the first-floor wing that consisted of a tasting bar and a function space for parties of twenty or so, a conference room, and a small office crowded with antique furniture but offering a spectacular vineyard view.
On the other side of the two-story reception hall and curved stone stairs, Grace led him down a hallway, then slowed her step as they reached the double doors of the banquet kitchen.
“Warning,” she said, pushing them open. “It’s cavernous.”
“Cavernous?” Alex came to a dead stop in the doorway, blinking at the fading afternoon light that poured through mullioned windows that filled one wall.
“I know, it’s huge,” Grace said.
His head swiveled from side to side as he took in the stainless steel, the equipment, the storage, the space. “Cavernous?” he repeated, a little speechless at it all. “Try…glorious. Extraordinary. Incredible, and holy shit, is that an eight-burner Viking stove and a Blodgett bakery deck oven?”
“You sound like little Christian when he saw the puppies.”
“Of course I do, because, oh man, the pastries I could make.” He took a few more steps, stretching his hands out to get it all.
“You think you could cook in here?”
“Cook?” He snorted a laugh. “I could do more than cook in here. I could make art in here. I could perform in here. I could…” He placed both hands on the massive prep counter, the size and scope of which he hadn’t touched since he’d left France. “I could change lives with the food I make in this kitchen.”
She laughed, her eyes light and bright as she watched him walk around. “Change lives? That’s pretty extreme.”
“So’s my food. Especially if I have free rein in this piece of heaven that I’ve been dreaming of for years.”
“I hate to admit it, but if we don’t have an event, all this equipment isn’t getting used. I have an apartment on the third floor with a small efficiency kitchen that meets my needs.”
He moved slowly toward the Viking, glancing up to inspect an industrial-size hood that could suck the smoke out of a burning building.
“I had to replace the appliances when I first bought the winery,” she told him. “I knew I wasn’t going to make a profit on wine for a few years, but there isn’t anything quite like this around Bitter Bark, Chestnut Creek, and Holly Hills. I got such an incredible deal on the purchase that I could afford to sink some cash into this kitchen, and then I renovated the reception hall and terrace for parties and weddings.”
“Money well spent,” he whispered as he pulled the oven door down and peered inside and pictured dough rising to near perfection. “I’m suffering from grade A kitchen envy right now. You should see what I have to work with. Santorini’s is about a fifth this size. And at home, I have a galley kitchen in an apartment. This is…” He sighed and stroked the massive handle. “Gorgeous.”
She laughed. “Well, make yourself at home. I don’t think I’ve ever had a chef in here who treated everything with such reverence.”
“Then you’ve probably never had a real chef in here. Is that a sound system?” he asked, pointing to speakers in the ceiling.
“Yeah, Desmond liked to hook his phone up to them with Bluetooth.”
“Sweet.” He pulled open the door to a large walk-in cooler. “And this is well stocked and neatly organized.”
“A lot of that is what was purchased for your mom’s wedding.” Grace followed him into the tight, cold space. “So, technically, this food belongs to your family.”
“So I can cook…” He bent over, doing a rapid inventory of the food and a lightning-quick menu in his head. “Wow. I could make…” He straightened and looked at her. “Dinner. Tonight. For you. And me.”
“That’s not—”
“Please.” He put both hands on her shoulders and added gentle pressure. “Rosemary-infused rack of lamb with a carrot soufflé and maybe a red cabbage slaw with hazelnut and lemon? We can eat it outside and watch the sun go down.”
She gave in to a slow smile. “You really want to do that celebrity wedding, don’t you?”
“I really want to have dinner on the terrace with you.”
He felt her shudder under his touch, then try to cover her response with a sigh of resignation. “Then I’ll set up a table and pick the wine.”
The next hour flew by in a blur as Alex slipped into work mode, put some classic rock on the sound system, and took advantage of every aspect of the chef’s kitchen.
He was vaguely aware that Grace had come back, opened a bottle of wine, poured him a glass, and taken one to the chef’s table under the window to watch him work. Every once in a while, when he stopped to think, wash his hands, or wipe down the prep station, he took a sip and threw her a smile. But mostly, he was deep into the creative process, timing his cooking, tasting his work, and visualizing the outcome.
When he had two plates beautifully arranged, he carried them outside, and she brought the wine. They sat across from each other, toasting just as a nearly full moon rose over the vineyard.
“How did you do this?” she asked with no small amount of wonder in her gaze.
“Years of training.”
“Not…this.” She looked down at the plate. “Obviously, you are a seriously fantastic chef.”
“You haven’t even taken a bite yet.”
“I’m eating with my eyes. But I meant…” She flicked her fingers from her to him, then at the whole ambience around them. “This.”
“The moonrise was just my good luck.”
She laughed. “I guess I’m not explaining myself. How did you get me here? This is so far out of my comfort zone, I feel like I’m a different woman.”
It was? “Dinner at home with a friend?”
“It feels…like more.”
He put down his glass and laid his hand over hers. “It is,” he said softly, making her eyes widen with surprise. “It’s my audition.”
Picking up her fork, she slid the tines through the mustard-shallot sauce, then closing her eyes, she slipped the fork between her lips and let out the softest, sweetest, sexiest moan.
After a moment, she opened her eyes to meet his, then leaned back in her chair, probably unaware that fading light put an extra glow in her hair and eyes. “Now I know why your family calls you Alexander the Great.”
“Do I get the job?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He raised his glass to the moon. “Nice work, Mother Nature.”
“Mother Nature didn’t make this sauce.”
He laughed, and then they both ate slowly, savoring every bite. Alex was always critical of his own creations, but he was confident he’d hit this one out of the park.
“Think this is the kind of dinner your celebrity clients would like?”
“It’s the kind anyone with a mouth, nose, and stomach would like. This is perfect.”
“Nothing’s perfect, especially in the kitchen. But…” He took a bite and nodded when the flavors me
lded exactly as planned. “This is close.”
“To answer your question, I honestly don’t know what Scooter and Blue will want on the menu. That’s what’s being discussed with the advance team reps. That and…” She made a face and looked at the bottle on the table. “The wine.”
“So, what’s your plan for that?” he asked.
“To promise them whatever they want and then figure out how to deliver. They won’t be tasting anything this week. I suppose, if we make the cut, there will be a test dinner—a dry run, if you will. That’s usually how it goes when you’re competing with other venues for a big event.”
“But still you want to blow them away on Tuesday and make the cut.”
“I do.” Her gaze moved past him to the vineyards that spilled out from the terrace. “It’s a shame we don’t have an extra twelve or eighteen months to age this year’s harvest. It was a wonderful harvest, the best in the three years I’ve had the winery. For weeks, I’ve been adjusting the candida on the fermentation and keeping the sulfur dioxide synthesis to a minimum.”
“Have you ever considered…” He leaned closer. “Not treating winemaking like a science project?”
“It is a science project. Every single step of the way, including where we are right now, all the way through malolactic fermentation, science is involved.”
“Malo-whatic?”
She smiled. “A layman would call it barrel aging, for at least a year, maybe eighteen months.”
“And you feel that long step is absolutely necessary?”
She gave a sly smile. “Oh, I don’t know. Do you think the rosemary rub on this lamb was absolutely necessary?”
“Not if I was making a different recipe.”
“I never change the chemistry, which, I guess, is what you call the recipe.”
He finished his last bite, setting down the fork and using the linen napkin to dab his mouth. “And you press late this week, right? That means you’ll have wine this week from your wonderful harvest.”
“I told you I’m not a fan of first press,” she said. “It’s…hit or miss, and it basically happens on one night, and there’s a lot of…instinct involved.” She sounded like she wasn’t quite sure she trusted hers.
“But that’s why the end product can be magical,” he countered. “In France, they go crazy for the Beaujolais Nouveau.”
“Different grapes, different climate, different soil. I mean, it could be done by someone with more experience.”
“You could do it. Trust your gut.”
She looked at him for a long time, quiet. “I trust science and logic,” she finally said. “They’ve never let me down.”
Like people. She didn’t have to say it, but he could read the unspoken words in her eyes, and it made him want to know who did that and why and how he could show her that not every person would let her down.
“Well, I live and breathe by my gut,” he replied. “It rarely fails me. Plus…” He put his hand over hers and felt her fingers tense. Baby steps, he told himself. No reason to scare her. “My palate is flawless,” he said, only half teasing, but definitely keeping things light. “I could help you make that wine. It could be perfect.”
She smiled, leaning right back toward him. “I thought there was no such thing as perfection.”
“I meant in cooking. In life, plenty of things are perfect. Your eyes, sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes the most haunting shade of both. Those are perfection.”
Color rose, highlighting her cheekbones. “Stop it.”
“Why? It’s true. And those three little puppies? Perfection.”
She laughed. “They are. And so’s your flirting game. Everything about you, actually.” She tipped her head and studied him. “What’s your fatal flaw?”
“That I don’t have one?” he joked.
“Everyone has a fatal flaw. Please tell me there’s something wrong with you.”
He smiled and pointed a playful finger at her. “You’re flirting game’s pretty good, too, you know.”
She laughed, denying nothing. “Name a flaw, Alex Santorini. Fatal or otherwise.”
“Okay.” He thought about it for a moment, knowing this was as good an opportunity as any to share his real issues with someone he liked and respected and who had no vested familial interest. “I’m frustrated by my situation, trapped in a kitchen that’s nothing like the dream I just cooked in, and I frequently wake up in the middle of the night wanting to scream that I’m thirty-six years old and haven’t started my life yet. Not my professional life, anyway.”
She searched his face for a moment, thinking. “Why don’t you change your situation?”
“Family.” He didn’t hesitate one nanosecond. “My family is the one and only reason I stay where I am and can’t change a thing.”
“Would they stop you?”
“No, but…” He lifted the glass and turned it to watch the liquid form legs. “It would rock the foundation of our family not to have a Santorini in the kitchen. It’s more than just a family-owned business, it’s a family-run business. And that doesn’t just mean John clicking away on his calculator and griping about how much I paid for truffle salt. The business is a restaurant, so a Santorini should be cooking.” His father hadn’t said that on his deathbed, but Alex knew what the man had been thinking when he’d faced the end. And he couldn’t let Nico Santorini down.
“I get that,” she said. “But can’t you sit down and tell your family how unhappy you are? They all seem like very reasonable and loving people.”
“They are, and they’d probably tell me to go fly free. But I can’t. I mean, I could if someone else knew how to cook. John’s a numbers guy, Cassie is running her own event-planning business, Nick’s a doctor in Africa, and Theo’s in the Navy. My mom’s a decent home cook, but no chef. The food gene was all…” He closed his eyes, his father’s face as crystal clear as the day they’d said goodbye. “It’s why I grew this beard, you know?”
“For the restaurant?”
“For my dad. John and I both did. We wanted to be exactly like him. Work like him. Look like him.” He rubbed the now-familiar whiskers. “And I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like I’d be letting him down to walk away from the business that my grandfather started and my father ran.” He gave her a slow grin. “This is a Greek thing, trust me.”
“Sounds like a bunch of Greek excuses for not taking a chance and following your dreams, if you ask me.”
Greek excuses? He shifted in his seat and took the last drink of his wine instead of dignifying that with a response.
“Who in your family would be upset if you turned over the restaurant to another talented chef?” she asked. “Your mother? I sense her life is with Daniel now. Your siblings all have their roles.”
“Yiayia, for one,” he said. “It would break her heart, which is not the strongest to begin with. She had a heart attack before she moved here and never even told us. Now she looks and acts different, but I know there’s a very demanding woman under that nicely pulled face, and her expectations are sky-high.”
“Have you ever talked to her about it?”
He shook his head. “She’s only been living here a few months. She and Gramma Finnie are so busy trying to…”
“Set me up with your twin brother,” she finished for him.
He laughed, then made a fake angry face. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I’m not.”
The serious, sweet way she said it made him smile. “Anyway, she may look and act nicer than she used to be, but she’s still a steel-spined matriarch with her lifeblood in the restaurant. If I announced I wanted to cook French food or open a high-end gourmet restaurant, it would rock the Santorini boat too much.”
“The Santorini boat or the Alex boat?” She lifted a brow to punctuate the sharp, and weirdly intuitive, question.
He brushed it off. “You asked me my flaw. I think it’s that I carry a low-grade level of resentment against my family for holding me
back. You might not get that because you’ve been able to follow your passion to own a winery with nothing and no one to stop you.”
“No one at all,” she said, looking down. “Not a living soul.”
His whole being went cold at the way she said it. “Really?”
“And…” She lifted her gaze and met his with one that was unwavering and pained. “I would trade this winery for a family that has depth and history and trust and love in a heartbeat. Hell, I’d trade it for a dysfunctional lot of losers. I’d throw in my right arm and last year’s harvest for a couple of moderately interesting siblings and maybe a parent or two.”
He just looked at her, knowing that whatever he said would sound cavalier in the face of that kind of emptiness.
“Don’t ever resent your family, Alex,” she said. “Be honest with them. Do the right thing for them. But don’t resent them. You’ve no idea what it’s like not to have one.”
The words hit him hard, delivered with more passion than he’d heard from her, and the timbre of her voice said she meant every word.
“I’m sorry. I had no idea. I wouldn’t have made that assumption about your family not getting in the way.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes, it just seems that people think the grass is always greener, but my grass?” She gave a dry laugh. “No, it isn’t. My grass was brown. More like rocks, gravel, and barren wasteland. You have four siblings, an amazing mom, and have been gifted with about a dozen more of some of the greatest people I’ve ever met.”
He stared at her, putting two and two together and coming up with…three. Three abandoned puppies. “So, I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds, but can I make an observation about you?”
“I suppose.”
“Just going on my gut—”
“Which you trust.”
“Completely. That gut tells me this is your reason for not wanting to separate those dogs.”
She tried to wave off the observation, but he could see it hit home. “Oh, Alex. Dr. Freud is calling and wants his armchair analysis back.” She tried for a light tone, but just missed the mark.
“I’m serious. I’m pretty smart about these things.”
Three Dog Night (The Dogmothers Book 2) Page 7