Martin had done a thorough job of the research. The owners of that strip mall had taken the insurance money and walked away, leaving the place without a roof and Sophie’s without a home. “Just get me through dinner with the mayor.” He nudged the card a little closer. “After that, we’ll take it one party at a time.”
She had the right address, had checked it out in daylight and remembered the three white candles in the window. Red Heart Catering stood at the corner of 20th and Delancey in a perfectly maintained Victorian brownstone mansion. Imposing. A little terrifying for a Jersey girl, but she needed the job. Rita took a deep breath, climbed the half-flight to the elegant red front door, and rang the bell below a brass plate with the company name and the little rounded heart on it.
Something was different. She looked more closely at the card and saw a perfectly formed bead, like a jewel or a drop of blood, falling from the heart. It had to be a flaw in the printing, but it glistened in the light from the gas lamps that bracketed the door. Heart’s blood. The door opened and she took a startled step back, would have cracked her head on the pavement below if not for Martin Harris’ hand under her elbow.
“Miss DeLeone. I’m glad you came.” He was looking considerably more rumpled than he had on Saturday night, the spikes of his hair flattened on one side of his head and skewed oddly on the other. He saw her looking and rubbed self-consciously at the wrong side. “Not quite awake yet,” he said. “Working nights.” He turned to lead her into the house, and maybe it was just her imagination, but she thought he wouldn’t look her in the eye when he said it.
“If I’ve interrupted something, I can come back.” She half expected a girl to wander out dressed in a sheet. Or a boy. Whatever. She didn’t want to be there when it happened, not if he was going to be her boss. Not if he was going to look that . . . rumpled.
But he waved his free hand, dismissing the offer. “No, I should have been up anyway. Don’t want to start with a bad impression.” The apology came with a wry twitch of his lips, as if a nap had used up all his currency for cool. She couldn’t help but shake her head. She hadn’t known him long enough to call him an idiot, but she was thinking it.
She’d expected elegance when she saw the address and the foyer didn’t disappoint her – not the parquetry rosette under her feet or the pale blue silk on the walls. “This is my office,” he said, and opened a side door onto a Victorian parlour with a very modern laptop on the correspondence desk. He closed the door again, led her to the centre pocket-doors, and nudged them open silently. “This is the ballroom.”
She’d known that some of the Gilded-Age mansions in this part of town had them, but this perfectly preserved jewel of a ballroom still took her breath away—from the gleaming floors to the cream-coloured taffeta on the walls and the mirrors that reflected the light from the Austrian-crystal chandeliers hanging from a ceiling painted with woodland scenes of corseted ladies and frolicking nymphs. Draperies the same fabric as the wall-covering filled one end of the room. Martin Harris flipped a switch and the drapes parted to reveal a small stage behind them.
“Oh, my!”
“I know. Sometimes I don’t believe it myself.” He didn’t turn off the lights, but led her across the polished-oak dance floor. “My great grandfather built the house in the 1870s. He lost most of the family fortune in the crash of 1893. My great-grandmother started as his cook then kept the house afloat cooking for other people. When it came to losing the house or making an honest woman of her, he married her. We’ve been in the business ever since.”
It wasn’t just a business to Martin Harris. She could hear the warmth in his voice, the pride and love for the house and the family that built it. Something clicked in Rita when he told his story. She felt a kinship with that long-ago grandmother who supported her family with her cooking. His mother too, he’d said. She’d been his chef until she left for Paris. Rita fought the feeling that she was a part of that line of women because she needed to be sensible about this job, needed to be wary. Waiters and under-cooks liked to tell stories, but nobody had stories about Red Heart Catering. They paid well and their clients liked privacy. That was it. Not even “Martin Harris is a really nice guy,” or “Martin Harris is an asshole, but he pays well.” Just the same zombified answer until she’d given up asking.
He had her – saw it in her eyes – and he started to relax, adding up the bill at Godshalls Poultry and Iovines and a half-dozen more of his suppliers. Metropolitan Bakery, too. Unless . . . did she want them to make the bread in-house? His mother had, but most places bought it in these days.
Then he was losing her again and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t quite believe anyone with the stardust he’d just seen in Rita DeLeone’s eyes could walk away from this house.
“Imagine what it was like in 1870,” he tried, with a glance to fill the ballroom with long-ago dancers. “Ladies in their ruffled silk dresses, and gentlemen in their evening coats and dancing shoes. A little orchestra on the stage, playing Strauss.”
He slid his left hand down her arm, lifted her wrist lightly while he settled his right hand at her back. “May I have this dance?” he whispered in her ear. The warmth of her filled his senses as he swept her into a waltz.
With each turn, more memories crowded the floor: the orchestra played Strauss under gas lights that glittered off the crystals of the chandeliers while the mirrors threw back the images of the dancers going round and round – his mother and father, Helene and her lover, scandalous even among their own kind, and a hundred more couples dancing until dawn. It made him dizzy, delirious with the heat and the music and the dance, whirling, whirling. The needle points of his teeth itched, but he suppressed every instinct to feed.
This was about the mayor’s party. It had nothing to do with the soft curves in his arms or the moist heat rising from behind her ear with the promise of blood and thyme. He needed her desperately – in his kitchen. But golden memories fizzed like champagne in his blood, confusing now and then, need and desire. He looked into her eyes, saw the joy and the music shining back at him, and couldn’t look away. His whole world shifted on its axis and settled in a new plane, fixed on the smell of her blood and the feel of her touch and the hunger in her eyes. He’d never be free of it, not until the day he died. And if he told her, and she walked away, he’d lose everything. He was lost. Knew it and couldn’t do a thing about it.
He’d fixed on Rita DeLeone. Shit. Damn. Hell. I am so screwed, he thought. And he dropped her hand as if it burned.
Magical. The room or the dance, or his glance that kept shifting between the past glory of the house and the present with her in his arms, was magical. She didn’t know what dazzled her more, the light from the crystal chandeliers or the hungry gleam in his eyes, but she could have fallen forever into that long-ago world he evoked with whispers in her ear. Unconsciously she arched her back, the better to look into his eyes, where the darkness at their centres had pushed back the blue, offering pools of mystery where ice had lain. She wanted those mysteries, every one of them, starting with his mouth and working down from there. Buttons. So many buttons.
Then he took a step back, wiped his hands self-consciously on his rumpled Dockers, and said, “Upstairs we have three smaller party rooms and a staging kitchen.”
It was over. Whatever it was. Rita wanted to scream, wanted to run, but he kept on talking. “On the third floor we have a few guest bedrooms. I have the basement apartment, so I’m on-site most of the time if you need me.” He was walking a pace ahead of her, taking them away from the magic, past a room with a couple of chairs next to the stage, to the very back of the house. “Guest bathrooms are on the other side of the stage, and this is the kitchen. Pantry here, staff bath, and your office.”
The kitchen was adequate: clean, which mattered a lot; pantry well stocked. The refrigerators were new, the stove not as good as the one waiting in her garage, but it would do for somebody. Not Rita. She was out of here, just as soon as he finished his tou
r and she found a door.
The office was small, and he’d been using it between chefs. He riffled through a stack of menus and pulled one out with a triumphant “Aha!” before he handed it to her. “For Mrs DeCourcy’s party. Starred items are her preferences. We want to make sure we cover them. The rest you can change if you like. Mom took her personal recipes with her, but we’ve got a good library of the basics.
“And now, if you don’t mind, we have a late job in Baltimore and I have to get ready. If you need anything else, just make a list and give it to Frank. Frank McCaffey’s our headwaiter and he should be here any minute. He’ll take care of everything.”
He was wandering away while he talked, then opened a door she hadn’t seen before to a staircase leading down. His basement apartment, she figured. He was leaving her behind with the invoices and the menus.
“I can’t take the job,” she muttered. He couldn’t hear her, was already gone, so she added, “Because you’re making me crazy,” under her breath, and tripped over a dignified man with silver hair and a tuxedo who had come in behind her.
“Sorry. I’m Frank McCaffey, by the way,” he said, and took a step back. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”
“I’m Rita DeLeone,” she answered tartly. “And I’m not staying.”
“Is there anything I can say to change your mind?” Frank’s eyes didn’t pull her in like a vortex, but they crinkled in the corners with warm understanding that made her almost as nervous as his boss did. “He makes us all crazy sometimes, but is that any reason to let him poison the mayor?”
The mayor. The Great Stair Hall. She had to do it, just to prove to herself that she could still pull off an affair like that. “Just the one party,” she told him and figured he’d get the message to his boss. “For the mayor, not for Mr Martin Harris. That’s it.”
“It’s enough,” he answered. She didn’t believe he meant it, but she wasn’t giving Mr Harris a choice. The menu would do for now. She could manage it and his next chef would want to change things to suit anyway. But it sure wasn’t going to be her.
Helene welcomed them into her office, which was a sleek, modern contrast to the parts of the house the public got to see. Helene was a sleek contrast to the house as well, with silver hair cut short and angled to highlight her sharp, high cheekbones. She offered coffee waiting in a pot on the desk. Martin poured three cups. He didn’t know how Rita DeLeone liked her coffee, or if she liked it at all, but she handed over the menu in its leather cover then took the cup, added a little cream, and smiled politely when Martin made the introduction.
Martin sat back and watched as Rita went quickly over the menu, answering Helene’s questions and offering her own suggestions to balance simple but elegant options with the more challenging fare. When they were done, Helene handed back the leather folder and passed a measuring frown from Rita to Martin. “Does she know what she’s getting into with Red Heart?”
That was the question he didn’t want to hear. Because, no, he hadn’t told her and didn’t plan to, at least not until after the party. “I stole her from Prescot’s.” It answered the surface question Rita would understand – could she cook as well for 400 as she did for 40? – but ignored the trouble he was in, because she wouldn’t understand that at all.
“Very well.” Helene didn’t approve, but conceded the point for the moment. She rose to show them the door. Martin followed her and stumbled – damn, he hadn’t expected to slip up like that.
“Are you all right?” Rita DeLeone’s hand fell on his arm and it felt like fire burning right through his jacket.
Control. Control. He kept the needle points of his teeth retracted. “I’m fine.”
Helene had known him since the day he was born, had known his mother when she’d built Red Heart. She didn’t miss much, and she hadn’t missed this. “Would you mind waiting in the hall for just a moment, Miss DeLeone?”
Rita left, reluctantly, and with a promise: “I’ll be right outside this door if you need me.” Then Helene pressed him back into his chair, which he didn’t need because he was fine now, really.
“When was the last time you fed?” She held his face in her hands, watching for a lie.
He had to think about the answer. “Saturday.” He stared at the three white candles on her mantel – sanctuary, hearth and home – counting up the days. He hadn’t realized it had been so long. “I think it was Saturday.”
“Why? Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“I’m not. I didn’t realize—” Dani had stopped by and he’d turned her down, paid her anyway because it was her day and she depended on the money, but: “I just wasn’t hungry. Nobody smells right any more.”
Helene went very still. “You didn’t.” She sighed, because it could only mean one thing. “Oh God, child, you haven’t fixed on the chef, have you? You haven’t even told her what you are!”
“I don’t know how it happened.”
“I know, my dear, it happens that way sometimes.” But he could tell from the sound of her voice that she didn’t know, that she thought he was a fool. “You have to eat.” Rasp of a pearl button on silk as she undid the cuff of her blouse, and her wrist was under his nose, not smelling like food and warmth and blood and home, but something sure and familiar nonetheless. He let his points come down this time. They ached because he hadn’t fed in too long, and he’d been holding them back around Rita.
“I’ll give Marcus a call; he’ll come over tomorrow,” she said, and stroked his hair while he fed. It wasn’t quite the same from his own kind, wasn’t human enough, but it would keep him alive until he figured out what to do.
He retracted the needle points into his teeth and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll be fine.” He shook his head and it didn’t make him dizzy this time. “I can handle it.”
“By not eating? Mind over matter won’t help. Beef carpaccio in truffle oil won’t help. Marcus and I won’t help for long. If you don’t have living human blood, you’ll die.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“I think you will, my darling boy,” she said, which was ridiculous. He was almost as old as his house. But she sighed again, and said, “Accept Marcus tomorrow. Promise me. It’s not enough, but it will do for now. And I want a Red Heart party for next Saturday. Fifty guests, costumes for all, Gilded-Age theme. We’ll take two rooms upstairs, card tables and refreshments in one, buffet supper in the other, and the bedrooms for privacy. Set up the ballroom for dancing. Hire the usual for music. A party like the old days. It will be a test of your new chef.”
“There’s not enough time.” A party like that could take months to pull together. She’d given him three days. Rita was going to kill him.
“I know you’ll manage. Red Heart never lets its clients down.”
“She can’t know,” he said. Feeding was always a private matter, but a Red Heart party was supposed to be safe space. “I need her in the kitchen. If she walks, the business will die.”
“More than the business will die, sweet boy. Give me my party. We’ll see what we can do. Oh, and one other thing – send Frank over tomorrow? I’ll discuss details of service with him and free you up for more pressing matters.”
“Frank can’t wear the red heart yet.”
“Don’t worry about Frank. I have other interests in him. Like my party.”
And it was true that Helene had never fixed on Frank. She liked him, had preferred him at her parties from the moment he joined the company, but she had other favourites as well, and occasionally liked something new for variety. Unlike Helene, his mother had fixed on a human husband, and Martin had been the result of that.
Humans died, and his mother had mourned his father’s loss through two world wars. He didn’t want that in his life. Didn’t want to watch Rita DeLeone grow old and die. Didn’t want to mourn her into the next millennium. His mother might know what to do, but Martin wasn’t ready to tell her how badly he’d screwed up until he solved the prob
lem himself.
“Saturday,” he agreed, and wiped his mouth again because he didn’t want Rita to know. He couldn’t believe that such a minor inconvenience could suddenly become this huge thing in his life. It was just blood. He only needed a sip, it was nothing. But he couldn’t tell her. And he couldn’t drink from anyone else.
“We’d better tell Rita. About the party.”
Saturday. She could not believe Martin had agreed to do this, and she told Frank McCaffey so. “If he didn’t own the property, and if he hadn’t turned away his other clients with his cooking, we’d be having this party in the parking lot at Trader Joe’s!”
Helene DeCourcy’s house could easily handle a less ambitious party for fifty, but she didn’t want a mill and swill with finger food. “Costumes!”
“It’s almost Mardi Gras,” Frank pointed out and kept on counting napkins – serviettes, he called them. She hadn’t heard that term since cooking school.
“Parking lot. Trader Joe’s,” she answered back, satisfied that he really had to work to hide his smile. She had a prep cook on the buffet and two cooks working on the light refreshments for the card room. Martin had rejected her own suggestion for prep cook, but he’d had some kitchen staff already, so that turned out all right. She’d pulled in Doug to handle the drinks because he worked hard and didn’t hit on the guests.
The waiters would arrive in about two hours. Frank had that well in hand. “The usuals,” he assured her. “They know Helene, they know her parties. We’ll be fine.” Hard not to believe him when he called the client by her first name like he’d been doing it for a hundred years, so she took his word for it and went on to the next worry on her list, this one not as easy to let go of.
“Where’s Martin?”
Frank checked his watch. “He should be up by now, probably in the shower. I’d give him another fifteen minutes before I started to worry.” But the reminder cut a frown between his brows. It was after six. Helene’s invitations said eleven thirty. The food was under control – a standing rib roast in one oven, a ham in the other for the card room, and the quail stuffed with fois gras was prepped and waiting in the fridge. But they needed to do a last walk-through upstairs, and Martin hadn’t shown his face in the kitchen yet.
Love Bites UK (Mammoth Book Of Vampire Romance2) Page 18