Fearless Love (3 page)

“Todd Fairley.”

“Fairley, huh?” She stared down at the greens for a moment, then grimaced. “Hope he turns out to be fair himself.”

You and me both, sugar.
“I guess we’ll find out in a couple of hours.” He turned back to his eggs. At least they seemed to be a neutral topic.

Three hours later, after the lunch rush had died down, Todd Fairley arrived wearing khakis and a knit golf shirt, and Joe felt the first stirrings of unease.

Fairley didn’t exactly look like his idea of a chef. No gut, for one thing. No tats. No facial hair or visible piercings. No rat tail. He looked like he got his hair cut regularly, in fact, and he’d obviously shaved within the last four or five hours.

The two times he’d met Fairley previously in Austin, he’d been dressed for the dinner crowd in his chef’s coat. The food he’d turned out had been respectable—more than respectable if Joe was feeling generous. And he’d come across as a normal member of the kitchen brigade, if there was such a thing as
normal
where the kitchen was concerned.

But now he looked really…
wholesome
. Joe couldn’t imagine him wielding a cleaver to scare off a kitchen rebellion, which was what one of the sous chefs of his acquaintance had done. On the other hand, he looked like the kind of anal retentive type who’d make sure that nothing left the kitchen for the dining room in anything other than the best possible shape, which was what the kitchen at the Rose really needed right now. Since Joe was cooking, he couldn’t expedite at the same time.

And then there was the fact that Fairley had come very highly recommended by the
chef de cuisine
at one of the more trendy restaurants in Austin.

But for a sous chef, Todd Fairley had a more than passing resemblance to an insurance salesman. Brown hair and eyes, warm smile, pleasing manner. He’d probably be a whiz with the customers at Applebees. Whether he could work with the collection of culinary pirates in the Rose’s kitchen was another question.

Knock it off. You hired him.
He had. And he still thought it was a good decision.

Fairley shook hands with everybody in the kitchen, managing not to blink at the tattoo of an exploding wine bottle running from Leo’s biceps to his elbow. Jorge’s tats were more subtle, but Jorge also wore his shoulder-length hair in a bun on the top of his head that reminded Joe a little of a sumo wrestler. Fairley took it all in stride, or at least he seemed to.

Joe found himself tensing when Fairley reached Darcy’s station in his tour around the kitchen. The neon-green tips of her hair were just visible beneath her beanie. Her own tats were hidden beneath her chef’s coat. She kept her earrings down to a single pair of studs on the job, although off the job she sometimes had four or five running up the side of her ear. She looked like a certified kitchen warrior, ready to go to battle with a whisk and a chef’s knife. Joe only hoped Fairley knew enough not to screw around with her right off the bat.

“Darcy Cunningham,” he said, gesturing toward Darcy. “She’s on line, usually sauté and grill. Sometimes saucier.”

Fairley gave her an automatic smile. “Nice to meet you, Darcy. Always nice to know you’ve got experienced line cooks backing you up.”

Darcy stiffened slightly, and Joe did a quick review. Okay, maybe saying she was there to back Fairley up wasn’t exactly subtle, but it was no less than the truth. He turned to the rest of the kitchen. “We’ve got service starting in an hour and a half, people. Let’s get on it.” He gestured Fairley out of the kitchen ahead of him, then into his small office at the back.

“She doesn’t like me, does she?” Fairley said genially.

Joe shrugged. “She’ll get used to you. Just stay out of her way. She’s a hell of a cook.”

Fairley’s brow furrowed slightly. “Stay out of her way?”

“You know what I mean. She’ll do her job, and she doesn’t need a lot of supervision. Once she’s used to you, she’s somebody you can rely on to get things done and done right.”

Fairley glanced back toward the kitchen. “What about the other two?”

“Jorge and Leo?” Joe shrugged again. “They’re good. Not as good as Darcy, but still good. Leo was with me in Dallas. Jorge hired on when I moved down here.”

“They speak English?”

Joe managed not to frown. The question wasn’t as left field as it might have seemed, and it didn’t necessarily say anything about Fairley’s attitude toward his employees. Lots of kitchens required the chef to handle two or three languages. Joe could do Spanish, but his Vietnamese was shaky. “They’re both from Texas, so yeah, they speak English. The new dishwasher, Placido, is a little more problematic, but he can get by.”

Fairley nodded. “Not a problem. My Spanish is okay.”

“Good.” Joe pushed himself to his feet. “We’ll start you off tonight. Menu’s posted in the kitchen. Prep’s already underway—should be mostly complete by now. Service starts at five thirty.”

Fairley smiled again, pushing easily to his feet. “Someplace I can change around here?”

“Staff room down the hall to the left. There’s a men’s room next door if you’re feeling shy.”

“No problem for me.” Fairley turned toward the door. “Any problem for Ms. Cunningham?”

“Darcy can handle it.”

Fairley gathered the hangers with his chef’s jacket and pants from the back of the office door, then headed off down the hall. The jacket had been so white it made Joe’s teeth ache. And he had the traditional black-and-white checked pants to go with it.

Joe was willing to bet he had a toque too.

Still, his clothes weren’t a problem. He’d look like a chef was supposed to look, which might give him an advantage in the kitchen. And Fairley could probably find a place to hang his clothes in the staff room—it was big enough to provide them all with closet space.

Considering that Darcy had been sharing that room with Leo, Jorge, and Joe himself for the past year, he doubted that sharing it with Fairley would present any new difficulties. On the other hand, something about the way Fairley had asked about her made Joe feel faintly itchy.

In fact, there was something about Fairley’s bland perfection that made him more than itchy—it made him wonder if he’d made a mistake after all.

Recommendations. Experience. Anal retentive.
All good qualities in a sous chef. All good reasons for hiring Fairley. He had every reason to believe the guy would be a great addition to his kitchen.

And if he doesn’t work out, I can always fire the son of a bitch.

Joe sighed. Just his luck to hire the perfect guy and have him turn out to be perfect for somebody else’s kitchen.

MG studied the contents of the refrigerator and tried not to sigh. At least she no longer had to eat eggs. In fact, she had no eggs to eat since she’d sold them all to Joe LeBlanc. Which left her with bologna, sandwich bread, some slightly rusty lettuce, and a jar of mayonnaise that might or might not last the week.

She flopped two pieces of bread onto a plastic plate her grandfather had probably bought at the dollar store, then smeared on mayonnaise and layered a piece of bologna and a half-leaf of lettuce (ripping off the part that was too brown even for her). She poured some tea from the pitcher in the refrigerator into a green glass tumbler that probably dated back to her grandmother, then took her seat at the aged wooden table in the corner.

She wasn’t entirely sure what had become of her grandmother’s good furniture and dinnerware. Her grandfather had claimed he was trying to simplify his life, get rid of stuff he didn’t need any more. But she suspected he’d sold a lot of things she remembered from her childhood—her grandmother’s china and silver, the antique dining room table and breakfront, the rockers that had been used to pacify generations of Carmody babies.

All of it had undoubtedly gone to the various antique stores around Konigsburg. She just hoped her grandfather had gotten a fair price for it. And that it had helped to pay down the medical bills left over from her grandmother’s last, catastrophic illness.

The bologna tasted like it contained more filler than meat, but she guessed that was what you got when you went with the super value brand. What would she rather be eating? Pad Thai maybe. A margherita pizza. Roast chicken with cornbread stuffing.

Well, at least you’ve got the chicken.

She winced. Her grandfather had killed and plucked his chickens without a qualm, but she’d never watched him do it. She wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it herself, and it wasn’t something she felt like researching. Not even for Robespierre, Rooster From Hell.

Still, she had to come up with some other way to raise some cash and do that fairly soon. The eggs obviously weren’t going to be enough on their own, and she doubted the farm had much else that would be worth selling.

Except, of course, for the farm itself.

She blew out a breath. Her last promise to her grandfather had been to hold onto the farm. Or at least to try. She couldn’t do much at the end beyond keeping him comfortable, but she’d tried. And she’d promised. And she’d do it if she could. She owed him that much.

Her accounting skills were minimal, but she didn’t exactly need much skill to figure out the accounts for the farm. One very large mortgage. One middling to small inheritance consisting mainly of insurance. One great-aunt ready to gobble up the farm and spit out the bones.

She could make the payments for a couple of months out of the small amount of money Grandpa had been able to pass on. But once that ran out, her options dropped down to zero. The eggs sure as hell wouldn’t pay enough to pacify Great-Aunt Nedda. And she had interest piling up on the one payment Grandpa had missed when he’d first gotten sick.

Obviously, she needed a job, and she needed one fast. She glanced down at the copy of the
Konigsburg
Herald-Zeitung
that she’d spread on the table earlier in the day. There wasn’t much there right now in the way of jobs for someone with limited office skills—some openings for hotel maids, one ad for a convenience store clerk in Johnson City, a counter job at a fast food place out on the highway, plus somebody needed a waitress in Marble Falls. All of them minimum wage, of course—probably the best she could hope for anyway.

She sighed. Tomorrow, she’d start calling around, maybe starting with the counter job. The waitress job would provide a few extra bucks in tips, but the cost of driving to and from Marble Falls would eat that up fast.

None of the jobs would give her time to look for gigs, but that wasn’t important any more.
You know that, right, MG?
Right. She did know that. Absolutely.

She took her plate and glass to the sink, glancing out the back door window as she did. Robespierre was strutting around the chicken yard in the fading light, patrolling for predators. MG wasn’t sure what kind of predators he might find or what good he’d be if he found them. The fence was a good five feet high, with boards along the bottom edge to discourage any wandering paws that might try to reach through the wire. Still, the rooster looked impressive. Give him a shako and a rifle and he’d be ready to guard Buckingham Palace.

Maybe she could turn him loose on Aunt Nedda. Now there was a predator worth confronting. MG sighed. Best wash the dishes and then go check the food and water in the hen house. She didn’t do gigs anymore. She did chickens.

Chapter Three

MG had one central thought as she stumbled to the hen house at five forty-five the next morning—no sane person got up at five thirty. Even Robespierre looked surprised to see her. Or maybe he was just sleepy too. At least he didn’t make his customary foray at her ankles, but that might have been the result of the handful of chicken feed she dropped in front of him. Maybe Joe LeBlanc knew what he was talking about.

The roosting hens gave her a few token clucks, but they weren’t interested in waking up yet either. She collected the eggs from the nesting boxes, fifteen in all. In the middle of the row, Hen Nine was still on her nest box, as usual.

“Broody,” MG muttered. “According to the Internet, you need a change of scene. We’ll see about moving your nest box when I get back.” She reached under the hen, got the usual flurry of pecks, and extracted a single egg. “Bingo.”

Hen Nine produced a few more angry clucks, then subsided into sleep.

MG considered putting the eggs in a carton, but decided against it. She was just going up the road to the inn, and she didn’t want to waste a carton.

The inn looked very dark and very quiet as she drove up. Its stately white expanse spread silently across the well-clipped lawn, canopies of live oaks lining the circular walk through the early spring flowers. Yard lights illuminated a parking lot at the back, and since that was where she figured the kitchen entrance was, she pulled her Kia into a slot near the door.

The farm was actually close enough to the inn that she could have walked the eggs to the kitchen, although she didn’t want to do that until it started getting light earlier in the morning. Jogging down a country road in total darkness with a basket full of eggs didn’t strike her as a particularly smart thing to do.

As she approached the back entrance, she saw a figure move across the lighted window. Clearly, the kitchen staff was already at work at six fifteen. She shifted her basket to her other arm and pulled open the door.