Fire Me Up (8 page)

“That's definitely a start,” Adrian said, watching the guy head toward the back of the kitchen. Without warning, his stomach let out a wail, reminding him that he'd been long overdue for sustenance when he'd walked in here two hours ago. The thought of eating had quickly been pushed to the back burner at the prospect of helping Teagan in the kitchen, but rather than idling at overdue, now his hunger had reached total foreclosure.

And it was enough to make his legs unsteady.

Teagan's eyes narrowed on him, and he braced for impact. “You must be exhausted. And starving. Did they give you a 'script for pain?”

He got halfway through his shrug before he remembered the gesture was a bad idea. “Yeah, but I haven't taken it in a while.”

She took a step toward him, missing nothing as she did a critical once-over from head to toe. She shook her head, muttering something about low blood sugar being an epidemic lately. “You look pale. Come here.”

“I'm good.” Dark spots danced across his vision, threatening to out him. “Maybe a little hungry.”

“Mmm-hmm.” In a flash, Teagan was next to him, his good hand flipped up in the circle of her fingers while she called Jesse back up from the alcove.

“I told you I'm fine.” Jeez, she was sneaky! Usually he was pretty aware of stuff like that—you tended to learn decent evasion tactics in prison—but between his lack of sleep the last two weeks, this morning's accident, and his negative food count, he was just out of sync.

“What's up? Everything okay?” Jesse asked, forehead creasing as he caught sight of Teagan doing her little look-see.

“It's going to be. Can you please tell Brennan I'll be upstairs for a minute? I have something to take care of.”

The guy nodded and disappeared, leaving Teagan to hit him with a high-level frown. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” And more importantly, why were his traitorous feet following her without getting the pertinent information? Damn, his body ached, and those black spots were getting bigger and kind of swirly.

“To the office. I want you to sit down.”

“I don't want to sit down.” The argument lost its steam somewhere between concept and execution, and it fell from his lips more like a plea than anything else. Fuck. When did he get so tired?

Teagan gently prodded him toward the door between the dishwashing alcove and the walk-in, and up a set of dimly lit stairs. “Too bad. If you pass out on me, we're right back to liability territory. And anyway, you just took care of my kitchen. The least I can do is take care of you.”

“I can . . . take care of myself.” Adrian's feet felt sloppy beneath him as he followed her into a shadowy room at the top of the steps.

“Uh-huh. You sound like it.” She hit the light switch with the flat of her hand, the soft illumination revealing a small, appropriately cluttered desk and office chair combo, along with the most unsightly couch he'd ever laid eyes on.

“Whoa. That's, ah. Orange, huh?” The thing was a Muppet, only slightly less subdued.

“Do not mock my office couch. What it lacks in style, it makes up for in comfort.” She nudged him to sit, and he was vaguely aware of Jesse poking his head through the door. He murmured something to Teagan, who answered him in hushed tones before he disappeared back through the entryway.

“Okay. Here we go.” She grabbed a bottle of water from a dorm-sized fridge next to the desk, cracking the cap as she maneuvered back to the orange monstrosity. Rather than sitting down at his side, she knelt in front of him, propping one elbow on the nicked-up coffee table. “Drink this.”

Adrian was shocked to discover he was actually parched, and the ice-cold water slid down his throat as he took a long sip, then another. “You don't have to sit on the floor.” He might be rough around the edges, but even exhausted, he could call up a little decency. Teaching him good manners had been his
nonna
's first order of business when he'd gone to live with her at the ripe old age often, followed closely by teaching him how to cook.

God, he missed her.

“Thank you,” Teagan said, looking genuinely surprised at his niceness. “But I'm okay right here.”

Realization hit him slowly, but with surety. “It's easier for you to watch me this way, isn't it? Make sure I don't keel over, and all that rot?”

A smile eked past her heart-shaped mouth, and she motioned for him to keep drinking. “Maybe.” She took a deep, audible breath before coming out with, “You saved my ass tonight. I really don't know how to thank you.”

“You just did.” He wasn't about to tell her the feeling was mutual. She'd probably think he was a total freaking wing nut. “But I really should be downstairs telling Jesse how to break down your kitchen.” Of course, every one of his limbs blackballed the idea, and the bone-weary exhaustion kept him pinned into place on the cushy, extra-wide couch.

“Jesse knows how to run dishes, and I have to stick around and help Brennan until last call anyway, so I'll make sure everything gets cleaned and put away.” She took the empty water bottle from his hand, getting up to replace it with another.

“Yeah, but you need to prep for tomorrow.”

“And you need to eat something and take your medicine. If the hunger doesn't get you, the pain will. Trust me when I tell you, you don't want both of them to gang up on you now that you've stopped moving.”

A knock on the door punctuated her words, and before he could argue, Jesse materialized with a plate in one hand and Adrian's leather jacket in the other.

He held up the plate, looking uncertain. “I made this. It's, uh, ham and cheese. Nothing special, but I figured protein would be good if you're feeling out of it. The fries are hot, so be careful. And thanks for all your help tonight.” He hung the jacket by the door and put the plate on the coffee table in front of Adrian before retracing his steps toward the exit.

“No problem, man. Thanks for the food,” he said as Jesse disappeared for the second time in ten minutes. Adrian eyed the sandwich, then Teagan. “You're not going to get up from the floor until I eat all of this, are you?”

This time, she couldn't catch her smile before it flashed out. “Only to get you something to manage that arm.” Her eyes flitted to his jacket, outlining her unspoken question.

Adrian gave in, too tired to argue. “Inside left-hand pocket.”

Teagan produced the orange bottle and doled out two pills big enough to choke a grizzly bear. “These first, food on top.”

He obliged, mostly because he'd bet she was serious about growing roots in the area rug until he did. The sandwich was a little dry and definitely plain, but it was the best thing Adrian had tasted in weeks, and it took all he had not to hoover it
and
the fries in about three seconds. Teagan waited patiently for him to eat, not breaking the comfortable silence between them until he was nearly done.

“Why didn't you say anything about being hungry?” she asked, and he swallowed his last bite before answering.

“Kitchen's more important.” It was easier than trying to explain the weird dead-zone focus he felt when doing his job. He'd been surrounded by food for the last two hours, yet the angry pangs of hunger had hit the skids as soon as he'd seen those tickets needing to be filled.

Teagan nodded, tucking a strand of disobedient hair back into her crooked ponytail. “It sounds kind of crazy, but when I'm on a call, I forget I'm hungry. Or tired, or mad at someone, or whatever. I've done twenty-four-hour tours at the station where I barely ate a crumb, but I didn't notice until after they were over.”

Surprise ribboned through him at how well she'd just summed up the thoughts he hadn't shared, but his head suddenly felt too heavy to even nod in agreement. “Yeah. I've done that.”

“They say it has to do with the adrenaline. Me, I think it has more to do with the adrenaline junkies doing the job.”

Man, her eyes were pretty in the low light filtering over from the desk lamp, all glittery and golden-brown, like sunlight shining through a stained-glass window. He wanted to keep looking at them, but his own eyes were so leaden, they just kept blinking.

“Adrian?” Teagan's voice was right there, but detached, like he was above her. “Oh hell. I should've known this would happen.”

“Hmm?” He really had to keep his wits about him. He had to focus. Keeping his eyes open would be a good start.

“You're exhausted,” she said, and somehow he managed to start floating as she spoke, which would be kind of creepy if it didn't feel so good. “And after your reaction to the Fentanyl earlier, I . . . God, I never should've let you do this.”

“No.” Okay, so at least that one made it out of his mouth. “I'm just . . . I only need a minute.” One minute. Then he'd get up and go back to his quiet apartment with its even quieter walls. The woodsy scent of rosemary layered in with more familiar kitchen smells covered him like a blanket.

Wait, that was a blanket. Hold on . . .

“Get some rest, Adrian.” A hand skated over his face, the sensation lulling him even further into oblivion until everything went completely, blissfully dark.

Teagan woke all at once, painfully aware of several things. A) Using a balled-up sweatshirt in lieu of a pillow was a really bad idea if you wanted to get some semblance of a decent night's sleep, and B) Dear God in heaven, what was that mouthwatering smell? She cracked her eyes open to investigate, barely resisting the urge to flail four feet into the air at the sight of Adrian's sexy-as-sin stare pinning her down from the center of the office couch.

“You let me sleep here all night.” His gaze was unflinching, and the last twenty-four hours came crashing back to her in short order. Responding to the accident on Rural Route Four, finding out her father was sick, Lou walking out midshift, Adrian saving her ass.

Teagan sat up quickly and yanked a hand through the rat's nest masquerading as her hair, the sweatshirt-pillow tumbling to the floor in a sloppy heap. “Uh, well, yeah. You were in no shape to drive, and by the time I got done downstairs, I kind of wasn't either. Plus, I was a little worried about your arm, so I just . . .” She capped off her words with a shrug, and okay, ow. Sleeping in that chair had bent her vertebrae like an accordion gone awry. “What time is it?”

“Eight thirty.”

She blinked back her groggy surprise and swung her gaze toward the window. Sure enough, insistent sunlight was doing its best to poke past the tightly slatted blinds. “Oh.” Damn, how had she slept so late? She had to get up, get moving, at the very least get a cup of...

“I made some coffee.” Adrian pushed a mug full of dark, steaming morning goodness across the scarred surface of the coffee table.

“You're not supposed to cook.” Teagan hesitated, despite the gimme vibes her brain was steadily pumping out. Oh Lordy, it was the most perfect shade of mahogany brown, like he'd brewed it just right and added a bare splash of milk but nothing more.

His voice rolled over her like a lazy Sunday morning, husky and slow, and okay,
some
parts of her were definitely awake. “Making coffee isn't cooking. It's self-preservation. Plus, it's done. You might as well have some.”

Teagan shook off the ridiculous prickle of heat rolling up her spine and eyed the mug. There wasn't even a hint of anything frothy or frilly in it. Just a nice, hot cup of coffee, exactly the way she liked it.

“You may be right,” she said, trying not to lunge outright. The coffee tasted as bold and incredible as it smelled, and she drank deeply as she unsnarled her thoughts one strand at a time.

She'd averted disaster last night by a microscopic margin, and that had only been with serious help and even more serious luck. But today was going to be a whole new brand of difficult. Aside from getting her father taken care of at home, which wasn't going to be a bowl of cherries, she had to iron out this payroll kink if she was going to have a prayer of keeping what little staff they still had. They usually opened at two on the weekends, so at least she had a few hours, but Teagan didn't have a clue about the Double Shot's books. For all she knew, it would take half the damned day just to find them, let alone figure out what she was looking at. And then there was the not-so-small matter of not having a cook. God, this had all the makings of a grade-A nightmare.

But no way was she going to let her father come in and deal with this. He'd disregarded Dr. Riley's warning to rest more and take his meds long enough. His life depended on her finding a longer-term solution until his health was under control, and so she would.

But first she needed to address Pressing Issue Number One, which was currently leveling her with a very smoldering, very piercing, very unreadable stare.

“I suppose I owe you a bit of an explanation about last night. Things don't usually get that . . . hectic,” Teagan said, but he cut her off with a curt shake of his head.

“You don't owe me anything.”

The laugh that popped from her lips was involuntary. “Seriously? You helped me through a dinner shift the same day you got flattened by a minivan. I probably owe you my firstborn. Or I would if I had one.”

A flicker of something Teagan couldn't quite pin down colored his eyes a stormy gray green, but he lifted one corner of his mouth in a half smile to temper it. “I wouldn't say I got flattened.”

“No?” She lifted a brow at the cast-and-sling combo covering his left side.

“Clipped, maybe. But it was more like a love tap than a leveling. Let's not get crazy.”

She dropped her chin with an ironic exhale. “My life is so far past crazy right now, it hurts.”

“You want to talk about it?”

Her head sprang up. “You want to listen to my problems?”

“Polite conversation is for amateurs, remember? And anyway, I've got nowhere else to be.”

Whether it was fear for her father, or the time she'd spent being thrust unexpectedly into a kitchen she hated, or the heated, penetrating way Adrian was looking at her right this very second, she couldn't be sure, but the words crowded out of her so fast, she was helpless to do anything other than listen to her own voice.

“The thing is, I just found out the not-so-easy way that my father is diabetic. Which wouldn't be the end of the world, really, except the disease is completely out of control, and the late nights and hard labor of running a bar and grill have made it pretty much impossible to manage. He needs to scale back on his hours to rest, and obviously, we're short-staffed. Until I can figure out a way to get someone in here to help for a while, this place is stuck with me, I guess.”

“You seem pretty comfortable running the place, other than the kitchen.” A tiny hitch in Adrian's shoulders served as his only apology for his last words, and what could she say? They were true. “Does he have you on the books as a manager?”

“On paper, yes. I'm second in command. But my father has run the place from door to door since I was in elementary school. He's got a solid staff. Or he did until recently, anyhow.” Teagan's stomach gave a deep yank. Without Lou, she was well and truly screwed. “I have the authority to run things when he's not here—write the schedules, authorize orders for inventory, pay the bills, that kind of thing. But it's more theory than practice.”

She'd seen the power of attorney papers he'd drawn up five or six years ago and put in the safe, although in the time that had passed between then and now, Teagan had run the Double Shot exactly once, for two days while her father had gone to her great-aunt's funeral. Even then, he'd left her detailed hand-written guidelines and done the weekly food and liquor orders before he'd left. “So even though my father is going to hate handing over the reins for a while, that's what's going to happen.”

“Running a restaurant is a full-time gig. But I'm guessing from how things went last night that you know that.” Adrian's voice was calm and quiet, and the lack of poor-you sympathy made her even more uncharacteristically inclined to share.

“I do. I'm planning to take a temporary leave of absence from work.”

It was a reality she'd come to terms with in the bone-weary hours between closing the kitchen and closing the bar last night. Running the Double Shot while holding down her day job would require either a time machine or a body double, maybe both. Her savings were small but sturdy, and she could get by on a leave of absence for a little while. Convincing her father to let her do it for more than a night was going to be the hard part, but she'd get to that soon enough.

Teagan shook her head, her thoughts threatening to overwhelm her. “But not working the squad seems kind of like the least of my worries right now, you know? I'm down two cooks, a waitress, and a bookkeeper, and another manager wouldn't hurt this place either. I can figure out what needs to be done and delegate tasks just fine. It's finding people to delegate
to
that's biting me on the ass right now.”

Stubble-covered muscles tightened over Adrian's jaw, and his voice went to gravel. “It might not be as difficult as you think.”

“I'm not sure your definition of difficult is all that spot-on.” Between her and Brennan and Jesse, she had a painfully short list.

He shot her a look that found her center in a direct hit. “Try looking right in front of you, Red.”

Teagan's eyes flew wide, and it took all she had not to drop her coffee mug into her lap. Having Adrian in the kitchen last night had been an
emergency,
not a precedent. “You want to help me run this place?”

“Why not?”

“For starters, you already have a job, don't you?”

His stare shifted to a cool gray. “Let's just say I'm also taking a leave of absence, and mine isn't exactly voluntary, either.”

“But you're on leave because you're injured, Adrian. You can't cook for me any more than you can cook for the resort.”

“No, but I can teach you to do it.”

Teagan's heart log-jammed in her esophagus. “I can't cook.” The books, she could figure out. The management, no problem.

The kitchen? No chance in hell. Last night had been an exception, and she'd hated every burger-flipping second.

“You did well enough to survive last night, and I can show you how to get better.” Adrian's expression sent a shot of ninety-proof heat down her spine. “The guy from the bar last night, Brennan. Is he in? To help you through this, I mean.”

“I, uh . . . yes.” There might be only a handful of things she could count on for certain, but Brennan's loyalty was on the list.

“Good. I can teach him enough management to get by in less than a week, at least until you find someone with experience to help out. He's already got the front of the house down well enough. By the end of the month, he'll be money with inventory and scheduling. Your books will be more complicated, but like I said, I've got time to kill, so I can make it work. The only thing I can't do is cook. Not until this thing comes off, anyway.”

Which meant she would have to do it. Not just for a night, but indefinitely.

Teagan opened her mouth, the word
no
perfectly formed on her tongue, just begging to roll off.

But instead she said, “And you
want
to do this?”

“Absolutely.”

A thought popped into Teagan's head, and even though it forced a wash of heat over her cheeks, she had no choice but to give it voice. “I don't know how much I'd be able to pay you.” God, whatever she could scrape together would probably be a mere pittance in comparison to what Adrian made at La Dolce Vita. The place had a monthlong wait for reservations, for God's sake.

“I'm not asking you to pay me. In fact, I don't want to be on your books at all.”

Teagan jerked back, her shoulders bumping the timeworn cushion of her chair. “You want to run the kitchen for nothing?”

“Doesn't look like nothing from where I sit,” he said, but oh no. No way was she letting him skate by without answers.

“Why do you want to help me so much?”

The question seemed to throw Adrian, and he paused, long and hard. “Because it makes sense. Because you need the help. And because . . . I need it, too. Look, six weeks off might sound like paradise to some people, but to me it's hell on earth. I need to be in a kitchen, even if it's a little unconventional, until I can get back to work for real at La Dolce Vita.” He shifted forward, locking his gaze with hers. “The only thing I need to be clear on is that everything here is on the up-and-up.”

Her skin prickled as the words registered. “Everything that goes on here is perfectly legal, if that's what you're asking. My father's not stupid.” Keeping the frost from her tone was impossible, so Teagan didn't even try. Just because they ran an establishment that was as much bar as it was grill didn't mean they were delinquents, for God's sake.

Adrian nodded, an expression she'd swear was relief flicking over his face before disappearing into his gruff demeanor. “Then we're square. I can help you run the place. But you're going to have to let me. What do you say?”

Her mind's eye whirled backward, landing on the hazy image of a woman with rich, auburn hair, an apron tied tight around her trim waist as she watched her seven-year-old daughter roll out scraps of pastry dough.

A year later, her mother had walked out the door, and Teagan had sworn on the spot she'd never cook another thing for the rest of her life.

But Adrian was right. Letting him teach her to cook made sense, and what's more, it was the only option she was going to get to save the man who'd raised her when her mother had chosen greener pastures over her own family.

“You've got yourself a deal, Superman. But trust me when I say teaching me to cook is going to take every ounce of what you've got.”

Adrian's smile was dark and sexy and oh-so-good, and it arrowed all the way through her as he said, “Oh, trust me, sweetheart. I'm counting on it.”

 

 

Teagan parked her seen-better-days Toyota Corolla in the gravel driveway outside her father's lakeside cottage and got out of the car. The late-morning sunlight threw tree-dappled patterns on the fresh carpet of spring grass surrounding her childhood home, conjuring a postcard-perfect scene that would put even the most ill-tempered mind at ease.

This conversation was going to suck.

She palmed the handles of the three grocery bags in the back of her car, steeling her resolve as she stared down the warm pine panels of her father's front door. As much as she hated it, this had to happen, and fast. Teagan checked her sturdy Timex, calculating her words as she mounted the steps to the tiny stone porch and gave the front door a solid rap.