Fortune's Just Desserts (6 page)

On the small, outside chance that the exceedingly creative chef had neglected to christen his new creation, Marcos thought a moment. As if inspired, a name popped up in his mind.

Heavenly Sin.

It seemed appropriate because, while he didn't doubt that the dessert was sinfully caloric, tasting it was pure heaven.

Abandoning the parfait glass on his desk, Marcos left the office and went into the kitchen.

Enrique was there, frying something in one of the larger pans. The high flame beneath it was hissing and sizzling as pats of butter swiftly dissolved, ready to enhance whatever he dropped into the pan next.

“That was fantastic,” Marcos cried, striding toward the chef.

Enrique looked over toward him, a quizzical look on his face.

“That dessert you left in my office—sheer genius,” Marcos enthused. “Do you have a name for it yet? Most likely you do,” he said, answering his own question. “What do you call it?”

“Wendy's,” the chef said simply, a very amused smile on his thin lips.

Marcos stared at the man, a little dumbfounded, as well as confused.

Was Enrique saying that he'd named that wondrous dessert after the Fortune girl?

“I don't understand. Why would you call it Wendy's?” Marcos wanted to know.

“Because I'm the one who made it,” said the soft Southern drawl coming from behind him.

W
endy.

The slight whiff of the perfume she always seemed to wear announced her presence in the vicinity even before he heard that annoyingly lyrical Southern drawl of hers.

Marcos turned to face her. “You made the dessert.” It was not a question so much as a statement of disbelief.

“Yes.”

Separated by a couple of feet, Marcos studied her for a long moment. Her gaze met his, blatantly re turning his stare. Marcos frowned, doing his best to look distant and unapproachable, mainly because he would have preferred being neither. And
that,
as far
as he was concerned, was totally unacceptable. After all, he was her boss, not to mention that he was older than she was and that they came from two totally different worlds. His people had to work for everything they had, hers had been born with silver spoons in their mouths. Anything he might have even vaguely entertained was doomed before it ever unfolded—he just had to make certain that it didn't even try. The best way he knew how to do that was to make her want to quit.

“All right,” Marcos allowed gamely, “you made this.” If it was to appear as an insert on the menu tonight, he needed to give credit where it was due. “So what cookbook did you get it from?”

Her shoulders seemed to square themselves and he had the distinct impression that he was in the presence of a soldier prepared to go off into battle.

An unbidden shiver of anticipation went through him. He didn't bother exploring why.

“I didn't,” Wendy informed him with just a touch of pride in her voice.

Frustrated, Marcos dropped his kid-gloved treatment. “You're actually standing there, telling me that you just came up with this dessert today.”

“If that's what you're asking me,” Wendy replied, “then yes, that's what I'm telling you. I just came up with this dessert.”

“I told you she was good,” Enrique chimed in. The pride in his voice was unmistakable, as if he'd been
mentoring her these last few weeks. Which, it now seemed, he had.

“Yes, you did,” Marcos acknowledged, still scrutinizing her. “How did you come up with this?” he wanted to know. Twenty-one-year-old heiresses didn't ponder recipes and ingredients—they thought about parties and having a good time with five hundred of their “closest friends.”

Wendy shrugged. The entire process had simply come to her, but she doubted if this man with the wickedly penetrating eyes would understand that. “I just did.”

“You experimented at home, making trial samples?” Once the words were out he could almost envision her in a state-of-the-art-kitchen, half-filled mixing bowls scattered everywhere and splotches of cream dotting various parts of her hands and face….

Marcos forced himself to erase the image from his mind because its effect on him was not what he wanted going on right now, just as he couldn't quite figure out how the heiress had actually come up with something so good that eating it almost qualified as a heavenly experience.

“No, no experimenting. At least not at home,” she amended. “I just did it here. Now.”

Marcos was looking at her as if he didn't believe her. Why didn't that surprise her? Well, she didn't care what he believed—she knew that she was telling the truth. As did the chef.

But for Enrique's sake—and peace—she continued explaining. “One thing seemed to go with another and before I knew it,” she gestured toward several other parfait glasses on the next table, all filled with the same creamy dessert she'd just concocted, all intended for the other kitchen staff, “I came up with that.”

“That,” Marcos repeated, with more than a little self-deprecating defeat woven in through the wonder. Even if she had come up with it—and he wasn't completely convinced that she had—there was no denying that it was damn good. He had absolutely no doubts that the customers would love it. “Do you have a name for it yet?”

She grinned then. That grin he'd begun to think of as the visual illustration of an old-fashioned rebel yell. “I don't name my food, Marcos. Not if I'm going to eat it. Seems kind of cannibal-like, don'tcha think?”

He didn't answer her. How could he? He didn't even know where to begin with that kind of logic.

So instead, he turned to Enrique. “We're going to have to call it something if it's going to be on the menu. What do you think of Heavenly Sin?”

Enrique slanted a glance in Wendy's direction, his smile appreciative and approving. “I try to think of it as little as possible.”

“As a name for the dessert,” Marcos stressed, his impatience approaching critical mass.

“Oh, I see.” Enrique nodded, as if rolling the name over in his mind. “It works for me.”

And he was quitting while he was ahead, Marcos thought. The longer he took with the name, the more time that gave to Wendy to throw a wrench into the works, making it grind to a halt.

“Heavenly Sin it is. I'll see about having an insert placed in tonight's menu.” He focused exclusively on his chef. “Do you think you can come up with several dozen of these for tonight?”

“No problem, right, Wendy?” Enrique asked, deflecting the question to the dessert's creator.

“No problem,” she echoed with confidence, her eyes shining.

“You're still taking care of the dessert,” he told Enrique. They were temporarily short one dessert chef—theirs had quit last week because her husband had gotten a job in another part of the state. Marcos was still interviewing replacements. He turned his attention to Wendy. “I'm going to want you on the floor,” he informed her.

He was caught completely off guard when Wendy smiled widely and said, “Why, Marcos, most men usually buy me dinner first.”

It took him a second to realize what she was saying to him. And longer to get the heat that shot through him under control and compose himself.

“That's another thing,” he began when he finally found his tongue. “You haven't been here long enough to call me Marcos.”

And my guess is that you never will be.

“So that's, like, a milestone?” Wendy asked him.

“Something like that,” he muttered. All he wanted to do right now was get away from her so that he could effectively regroup. And draw a breath without inhaling her delicate perfume. “So when
do
I get to call you Marcos?” she asked.

There was something about the way she said his name that sent ripples through him. High, tidal wave type ripples.

He definitely didn't need this.

“When pigs fly,” he muttered under his breath. Or thought he did.

It turned out that she'd heard him. “I'll be watching the skies, then,” she promised.

Marcos didn't have to look—he could hear the wide grin in her voice. As he walked off, back to his office, he couldn't help wondering what he had done so wrong in his life to merit being saddled with her. He also wondered what he'd have to do in order to wipe the image of her sexy smile from his mind.

 

Damn, but he'd never been so happy to get the results of a lab test before, Flint thought, as he hung up the phone in his hotel room.

He'd paid extra to have the results rushed through instead of taking the customary four to six weeks. He knew he wouldn't be able to stand the tension or
put up with the waiting, even though he was fairly certain that he hadn't fathered the infant causing all the fuss.

Well, part of the fuss, he amended. The rest of it surrounded his missing uncle, who was also the baby's uncle—or some such relation, he thought. Of late, the exact delineation of family dynamics were beginning to elude him.

Not that he allotted a great deal of concern to William's disappearance. Hell, plenty of men got cold feet and took off right before their wedding—or wished they had the guts. His uncle had just thought better of surrendering his freedom for a wedding band, that was all.

Uncle William would turn up eventually, relieved or sorry. But either way, the man would be alive and breathing.

Just like him, Flint thought, heading out of the hotel and out onto the street.

God, that was a relief, he thought again. He hadn't realized just how heavily all this had been weighing on him until he'd gotten the word that he was in the clear.

He might be, Flint thought, but some other male Fortune sure as hell wasn't. And it was someone close to home.

The technician who had called him had told him that while he hadn't fathered the infant, he did have certain markers in common with the baby's father. When he'd asked the technician just what that meant,
the woman had explained to him that most likely a sibling of his
had
fathered the baby.

That meant either Ross or Cooper was the father, and Flint really doubted there was a chance in hell that it was Ross. His oldest brother was head over heels in love with his wife, Julie.

That left Cooper.

Cooper. His other older brother hadn't been around for a bit. Cooper had the really annoying habit of just disappearing for whole pockets of time, vanishing as if he was one of those mountain men from two hundred years ago, living off the land and keeping to himself.

Truth be told, Flint had been pretty surprised to see Cooper at the church. He thought for sure that Cooper would pass on what, by any other name, amounted to a family reunion. One that had ended badly, granted, but nonetheless had been a gathering of the various branches of the clan.

Could Cooper be the father?

It seemed to Flint like a lot of things were pointing to that, but right now he didn't feel like spending his time trying to puzzle that out.

He just felt like celebrating.

Flint got into his car and drove around, looking for some place suitable for him to celebrate his relief and joy.

When he saw Red, he decided it had to be fate. After all, his baby sister was now married to a Mendoza—Roberto—and it looked as if she was finally
happy, after all these years and with one disastrous marriage behind her. That meant a lot.

Red it was, Flint thought, turning his vehicle into the parking lot. He parked the car in the first available space he could find, got out and made his way into the restaurant.

A warm wall of noise—voices weaving in and out, festive Mexican music in the background and every so often the clatter of dishes and silverware—greeted Flint as he pushed open one of the massive oak doors.

“Table for two?” the hostess at the reservation table asked him as he crossed to her.

“One,” he corrected, reveling in the sound of that for the time being.

“This way, please.” The young woman seated him, then handed over a menu.

He'd barely started perusing the choices when a vivacious waitress with long, slender legs that made a man's mouth water approached him with a smile that would have taken the chill out of an arctic blizzard.

“Hello, my name's Wendy, and I'll be serving you tonight,” she informed him, her voice inspiring a melody in his head that he had a hunch was going to stay with him for a long, long time. The waitress leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. And just like that, she seemed to create an intimate air reserved for just the two of them. He found himself lost in admiration.

“Got your eye on something special?” Wendy asked.

Flint found himself really tempted to say, “You,” but he'd just gotten out of what could have been one hell of a dilemma. He wasn't about to jump feet first into a new one.

So instead, Flint retired his menu and asked, “What would you suggest?”

“Well, now, that all depends on what you've got an appetite for,” Wendy answered.

These days, Flint lived in Colorado. There was nothing fresh off the farm about him, and he knew that the waitress's friendliness just went with the territory, that she meant nothing by it.

But all that considered, he would have liked just one taste of that pretty little mouth of hers.

So, to divert himself, he glanced back at the menu, zeroed in on one of the items and said, “This steak dinner sounds pretty good.” He laced his hands together, resting them on top of the menu. “I'll take the prime rib. Rare,” he said before she could ask.

Wendy's smile continued as if it would never end. “Man after my own heart,” she told him, making the notation. “Love a good steak myself.” She looked up at him. “And what would you like to go with that? We've got baked potatoes, fries—”

Wendy continued, reciting the rest of the selections that went with the entrée he'd ordered.

Flint hardly heard a word she was saying. He was far too busy watching her lips as she gave him his options.

And he wasn't the only one.

From across the room, Marcos was doing his own observing. Just as he had for more than several days now. He told himself that it was part of his job. He was on the lookout to make sure everything was executed properly and that there were no glitches anywhere, no cause for any patron to complain about the service at Red.

It was the same reason that he took random samples of the food that came out of Red's kitchen. He had a discerning palate as well as a discriminating eye and it was up to him to keep things operating at top levels. That was what his aunt and uncle were paying him for.

However, when it came to Wendy, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he spent more time than he really should observing her.

Marcos could feel his temper rising as he watched Wendy leaning over this latest customer of hers, who was practically drooling over her. He frowned. Deeply.

Agitated, Marcos knew that he should just let the matter go and return to his office. After all, no harm was being done, it wasn't as if he had nothing else to do. There was payroll to review and inventory to verify before Friday came around. Fridays were when he had to place the new orders for the coming week.

He knew what he
should
do, but somehow Marcos found himself striding across the floor toward the
table that Wendy was lingering over—and toward the man with the large eyes.