Into the Fire (5 page)

He was serious. In fact, she had never seen him look so grim. There wasn’t a trace of laughter on his lips, and his eyes were so dark, they looked gray, not green. She frowned, wanting to ask him why he was so sure he would fail, but he held up a hand. “I’m not finished. I just bought Personal Chef, but at the conclusion of our contract, I’ll sign it over to you.” She saw a muscle jump in his jaw. “It’s a good deal, Lila. I hope you’ll accept my offer.”

She wanted to say no.
Hell, no.
She struggled to tap into the fury that had filled her when he made his first offer, but she couldn’t find it. Instead, she was flattered, almost tempted, and it was a dangerous feeling. Any bargain made with Jackson Calabrese was a deal with the devil, but curiosity sparked in her brain. She had to admit she was dying to see his menu.

He stepped closer to her, probably smelling blood in the water. “My lawyer will draw up a legal agreement. The money and the business will be yours, fair and square, in three weeks.”

“Three weeks? I thought you opened in two.”

“Our agreement will be contingent on a good review from the New York Times.”

And there was the catch. Naturally Jack would expect to rate an immediate review in the Times. “Why the conditions?” she asked. “Isn’t my working for you enough, Jack?”

His expression was hard, eyes dark. “You need to have a stake in this too. There’s no trust between us, and you aren’t exactly famous for sticking to the job. You didn’t finish your art degree, and you didn’t bother coming to the Culinary Academy graduation ceremony. I can’t have you creating a menu we can’t reproduce under normal working conditions and then disappearing. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to screw me, Lila, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let it happen.”

She looked up at him, trying not to betray her hurt. How dare he use her past against her? And who was he to throw stones? He’d seduced her and stolen her ideas. Now he was manipulating her into working for him. His character wasn’t flawless either.

“You will work for me,” he continued. “You will fix my menu, and document every change in each dish, down to the very last ingredient. You will make sure my chefs can cook each dish in their sleep before you leave. And I will pay you.”

Of course he would think she would screw him. That was how his brain worked. Unfortunately, her mind worked the opposite way. She was too honest and upfront for her own good, but that was going to change. She wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip away twice. She thought of what Betsy had said about proximity and wished she’d accepted his offer yesterday. Then he might not have drawn up a pesky contact.

“Well?” he asked. “How much do you want?”

“Hang on.” She wished she could phone a friend—or two. Or at least someone with a calculator. She solved that problem by pulling her cell phone out of her purse and sitting down on the bench. She took a sip of coffee then set it aside, wondering if he would sweeten the deal and throw in a car, a house—heck, maybe a small country or two—if she stalled long enough.

She began to add it up: the competition money, the balance of her school loans, her credit card, her rent for a year, a few thousand for her Dad because he kept sending her money even though he didn’t have any, plus a generous dining allowance because, damn it, she lived in an amazing food city and she was hungry. Jack could afford it. The greedy thoughts running through her head reminded her of game shows she had watched as a child where panicked shoppers rushed through grocery stores, trying to get all the big ticket items before the timer ticked down to zero.

She couldn’t look at him as she named a ridiculous sum.

“Done.” His reply was instant, making her think she had asked for too little.

“I’m not finished yet,” she added, mimicking the peremptory tone he had used earlier. “That’s what I want at the end of the three weeks. You just eighty-sixed my weekly paycheck. Some of us depend on those to live, you know. I want a hundred dollars an hour, with time-and-a-half for anything over forty hours a week.”

“Fifty hours,” he countered, with the first smile she’d seen out of him this morning. “We work in the restaurant business. There are no forty-hour weeks.”

“Fine.” She wasn’t going to quibble over ten hours. Anything less than sixty hours a week would be a walk in the park anyway.

Jack held out his hand.

“No papers to sign?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

She felt a shock of desire as she slid her hand into his callused palm. He didn’t let it go.

“Tomorrow.” He tugged her to her feet, and it finally hit her.

She wasn’t going to be poor anymore. She would own her own catering business. Her head spun with ideas, and she sat back down hard on the bench, feeling dizzy. She couldn’t wait to tell Betsy and Jenna. Maybe her dad could move to New York and help her run the business.

She felt Jack’s gaze on her as he gathered the paperwork and keys Dennis had left on the bench. “I need a minute to process.” She reached for her coffee.

“Don’t take too long. We don’t have any time to lose.” He fit a key into the back door and opened it.

She stared at him, confused. “Aren’t we going to Inferno?”

“I just bought a business,” he said dryly. “I thought I should see what it looks like.”

“Right.”

“Don’t forget Personal Chef has parties this week, and you’re still responsible for making sure the prep gets done. Do what you have to do to get ahead. I expect you to meet me at Inferno tomorrow to sign your contract and go over the menu.”

“Of course,” she said tightly.

“My father is out of town, so I have to keep tabs on the restaurants this week.” He held the door open with his foot and pulled a card out of his wallet. “Here’s my cell phone number and the address. Is noon good for you tomorrow?”

She nodded, realizing she was going to have to work all night to get far enough ahead to leave at noon. Then she’d have to do it again tomorrow. And the next day. What had she gotten herself into?

“My chefs work three to eleven, so we’ll have plenty of time to get you up to speed before everyone arrives.”

“I’ll have to leave by four tomorrow.” He looked annoyed, and she almost smiled, glad she was able to thwart him in some small way. “We’re down a server, remember? I have to work tomorrow night.”

Jackson shook his head. “I’ll get somebody from one of the Calabrese restaurants to cover for you. You have more important things to do now.” He opened the door and disappeared inside.

She stared after him, stunned by his arrogance. It must be nice to be a Calabrese.

What would it be like to be able to buy anything you wanted—even a person? To never be short on wait staff because you could always borrow someone from another restaurant? To never have to worry about what would happen if you failed because there was an enormous safety net of cash stretched out beneath your feet?

In the span of five minutes, Jack had rearranged her life. He had told her what to do tonight, what time to show up at work tomorrow, how long to stay, and what she’d be doing. She had no doubt every day of the next three weeks would follow a similar pattern, and she’d better get used to it. Her time belonged to Jack now.

She gasped as the enormity of her decision caught up with her. She didn’t have a safety net. She was going to lose everything, including her job, unless Inferno got a good review in the New York Times. Holy gods, what had she been thinking? She let her head fall back on the bench and closed her eyes, wondering if Jack would let her stay on staff at Personal Chef long enough to get another job if Inferno bombed in the Times.

A deal with the devil demanded a price, and it was always nearly impossible to pay. He’d cleverly tied her good fortune to something she couldn’t predict or control, and she’d been so astounded by his offer that she hadn’t paid attention to the details. Even if by some miracle she could work magic with the Inferno menu and score a good review, there was no doubt in her mind the next three weeks working with Jack were going to be hell. She took a deep breath and sat up straight on the bench.

Hell or not, she’d made a bargain and she was going to do her best to fulfill it—with one exception. Jack had hurt her by throwing her past failures into her face. She was going to make it her personal mission to discover his weaknesses and do him the same favor. Betsy and Jenna were right—the restaurant world was full of challenges. If there was going to be hell to pay, she was going to make damn sure she wasn’t the only one paying it. Jack was going to suffer, too, in as many ways as she could devise over the next three weeks.

Suddenly, she was feeling very creative.

Chapter Six

Jack watched Lila read every word of the contract, expecting her to find some fault that would cause her to storm out of the dining room. There was no way it could be this easy. All day yesterday, he’d expected his cell to ring and for her to tell him the deal was off. He’d run around like a crazy man, visiting all the restaurants and making sure everything was running smoothly, so that he could be here today. Even as he’d run on his treadmill last night, unable to sleep until well after midnight, he’d been waiting for the ax to fall.

She slid a pen out of the pocket of her chef coat. “Free meals too, right?”

He nodded. “You could use some fattening up.”

She frowned and muttered something under her breath as she scrawled her name at the bottom of each contract.

He countersigned. “You won’t regret it.”

She rolled her eyes and tucked her copy into her purse. “Are you kidding me? I already regret it. Stop gloating and hand over the damn menu.”

He slid it across the table. If watching her read the contract had been difficult, this was torture. He nearly squirmed as her eyes darted back and forth across the page. When she reached the bottom, she went back up to the top and started over. This time, she read even more slowly, and by the time she looked at him again, he was ready to climb the walls.

She said nothing, but a shadow flickered in her blue eyes. Why was she hesitating? He could take it.

“It’s boring.”

Or maybe he couldn’t. Suddenly it was difficult to breathe. Black spots obscured his vision, and he forced himself to focus on the paper she shoved across the table to him. He gritted his teeth, then winced as pain shot through his jaw. His dentist had warned him. Unless he developed another response to stress, he was going to end up with cracked molars. However, the future prospect of extensive dental work wasn’t as painful as what lay in his immediate future: listening to Lila Grant rip his beloved menu apart.
This is why you need her
, he reminded himself.

He loosened his jaw enough to grind out, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Clearly, she had expected him to argue. Since he didn’t, she scrunched her freckled nose and leaned across the table to look at the menu again. “It’s solid. I probably don’t have to tell you you’ve got all the classics covered. But somehow I don’t feel compelled to order a thing.”

“Not even the truffled mashed potatoes?” He let his eyes drop to her waist, and then wished he hadn’t, remembering the feel of her slimmer frame beneath his hands in the dry storage room. Now it was hard to breathe for a different reason.

She rolled her eyes and ignored the question. “You need to mix it up a little.”

“I hope you aren’t talking about fusion food. That went out in the nineties.”

She stood and headed for the kitchen. “Imagination never goes out of style. Come on, let’s go into your kitchen and throw everything up in the air and see where it lands.”

Her back was a tempting moving target. Maybe he should give in to the juvenile impulse to pelt her with food every time she irritated him. Not solid food, though—sticky stuff, like barbeque sauce, hoisin and honey. Yes, definitely honey. In her hair, dripping down her neck. Honey everywhere. He remembered a movie he’d discovered beneath his older brother’s bed when he was twelve, and suddenly Lila was naked in his imagination, rubbing honey on her thighs.

“Jackson?” she called over her shoulder, already halfway across the dining room.

He grinned. His subconscious had provided an excellent antidote to stress. Every time Lila pissed him off, he’d picture her naked. It would save his teeth and restore his good humor at the same time. There only drawback to this plan—his erection. “Be right there. Make yourself at home in the kitchen.”

She shrugged and disappeared through the door.

When she was out of sight, he stood up and walked across the room to the bar. He grabbed a clean apron to cover himself. When that didn’t do the job well enough, he pictured a starving kitten, but since he didn’t really like cats, nothing happened. Starving puppies? Abused orphans?
C’mon, boy, is that the best you can do?
He snorted as his father’s voice in his head produced the desired result—an instant wilt. At least his father’s scorn was good for something.

He pushed through the door and entered the kitchen, where Lila had already grabbed an apron and wrapped it around her waist. “What took you so long?”

“I had to call my lawyer,” he lied.

She yanked the reach-in open with such force he decided not to mention his lawyer in her presence lest he risk having to call the repairman. For several long minutes, he stood behind her while she examined every component in the cooler. “Got spoons?” she asked without turning around.

He handed her a basket of tasting spoons as well as an empty basket for the dirty ones. Impatience built inside him as he followed her through the kitchen, watching her explore every nook and cranny. He wasn’t sure what was going on in her head, but she looked at each dish in the dish room, every liquor in the bar, all the ingredients in dry storage, and countless containers in the cooler. Her hair was tied in a knot on top of her head, and by the time she was finished, he had memorized the shape of the back of her neck.

Lila bent to reach lower in the cooler, and Jack shut his eyes. She might drive him crazy with her superior attitude, but Lila Grant had a fantastic ass. When he was sure she was standing upright again, he opened his eyes. He hadn’t thought much further than getting her to agree to help him open Inferno. Now he realized he had another problem on his hands—his dick didn’t understand his relationship with Lila had undergone major changes. Not that a couple of hook ups qualified as a relationship, but whatever, she worked for him now. He had to focus on something in the kitchen other than her ass.

Since their agreement was temporary, he couldn’t leave her to explore the kitchen on her own. Any changes Lila made to his menu would get him through the rest of the summer and fall, maybe even winter, but he needed to be able to deconstruct her magic in order to create future menus. Nope, he was going to watch her every move. His father wouldn’t be breathing down his neck for at least a week, and with Lila in the kitchen, his menu was all but fixed. All he had to do was pay attention.

…

Lila was stalling. She could feel Jack’s intent gaze on her. Was he waiting for her to bend over and pull a new, improved menu out of her ass? It wasn’t going to happen. In fact, she had no clue how to fix his menu.

Because it wasn’t broken.
In fact, it was brilliant, and she loved it, but she couldn’t very well say that, could she? Not when it was so much fun to let him think she hated it.

She closed the door of the last reach-in and carried her spoons to the dish room. Jack followed her, of course. “Back off, Jack. Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Not at the moment, since you’re doing my job. I don’t want to miss all the magic.” Why did he sound pissed off? She was the one who was scrambling to figure out how to improve a menu that was already perfect.

She heard the back door open and a few seconds later, a stunning forty-something woman with riotous salt-and-pepper curls and warm brown eyes walked into the kitchen. Her chef coat was slung over her arm and her black t-shirt proclaimed her love of heavy metal music.

“Lila, this is my pastry chef, Emily.” They shook hands. “Lila is…” This was going to be fascinating. How was Jack going to explain her presence to his staff without damaging his enormous ego? She raised an eyebrow and smiled, waiting.

“Lila is our secret weapon. She’s a wizard with flavor. I want her to put her creative spin on the Inferno menu before we open. Please treat her as you would my partner. Anything she says goes.”

Lila had to lock her jaws together to keep her mouth from falling open. She had expected Jack to treat her as his underling, and he’d just given her the key to the kitchen. She hoped her smile looked confident, not terrified.

“You got it, boss.” The older woman smiled. “Welcome to Inferno.”

Jack motioned toward the back. “Why don’t you two get acquainted in the bakeshop, and I’ll introduce Lila to the rest of the guys when everyone is here?”

Lila nodded and followed Emily around the corner into the small bakeshop. Lila had already been through her cooler and tasted everything, a fact Emily wouldn’t be able to miss, since there was one bite out of every dessert except the chocolate cake. Lila had eaten most of a piece of the airy, flourless confection topped with whipped cream.

“Sorry about that,” Lila said, pointing to the nibbled on desserts.

Emily shrugged. “Either you eat them, the jackals on the line get ‘em, or we take it all down to the mission. A chocolate lover, huh?” Her smile was genuine.

Lila smiled back. “Guilty.”

“Me, too.”

“I can tell.” The desserts were heavy on the chocolate, but Lila wasn’t going to start making suggestions until she got a feel for the dynamic in the kitchen. For all she knew everyone was going to hate her. Even with Jack’s clear support, this could be more difficult than she had imagined.

“So, how long have you known Jack?” Emily asked. She looked up to find the pastry chef giving her a grin that could only be described as naughty.

“Excuse me?”

“When I walked in, you two were standing awfully close to one another. Jack keeps his distance, so what’s the story? You two go way back or what?” Her chocolate brown eyes gleamed with curiosity.

“I…uh…” Lila had clearly been working in the kitchen by herself for too long. She’d forgotten that gossip was the rule, not the exception. Her natural tendency toward honesty was not going to serve her well here. “We went to culinary school together,” she finally said.

Emily nodded slowly. “Interesting. I wouldn’t have ever thought Jack would hand over control of his kitchen to anyone.”

Lila blinked hard and took a deep breath, fighting her memories of Jack losing control on top of her…beneath her…behind her. She felt her cheeks heat and knew she had given herself away when Emily chuckled.

“Very interesting.” Emily tossed her backpack under the table and shrugged into her chef coat. After it was buttoned, she twirled her hair into a tight bun, washed her hands, and tugged a clipboard down from a shelf.

Lila surveyed the rest of the room, noticing the bakeshop equipment was brand new and top-of-the-line. In fact, the entire Inferno kitchen was amazing, clean, well-equipped, with plenty of refrigeration and ample storage. She thought of the tiny kitchen at Personal Chef and anger burned inside her. Yes, it must be fun to be Jack, with an unlimited budget to open his new restaurant. Jack, who only had to open his checkbook to get what he wanted. Jack, who stole what he wanted if he couldn’t buy it.

She picked up a balloon whisk so delicate it could only have one purpose, to whisk egg whites, and gave it an experimental twirl. Her soufflés would rise to heights unknown if she had this whisk. Surrounded by so many fun toys, it was hard to remember she wasn’t here to enjoy the facilities. She had three weeks to fix the menu and discover Jack’s Achilles heel, starting now.

She hung the whisk back on its hook and turned to Emily, hoping the pastry chef might be able to give her the scoop. “So…have you known Jack long?”

The older woman nodded. “Long enough to know he’d make a great boss. My husband and I worked together at Breeze, Drew Calabrese’s flagship restaurant. He’s still there, but I was thrilled to follow Jack to Inferno. Jack used to come into the Breeze bakeshop all the time to hide from his father—not that he ever said that. He would have said it was for the cookies.”

“But you knew better?”

“Honey, everyone knows better. Those two fight like cats and dogs. Well, Drew fights. Jack walls up and turns his fury into food. He’s a tornado on the line. I don’t think he even needs the rest of the guys. When he gets going, he could probably work every station himself. But cover your head and batten down the hatches if you see his father in the kitchen. One of these days, Jack’s going to blow. That’s why I keep the bakeshop well stocked with cookies.” The other woman’s grin turned sly. “Maybe you should give him a different kind of cookie.”

She looked so hopeful, Lila couldn’t help but laugh.
Only in my dreams.
The thought caught her by surprise, and she realized she was feeling sorry for Jack. He didn’t deserve sympathy for his family problems. She turned her thoughts away from the memory of his vulnerable expression when he had confided in her six months ago. Knowing Jack, it had been a ploy to gain her sympathy so she would throw the competition.

She thought of her bank balance and the stack of bills lined up on the counter and her sympathy for Jack disappeared. “No cookies for Jack. Not from me.” But she couldn’t wait to meet his father. “What are you working on today?”

“Special desserts. I’m thinking of a chocolate pots de crème for starters.”

Lila opened her mouth to speak, thinking of all the chocolate already on the menu, then shut it. She wasn’t sure how Emily would take criticism from someone she had just met.

Emily gave her a direct look. “Spit it out. If Jack listens to you, then I will too. I can tell you have a suggestion.”

Lila decided to take a chance. “There’s a lot of chocolate already. I happen to love it, but you might think about creating special desserts for the crazy people who don’t like it. Or are allergic.”

Emily gave her a rueful grin. “It’s a constant struggle to resist my go-to ingredient. I’m working on that. Still too much chocolate?”

“Maybe something with nuts?” Lila suggested, relieved she hadn’t just made an enemy.

Emily made a note on the clipboard. “I’m all over it.”

Someone walked past the alcove then doubled back to peer in at them.

“Yo, Em! How the hell did you rate an assistant?” A small man with a meticulously-waxed handlebar mustache gave Emily an offended look.

“She’s not my assistant, Chef Boyardee. She’s your new boss. You better start sucking up.”

“No way. Did Chef sell the restaurant?”