Ready To Burn (Due South Book 3) (35 page)

“Shaye!” Del yelled.

She startled, knocking a plated frittata off the counter. Oh, crap! She never dropped plates, and that was her second this morning.

“Goddamn it! What’s the matter with you?”

Flustered, Shaye didn’t know whether to reach for a cloth or kick him in the shins. She stammered an apology, and Fraser appeared at her side with a broom.

“I’ll take care of it, Chef,” he said.

Del snapped out more orders. Pressure, she decided, squeezing her lips shut. She slanted a glance at Ethan, who gave her a sympathetic smile. Why Del had to be such a dickhead when Ethan went out of his way to be polite and professional—she couldn’t fathom. Admittedly, she wasn’t at the top of her game. They were close to chaos, as today’s lunch service was the first to experience Ethan’s new menu. The rare beef and
foie
gras
, crab frittata, roasted quail and other dishes all tasted divine—but how would they go over with the locals?

“Table three is getting antsy,” called Charlie, fidgeting at the window. “Where’s my frittatas?”

“Ask bloody Shaye,” came Del’s snarled response.

“Waiting on two beef, one pasta, one salmon for table six.” This from Lani.

“Table nine is about to walk. Where the hell are my quails?” Helena chimed in.

Ethan and Del’s orders flew around the kitchen like shotgun pellets.

“Fire the mussels for table two.”

“Eighty-six the quail.”

“Pump it out, Vince, c’mon.”

“Table six, run it.”

“Shaye!” Del appeared at her side. “What the fuck are you doing? You’re meant to be expediting!”

She reared back, scalded by his tone. “I—”

“You’re standing there like a fucking statue.”

“Sorry, Chef.” Her voice came out a choked squeak.

“Sorry’s not good enough this time. Get out of my kitchen.”

At first, she didn’t understand what Del meant, the contours of the face she’d traced with her fingertips so contorted that he’d become unrecognizable. Then her gaze flickered to his finger, extended and pointing to the door.

“
What
?”

“Get. Out.”

Cogs clicked and rotated in her brain. She had to close her eyes a moment to work out the significance of his words. “Wait—are you firing me?”

“Yep.”

“You can’t.” Part of her—the bit not focused on her lover and the man she trusted ripping away the thing that mattered most—was proud of how she’d apparently learned to ignore Ethan’s crew.

“I can. I have. You need to leave.”

His eyes pierced her like cold steel, bereft of warmth or mercy. She saw the ruthlessness then, the determination that had transformed a heart-broken fourteen-year-old boy into a man who’d put ambition before anything else.

“But, Chef—Del…please.” Everything she’d come to feel for him tore through her words, leaving them raw and bleeding at his feet.

The only reaction on Del’s face was a slight muscle tic in his jaw.

Henry and his insatiable need for drama would be behind this—no doubt the little man, hunched evilly in the corner of the kitchen, was salivating with excitement. Perhaps the director even expected her to burst into tears and beg Del for her job? Hard luck. She was a Harland, daughter of a man who’d had the discipline to train and dive to depths unimaginable on one breath.

Shaye angled her chin. “You don’t get to fire me, Westlake.” She yanked on the ties of her apron. “I quit.”

She balled up the apron and hurled it at Del’s head—which hit a bullseye of course—and stalked to Due South’s back door, where she whirled around to Cruz’s camera and flipped it the bird. Childish? Hell, yeah. But boy, it felt
good
.

“Enough
friction
and
disharmony
for you, Henry?”

Then she walked out and slammed the door.

***

“You’ve got some nerve,” Glenna Harland said after opening her door—the one reserved for friends and family at her B&B.

To say Shaye’s mom looked at him like something clogging a bathroom drain was an understatement. The Oban grapevine was alive and thriving. Del resisted the urge to swipe his clammy palms down his legs and instead shoved his hands into his pants pockets.

“Been told that before, ma’am.” Sticking with squeaky-clean politeness might work in his favor. “But I’d like to speak with Shaye, if she’s here.”

And please, let her be there…he’d looked everywhere else.

He’d texted, rung, and left messages while on bathroom breaks—the crew must’ve thought he’d had the bladder of an eighty year old—but nothing.

West shoved him into his office the moment lunch service and filming was over, demanding to know why Del had fired his soon-to-be sister-in-law. After he explained, West had shaken his head and sighed.

“I’m going to find her now and sort this out,” Del said.

The best laid plans and all that shit.

After he’d banged on her door for five minutes, Denise had come upstairs and told him to quit it—Shaye wasn’t there. So he’d tried her friends—Kezia, Holly, Erin from the Great Flat White Café. Figured women went to their female friends first when a guy acted like a horse’s ass. The three women had stonewalled him with similar replies.
After hell freezes over, I’ll tell you where Shaye is.

He wasn’t brave enough to ask Piper or Ben if they’d seen her.

Finally, Del returned to Due South and ran into Carly. His sister called him an asshat, and said, “Try her mom’s place, but don’t you dare mention you spoke to me.”

So, he’d fronted up, asshat-extraordinaire, on Glenna’s doorstep.

“You’re the last person my daughter wants to see right now,” Glenna said.

He swallowed past the thickness in his throat but didn’t lower his gaze. “I think you’re right, ma’am, even though I had good reasons for what I did.” Time to play his trump card. “And I’d like to try to explain those reasons to Shaye before the wedding. I don’t want any animosity between us to mar Piper and West’s big day.”

Glenna’s rigid posture softened, and she huffed out a long sigh. “You’d better come in.”

Del followed her into the hallway.

“She’s in the kitchen,” Glenna said quietly. “I’m sure you remember where it is?”

His stomach flipped in a sickening roll, though his childhood memories of the Harland’s place were mostly good ones. He’d belonged here then, even if it were only as a tagalong. Glenna and Michael Harland had given him safe harbor and the messy noise of a family who loved each other to replace the vacuum of affection in his own home.

He nodded, reaching out for the door handle. Glenna’s hand closed over his before he could turn it. When he glanced up at her, her hazel eyes were bright, intense.

“We never got over losing you, Del. None of us—me, Michael, the kids, and most of all, your father and Ryan.”

His stomach dropped at the sudden topic change and the shot of emotion it fired through him. “Ah. I thought you were mad at me?”

“Oh, I am. Plenty mad.” Glenna flashed a grim smile. “But I believe you when you say you had good reasons to do what you did. You’d never do anything to truly hurt her or your family. You’re still one of my little tribe of hooligans.”

Many times as a kid, he’d overheard Glenna refer to her children’s circle of friends as her tribe, the words surrounding him in the warmth of inclusion and affection. Now it filled him with an aching loneliness. Maybe he’d left a hole here thirteen years ago, but it was too late for him to fit into it again. His shape had changed. He wasn’t a kid whose biggest problem had been his parents’ imminent divorce, but a man with jagged edges and a whole shit-load of baggage.

Yet, he was touched enough to kiss her cheek, the faint scent of her perfume—Chanel No. 5, he remembered—curling around him. “Thanks, Glenna.”

“Go talk to her.” She squeezed his hand then let go, moving out of his way. “I’ve seen the two of you together, I know you’re…” A pregnant pause as Glenna dipped her head and looked up at him with a meaningful glance. “Good friends. So for goodness sake, don’t make it worse.”

Del nodded, because hell, what could he say to her?
Yep, I’m the kind of good friend who has boned your daughter every chance I got. Or, I’m the kind of good friend who’ll continue to crave Shaye, even though we’re almost at the bottom of this dead-end street.
Some friend.

“Right,” he muttered and opened the door.

Good luck to him in not making everything
a lot
worse.

Shaye had her back to him in the massive kitchen, her right arm stirring something agitatedly in a big mixing bowl. Vanilla and caramelized sugar and chocolate drifted in the warm kitchen air, the sweet scents of a woman baking off her mad. Del pressed his lips together as her arm froze, and she turned her head.

She stared at him, her beautiful face for once devoid of emotion. He’d no idea what thoughts—homicidal or otherwise—flickered through her brain. Strands of her hair had slipped out of her mussed-up ponytail, and as he moved to sit on a breakfast bar stool, a few drips of batter splattered out of the bowl and dotted across her tight-fitting tank top. He’d spotted her chef’s jacket dumped on a dining room chair when he first entered the kitchen.

Brushing her forearm over her brow, Shaye broke eye contact and continued to stir.

“You planning to dump cake batter on me, cupcake?”

Her head whipped around, the bland expression evaporating into a
now I’m gonna gut you with my paring knife
glare. She jabbed the wooden spoon handle in his direction. “You. Don’t get to call me that again.
Ever
.”

Yeah, he’d figured after the nickname slipped from his lips that he’d just thrown gasoline over the situation. His bad. Del folded his arms and leaned on the counter. “I’m so sorry, baby, and I can explain—”

Shaye snorted. “Spare me your pathetic guy explanations for why you acted like such a butthead.”

“I was told to act like a butthead.”

“You had to act, you vain, lily-livered, half-witted pig’s bladder of a man?” She dumped the bowl on the counter and spun around to grab a paper-lined cake pan off the opposite one.

His heart lurched, the corner of his mouth twitching in an effort not to smile. Good God, he was crazy about this woman—ass-over-teakettle, as his dad would say—and totally, royally screwed.

Del propped his chin on the heels of his palms. “Since you’ve ramped up the Harland temper, let me have it. I can take it.”

She tipped the mixing bowl, the creamy golden batter pouring into the cake pan. Scraping out the last of the mixture with a spatula, she stared at him, her hazel eyes shooting fire. “No. You’ve taken enough from me.” In contrast to her fiery gaze, her voice was corpse cold, freezing her temper into icy shards. “You took my trust and my reputation and fucked it over like a cheap hook-up. You think I’ll yell at you for a bit then forgive you. You’re counting on my tendency to mediate and smooth things over, so you don’t have to feel bad.”

Dammit, she’d nailed him by the balls. “Shaye. You haven’t really been fired; it’s just for the show.”

“Henry’s idea?”

“Yes! Of course it was Henry’s idea.
Jesus
.” Thank God she understood. Yet the way she scraped out the bowl with stiff, jerky swipes…“You know I think you’re a fucking brilliant chef.” His voice softened at the sight of her pinched mouth and shiny eyes. “We’re good together, Shaye, in the kitchen and out of it.”

She placed the empty bowl in the sink. “Why did you throw me under the bus?”

It all sounded so sordid and selfish now. “Henry threatened to pull the plug on production here, to set his lawyers on me, Dad, and West if I didn’t cooperate. They would’ve sued Due South for breach of contract.”

Her eyes widened. “Holy crap.”

“You’ve no idea what a pile of dog shit I felt like having to do that to you today. Yelling at you, goddamn firing you in front of everyone—fuck.” The devastated look in Shaye’s eyes when she’d called him chef…
totally did his head in
. “I just wanted to rip Henry’s smug face off. I really am sorry, Shaye.”

The murderous expression on her face softened to slightly homicidal. “That jacked up, scummy little bastard would’ve ruined your reputation and crushed Due South in one fell swoop if you’d refused.”

“I couldn’t risk him going after Dad and West. As to my reputation…”

His heart kicked into high gear, pounding so hard, colors suddenly seemed unnaturally bright.
Tell her now, you sonofabitch, while you’ve got the chance. Tell her how you’re her worst nightmare of a man
. A guy tiptoeing along the razor blade edge between recreational binge drinker and alcoholic.

Wasn’t as if she could be any less disappointed in him.

“Well, in LA, my reputation’s already ruined, at least amongst the top restaurants.” He stood up and edged around the counter as Shaye blasted water into the mixing bowl. One false move and she’d aim the nozzle in his direction.