MG did a double take, then laughed. The late afternoon sun shone through her hair, turning the gold to red. He felt a quick kick of heat, which he ruthlessly suppressed.
Do not hit on the exhausted prep cook.
“So everything’s working for you?”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks for bringing me on here. It’s been great.” But he caught the momentary tightening of her lips.
Hell.
He figured there wasn’t any real hope that she’d tell him what was bothering her, but he had to ask. “Any problems?”
She shook her head, then took another swallow of beer. “Nope.”
He blew out a long breath. This was going really well.
Screw it.
“You interested in a gig tomorrow night?”
She blinked at him in confusion, suddenly wary. “What?”
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. When exactly had he lost the ability to talk to women? Or not all women, just this particular one. “There’s a wedding reception here tomorrow night—we’ll need people to get the food plated so the waiters can get it out on the tables. We can’t pull anybody off the dinner line, so we need people from the breakfast line to come in. You could pick up some extra money working in the kitchen.”
She was nodding before he finished. “Oh, okay. I see what you mean. Yeah, sure. I’m interested.”
“Good. Tell Darcy. She’s in charge.”
She nodded. “I will. Thanks. Well, I’d better get home now.” She pushed herself up from the wicker, then turned back to him. “Um…see you, I guess.”
“Right.” He nodded and watched her head down the veranda toward the back stairs, wondering just why the word
gig
seemed to make her so nervous.
Chapter Seven
Banquet plating was another adventure, MG discovered. The reception took place at the Woodrose event center, which had its own, considerably smaller kitchen. Darcy and Leo were in charge, along with a busboy named Travis they’d dragooned into helping. She and Travis stood with hotel pans of fingerling potatoes and grilled vegetables, along with a tub of greens, carefully but swiftly arranging everything on the plates to Darcy’s exacting standards. Leo plated the entrée at the end and did a quick swirl of basil oil before passing the plates to the event center waiters who arranged them on their trays.
Both the salads and the desserts had been assembled before they’d left the main kitchen. Still, it felt like they’d put together at least a thousand plates, which would have been a considerable feat since there were only around a hundred and fifty guests. MG stuck around after the dinner service to help unload the trays of dishes the waiters brought back and then load the desserts. Finally, around nine or so, she headed for her car.
Which wouldn’t start. She sat staring at the dashboard for a few minutes, willing the engine to turn over and knowing that it wouldn’t. The gas gauge sat resolutely on E, reminding her that she hadn’t fulfilled her promise to herself to stop at the convenience store and get ten bucks worth of gas on her way back to work in the evening.
Finally she climbed out, cursing quietly but thoroughly as she stomped down the drive to the road. It wasn’t a long walk to the farm. On the other hand, she’d been on her feet more or less constantly since early morning and she wasn’t sure she was up to even a short walk at the moment.
“It doesn’t matter what you’re up to,” she muttered. “The only way you’re getting home is on foot.”
The wind rustled through the spreading pecan trees alongside the road. Moonlight speared fitfully through the shadows of the leaves. Somewhere in one of the farm yards set back from the road a dog barked as she walked by.
MG shivered, then told herself not to be silly. It was a country road without much traffic. She was undoubtedly a lot safer here than she would have been strolling down a sidewalk in Nashville at this time of night.
Headlights appeared at the crest of a hill in front of her and she slowed down. Best to be cautious since the driver probably wouldn’t be able to see her too clearly—there were no street lights this far out in the country. Just as she stepped farther back onto the shoulder, she heard footsteps on the gravel behind her.
She whirled, balling her hands in fists—as if she could actually do any damage to a mugger.
“MG?” Somebody called softly.
She stood still, trying to peer through the darkness. “Joe?”
“Right.” He stepped closer so that she could see the outline of his body. Then the car’s headlights threw his figure into relief against the darkness. He wore a white T-shirt with his black chef’s pants, his shaved head gleaming.
“I saw you going down the drive. Did you walk to work today?”
She shook her head, then realized he probably couldn’t see her in the darkness. “I drove, but my car’s out of gas. It’s not that far to walk home.” Although it already felt like she’d been walking for ten miles or so.
“You should have told me. I’d have given you a ride home. Or a ride to the gas station. Do you want to do that now?”
“Not really.” She sighed. “I’m almost home and I’m sort of beat. I’ll walk over to the inn tomorrow morning, then get a ride to the gas station when I finish in the kitchen.”
The moon broke through the shadows again and she saw his face. He didn’t look happy. “I’ll walk with you then.”
She thought about refusing politely. But the idea of company on the dark road was suddenly very appealing. “Okay.”
She turned and started back toward the farm. After a moment, he joined her, stepping between her and the road as if he were protecting her from oncoming traffic. Given that he was a lot more noticeable than she was, that seemed like a very good idea. She gave him plenty of space.
“So how did the reception go?” he asked.
“Fine, I guess. I mean, I’ve never done one before so I’m not exactly in a position to judge, but nobody yelled at anybody so I guess it was okay.”
“Yelling?” She heard the amusement in his voice. “Someone yelling in my kitchen? We never yell. We’re a very even-tempered bunch.”
She chuckled until she remembered that she’d been yelling herself yesterday. She’d spent most of her time today avoiding Fishhead, who moved around the kitchen with such a self-satisfied smirk that she wanted to smack him. Fortunately, she had enough on her task list to keep her too busy to look at him.
A small but significant silence had developed as she thought about Fishhead and Fairley, her twin nemeses.
“You ready to tell me what happened the other day?” Joe said quietly.
She blew out a breath. “Honestly, I’d rather not. I don’t want to look like somebody who runs to the boss every time something happens. Could we just let it go?”
“We could.” He took her hand briefly, guiding her around a large chunk of limestone at the side of the road. “On the other hand, I need to know what’s going on in my kitchen. I can’t be in there all the time. It bugs me when something happens and I don’t know the details.”
“Why don’t you ask your sous chef?” She did her best to keep any trace of sarcasm out of her voice. “I thought he was supposed to be your rep in the kitchen when you aren’t there.”
“He is. And I already asked him. He gave me his version.”
MG’s shoulders tightened. Chances were good Fairley’s version wasn’t going to have much good to say about her. “What did he tell you?”
“He said you and Dietz had a problem. I’m trying to find out what that problem was.”
She was on the verge of telling him. He sounded so reasonable—a man who wanted to know what was wrong so that he could do something about it.
And she could already hear what Darcy would say if she gave in. You went to the chef? What’s the matter? You couldn’t stand up to the asshole on your own?
“I can’t,” she said softly. “I just can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”
He was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “Okay. It was worth a shot. So what are you doing down here anyway?”
“Doing?” She frowned at him in the darkness. “You mean besides working for you and feeding the chickens?”
“No, I mean how did you happen to end up in Konigsburg, Texas, living on a chicken farm?”
Joe swore he could feel her stiffening from three feet away. He’d known a lot of people who didn’t like talking about their backgrounds, and at least some of them were screwed up beyond all redemption. MG Carmody gave no evidence of being any more or less neurotic than the next person. Of course, the next person at the moment happened to be him, and he wasn’t exactly a model of mental health himself.
Which made her great reluctance to talk about herself particularly intriguing. “Did I say something wrong?”
She blew out a breath. “No. It’s just not very interesting. I came down here because my grandpa got sick and needed someone to take care of him.”
“Where were you before that?”
“Tennessee.”
“Doing what?”
Long pause. “Writing.”
Writing.
Well that covered a lot of ground. “Writing about what?”
“Oh, you know. Love, death, the usual. There’s my driveway.” She picked up her pace slightly.
Joe matched it. “So you wrote fiction? Novels? Or maybe journalism. I guess you could say that deals with love and death too.”
“No. I just… I wrote, you know? So where were you before you came to Konigsburg?” She sounded a little desperate.
“Oh here and there,” he said easily. “I was in New York, then New Orleans for a while. Then I moved to Texas, worked in Austin and Dallas, got the job with Resorts Consolidated.” He felt a little guilty all of a sudden. There were parts of his life he didn’t like talking about either. Who was he to expect her to give him all the details? “Did you grow up around here?”
She seemed to relax slightly. “No, my mom lived in New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. I grew up there, but I came here to visit every summer. I helped my grandpa with his chickens.”
“Do your parents still live there?”
“My mom does. My dad took off when I was little. I don’t know where he is now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, I never really knew him. My mom took her maiden name back, and I did too—I’m a Carmody more than anything else. My mom’s a tough broad. She brought me up on her own. I never felt like we were missing much.”
“I’m sorry about that too.” He slowed down slightly, hoping she would too.
She stopped, looking back at him. “So where are you from?”
He let himself grin. The yard light near the chicken house made it easier to see her face at least. “Aw, darlin’, can’t you tell?” he drawled, letting his accent deepen. “Baton Rouge.”
She grinned back. “I guess it is sort of obvious, now that you mention it. Did you grow up there?”
“Yes, ma’am. Lived there until I went off to learn how to cook. Only it turned out my mama’d already showed me how to do most of that.”
“Big family?”
He shrugged. “Big enough. I’ve got five brothers and sisters and a shitload of cousins. All of us lived in the same neighborhood.”
“So what did you learn in culinary school?” She turned back toward the front porch, but at least she was walking more slowly now.
“How to cook for a restaurant, which is sort of different from how to cook. Also how to survive in a restaurant, which is more important.” He almost hadn’t done that, of course, but he’d managed to pull it together in the end.
She turned to face him at the foot of her front steps. “Do you like it here?”
He paused. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever asked him that before. “Yeah. Overall, I like it a lot. How about you?”
“I haven’t been here long enough to have an opinion.” She paused. “Except that’s not exactly true because I lived here at Grandpa’s every summer for seven or eight years.”
“Not the same, though, is it,” he said slowly.
“No, it’s not exactly.” She sat down on her top step, staring up at him. “But in a weird way, it is. I mean, my grandpa was sort of an old style farmer. He’d go to town maybe once a week, if that, just to go to the HEB supermarket. He never went to a restaurant or a movie. He didn’t drink. He had a television set from the Stone Age. I think he even felt bad about buying food at HEB. He thought he should be able to grow everything he needed himself.”
“What about your grandma?”
She shook her head. “She died a few years ago. Cancer.”
“No other relatives around?”
She shrugged. “Well, there’s Grandpa’s sister, my Great-Aunt Nedda. She’s into real estate. But she and Grandpa weren’t close. We hardly ever saw her.”
He sat down beside her on the step. “So why are things not that different?”
She sighed. “Because I still don’t go into town that often. Hell, I don’t even take the time to put gas in my car. Between the chickens and the Rose, I’m a real drone.”
He leaned back, resting his elbows on the step behind him. “Chef’s hours are a bitch. It’s a wonder any of us have any home life at all.”
“You don’t get out either?” She raised a faintly disbelieving eyebrow.
“I don’t get out as much as I used to, but I make it into town occasionally.” Actually living in the country had been a safety measure for him. It wasn’t as easy to wander out to another restaurant or bar for a drink or five to let the adrenaline wear off. “We got Sunday and Monday off, you know.”