snorted. “Not until July. This is Maine.”
“So I’m told,” Damon murmured.
“You want to get them now, you’ll have to have them shipped in."
Damon shook his head. “They’re too delicate. Besides, you can always taste when something’s been shipped."
“Skip the squash blossoms and try fiddleheads,” Roman suggested. “That’s one thing you can get local. They usually have them at the market."
“I must have missed them.” Too busy getting distracted by Cady McBain, he thought, annoyed at himself. “I’ll look again on Saturday. In the meantime, we’ve got ourselves some ramps. Any ideas?"
Roman considered. “Twist a few of those babies around shrimp and give ‘em a nice sauté. Forget about the restaurant. You and me, we could have ourselves a nice dinner.” He switched to celery, his knife a blur.
“Ramp-wrapped shrimp. You ever made it?”
“A couple of years ago when I was working down in Jersey. I put it with a cilantro-lemon sauce but it was too light to stand up to the ramps. I’d probably do it again with something stronger, maybe roasted chilis or smoked paprika.”
“Try it,” Damon suggested.
The knife stopped. “What, now?”
“Sure. One of the farmers from the market is coming to dinner this Saturday with his wife. They’ve got an anniversary to celebrate. Chef’s tasting. His wife likes shrimp and garlic, by the way."
It was both opportunity and test. He watched Roman prep, first the shrimp, then the ramps. The young sous chef ran into trouble when he started to wind the green stalks around the shrimp, though.
“You need to soften them a little.” Damon spoke up. “Sauté the ramps separately and then twist them around the shrimp. Or blanch them."
“A sauté would give more flavor.”
“My thought, exactly.”
This time, Roman worked two sauté pans, one with ramps, one with the shrimp, dusting them with spices and seasoning. He picked the hot ramps out of the pan, wrapping them around the even hotter shrimp. Tough hands, Damon thought, always a good attribute in a chef.
And an ability to multitask. Even as the wrapped shrimp were in the pan for their final sizzle, Roman pulled out a plate and prepped it with a bed of salad. He set the finished shrimp on the lettuce, drizzling them with chili sauce.
“Looks good but let me show you something.” Damon picked up the shrimp pan and pulled out a second plate, this one flat and square. He didn’t bother with the salad, just drizzled a small circle of the transparent red chili pan sauce in the center of the plate and then positioned three shrimp on it with their tails together and pointing in the air like inverted commas. Using a spoon, he carefully dripped small dots of bright green cilantro oil around the plate, the colors vivid against the white porcelain.
“Keep it simple,” he said as he worked. “Go for height, contrast. The sauce goes on the plate, not the food. You get more visual impact that way."
“Yes, Chef.” Roman admired the shrimp. “That plate looks like something else."
“Looks are good, taste is better.” Damon reached out for a shrimp and swabbed it through the colored dots. He took one bite, considered. Squeezed on some lemon and took another. And another. “It’s good,” he said to Roman. “Add some lemon juice to the chili sauce, brighten it up. Plate it the way I showed you, finish it with some micro cilantro."
“We don’t have any.”
“How about the green market?”
“Not that I know of. You’ll have to get it—”
“If you say shipped in, you’re fired.”
“Yes, Chef,” Roman said.
“All right, forget about the microgreens. I’ll figure something out."
He turned back to his tenderloin tournedos, sealing them in plastic storage trays, then pulled Roman’s cutting board toward him. The sous chef stared, knife in hand.
“Well, get to work,” Damon told him. “I’ll finish this. You’ve got another hour to refine the sauce and write it all down and come up with a name."
“A name?”
“Sure. It’s got to have a name if it’s going to be our appetizer special."
Roman grinned. “Yes, Chef.”
Cady always felt calmer in her greenhouse. It wasn’t big as hothouses went, maybe twice the size of her living room, but it was her territory. There was a serenity in the ranks of greenery and the warm, humid air. Out here, shut away from the rest of the inn, she could put her hands in the earth and forget all about difficult guests, pesky clients, unreliable suppliers and other annoyances. Like Damon Hurst.
She shook her head. She wasn’t going there. She was not going to think about that moment in the kitchen when he’d leaned in close, when she’d seen in his eyes that he was going to kiss her. She wasn’t going to wonder what it would have been like. She wasn’t going to wonder how it would have felt. Nope, not going there.
You don’t know, you might like it.
That was precisely the problem. She might, and that would spell disaster. A guy like Damon Hurst wasn’t interested in someone like her. She’d seen him on the magazine covers wrapped cozily together with this model, that actress, and one thing Cady could say for sure was that she was not his type. Maybe he was bored, maybe she was a challenge, maybe seduction was a knee-jerk reaction for him. Whatever it was, she’d been down this road before. She wasn’t about to be played.
The problem was, when he got to looking at her and talking to her, she forgot all about that. All she could do was watch his mouth and wonder.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she muttered and began transplanting petunia seedlings into the hanging basket that sat on the workbench before her. This was what she needed to be focusing on. She needed to be thinking about how she was going to design the perennial beds she’d spent the morning clearing out over at the Chasan place. She didn’t need to be thinking about Damon Hurst.
Feet crunched on the gravel walk outside and, as though she’d conjured him by thinking, Damon opened the door across the room from her.
And serenity flew out the window.
“I thought I might find you out here,” he said, stepping inside. “Hiding out?"
“Working,” she said. “Lot of that going around.”
Calm had disappeared. Sanctuary was no more. She was uneasy, more than a little tongue-tied and, dammit, had butterflies. It didn’t matter that she was on the other side of the room from him. Suddenly, the greenhouse seemed very small.
Damon strolled around, still in his checks and chef’s whites. He should have looked ludicrously out of place and awkward. Instead,
