in Vegas?”
“In the Henderson suburb. I suppose when the two of us...” Reg stopped, seemingly at a total loss of how to complete the sentence. “Shane leases a flat behind the Strip,” he added and ran the back of his index finger under his nose.
“Will he base himself mostly in Vegas?”
“For a while. When we first opened in Los Angeles, it took a year until we were functioning smoothly.”
“It takes a long time to build a core staff that you feel confident in. People don’t work out. You hire new ones.”
“Shane is very exacting in what he expects. As you’ll recall.”
A flush of heat spread down Audrey’s neck.
“Ten years was a long time ago.” Audrey made reference to the St. Thomas collaboration. “I was just starting college so I wasn’t really involved, but I do have a vague memory,” she fibbed when, in fact, she remembered every second of that summer.
The twenty-four-year-old wunderkind chef and his demands in the kitchen had been legendary. “Didn’t the controversy begin with some herb we couldn’t get onto the island?”
“I still don’t know how I was supposed to make a yellow mole without hoja santa.” Shane’s thick vibrato filled the dining room. Audrey didn’t know how they had failed to hear him come out from the kitchen.
The surprise sent a blush all the way under the neckline of her dress.
“And your idiot sous chef suggested I use cilantro.”
“I was all of eighteen so, believe me, I was just an innocent bystander at the time.”
“We were on a tiny island, Shane.” Reg lifted his palms. “They weren’t able to fly in your herb.”
Shane held two small plates. Audrey took notice of the black leather cords he had roped around his wrists like the ones he wore in the cardboard cutout. There was something so rebellious about them. She’d never known a chef to wear jewelry on his hands. Yet she found them as mysterious and exciting as the man who donned them. His hands were so massive they made the dishes of food he carried look tiny.
“Nevada appears to be the motherlode for the ingredients I need,” Shane said as he placed one plate in front of each of them. “Chiles en nogada. Poblano stuffed with pork, pear and mango and topped with a walnut cream sauce.”
Audrey’s eyes widened at the striking presentation on the plate. She knew that the sprinkle of diced red and green peppers on top of the white sauce was in homage to the colors of the Mexican flag. The foundation of Shane Murphy’s menus was in the flavors of the Spanish-speaking world.
While Shane waited intently, she took a bite, careful to get a little morsel of each ingredient onto her fork. The rich cream fragrant with ground walnuts brought a decadent lushness to the pork, yet the dots of fruit kept the dish from being too heavy.
Audrey closed her eyes to savor the combination.
Depriving herself of sight, she could sense even more powerfully how Shane’s eyes bored into her face. Making her feel somehow exposed and beautiful at the same time.
She whispered upon opening her eyes and looking at Shane again, “Magnificent.” Possibly in reference to the food.
Shane pulled a fork out of the back pocket of his jeans and showed it to Reg. “There was a mistake with the order that came in today. Three tines? Am I serving Neanderthals?”
Without another word, Shane turned and returned to the kitchen.
Audrey noticed the four tines on the fork she was holding. She appreciated how important every small decision was for these consummate professionals. It was the same level of concern the Girards applied to their hotels.
“Audrey, I need to talk to you.”
They were only on the appetizer and she was already feeling unfocused and exhausted from being around Shane. Reg had just said something, but she hadn’t really heard him. “Has Shane always been so—” she chose her word “—fierce?” Although she guessed the answer.
“Since the day he was born.” Reg shook his head. “Our grandmother Lolly, who taught him how to cook her old Irish recipes, used to call him Mr. Firecracker. Of course, since Melina died he’s been grappling with his own demons. Forks are the least of his problems.”
The loss of his wife had left behind a wounded ogre. Audrey knew the story. The young woman who had been killed instantly in a car accident during a snowstorm in the woods of upstate New York. She hadn’t seen the Murphys very often during that time period, but her dad had sent flowers and reached out to Connor to offer his support.
Audrey asked Reg, “Does Shane talk about her?”
Reg dabbed under his nose and sounded exasperated when he questioned, “Why are we spending so much time discussing Shane?”
* * *
In his kitchen, Shane took out his frustration on the mint he tore for the salad. With a syncopated rhythm, he ripped leaves from their stems and threw them onto a work board. His preferred soundtrack of hard rock music did little to squelch the thoughts stomping through his head.
When he’d first heard this master scheme of Audrey Girard being matched up with his brother, he heartily approved. Reg spent far too much time agonizing over spreadsheets, finding fault with staff members and riding Shane about the cookbook or the lagging business. Hopefully a wife would take up some of Reg’s attention and get him off of everyone else’s back.
But now, face-to-face with Audrey again, the whole idea angered him. Wasn’t she just a little too pretty, a lot too sexy and even a bit too independent to be with uptight Reg? He loved his brother and wanted the best for him, but Audrey was too fine a lamb to be offered up for this sacrifice.
During the meetings regarding the new restaurant, he’d observed petite but voluptuous Audrey Girard in action. In her tight business skirts, she moved with the charged-up energy to match the clack of her high-heeled shoes. In fact, memories of her would linger in his mind for days after every encounter.
While Shane wielded his knife to halve the cherry tomatoes, a tight smile crossed his lips. He remembered the first time he’d met Audrey, still in her teens back then, during that summer in St. Thomas when he was doing a promotional stint as a guest chef.
She had been scared to death of him. Who could blame her? At twenty-four, with his heavy boots and impossible standards, he must have cut a frightening figure. Another sneer broke through as he realized that not much had changed since then.
Except for two massively successful restaurants that had made his name a household word. Although the world didn’t know that the restaurants had ceased making the profits they used to. Had anyone noticed that he was no longer asked to make appearances on national morning TV talk shows? That the public had moved on to new culinary revelations, new rising-star chefs? One thing they did know was that Shane Murphy had lost his wife to a gruesome death.
He plated the tomatoes and crumbled cojita cheese on them. Yes, he still remembered Audrey Girard and that midnight ocean swim. He flicked the mint on top of the cheese. Drizzled on olive oil and finished with a dotting
