to come up with a fresh idea. Just one new recipe for the cookbook. A start.
But he’d only spun his wheels. Unable to summon a clear vision. Nothing was right.
A muse was nowhere to be found.
“Aha,” Shane heard Reg call out as he entered the dining room with the salads he’d served tens of thousands of in his restaurants. “We were just talking about the cookbook.”
“What about it?” Shane already knew where this conversation was going.
“That perhaps we’ll shoot some photos of you on the patio,” Reg said. “Fire up the grill out there, and you can do street tacos with a party crowd surrounding you.”
Shane placed the salad plates on an empty table nearby so that he could clear Reg and Audrey’s appetizers away before serving. Audrey had only eaten a few bites of the poblano.
“You didn’t like it,” he announced rather than inquired.
Audrey looked up at him with her big eyes. He hadn’t remembered how light a brown they were. The color of honey. “It was delicious,” she answered, as if she thought that was something she needed to say.
“I see.”
Shane kept his connection with Audrey’s seductive orbs while Reg asked, “Are you any closer to actually finishing the cookbook, brother? Or even beginning it?”
“Enjoy the salad,” Shane uttered between clenched teeth.
Back in the kitchen, he dialed up his music even louder.
Even if he didn’t like it, he could see how the pairing of Reg and Audrey would benefit business. That was an important consideration now that Murphy Brothers Restaurants needed to take a huge step forward. A soaring success here could lead to more Shane’s Table restaurants in other Girard hotels.
Shane rocked his hips to the beat of a heavy metal song as he deveined the shrimp for the Guatemalan tapado.
And let’s face it, his brother needed to get married. A woman’s touch was going to be the only way to get Reg to lighten up. Plus their parents, now semiretired, longed for grandchildren. Shane would never marry again or have children. Reg was their only hope.
His dad and Daniel Girard used to joke around about matchmaking Reg and Audrey, but after Melina’s death the talk became serious. Shane had made an impulsive marriage that ended in disaster. His father probably felt he needed to step in to insure his other son had a more controllable fate.
After a hand wash, Shane began sautéing the onions and peppers.
One marriage was quite enough for Shane, thank you very much. He was clearly not to be trusted with the well-being of another person. Not a day went by that he didn’t think about the death that maybe he could have prevented. Had he been a different person. In fairness if Melina had been, too.
Shane added the coconut milk that was the basis of the sauce to the sauté pan. Mixed in a ladleful of stock. Stirred in his seasonings.
If a Murphy brother was to marry, it was definitely going to be Reg.
Then why did he picture Audrey, with those spectacular golden eyes smiling at him, while a voice to the side of them asked, “Shane Niall Murphy, do you take this woman...?” Why was he picturing lifting a white-dressed Audrey up into his arms and carrying her over a doorway threshold into a private suite?
Tossing the shrimp into his sauce, he reckoned that the prospect of anyone getting married probably brought up twisted wedding images for him. He was just having a distorted waking nightmare about Melina.
Swirling in a handful of chopped chard, he finished the dish. He portioned cooked rice onto two plates and spooned his stew on top of each. Another recipe he could cook with his eyes closed.
Coming out from the kitchen with his tapado de camaron, Shane noticed from twenty feet away that Audrey hadn’t finished her salad. Was she one of those girls, who only pecked at food? He’d always noticed the seriously lush curves on that small frame of hers. She didn’t look like a bird who didn’t eat.
Were his flavors too unusual for her? Was she used to a blander palate?
He placed the dinner dishes down on the side table.
“You didn’t like the salad, either.” He hastily snatched Audrey’s barely touched plate. “I sell a lot of them.”
“It was lovely, I’m just not that hungry,” Audrey sputtered like she was making an excuse.
Shane served his entrée.
“Have a seat with us,” Reg instructed, gesturing for Shane to pull a chair over from one of the other tables. Reg refilled his own sangria glass and slid it into position for Shane to have it. Audrey’s was barely touched.
For all of his brother’s annoyances, Shane respected Reg more than anyone in the world. Reg had provided the necessary foresight and know-how to lift Shane’s Table to fame. Shane could never have done any of it without him.
Reg had taught him that he had to play the game sometimes, had to make nice with people even when he’d rather be hiding in the kitchen. So he obeyed his brother, turned around a chair and straddled it backward to sit down with them.
“We need to have a discussion about the cookbook,” Reg said with a concerned look. Had they been spending the whole dinner talking about him? “You know we’ve committed to a date with the publisher and they, in turn, agreed to create a mock-up so we can do marketing with it.”
“If it’s a mock-up, then it could be filled with empty pages—what’s the difference?”
“Because you have a contract with them, saying that you’re going to deliver a cookbook,” Audrey added. “They’re not going to go forward if you’re not going to meet the deadline.”
“The TV taping is going to bring you and the restaurant into the living room of millions of viewers,” Reg said.
“We’ll not only sell cookbooks,” Audrey said, “but it will bring people to Vegas to eat at Shane’s Table.”
“You know we all need this,” his brother added.
“The publicity could put us at capacity for a year,” Audrey stressed.
Reg and Audrey both paused to take bites of their tapado. Reg gestured his approval while Audrey stayed straight-faced and chewed slowly. Reg asked, “Have you even started it?”
“Enough already. I get it. I have to deliver the cookbook.” With that, Shane hitched up from the chair and stomped back into the kitchen.
Annoyed, he portioned the pastel de tres leches he had made this afternoon. He hated being ganged up on like that. Hated all of that aggressive sales-y behavior, even though he knew that was what it took to be successful. Just as he knew he wasn’t at all cut out for it. And as for that smart-talking bombshell Audrey... He’d like to show her how actions spoke louder than words.
Shane, he reprimanded himself, Audrey is going to be your sister-in-law. You do not kiss your sister-in-law. You do not even
