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  Greg overheard that as he was clearing the tables he’d served before hers.

  He could go anywhere.

  Somehow he knew that now. He hadn’t until this moment, but he did now. Sure, these were Eagle Cove locals, but just because they were coastal didn’t say what most people thought it did. A couple decades back, all of these little communities were busted flat logging or fishing towns—and some still were. But others, like Eagle Cove, were now tourist retreats and retirement communities. He was constantly astonished at what the people here had done before coming to live here.

  And now he was the one astonishing Jessica Baxter and he liked the way that felt on several fronts.

  As guests finished the crispy-herbed halibut, he replaced it with a coconut gelato palate cleanser served in tall martini glasses with tiny sugar-bowl spoons. The unexpected flavor, floated on just a dribble of Becky’s hard cider, would jar their palates enough that they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by three courses of seafood.

  Watching their reactions, thanking them for the compliments, he knew that he could go and start his own restaurant, even make a go of it. If it wasn’t for the money. He could solve the startup money issues with a partner, but he didn’t want to be burdened by some other chef who would try messing with his recipes. And a manager-level partner would probably end up trying to manage the kitchen as well as the front of the house and that would never do. No, Greg wanted the control. He rather liked being his own master here at The Puffin.

  He ducked into the kitchen to start working up the Second Course.

  This was the trickiest of the lot and it took everything he, Peggy, and the Judge had to pull together the Halibut Veracruz. He left the floor to Becky’s charm, which bubbled out of her as easily as the fizz in her cider, and focused on the food. The paper-thin slices of chorizo sausage had to be seared, but not burnt. The tomato-and-Spanish olive sauce had to be hot enough to finish cooking the intentionally underdone fish as it traveled to the table, yet the long curves of sliced avocado and the final dollop of sour cream must remain cool on the tongue.

  “I knew you were good, son,” the Judge spoke as he ladled the sauce over each piece of fish in the long line of plating that covered every available surface.

  “He just had no idea how good,” Peggy finished for him as she nestled in the thick slices of buttered and toasted French baguette from Cal’s bakery.

  Greg set the avocado and sour cream himself, checking that each plate looked perfect as he went.

  “I’ll give you whatever else you need,” the Judge finished and began gathering up the first plates to carry out.

  “What you’re doing is just great, Dad.”

  “No, I mean whatever bankroll you need to get started, I’m your man,” and he was gone from the kitchen, his arms laden with plates.

  For the second time tonight Greg’s mind went into full lock-up—skidding sideways, unable to get his foot off the pedal. He knew he was headed for some kind of a crash, but he had no idea what it was or what he could do about it.

  Peggy slapped his behind hard enough to jar him loose. “Hooey, boy. You’re almost as cute as your father when someone catches you out.” And with a bark of laughter, she headed out with the next tray of food.

  His own restaurant? It was finally in reach…and due to the most unlikely of sources.

  Serrano chili, garlic, oregano, capers…it didn’t matter that there was no salt and pepper on the table; the dish had been seasoned to perfection. The cherry porter harkened back to the sweet berry puree under the First Course without adding an unwanted sweetness to the Halibut Veracruz.

  Jessica wanted to wallow in the dish: like a luxurious trip to the spa. It was an adventure of flavor and texture. She’d done some restaurant reviewing—had chiseled out a brief niche among the new chefs of Chicago, though the niche had gone away when some New York reviewer had decided to move to town to make their name, imitating the huge splash Cassidy Knowles had made in Seattle. But in those first six months she’d learned a lot about innovative food. Greg didn’t innovate, at least not in the way most of them did. It wasn’t all molecular techniques, odd foams, and food that had been manipulated until it looked like anything other than what it was.

  He’d found his challenge in simplicity, a much harder technique. When the dish was simple, when it was designed to highlight just one or two key ingredients, then perfection was required. There was no hiding a flaw when the artist’s palette was something as simple as a piece of mild white fish.

  “For dessert,” Greg announced to the room, “I made a chocolate-strawberry roulade with a hazelnut meringue. Becky has paired it with her Deep Bay Espresso Stout.” Which Jessica was charmed to see served in little espresso cups.

  “You can’t ruin this one,” Greg whispered to her as he served dessert to their table.

  She looked up at him in surprise. Something had shifted in him during the course of the meal, and she didn’t think it was just in her own perceptions. There had been a nervous energy about him; of worry, thinking back to it. This meal had scared him initially and she could see why, it had been a large and complex undertaking for such a small crew. But now he carried himself with a confidence, a surety that he had lacked before. It was as if the boy had become a man over the last hour or so.

  “How would I have ruined it?”

  Then Greg did something wholly unexpected, he blushed. Deeply, until she could see his face was bright red despite the subdued lighting from the twinkle lights.

  “How…” Jessica trailed off unsure if she wanted the answer to that question.

  “I had to toss three roulades in the trash this morning…” he too trailed off.

  “Because of…” there was only one thing that Jessica could think of that would explain his reaction, “…of me?”

  After trying twice to speak unsuccessfully, he nodded, offered a charming shrug of, “And there it is,” then moved on to serve other tables.

  Nobody at the table was studying their dessert this time, instead they were all looking at her.

  Choosing discretion over stark embarrassment, she focused on her own dessert.

  “Always knew he was sweet on someone—” her father’s voice carried far too well. Thankfully Mom shushed him. Even in what he considered to be a whisper, Dad’s voice still carried. “Well, it was as obvious as a hard bite on a long leader that there was some reason he never got serious with a girl.”

  “We just never knew who.” At least Aunt Gina’s whisper didn’t carry past the table with how cozily crowded together they were, but it reached Jessica well enough.

  “He’s certainly never made a meal as good as this one before,” her father’s voice carried again and people at nearby tables started agreeing, and then a round of applause broke out.

  Under cover of the applause, as Greg did a fine job of bowing and looking both humble and pleased, Natalya whispered to her. “And now we know exactly why he cooked like that as well.” She offered a bawdy wink and a nudge with her knee where they’d been bumping each other under the small table all night.

  Jessica could feel her ears going as hot as Greg’s face had been. She reached up to release her hair from its sidetail so that she could hide a bit, but her fingers caught on the flower she’d forgotten all about—the one that Greg had tucked there.

  Certifiably lovely.

  Oh great!

  Once the buzz at the table turned to other topics, she looked up and spotted Greg. He was squatting down between Dawn—the freshman-year hussy—and the cutest pair of twins Jessica had ever seen. By how Dawn and the girls were dressed up, maybe that old hussy assessment had been wrong as well. Vincent McCall sat with them. She vaguely remembered Dawn, Vincent, and Greg being close in school; three years behind her, she actually hadn’t given them much thought. Wouldn’t have given Vincent any at all if Dad’s best friend and fishing-and-crabbing buddy wasn’t Danny McCall.

  And back in the day Jessica had only noticed Greg separately f
rom the others because he was Harry’s little brother and had always been hanging around. As a matter of fact, he’d been a real pill to shed when she and Harry had been trying to finagle some alone time for experimenting. Greg had been a seriously tenacious little pest.

  As if he knew that Jessica was thinking of him, he looked up from whatever the twins were telling him; looked right at her.

  For the first time she didn’t see Harry’s little brother. Instead she saw a darkly handsome chef who had just served one of the finest meals of both their lives.

  Chapter 3

  (Friday Night)

  The Judge didn’t cook on Saturdays or Sundays—Don’t much like braindead tourists anyway—so there was no urgent need to finish cleaning up The Puffin, but ten years of habit had Greg staying even after the others left. He liked making sure that everything was shipshape and tucked away.

  He’d also enjoyed the chance to think about the night. He’d often received thanks and handshakes for his meals, but he’d never received a round of applause like that before.

  He still didn’t know what to make of his father’s offer. His parents had set up a college fund that had seen him through the two years at CIA, plus the extra courses he’d crammed in during summers and weekends. The day he’d graduated the Judge had taken him aside and handed him a check for ten thousand dollars.

  “This is your startup fund, Greg. We gave the same to your brother. You work your tail off and you make this last. It’s all there is until your mother and I pass. Not because we can’t afford it, but because a man has to make his own way in the world and he won’t do that if there’s some safety net bailing him out every time he goes overboard.” It was one of the longest speeches of the Judge’s life.

  Greg still had every cent of that original ten grand in a savings account. For ten years it had been the symbol of his own restaurant and he’d built on that, never once touching it. He hadn’t done it fast. That money in the bank gave him a confidence that allowed him to work for less where he could learn more.

  And his father had just broken his own rule and offered to bankroll his new restaurant. Greg had thought that was still two or three years away. He didn’t want to squander the opportunity, so it was going to take some thinking and planning before he took any action at all. He’d treat it as a venture capitalist’s investment which he would repay with very high interest.

  One last check and he could find nothing else to clean or straighten. The kitchen stood ready for whatever came next—a blank template. He liked that. Unlike so many of the restaurants he’d worked, this one wasn’t all pre-stocked for some repeat performance of a fixed menu. There wasn’t a dinnertime’s estimated stock of a dozen racks of lamb, fifteen lobster tails, twenty pounds of beef tenderloin ready to be made into filet mignon, and all of the other culinary traps of a successful restaurant.

  His favorite part of any restaurant had always been the Fresh Sheet. What was at its very best today. What could be done with it. His Puffin’s kitchen was like that. Nothing pre-decided. A halibut had been caught a dozen hours ago, reached his hands two hours later, and had now fed fifty-three people.

  He patted the thousand dollars in his pocket. Even after paying back all of the vendors—because Ralph had comped him the fish in exchange for dinner for his family, making it a very expensive meal for Ralph—he’d have over seven hundred dollars which was going straight into his restaurant fund.

  Lights out, he pulled the door shut behind him and turned to face the night. It was warm and the ocean freshness was thick on the air. The Flicker’s marquee was out. The late show was done; it must be later than he thought. Usually it lit this entire end of Beach Way.

  Everything was shadows.

  Like most coastal towns, Eagle Cove had rolled up its sidewalks and only the Bobbin’ Red Robin Tavern remained open, its neon sign advertising “5B Brews On Tap” as a muted statement in the front window that barely lit the stretch of sidewalk in front of it.

  “What the heck, Slater?”

  He jolted. The voice, the tone, even the words themselves told him exactly who sat in one of the big wood chairs on the diner’s dark porch. The three elements blended together made a nuanced statement even without the visual.

  “Hi, Baxter,” he wondered what Jessica was doing here. He’d bet that falling into his arms wasn’t exactly likely.

  His eyes had adapted enough to the dark to see her sitting in the second chair to the right of the diner’s door. Greg could just make out the dark spot of the red dahlia that he’d tucked into her light hair. She still wore it. Had she been here since the patrons had left hours ago? Maybe, which was interesting.

  He sat in the first chair and only in that moment could feel the familiar pounding of the blood in his feet. Restaurant work did that to you and it wouldn’t be the end of a good day without that particular throb and ache. He kicked off his shoes, peeled his socks, and rested them on the cool, rough wood of the porch.

  “Whoa, that feels so good.”

  “When did you start?”

  “Today? After working for Dad from six to ten, I spent a couple hours helping Vincent with some cabinet work before your dad called with the halibut.”

  “Does he do that a lot? Or was it just because I was here?” He caught that the second part of the question was the important one, but answered the first.

  “Some. I get fish from him. Danny McCall gets me crab when they’re in. Tiffany brought me bear once, but more often sells me some elk.”

  “Tiffany? Quiet woman about my age with long hair? A good knitter?”

  “She knits? I didn’t know that. And she’s definitely not quiet; she’s always talking to herself—probably comes from living alone up in the woods. But the long hair fits. She’s one of the best bow hunters in town. And you remember what they say about deer in this town…”

  “Don’t need a gun, just need a baseball bat.” It came out in unison and they both laughed. He’d forgotten that Jessica Baxter had such an amazing laugh. The deer in Eagle Cove were so tame, that you could practically walk up and pet them.

  “A lot of folk bring me venison whenever I need it. Beef in the fall from Mr. Greene… I get food from all sorts of folks in town.”

  “I actually meant how long have you been doing this?”

  “Irregular Fridays at The Puffin or cooking?” Or crazy about you? But he wasn’t going to say that one out loud. Or answer it.

  “Both actually.” In other words all three, but she wasn’t any more willing to ask him about the unspoken part than he was to say it.

  He wished he could see her more clearly than just her general location. She was facing him, in a casual posture that didn’t place her hand on the chair arm next to his, but still she sat in an open way. In a…journalist’s way. As a matter of fact, her questions were…

  “Writing an article about me?”

  “No. I just…” Jessica slipped into silence. When she spoke again, her tone had softened. “I don’t know you, Greg. Everyone says that you’re crazy about me, but you don’t know me either.”

  “Making me just plain crazy.” He slid down in his chair, extending out his feet until his toes were wiggling in the cool night air. “I can live with that.”

  Again that patented, secret sauce Jessica Baxter laugh.

  He decided to go back to the first questions for safety. “Mom started teaching me to cook when I was tall enough to work on the counter while standing on a stool. I can’t even remember when I didn’t cook. What about you?”

  “Cooking?” Jessica kept searching for some anchor in the conversation but wasn’t having much luck. “I cook out of desperation, not skill. Mostly because my budget doesn’t allow for a personal chef. Or even going out much for that matter.” She hadn’t mentioned that last bit to Natalya, never mind anyone else.

  She’d been sitting here in the dark for hours trying to wrestle with that. Mrs. Wilson had seen clean through the thin facade that Jessica had been feeding her pare
nts for a while now—along with everyone else who asked. Her mentor had been kind enough to not prod for details in front of the others, rather offering a kind “come and talk when you’re ready” along with a hard hug.

  Jessica had been feeding the story to herself as well. And the journalist who had been telling the story—herself—was good enough that she’d almost bought it.

  It will turn around soon.

  Just need a couple solid contracts.

  Maybe get that big interview next week.

  But she’d gotten the big interviews, as many as ever.

  Jessica had landed the contracts too, more than many of her friends, but the terms had grown worse and worse with each one. The pay was going down and the draconian terms were worthy of the most heinous lawyer.

  “My career is against the rails…” Worst, there were no signs of it turning around at all. “…and I don’t see it turning around anytime soon. I also can’t believe you’re the one I’m telling this to. I haven’t told this to anyone, only just figured it out while sitting here.”

  “I’m a little surprised myself.”

  “And yet I’m finding it comfortable to do so?” She hadn’t meant it as a question.

  “I’ll take that as a good sign,” his voice was lazily pleased as if of course he deserved whatever good came his way.

  “Don’t get cocky, Slater.”

  “Whatever you say, Baxter.” Smug so-and-so.

  “Never mind. Forget I said anything.” She struggled out of the chair, stiff from not having moved in hours. She’d gotten cold despite the atypically warm evening. Her knees were a little wonky as she descended the steps.

  “Hey! Wait a sec.”

  Jessica got her knees in order and turned right at the bottom of the steps because Greg was descending to her left. Wrong way. LBB Lane was at the other end of the main strip. But Greg was now between her and her escape. She kept going. She’d hit the beach and walk back that way. She could see ahead through the darkness, by how the docks floated, that the tide was down low. Good, there would be enough beach to walk on.