Bellamy squeezed her eyes shut and slung her laptop bag over her shoulder, running to catch up. She did her best to block out the chorus of “what the hell are you doing?” coming from the back of her mind.
“I’m Bellamy Blake,” she said, following the guy’s brisk strides to the end of the dingy back hallway.
“Adrian Holt,” Brick Wall replied with a nod, bumping the door in front of them open with an elbow before barging through like he owned the place.
Bellamy’s heart skittered in her chest as the name sank in and did the recognition dance in her brain. “As in, Carly di Matisse’s sous chef, Adrian Holt?”
His wicked grin reappeared. “One and the same, Sunshine. Now go grab some whites from the back room and let’s see what you’re made of, shall we?”
After the third time Shane checked the same engine valves in Lucky Gunderson’s Cadillac, Grady arched his brow and followed it with a knowing grin.
“You wanna tell me what’s on your mind, or are you gonna keep daydreamin’ and tell me it’s nothing?”
Shane did his best to hide his smile in his sleeve as he pushed his hair back from his face. It was pretty much a no-go.
“Sorry,” he said, bracing himself with both palms against the Caddy. Lucky wasn’t exactly living up to his name as far as the Coupe de Ville was concerned, but that was okay with Shane. It gave him something to do other than watch the clock.
“Nothin’ to be sorry about when you’re wearing a smile like that.” Grady’s laugh echoed through the garage on a rumble. “So, what’s her name?”
Damn, Grady’s sixth sense was just unnatural. “Who said I’m smiling over a woman?” Shane’s attempt to blank his expression fell woefully short, and he ended up grinning like a fool at the Caddy’s engine.
“I might be old, but I ain’t stupid, son.” Grady chuckled as he examined the contents under the Cadillac’s hood, running his hands from the engine to the oil filter. “Only one thing brings out a smile like that on a man’s face, and that is a pretty girl.”
Shane shook his head. He knew when he’d been beaten. “Her name’s Bellamy. She’s here for the week. As a matter of fact”—he paused to jut his chin at the Miata—
“the two-seater is hers. She’s waiting for us to fix it before she can go home.”
“And where would home be?” Grady kept his eyes on the car, but Shane felt his skin prickle at the question.
“She lives in Philly.” He kept his tone purposely neutral, but Grady didn’t follow suit.
“Huh. You do like a hornet’s nest, don’t you?”
Shane exhaled, long and slow. “I know, all right?”
“Do you, now?” There was no accusation in Grady’s tone, and the honesty of the question made Shane realize that he had no good answer for it.
“It all happened kind of fast. I didn’t exactly plan on…you know. Any of it. But it’s no big deal,” Shane tacked on. The lie might as well have left scorch marks on its way out, considering how bad it tasted and how hard it burned. Still, big deal or not, Bellamy was headed home before the weekend was out, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Does she know?” Grady looked up from the Coupe de Ville to pin Shane with a questioning stare before lowering the hood.
Shane folded his arms over his chest. “No.”
“Mmm.” Grady turned his eyes back to the car and got behind the wheel to start it up, but Shane couldn’t tell whether he was just listening to the engine or waiting for a response.
Dammit, the last thing Shane needed was guilt over this. Knowing Bellamy was leaving was hard enough. Baring his innermost secrets to her would only take things from bad to worse.
“It’s pointless to tell her, Grady. She’s going back to the city. It’s where she belongs. Her whole life is there.”
The old man scrubbed a hand down the silvered stubble on his chin and killed the Cadillac’s engine. “Places are places, Shane. You come and you go, but in the end, it ain’t the places that matter. It’s the people you had with you that counts.”
“The places matter to me,” Shane said, his voice cold with finality.
Grady shook his head, and the faintest trail of a smile crossed his jaw, like he was thinking of something familiar. “You’ll learn. Now hand me that wrench, would you? The valves on this lifter are shot, and if we don’t replace it, it ain’t ever gonna run right.”
23
“I gotta admit, Sunshine. When I first saw you, I didn’t think for a second that you could hold your own.”
The fact that Adrian’s face only held slight disdain was weirdly comforting to Bellamy as she stood, exhausted, at a food-splattered kitchen station deep in the bowels of the resort.
“What do you think now?”
“I think you’d better clean up your work station before Chef di Matisse catches you. You’re a fucking mess.”
Bellamy wrinkled her nose at him, but only to cover up the grin she’d been dying to unleash. She still wanted to pinch herself at the fact that she’d spent two hours working on a list of techniques and test dishes in a professional kitchen. It blew the tiny yet functional kitchen in her condo out of the water, and she was still kind of in shock that Adrian had let her come down here even after she’d told him she was just an armchair cook with no professional experience. It didn’t seem to matter, as nobody had questioned her presence while they’d worked side by side on the same test dishes. Bellamy remembered that they were overhauling the restaurant. How freaking cool was it that she was getting to reap the benefits of menu-testing firsthand?
“You’d better hope your cooking’s better than your kitchen management. I’m not kidding about the mess.” Adrian tapped his foot impatiently, but Bellamy could see traces of a smile under the few days’ worth of dark stubble on his face.
“You’re a real sweetheart, Chef Holt. Really. I’m swooning over here,” she muttered, starting to tackle the mess in front of her. He couldn’t be serious about Carly catching her. Chef di Matisse would probably be pissed if she knew Adrian had let her come into the kitchen just to mess around, but she didn’t want to leave any signs that she’d been there, just in case.
“If you want to have a prayer in the kitchen, you’d better be able to handle it. Nobody pats you on the head in this business, that’s for damn sure.” Adrian flicked a glance over the cavernous kitchen, bustling with movement and smells and sounds. He tipped his platinum head at her before turning to walk down the row of stainless steel counter space, each with stations that looked like different variations of the one Bellamy was currently cleaning.
“By the way, I gave one of your test dishes to Carly. She’ll be back from her break in five.”
Bellamy stopped breathing. “You never said…I mean, you didn’t…she’s not supposed to taste any of it!”
She scrambled for wits that seemed to have no intention of surfacing. Adrian’s impromptu invitation to come show her stuff in the kitchen was supposed to be a fun-and-games kind of thing. She didn’t even have formal training, for Chrissake!