I don’t know if I was more impacted by his regret or my own.
“Although I was just throwing a fit in my head,” I added with a laugh, doing my best to defuse the weight of the moment. “Anyway, the point is, where’s the line there? What ‘cheapens’ and what entertains? And when it comes to that, I have to admit, Renowned is probably on to something. Getting us back in the kitchen together? That could probably be pretty entertaining.”
“Well, of course it would be entertaining,” he agreed with a smile. “In the same way disaster movies are entertaining. But . . .” He cut his words off with a groan, and then he shook his head and turned away from me. “Never mind.”
“What?”
He turned back. “They want us to fight, you know.”
I considered that for a moment and then scoffed. “Now I don’t think that’s true.”
He threw his hands in the air. “That’s exactly what they want, Hadley! They’re counting on you being the sweet and sassy belle of the Southern kitchen, and me being the troubled—‘but brilliant!’—jerk with a short fuse.” The air quotes he put around the words made it very clear he’d been hearing it all for a very long time. “They want us both because we hate each other. Don’t you see that?”
The air had been knocked out of me, so I could only just get the words out. “I don’t hate you, Max. I don’t . . . I mean, I don’t hate anyone.”
He sighed and took a step closer to me. “And I don’t hate you. Sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
My eyes began to sting, and I suddenly wished I had Max’s sunglasses. “No, I get it.” And I did. Maybe for the first time. “Um, so I think I’m going to go.” I began heading back toward the lot where my car was parked. He had not seen me cry even once during two of the most horrible days of my career, and there was no way he was going to see me cry now.
“Hadley, I just meant that’s what they think. And that’s what they want.” He was following after me and we were almost back to the Pancake Pantry line—a line of new observers to humiliate myself in front of.
I stopped suddenly and turned around to face him—not realizing how closely he had been following. I took a couple steps back, so that I didn’t have to look up at him. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. Tiny little battles were taking place in my head. My Southern manners were trying to hold down the fort against the desire to lash out at him for ever having hurt me in the first place, just to get it out of my system. The idea he had planted—that maybe there was a chance I could get Renowned to myself after all—was firing cannonballs at the resolve I’d already established to do the show as a duo. And my self-confidence was threatening to retreat with the approach of the battalion crying out, “We really like you when Max thinks your name is Hayley.”
“You . . . you . . .” I groaned in frustration. Egg separator. Fish scaler. Garlic press. Hot plate. “You frustrate me!”
He blinked rapidly several times before the corners of his mouth began turning upward. “I bet I do.”
“Mainly just because you confuse me.”
Nodding—and still smiling—he said, “I’m not trying to frustrate you. Or confuse you. If that counts for anything.”
“You knew about Renowned,” I said, finally resuming the very important thing I had been trying to discuss in Pancake Pantry. “When you showed up last night, you already knew.”
“I did.”
“And you . . . what? Thought you could get on my good side so I’d agree to do it?”
“My goals were not so lofty as to think I could get on your good side, but I guess that was the general idea.”
“Oh.” Honesty. Hadn’t expected that. “But what if I hadn’t called you? And . . .” Hang on a minute. “You’re the one saying you aren’t going to do the show.”
He shrugged. “I’ll just say this, Chef Beckett: Not a single moment between us, since the very first moment we met, has gone according to plan.”
What was that supposed to mean? And whatever it meant, why were the words, combined with the sly half-smile on his face, putting me at ease and also issuing a danger warning, all at the same time? Not to mention causing the pink splotches to start making their way back up my neck.
Definitely time to go.
“Look, you’re doing Renowned,” I stated, arms crossed in front of me. “You know it and I know it. Because it’s Renowned, and you just don’t say no, but also because they, whoever they are, don’t get to decide what we’re known for. We decide that. At least we try. They sure don’t get to pigeonhole us. So, you’re doing it. We’re doing it. And that’s that.” I spun on my heel and began hurrying to my car in a desperate need to get away. A desperate need I didn’t understand. But of course, I also felt a desperate need to be polite. “And thank you for the pancakes,” I tagged on, turning back quickly.
“I think you paid!” he called out with a laugh. “At least . . . I hope you did. I didn’t!”
I nodded my head and, without facing him again, stuck two thumbs-up in the air—which caused him to laugh a deep, genuine laugh that resonated all the way to my vehicle.
“Thank you!” he shouted.
I reached my car and climbed in as quickly as I could, turned the key in the ignition, and got the air conditioner pumping. Oregano. Parsley. Quinoa. I fastened my seat belt and checked my mirrors, knowing nothing was going to stop me from getting away from him before I was forced to consider, one more time, whether it was actually possible that he wasn’t the scum of the earth. Or at least that he was sincerely trying not to be.
And before I was forced to acknowledge to myself that a relatively decent human being—with that smile and those eyes . . . and those arms—could pose more threat to me than the old Maxwell Cavanagh ever had.
9. Reduce to simmer.
MAX
What was that?
Max attempted to process it all the way back to his Range Rover, and all the way back to the interstate. He was so glad he packed light, and that he’d thrown everything into his backpack before breakfast. He was ready to get out of Nashville and begin the process of getting everything back to normal.
Normal.
What was normal? He didn’t have a normal work schedule anymore, that was for sure. Yes, his suspension had ended, but so far, the Culinary Channel had made no official moves to get To the Max back on the air. He didn’t doubt that would happen—probably sooner rather than later—but for the moment, he wasn’t filming or even making plans to film. For the first time in years.
And then there were his restaurants. Business was solid. Business was always solid. When you could consistently serve patrons one of the best meals they’ve ever eaten and do it with the best customer service they’ve ever experienced, there would always be plenty of people willing to pay exorbitant prices and make reservations months in advance. The problem was, they didn’t need him. They needed him to check in on occasion and to stay in touch with the manager and the executive chef; they needed him to introduce new dishes every so often. They needed his name—still a mark of excellence, even if people weren’t thrilled with his behavior. But they did not need him. He may have had the right to walk into any of his kitchens and take over anytime he wanted, but it wasn’t a good way to do business.