Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [25]
“Does he have ambitions to be a chef?” Miranda wanted to know.
Adam eyed her askance. “Sweetheart, nobody works a backbreaking shit job like dishwasher if they don’t want to move up in the kitchen. There’s other ways to make minimum wage. Ways that are less smelly.”
Miranda pondered that while flipping to a new page in her notebook. She jotted a few notes, wanting to be able to capture it later. There was some really good stuff here, not the least of which was the executive chef and owner.
Adam Temple. Captain of this motley crew, fearless leader, and coconspirator all rolled into one. Miranda looked up from her notes to find he’d been drawn into a conversation with Frankie. It looked fairly serious, their two dark heads bent close together, examining something in a copper pot on the range. Adam was adding pinches from Frankie’s assembled bowls of ingredients and stirring them in with a long wooden spoon. After every addition, they’d each grab a clean tasting spoon and sample the new mixture.
Next to Frankie, Adam should seem short—the sous-chef had at least four inches on him. And yet, there was something in Adam’s stance and presence that was undiminished, no matter who he stood beside. He radiated vitality and an intense interest in all the doings and workings of the kitchen. Every cook, every ingredient, every tool—he was proud of it all, and his passion for what he was doing fascinated Miranda.
It was so foreign to the way she approached her work. Writing restaurant reviews was a job. A good job, one she’d pushed hard to get, and continued to strive to do well. But it was still, in the end, work.
Adam didn’t work in the kitchen. He lived it, breathed it, embodied it.
What worried Miranda—the thought that was going to keep her awake tonight—was the fact that a part of her yearned toward the warmth of Adam’s intensity. To be the focus of so much passion . . . Miranda shivered, ruthlessly quashing any speculation on the way Adam’s blunt callused hands would feel on her skin.
It was pointless to speculate. Adam Temple, Miranda was beginning to suspect, was a true believer. A fanatic, in his way, and that passion of his was all reserved for Market. Any woman hoping to bask in his warmth would have to be content with the reflected glow off his love for the restaurant.
Not that Miranda was that woman. Not at all. Besides the fact that he’d made it clear he resented every moment he was forced to spend in her company, she was a professional.
She was here to do a job. Nothing more.
Firming her mouth, she snapped the notebook shut and ignored the slight ache of longing. She’d learned the trick of it a long time ago, and she’d do well to remember it now. The key to happiness, or at least, the key to contentment.
Don’t want what you can’t have.
SEVEN
Market’s nonpublic areas were cooler even than the dining rooms. Jess thought so, anyway. He liked to see the things most people didn’t have access to, the dim, poky back stairway, the changing room, the unisex bathroom the staff shared.
Grant had given him the abbreviated tour on the way to Adam’s office where they’d do the interview. The restaurant manager was younger than Jess would’ve expected for someone in that position, especially in a hot new Manhattan eatery. Disconcertingly good-looking, in a preppy way, with his sunny blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes. Not that Jess was going to do anything about that.
Here, with people Miranda knew? Not to mention around people he himself would hopefully be working with.
Jess was going for the super straight-arrow vibe in a big way.
“This could all work out real well,” Grant was saying. “We’ve been having kind of a tough time staffing front of house, and Adam mentioned you have some experience with fine dining?”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, yes. I waited tables through high school, upstate where we grew up, and I worked at the best restaurant in Brandewine for two years.”
“Brandewine?”
“Where I went to school. It’s in the Midwest.” Jess tensed