Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [7]
“Ha!”
Adam frowned. The vehement exclamation came from somewhere in the crowd, and he lifted a hand to shade his eyes, as if that would somehow help him identify the speaker.
“At Market . . .” He tried to find his place, but the momentum, the passion, was gone. He felt sweat spring out cold on his palms. “We . . . I was saying, I want to nourish not just your bodies, but your minds. Your understanding of what food is, and how it comes to you.”
That same damn voice spoke up again. “It hasn’t come to us at all!”
Movement by the swinging kitchen doors caught his eye momentarily. Adam looked over to see the waiters pouring out of the kitchen, food-laden trays in hand. The perfection of Grant’s timing staggered him, and all he could say was, “What?”
“There isn’t any food,” a woman said, detaching herself from the rest of the fascinated audience. “You’ve invited us here, apparently, to talk at us about your fabulous food for hours on end, but have yet to serve us any.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. He didn’t think the “hours on end” comment was totally fair.
The woman, a redhead, Adam noticed, nodded once, decisively, as if pleased with herself. An attractive older woman at her side attempted to pull her back out of the limelight, but Red was having none of it. She tossed her head and marched right up to the bar, wobbly in her heels but purposeful in her movement.
Adam divided his attention between the waiters, finally beginning to offer their trays of pastry puffs and roasted vegetable skewers to the guests, and the approaching heckler. As the guests began to notice and enjoy the food, most of them turned away from the bar and fell on the waiters like lions on a herd of lame gazelles.
The heckler was wearing the requisite black dress, draped over what looked like very nice curves—but the shoes. Bright, shiny with a glossy patina like you get on good crème anglaise, the color of pinot noir held up to the light. Heels like ice picks, and above them, her legs stretched on for miles, slender and perfect. Those shoes sparked his interest.
Interest that ratcheted up by a billion as the light from the bar finally illuminated her face. She was gorgeous, like a Botticelli angel, all flaming hair and startling blue eyes, round cheeks and sweet, sweet mouth.
What was coming out of her mouth, though? Not so sweet.
She pursed those pretty pink lips up at him and sneered, “It always makes me wary when a chef feels he has to climb up on his soapbox and philosophize to justify his cooking.”
“You’re right,” he said, baring his teeth in a parody of a smile. “It’s crap. My food is a more eloquent expression of the benefits of local, seasonal produce than anything I could come up with to say.” He gestured to the other guests. Most of them, he noted with gut-deep satisfaction, were licking their lips and reaching for a second or third canapé. “Seems like they all agree with me.”
Now it was her turn to blink. She looked pretty and owlish, confusion softening the hard line of her mouth; too damned intriguing. Anger and attraction coiled in his belly, a pleasantly unsettling mix. Like what happened when he added a splash of lemon juice to a rich cream sauce.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
She tossed her head again, the motion making her sway a little. Adam looked more closely. Her pupils were blown wide and dark, and her cheeks were flushed in a lovely contrast to her fair complexion.
“Miranda Wake, Délicieux magazine,” she said defiantly, as if expecting him to take issue with it.
Ah-ha, he thought, somehow unsurprised, even though he’d always pictured the New York food scene’s most notorious critic as being considerably older and more dried-up looking than this fiery little piece.
Miranda Wake. You are blitzed out of your mind, on cocktails I designed, mixed with liquor I steeped with my own hands.
There was something