On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [99]
That’s what we want, Devon told himself. It means you haven’t irreparably damaged your reputation by fucking everything up the last two weeks. You can still pull it out. You can save it.
The added pressure of knowing he had a full house tonight, though? That he could’ve lived without.
Devon hated to admit how nervous it made him to be staking his entire reputation, his entire professional future, on this one dinner.
It had to be the meal of his life.
He’d cooked his heart out getting ready for it, tasting new dishes, discovering new flavor combinations with Lilah, and working with the Market cooks to perfect the recipes.
He was more than a little stunned at how the mood in the kitchen had lifted over the last few days. He’d let the cooks go back to the old menu for regular dinner service, and he could taste the difference in the quality of food they were putting out. Adam’s menu was pretty frigging delightful without all those flashy, expensive additions, Devon was forced to admit.
Not that he’d ever say that out loud. This X-factor stuff only went so far.
Almost better than the rising quality of food, however, was the rising tide of fun in the kitchen. As the line cooks relaxed, they started joking and messing with each other, and the energy of the place started to hum like a generator. They never got out of hand, Devon didn’t let things slip so far as that, but the difference from the previous week’s funereal atmosphere was palpable.
The food experiments he and Lilah were conducting opened up so many memories in Devon’s mind, tossing him right back to his first restaurant job, a tiny chowder hut on Long Island, where he’d first realized that a kitchen crew was a tightly knit group of compatriots, brothers-in-arms, a family. Love them or hate them, they were there in the trenches with you every step of the way. It was a bond as strong as any Devon had ever encountered.
He put aside the cold, bitter, swearing character he’d believed himself to be and thought about those long-ago nights. He remembered the older, more experienced cooks he’d learned from, had once modeled himself after, and let himself become part of the flow at Market.
Like loving Tucker, it proved startlingly easy.
The unspoken truce he achieved with Frankie was the start of it. Once the icy conditions between Devon and the sous chef began to thaw, the rest of the cooks warmed to him.
A lushly curved body pressed into him from behind, plump, strong arms sliding around his waist.
Devon smiled. His relationship with his brigade wasn’t the only thing heating up.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, turning in the circle of those arms to stare down into the beautiful, wide eyes. He felt immediately soothed on some deep, untouchable level.
“You had your shoulders set in your manly aura of hyperfocus way,” Lilah laughed. “I bet I could’ve shaved half your head before you knew I was in the office.”
“Not a chance. No matter what I’m focused on, the minute you touch me everything else goes away.”
She hummed, delighted. “I like that.”
“Mm. That’s why I can’t have you in the kitchen tonight. Too dangerous. But hey, you being out in the dining room means you had to dress up, huh? Let me get a look.”
Lilah did a self-conscious twirl for him, and Devon’s mouth watered a little at the scrumptious spill of her breasts over the purple bodice of her dress.
“Like it? It’s new. Grant helped me pick it out.”
He’d watched her go off with Grant for a day of shopping, and he hadn’t even felt a twinge of jealousy. Maybe Grant wanted her, maybe he didn’t—but either way, Devon knew who made Lilah’s eyes sparkle, who made her laugh that husky chuckle, who made her sigh and moan and scream with pleasure. He stared at the dress, and he knew exactly who she was wearing it for.
Devon was the luckiest son of a bitch in the city.
“Yeah, I like it,” he managed to choke out, his eyes glued to the neckline. Was that what a sweetheart silhouette was? For all he’d educated himself on men’s fashions since getting the hell out of Trenton,