The Chef's Choice: The Chef's Choice

“It’s got possibilities,” Damon allowed. “The kitchen setup’s good. A little small for the size of the dining room but it’s not a problem right now. We’ve got enough tables to do a hundred and fifty covers a night but we’ve had less than a quarter of that since I’ve been here."

“It is okay to start small. You are still working out the bugs.”

“Bugs are definitely not on the menu.”

“And that is a good thing. The health department just closed La Dolce Vida for violations,” Descour said, referring to Manhattan’s Italian restaurant of the moment.

Damon shook his head. “Marco never was much on taking care of the details."

“You may have had your faults, but you always kept a clean kitchen,” Descour said.

“I learned from a tough boss.”

“You did not learn everything from me, my friend. Some of what you know is a gift. Some of what you know I want no responsibility for,” he added before Damon could be pleased. “I did not like it when you were pissing your life away."

Funny how the rebuke didn’t sting the way it would have from Damon’s father. Then again, Colonel Brandon Hurst would never have leavened the criticism with a compliment, or meant the compliment if he had. It would have been one more condemnation in a lifetime’s worth, one more bit of proof that Damon had fallen short of expectations. Paul said it because he wanted better for Damon; the colonel would have said it because he wanted a better reflection on himself.

Which was an opportunity for its own kind of small revenge. However much Damon had squirmed at the exaggerations, rumors and outright lies the tabloids had printed about him, he’d always enjoyed imagining the colonel’s reaction, coming across them in some grocery store.

He never knew for sure it had happened because he hadn’t spoken to his father in nearly a decade.

If anyone had suggested to him that his drive for success stemmed from a need to prove himself to his father, Damon would have scoffed. Paul, though, Paul mattered. The problem was that Damon had no good answer for him. Mistakes, he’d probably—okay, certainly—made, but it was pointless to regret them now. The thing was to learn. If he’d done that much, then they could be filed under interesting experiences, no harm, no foul.

“What’s done is done,” he said. “I can’t change it. I’m more interested in what happens next."

“I shall be curious to see,” Descour said.

“I’m even more interested in finding a way to get produce that hasn’t spent the day soaking up exhaust fumes in some cargo bay."

“I shall be curious to see how you manage that, too.”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

After he’d ended the conversation and hung up, Damon stared at the phone before him for a moment. “Hey, Roman,” he said aloud. “What do you know about foraging?"

Early morning was Cady’s favorite time. The day felt fresh and new, the air so crisp, even in May, that her breath showed as she loaded bags of Compass Rose yard waste into the bed of her battered pickup. The guests were all asleep, the employees yet to show up. She had the grounds to herself, just her and Grace Harbor, the quiet lap of the water against the rocks punctuated by the cries of the gulls.

Some people took time to find their place in the world. Cady had always known she belonged in Maine. Her brother, Walker, might have moved to Manhattan; her sister, Max, might have tried out Chicago before coming back to settle in Portland. As far as Cady was concerned, there was nowhere else she’d rather be than on this particular bit of coast. Life down east might not always be easy, but it satisfied her soul.

Of course, these days she had a bit more than her soul to worry about. After six years of working for another landscaper in the area, she’d decided to hang out her own shingle two years before. Be her own boss, her thinking went, though she hadn’t quite realized at the time that being her own boss really meant thateveryone was her boss, particularly her clients. To date, the best thing she could say was that she was keeping her head above water.

Barely.

One challenge was that the population of Grace Harbor was a whopping five thousand people, though that quadrupled when the summer tourists descended in droves. Another was that the Maine growing season was so short. Hard to make a living growing things when those things only grew from May to September.

But that was the job she’d taken on, so from May to September, she worked, she cultivated, she pasted a smile on her face and made nice until her jaws hurt. And in the winter, she put a plow blade on her truck and prayed for snow.

Still, she was making progress. Her old truck would have to last a few more years but the new greenhouse gave her a critical advantage in growing her own stock that would pay off big down the line. She’d acquired a few steady clients—businesses, rental property owners, her uncle Lenny at the marina. She’d scrape along, even if the Compass Rose was still her biggest account.

Cady settled another bag in the bed of her truck and turned back to the pile. It didn’t matter that the inn was family owned, her parents had always treated it as a business, insisting on paying her just as they would any other groundskeeper. And because Cady was in business, too, she’d felt honor bound to negotiate long and hard with them over the terms. She still considered it something of a coup that she’d fast-talked her father so that he didn’t realize he’d signed a contract that paid her less than he had his last groundskeeper.

It was her business, and she’d do what she wanted, including offer a family discount, even if the family didn’t know. It wasn’t as if she was going to go broke.

Yet.

She wasn’t so sure about her parents, though. The past couple of years had been increasingly tight, even as repairs on the nearly hundred-year-old main building mounted up. They definitely needed to make a move to bring in more traffic.

Hiring an unstable guy like Damon Hurst wasn’t making a move, though. It was desperation.

Damon Hurst. Just the thought of his name had her fuming, and if that didn’t, the memory of his easy smirk did. Cady knew about him. Oh, she knew all about him whether she wanted to or not, courtesy of Tania, who was a complete junkie for his show.

“I don’t care about cooking, Tania,” she’d pleaded at one of their weekly get-togethers. “Can’t we just watch a movie?"

“It’s almost over. Besides, how hard is it? Don’t you want to look at that face?” Tania had returned, eyes gleaming. “Don’t you want to see how long it takes him to yell at one of his chefs during the competition?"

“No. I want to see vampires and car chases and preferably something blowing up. I don’t want to see Damon Hurst."

Well, she’d have to see him now, Cady thought, at least for the two or three weeks he’d probably stick around. She thumped another bag of yard waste into her truck. How he’d managed to con her parents into trusting him was anybody’s guess. Why, was even more perplexing. He had to have options in the city, job offers that paid a whole lot better than her parents could afford. Why come all the way up to a little dot-on-the-map Maine town? Could he really be that hard up? And if he was, did they really want him?

It was a fiasco waiting to happen. The guy hadn’t even bothered to come look at the restaurant and meet the people he was going to work with before taking the job. That wasn’t the behavior of a man who gave a hoot about his staff—or his performance. No way was he planning on being there for the long haul.

Gritting her teeth, she slammed another bag down.

“You’re going to split one of those open if you don’t watch it,” a voice said behind her, making her jump.

She knew before she turned it was him.

He wore jeans and the same bomber jacket he’d had on the day she’d met him, his dark hair loose and pushed back behind his ears. He still hadn’t bothered to shave; even in sunlight, his eyes looked only two or three shades away from black. Not that she was noticing. Good-looking guys didn’t get to her, Cady reminded herself.

She spared him another glance. “Well, you’re up and around early."

He smiled faintly. “Not a lot of nightlife around here.”

“Life in Grace Harbor. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I didn’t say I was disappointed.”

She bent back to her rubbish pile. “I’m so relieved.”

This time he laughed outright. “Nice to see you’re in good form again today."

“I’m in good form every day,” she said, tossing an armload of rhododendron branches into the bed. “Get used to it."

He looked her up and down. “I’m not even going to touch that one."

She flushed and grabbed another load of branches from the previous day’s pruning to toss into the bed. “So what brings you out here so early?"

“Maybe I just wanted some fresh air.”