She remembered all right. He’d dangled that carrot as she’d been about to head out the door after their first taping the previous week. Though somewhat interested in his proposition, when he hadn’t said anything more about it, she’d dismissed the thought. “What kind of research?”
“We’re considering adding a restaurant segment to the show. With your background, I thought you could provide unique insight.”
She wiped her hands with a kitchen towel. Continued to pat them dry.
Unique insight
? He certainly had a way with words when he wanted something. What was he up to now? Was he coming on to her? Trudy had warned her. And yet, it wouldn’t hurt to hear him out.
“You see restaurants from a different angle. I know when I like the service, and the food, and the ambience, but you know what else needs to be evaluated.”
Surely that was a line? Still, she wanted to know where he was going with this. “Like what? You pretty much covered it.”
His eyes lighted on the towel she held. “Cleanliness. And safety practices. And…you are going to wash your hands with soap and water besides wiping them on that towel, aren’t you?”
Good grief. She’d grabbed the first thing available to mop her hands rather than rinse them off in the sink. He’d distracted her to the point where she’d almost made a major safety mistake. She never did that. “Of course. Your invitation threw me, that’s all.”
He returned a sly smile, like he knew exactly what he’d done to her. “So what do you say? Do you like Southwestern?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not really.” She pointed to the chilis. “This was one of today’s tasks. But as a rule, I don’t like spicy.”
“Really? Interesting. I thought all chefs, all of
us
chefs, grooved on spices.”
“Guess not.”
“Is that your not-so-subtle way of turning me down?”
Sounded tempting. Too tempting. There was something more to his offer, but what? She copped a few extra seconds to think by clamping a lid on the container and walking it to the nearby refrigerator. When she returned, she said, “I’ll go with you. But I’ll leave the hotter offerings to you.”
“I can handle hot.”
She swallowed. Twice. It was all she could do not to flinch “Yes, I’m sure you can. I’ll meet you there.”
He gave her the address and indicated a time. “I, uh, should go. Need to check with Jasper on something. See you tomorrow night.”
“You won’t be here for the taping?”
“Well, yeah. That too.”
He hustled out of the test kitchen, apparently anxious to catch up with the supervising producer.
Once he was out of sight, she headed immediately to one of the prep kitchen’s coolers. What was with her? Chopping chili peppers never made her sweat like this, even habañeros. She still had her head inside when Trudy tapped her on the shoulder. “Ready for today’s taping?”
Reese jumped back, slapping a hand across her heart. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! I nearly hit my head on one of the shelves.”
Trudy squared her shoulders but took a step back. “I wasn’t sneaking up on you. I heard you talking to yourself and wondered what was going on.”
She thought fast to come up with a reason for being in the cooler. “Inventorying the food items in there. Don’t you do that before every taping?”
“Nobody’s ever told me I had to. Besides, there’s usually enough. I buy twice what we actually need.”
“That’s so wasteful. I thought this show operated on a shoestring budget.”
Trudy nudged the bridge of her eyeglasses further up her nose. “Well, excuse me! It wasn’t my idea. I was told to do that and no one’s said any different since.”
Reese stared at her partner. Things weren’t adding up…literally. Though the carrots she’d stayed late to fix the previous evening were now in the kitchen set’s refrigerator, the amount of extras she’d left in the prep kitchen cooler had diminished. The same held true for the cantaloupe.
Maybe her lack of sleep was clouding her brain. Not that worry about today’s taping had held sleep at bay. No, she’d remained wide-eyed wondering why no one was allowed on the set the night before the taping. She reopened the cooler. “There’s less food here than last night.”
Trudy stuck her head in and popped it out immediately. “Don’t get so worked up. Still enough for the taping. Save your strength for Leonie. She’s like a general heading off to war on taping days.”
Even after Trudy drifted off to another part of the prep area, Reese continued to stand there in front of the cooler, trying to make sense of her discovery. Of course Trudy could dismiss her concern. She wasn’t a food professional. She just followed orders, when she was of a mind to do even that. On the other hand, she, with her chef’s training, couldn’t dismiss the facts that readily.
“Is there a problem, Dunbar?” The “General” had arrived.
Reese blinked back to reality. “Problem? Uh, no, Ms. McCutcheon.”
“Then why are you standing there gazing off into space? Every minute counts when preparing for the taping.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that. I’m trying to figure out what happened to some of the food items I left here last night. I think someone may be stealing food from you.” She looked directly into the other woman’s eyes. “I thought you should know.”
The executive producer stared back, although it was into space, not at her.
“Ms. McCutcheon? Did you hear me?”
The other woman’s head snapped toward her. “Of course, I did. I’m not deaf.”
What is with this woman? I’ve just told her someone is stealing her blind, and it’s like I’ve insulted her.
“I understand you don’t do a formal inventory before each taping. I thought…”
Green fire nearly burned through her. “Chef or not, you don’t need to think here, Ms. Dunbar. I do that for everybody. You just prepare the food.” To emphasize her point, she picked up a wooden spoon from the counter and handed it to Reese.
She got the picture.
The executive producer added, “Let’s not hear any more talk about disappearing food. It demoralizes the rest of the crew. Do you understand?”
She didn’t answer. No point, since the harridan had already left.
Why doesn’t she want to hear about my suspicions? Is she the thief?
Trudy materialized out of nowhere. “Do you have a death wish?”
“I felt she needed to know. I can’t prove it, because I didn’t write anything down last night when I counted.”
Which I’ll certainly do from here on.
Trudy gazed toward the door through which the executive producer had exited. “She’s really taken a dislike to you. More than being miffed because she didn’t hire you.”
“She seems to resent my being a chef. Do you think it’s a Queen Bee complex?”
Trudy narrowed her eyes, apparently considering. “Maybe. Other than Nick, of course, we don’t have anyone else with food experience on the crew.”
“Really?” She vaguely recalled Trudy alluding to that before, but until now, she hadn’t paid much attention to that statement.
“No one that I know of.” Pushing her glasses up with her left hand, Trudy noted the time. “Whoa! We gotta get movin’. Maybe if we get caught up, we’ll have a little time before taping gets underway to start my cooking lessons.”
That again. “Sure.”
Reese returned her attention to the cooler. Something was definitely not right here, but there wasn’t time at the moment to dwell on it further. Pointing out the disappearing food probably hadn’t helped her campaign to get on the executive producer’s good side. But she couldn’t just drop the issue. And, despite the woman’s instructions to leave it alone, she wasn’t about to forget the issue.
Since all was ready for the taping except the chili peppers Nick’s interruption had kept her from finishing, it seemed as good a time as any to give Trudy her first lesson on the finer points of cooking. Reese used the remaining peppers as her first subject. “Always keep your eyes focused on the food.”
“Where else would I look? I want to keep my fingers.”
“And those nice rings. I’m glad you followed my suggestion to don disposable gloves.”
Trudy pushed the bridge of her sapphire blue eyeglasses higher up her nose, taking great care not to actually touch them with her latex-covered fingers. “Uh, yeah, well, I usually wear these. I, uh, couldn’t find any the other day when you saw me.”
Right
. At least Trudy had taken to the suggestion with little argument. Reese didn’t care if she’d embarrassed her. Chefs made sure their kitchens ran efficiently and safely; they couldn’t afford to apologize every time they stepped on someone’s toes.
“You’d be surprised where some people look while they’re in the midst of chopping. Your eyes have to adopt a sort of rhythm that balances the location of the knife with the condition of the food item so the one doesn’t slip and the other doesn’t move.”
Better keep these sessions short. Not only was Trudy proving to be an impatient student, but it wouldn’t help if any of the crew discovered what they were up to. Everyone was already treating her differently since word of her being a chef had leaked out. That information couldn’t go beyond the studio or her already suffering reputation would suffer even more
While she continued to make small, tentative cuts in the peppers, Trudy said, “I saw Nick in here talking to you earlier. Looks like you’ve piqued his interest.” Though her focus stayed on the chopping block, a coaxing, conspiratorial tone underscored her words.
Reese shook her head. “I doubt that.”
“What did he want?”
It was becoming increasingly clear that Trudy was a mega-sized snoop and wasn’t afraid to ask questions. And she was also persistent. When one question didn’t elicit the information she sought, two or three more followed.
While Trudy tidied up their work area, Reese cleaned the knife and put it away. “I’m not sure what he wanted. At first, I thought he might be going to ask me out, but that didn’t happen.”
“That’s not like Nick. He usually hits on a new woman her first week on the job.”
Reese grabbed a wipe and began swabbing down the counter Trudy had just cleaned. Trudy relieved Reese of the wipe and flung it in a nearby waste container. “He may not actually date them, but he likes to serve as unofficial greeter.”
“Guess I’ll consider myself unofficially greeted then.” Was that what he’d been up to?
Trudy undid her wraparound white apron. “Don’t underestimate Nick. He’s not exactly what they called a cad in the old time movies, but he’s definitely a charmer. Comes naturally to him. Don’t mistake it for interest.”
Reese unbuttoned her jacket. “Not to worry. I don’t mix business with pleasure.”
“Good idea.”
When Reese shot the other PA a perplexed expression, Trudy said, “Leonie has already made you Public Enemy Number One. If she thought her boy was taking a shine to you, there’d be hell to pay.”
Trudy headed back to their office area before the rest of the crew and other staff filtered in after lunch, leaving Reese alone on the set. She had deliberately not mentioned the restaurant review she’d agreed to participate in. Her new student was a gossip and, after what Trudy had told her about Leonie’s possessiveness, Reese didn’t want news of her having dinner with Nick to get back to the woman. It was time to get herself off the Public Enemy list.
Chapter Six
On Saturday night, Reese dashed into Ocho’s, an upscale southwestern restaurant in SoHo. “Sorry. Traffic,” she apologized to Nick. Gone was the white chef’s jacket, replaced with a knee-revealing, cleavage showcase of a red dress sure to stop every fork in the restaurant mid-air.
He gulped, dropping the menu he’d been perusing. His expression melded into a smile he hoped said he’d happily wait for hours if it meant seeing her look like that at the end of his vigil. “Hadn’t noticed. Just got here myself.” He rose, took her hand in his, nodded to the maitre d’, who signaled for the headwaiter to escort them to their table. Heads turned their direction as they made their way to the best seats in the room.
“You look sensational,” he told her after they were seated.
“I hope I didn’t overdress.”
He tried without success to tone down his near-leer. God, when she shed that chef’s jacket, she was cooking with more heat than when she was actually in the kitchen. “No chance of that.”
“You look pretty good yourself.”
“Thanks.” He straightened his tie, a sliver of navy blue silk that set off his stark white dress shirt and gray blazer, a major change from his all-dark camera wardrobe or the old jeans he wore otherwise. “So? What do you think of the place?”
She made a show of inhaling the various aromas wafting about them. “I like how the reflections of the tea lights bounce off the mirrors around the room, although I would have preferred more color to offset the stark white linen.”
Good. She was taking this assignment seriously. And that’s what they were here for, right, not just to sit here and ogle her.
He surveyed the flock of diners surrounding them, nodding to some, gracing others with his trademark smile.
Reese watched him, a fascinated expression on her face. “You’re quite the crowd pleaser.”
“Defense mechanism I learned as a kid. When I wanted my mother to stay home from her fancy parties.”
“You seem to have honed it to a fine art.”
“Yeah?” Was that meant as a slight? Nah, this woman was too direct. If she wanted to put him down, he’d know it. On the other hand, was she flirting? He needed to know. “How’s it working on you?”
“Can’t say,” she said, water glass in hand. “I don’t have any fancy parties to skip.”
Not quite flirting, but she was definitely baiting him. Well, hell. Might as well give her a taste of the old Coltrane appeal. “I’d think an up-and-coming New York chef with your looks would be turning down invites right and left.”
“And I think you’ve kicked your charm switch up a couple notches for my own personal demonstration.”
Saw right through that, did she? “Just speaking the truth.”
“Uh-huh, well, thanks for the compliment. I appreciate the honesty. I’m a pretty upfront kind of person.”