Burn for You

“You mad at that jambalaya, Bianca?”

I glanced up from the pot. Pepper stood beside me, watching me with arched brows and a worried look, like I might start throwing things.

I sighed. “No, and please don’t say anything about how bad I look, I already—”

I stopped short, dumbfounded by Pepper’s outfit.

Her neon pink blouse was cut so low her hoo-has were on display like buns at a bake sale. Her zebra-print leather skirt was so short it was almost a belt. Under the skirt she wore fishnet stockings and a pair of sky-high, red-and-black heels that screamed Fuck me! at the top of their cheap snakeskin lungs.

She asked brightly, “Hey, what do you think of these earrings?” and lifted her hair away from her face to display an enormous pair of gold hoops with little gold hearts dangling from the bottoms.

Hoyt called out, “Ain’t nobody lookin’ at ya earrings, couillon. And pull down that skirt, I kin see clear to the promised land!”

“They’re lovely, Pepper,” I said, to distract her from whatever insult she was about to toss back Hoyt’s way. You had to have tough skin to work in a kitchen, but all the hazing was done with a generous dose of love.

Pepper smiled. “I bought them with the tip I got last night from Mr. Boudreaux. The heels, too.”

And the rest of the outfit, most likely. Judging by the looks of things, she probably had enough left over from that hundred bucks to buy another ensemble of the same quality, with money to spare.

“How nice for you,” I said. “Now tell me why you’re in the kitchen and not up front at the desk.”

“Oh yeah! That’s what I came to tell you. It’s about Mr. Boudreaux.”

I stared at her with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What about him?”

Pepper beamed. “He’s here. And he wants to talk to you.”

I groaned. Dear Lord, not today. Not him, today. “Tell him I’m busy. I can’t get away now.” Besides, I hate his stuck-up guts.

Pepper blinked. Her brows pulled together. “Um. He sort of . . . you know. Demanded to see you. Like he does.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Today you don’t seem quite as inclined to shove a bucket of crawdads where the sun doesn’t shine like you did yesterday, Pepper.”

She admitted sheepishly, “He might have given me another tip.”

Funny how some people’s opinions can be changed with a simple thing like money. At least she had the decency to look embarrassed about it.

“What does he want?”

Pepper shrugged. “All he said was, and I’m quoting, ‘Bring the owner to me. Now.’”

The owner. I bet that bastard didn’t even remember my name, even though it was right over the damn front door! And he expected me to drop everything and come running when he called like I was some kind of servant? Like I was a dog?

Steam began to pour from my ears. I shouted, “That man could give the baby Jesus hemorrhoids!”

Eeny cackled. Pepper took a step back. Shaking his head, Hoyt let out another whistle. Everyone in the kitchen stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at me.

Flustered, I smoothed a hand over my hair and tried to compose myself. In a lower voice, I told Pepper, “You go tell Mr. Boudreaux that the owner is as busy as a one-legged cat in a sandbox. I won’t be coming out to see him, now or ever. If he’s got something to say to me, he can have his blasted lawyer write me a letter.”

Pepper didn’t look convinced. “Um . . . I don’t think that’ll go over, Bianca.”

“Good, let him be the one to lose sleep for a change,” I muttered, battering the jambalaya with a wooden spoon. If I kept this up, I’d be serving a finely blended soup instead of the chunky seafood-and-sausage stew, so I forced myself to breathe and slow down.

“All right.” Pepper sighed, turning to go. “But I don’t think he’s gonna like it.”

I grunted. God forbid Prince A-hole doesn’t get his way!

I went back to work, as did everyone else. For a full sixty seconds, at least, until Jackson Boudreaux crashed through the swinging kitchen doors like a gale-force wind.

Hurrying in behind him, Pepper looked at me, her hands held up in surrender. “I tried to tell you!”

But I was having none of Jackson’s nonsense today. I propped my hands on my hips and leveled him with The Look.

The Look was a Southern female specialty, handed down over generations. Every family of women had their own particular version. Some said The Look could even go through walls and be heard over the phone. It was an art form among genteel womenfolk, and its effect was always the same.

Jackson took one more step into the kitchen and stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted me.

“You,” I said, attitude set to bitch level ten, “are not welcome in my kitchen. Now turn your uppity butt around and get out.”

And what did that ornery bastard do in response?

He smiled.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible if I didn’t see it for myself, but there it was, a cocky little smirk that lifted the corners of his lips just enough to let me know he found me amusing.

Then—just to make me mad enough to cuss out the pope—he ordered all my employees out of my kitchen.

“Everybody out!” he commanded without looking away from me, that deep voice rolling like thunder through the room.

When those turncoats had the audacity to start hustling their butts out, I almost lost my mind.

“Everybody stay put!” I said. “The next person who moves is fired!”

Cue the sound of screeching brakes. Then I had twelve employees looking back and forth between Jackson and me, waiting breathlessly to see what would happen next.

Standing by Hoyt, Eeny was busily fondling one of her trinket necklaces, muttering something under her breath. I hoped it was a voodoo curse that would make all Jackson’s hair fall out and shrink his balls to the size of peanuts.

“Miss Hardwick,” Jackson began, snarly as a grizzly bear, but I cut him off.

“Where’s your attorney? Or are you serving me the papers yourself?”

He blinked, his thick brows drawing together. “Attorney?” Then his look cleared. “Oh. No, I’m not suing you.”

Not trusting myself to speak, I spread my hands wide and stood there, like What then?

He said, “I have a job for you.”

Mother Mary, the man was offering me a job? Like this restaurant thing I’d been planning and saving toward for years was just a little side hobby, something I did in my spare time to make a few extra dollars toward my rent? And judging by his smug, aren’t-you-lucky delivery, he had every assumption that I’d be champing at the bit to come work for him. Because what a dream that would be.

I had to bite my tongue and count to ten before I was calm enough to string a coherent sentence together. Well, it wasn’t actually an entire sentence. It was just a word.

“No.”

I had to give it to him, he had extremely expressive eyebrows. Those thick black caterpillars perched over his steely-blue peepers had an entire language of their own. Right now they were drawn together in a glower that told me I was a rebellious little nitwit that he was fully prepared to have drawn and quartered and fed to his dogs.

My staff looked on in fascinated silence.

Through gritted teeth, he said, “This is an incredible opportunity for you—”

My sharp laugh made two of the line cooks jump. “How thoughtful of you to think of little ol’ me for your precious opportunity! I’ve been waiting so long for such a tantalizing offer! Whatever would I do without you?”