Love in the Morning (6 page)

She glanced up at him. “Did you grow up here?”

He shook his head. “I grew up in the east, but I went to college in Boulder. I came up here to Salt Box around ten years ago.”

She frowned slightly. “I guess it would figure that most of the people in a town like this didn't start out here.”

“True.” He shrugged. “You've got a few natives, though. Nona, for example. She and her son own a garage that's been in the Monteith family for a couple of generations.”

“What about Dick? Is he a native?”

Clark grinned—his first real grin since leaving the Blarney Stone. “Dick is a transplant. A relatively recent one. He was some kind of big deal in Hollywood for a long time until he brought his whole operation up here a couple of years ago. Only he doesn't do that much as far as I can see. He's got an assistant, Monica, who really runs things for him.”

Lizzy stared up at him with suddenly wide eyes. “He worked in Hollywood? Like in movies? And television?”

Clark frowned. She looked more anxious than impressed. Why would Dick's profession be such a shock? “Yeah, I guess. He's got some kind of production company—both TV and movies. Only like I say, his assistant does most of the work these days.”

She licked her lips, turning back to stare up the road again. “That's interesting,” she muttered.

“I guess,” he repeated. The Praeger House appeared out of the darkness ahead of them, glowing at the end of the drive like the Emerald City.

They trudged up the drive in silence, Lizzy still hugging her arms around her waist.

He held the door open for her to walk through. “Hope I didn't keep you out too late.”

She shook her head. “It's fine. I'll start going over those invoices and the stock tomorrow. I should have some orders ready by tomorrow afternoon.”

“No hurry.”

“Okay, well thanks. I'd better get some rest. I have to get up early tomorrow.” She gave him a smile that was more like a lip flex, then turned and practically trotted toward her room at the end of the hall.

He stood watching her with narrowed eyes. All in all an interesting evening. A good meal in congenial company. But some real questions were clear—what was it about Dick Sonnenfeld and his Hollywood connections that had Lizzy Apodaca so worried? And why had she taken the job at Praeger House in the first place?

Chapter Six

Lizzy stayed out of Clark's way for the next couple of days. She'd seen that slightly suspicious look in his eyes as they'd walked back to the hotel. It was just the shock of finding out that Dick Sonnenfeld was somebody connected to Hollywood. Worse, that he was somebody connected to a television production company. She'd been amazingly lucky so far—nobody had recognized her as far as she could tell. She'd begun to think she could relax.

But dinner at the Blarney Stone had reminded her of just how much she had to lose. Things at Praeger House were working. She was turning out good food in a great environment. Now was not the time for careless revelations.

In their few hours of down time, she showed Desi how to make omelets. He still wasn't ready to go live, but he was getting better. Once she had him up to speed, they could take turns on the omelet station.

Once upon a time she'd had a great French toast recipe—sort of like
pain perdu.
She'd always made it to order, but she was experimenting with ways to mass produce it. And maybe they could have other things at the omelet station besides omelets—crepes and
pain perdu
and even pancakes. Those things would be a lot easier to make if they had another person in the kitchen, but she wasn't about to ask Clark to hire somebody new. Best to keep her head down and keep doing her job.

She saw Clark strolling the halls of the hotel now and then, towering slightly over the rest of the staff. This morning he'd been standing next to Colleen at the front desk, pushing his slightly shaggy brown hair out of his eyes with those nice long, tapered fingers.

Stop it, Lizzy.

Right. Enough of that. This relationship was strictly business. It had to be. No getting close to anybody around here.

After they'd finally finished serving breakfast that morning, she helped Desi put the leftovers back in the walk-in and made sure Marco had gotten the kitchen cleaned up before he'd headed off to high school. She felt a little guilty about employing somebody that young, but he seemed so delighted to have the job that she wasn't inclined to look for anyone else.

“You going to mix up the muffins?” Desi asked.

Lizzy jumped a little. She hadn't exactly been paying attention. “Sure. They can sit overnight.”

“What kinds?” He leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked a little like Clark, if you took off about three inches, fifty pounds, and a decade or so. Right now he had a determined expression.

Lizzy shrugged. “Maybe zucchini. Blueberry and bran—those are pretty much standard.”

Desi bit his lip. “How about applesauce? Apples are in season right now. We could make fresh applesauce in the buffalo chopper. I found a recipe on the Web that looks good.”

Lizzy's eyes widened. “You want to make muffins?”

He nodded a little jerkily. “Yeah. I mean, I know it's your thing and all but I've been watching and I think I could do it. And I'm getting better at chopping stuff for the omelet station. It shouldn't cut into my time too much.”

He actually had been getting better at the chopping part of things. His knife skills were growing by leaps and bounds. Still, the muffins were their stock-in-trade—people were beginning to talk about them. Any that were left over they sold in the display case, and those went quickly.

Clark snagged a muffin every day. Not that she noticed or anything.

Lizzy shrugged. “You can try a small applesauce run. Let's say a dozen for now.”

Desi's jaw became resolute. “Yes, ma'am. I'll do 'em right.”

“Good enough. Get the omelet fillings done and then you can work on the muffins.”

She watched him set to work on the onions, his knife moving systematically. He had the makings of a good chef.

So did you once.

Her own jaw became resolute. She
was
a good chef. She'd been close to great once upon a time. All she needed was a chance to vindicate herself. A chance like the Praeger House.

The kitchen door swung open and Clark stepped inside. He raised an eyebrow in Lizzy's direction “How's it going?”

She wiped her suddenly damp palms on her thighs. “Fine. We're fine. Breakfast went fine.”
Geez, could you sound any more suspicious?

Clark frowned a little, but let it go. “Okay, I need to talk to you. Let me take you to lunch.”

I need to talk to you.
The most ominous words in the English language. “Um…okay.”

Desi glanced up from where he was chopping, his eyes anxious. “What about the muffins?”

Saved.
“Right. The muffins. We still have to fix the muffins for tomorrow.”

Clark grimaced. “How long will that take?”

Hours. All afternoon. Come back tomorrow.
“An hour or so.”

He glanced at his watch. “Okay, I've got stuff to do too. Make it dinner. I'll come back around five.”

She exhaled a long breath as he stepped back through the door, letting her shoulders loosen.

Desi looked at her curiously. “You okay?”

“Sure.” She rubbed some sanitizer onto her hands. Surely that would take care of her damp palms. “Let's get to the muffins.”

*****

Clark showed up promptly at five. Lizzy wondered if they'd head for the Blarney Stone again. She wasn't looking forward to her second encounter with Dick Sonnenfeld, but figured she should get used to it. Other people were bound to be curious about her background and how she ended up in the Praeger House kitchen.

But Clark steered her in the other direction on Main Street, heading toward a small restaurant at the end of the block. “Italian okay by you?”

“Sure.” Anything unaccompanied by Dick Sonnenfeld was great. Of course, there was still that ominous
I need to talk to you
thing.

The waitstaff at the restaurant seemed to know Clark, although they were a little surprised to see Lizzy. She suspected that he usually showed up with someone else, who probably looked less like a stranded immigrant. She ignored the slightly leaden feeling around her heart when she considered that. Totally inappropriate.

After the waitress had taken their orders for lasagna (hers) and pizza (his), he leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping restlessly on the placemat.

Lizzy's stomach tightened. This was where the
I need to talk to you
part would come in.

“So have you ever heard of the Best Of the Box contest?”

Her shoulders relaxed.
Okay, I can deal with this.
She shook her head. “I think I heard you mention it to Clarice.” And of course she'd also heard Clarice's rejection of the whole idea. “What is it?”

“The local promo magazine, the one that's handed out at the hotels and the reservation services, has a contest every year to name the best in several categories in town. You know—best burger, best pizza, best margarita, stuff like that.”

She frowned. “I'm surprised a promo magazine would do that. Don't they run the risk of alienating some of their advertisers?”

He shrugged. “They've got so many categories they can take care of a lot of advertisers. But it still means something to win it. The competition is…spirited.”

“Okay.” She nodded slowly. “So how do we fit in?”

“They've got a new category this year—breakfast buffet. We've done well in the lodging competition, but we've never been able to compete for food service before.”

She narrowed her eyes. “But isn't our breakfast just for guests? Would we be eligible to compete with restaurants that are open to everybody?”

He shook his head. “Most of the people we get are guests, but the breakfast is open to anyone who walks in the door. All they have to do is pay Betsy.”

Betsy was the cashier who sat just outside the door of the breakfast room, collecting money and meal tickets. She looked like everybody's high school algebra teacher. Lizzy guessed that nobody would get past Betsy without paying.

She nodded slowly. “Right. So you want to enter? Do you want me to do something different with the menu?” Scrambled eggs were good for the guests and fast to fix, but they weren't exactly imaginative. Even an omelet station was pretty standard. She was guessing restaurants with real breakfast buffets probably offered a lot more.

Clark grimaced, sighing. “Yes, I want to enter. More than that, I don't know. I guess we'd need to upgrade our offerings a little. Right?”

She nodded. “Most likely. What did you have in mind?”

He was back to tapping his fingers again. “I've got nothing in mind, to tell you the truth. I mean, I know what we're doing now isn't enough to win the contest, but I don't have a clue about how to upgrade it. You're the chef. What do you think?”

Lizzy's heart took a little hop. “Offering more baked goods and fruits would be the quickest fix. And maybe another breakfast entrée.”

Clark's fingers stilled. “What kind of baked goods?”

“Scones would be easiest. Maybe biscuits. If we wanted croissants and danishes, we'd need to find a bakery to supply them. They're too labor intensive for us to make in the kitchen.”

He nodded slowly. “Scones sound good. Along with those muffins of yours, that ought to build our rep.”

Her heart took another gleeful hop. So she hadn't been kidding herself. He really had noticed the muffin upgrade.

“What kind of extra entrée were you thinking of?”

Now it was her turn to frown. She had some ideas, but she hadn't worked it all out yet. “Maybe pancakes or French toast. We could maybe do crepes along with the omelets, although that's asking a lot from a single chef. But we could try to make the crepes the day before and just have the omelet chef put in the fillings.”

Clark was back to frowning again, but it looked more like concentration than disapproval. “I'm guessing our crowd would be more interested in pancakes than crepes anyway. What about waffles?”

Lizzy shook her head. “Too much trouble. You'd need new equipment with waffle irons and they have to be kept at the right temperature or you end up with a total mess. Pancakes are relatively easy if you've got somebody back in the kitchen making them.”

“New equipment.” He stared off at the restaurant's front window. “Would we need any new equipment with what we do now?”

She took a breath. “We don't need equipment, but we could use another assistant. Particularly if we're doing stuff in the kitchen besides scrambled eggs and bacon. We'd have one person on the omelet station, and two in the kitchen.”

His frown intensified.
Crap.
“You think the omelet station is a good idea?”

She shrugged. “It gives us a leg up on the breakfast buffet ladder. We need something as a special feature, and omelets are easy as long as you've got enough people so that you can devote one cook to doing that and nothing else. You could widen it to eggs cooked to order if you want to—it's not that much harder to fry eggs.” Although it would be another kind of learning curve for Desi.

Clark nodded slowly. “We're getting a lot of mileage out of it, that's for sure. The line for omelets almost goes out of the dining room most mornings.” His lips moved into a dry grin. “Of course a lot of them look more interested in the cook than the omelets.”

Lizzy's cheeks grew warm. “Watching somebody cook omelets is a kick. People always line up to see it.”

His dry grin stayed in place, but he didn't say anything more about the omelet line. “Okay, let's leave it at this. You come up with a new menu. I'll try to scare up another cook for you. And we'll send in the entry next week. Agreed?”

She nodded quickly. “Agreed. We can do it.”

“We can.”

The waitress appeared at their table with dinner just then, and the conversation lapsed. But the warmth that came from that
we can do it
seemed to linger for a while. When was the last time she'd had anyone tell her she was good at her job? Or even felt like she had a right to an opinion?
Maybe things are finally turning around. Maybe I'm finally on the road back.
But just the same, she felt like rapping her knuckles on the wood table, just in case.

*****

It took Clark a few minutes to relax completely and start enjoying his pizza. He hadn't realized how nervous he'd been about Lizzy's reaction to Best of the Box.

He narrowed his eyes. Not
nervous.
He wasn't the kind of man who got nervous about stuff.
Concerned.
He could go that far. He was
concerned
about Lizzy Apodaca's assessment of their chances. He figured she wouldn't be as nasty about it as Clarice had been, but then she had more to lose than Clarice did. Still, he'd been afraid she'd say no, even if she said it politely. The more he thought about the contest, the more his competitive streak came to the fore. He wanted to win. Best of the best—that was Praeger House, by God.

Now of course he'd saddled himself with finding a new kitchen assistant. Maybe Saltzman could help—he knew more about the local restaurant scene and available cooks.

Clark glanced across the table again at Lizzy. She still had on the clothes she wore in the kitchen—jeans and a T-shirt along with running shoes. Somehow she looked more appropriate than Lauren had at the same table. He didn't think he'd ever seen Lauren in jeans, even though they lived in a place where jeans and T-shirts were pretty much the standard.

Lizzy's jeans and T-shirt emphasized her rounded breasts and hips, the slim length of her legs. All things he'd never been aware of with Clarice. In fact, he didn't think he'd ever noticed what Clarice wore in the kitchen.

He bit down hard on a piece of pepperoni. He probably shouldn't be noticing that about Lizzy either.

She glanced up at him just at that moment, frowning slightly. Maybe he'd growled or something. “How's the lasagna?” he said quickly.