Shadow's Edge

16

He froze. His skin took on the pallor of a bed sheet. His beady eyes bulged out of his head until she thought they might actually be ejected from their sockets.

“The press,” he whispered, his face ashen. He lifted his hands to the sides of his head. “If word gets out to the press that you called His Holy Dignity a d**k—”

“I did not —”

“Geoffrey!”

The hostess, a busty brunette in a clingy black dress with a plunging neckline, burst through the swinging steel doors of the kitchen and looked wildly around, almost panting in panic. “Geoffrey!”

“For God’s sake, Tiffany, I’m right here! What is it?” he spat, turning with a huff.

“The earl,” she breathed, pointing over her shoulder toward the dining room. “He’s asking for you.” She twirled back out through the doors with a flash of tanned leg above a platinum gold Jimmy Choo pump. Geoffrey turned back to Jenna and narrowed his eyes. “Your employment with Mélisse is terminated, effective immediately. Get out of my restaurant,” he snarled.

Before she could open her mouth to speak, Geoffrey vanished through the kitchen doors like an angry poltergeist, leaving only the metallic scent of fury lingering behind.

Jenna drew in a slow breath, checking her anger. She looked around the open kitchen with its black-and-white-tiled floor, enormous walk-in refrigerator, stainless steel sinks, and bustling activity, and said a silent good-bye. She had only her jacket and handbag to retrieve; all the papers and files in her small windowless office belonged to the restaurant.

Once she stepped out the door, it would be as if she hadn’t spent the past two years of her life here. It would be as if she’d never existed.

In a daze, she moved through the kitchen toward her tiny office at the back. She slammed the door behind her to block out the snickering from the sous chef and picked up her handbag from the chair where she’d tossed it as she rushed out at the beginning of her shift.

She looked around one final time. The shape of the room, the bookshelves lining one wall, the master sommelier certificate framed above her small desk. The thought that she’d be able to take one thing after all—the certificate earned through her own hard work and talent—did nothing to cheer her. After being fired from Mélisse, she doubted she could work anywhere in the city again. She’d soon be bartending at the strip club near the airport.

The pounding of fists against the office door made her jump and spin around.

“Jenna!”

It was Geoffrey, hissing, probably come to take her head away on a platter.

“Give me a minute, Geoffrey, I’m just getting my—”

The door swung open to reveal Geoffrey and Tiffany looming large in the doorway, with the entire kitchen staff pressed close behind them, staring in with the look of a lynch mob.

She took a startled step back and bumped into her chair. It clattered to a stop against the desk and everything fell silent but for the faint sizzle of unwatched onions caramelizing in butter on the six-burner range in the kitchen beyond.

Geoffrey held a bottle of wine in his hands and lifted it toward her, his pale and bulbous brow beaded with a fine sheen of sweat.

“The Latour,” he rasped, his hands slightly trembling. “He wants you to serve it.”

Jenna’s gaze jumped back and forth between Geoffrey and Tiffany, who were both stiff and pasty as mannequins. No one else made a peep.

Geoffrey swallowed and held the bottle out as if it were a holy relic. There was a generous layer of dust settled over the glass, a faint smudge of mold on the label; the sign of a perfectly undisturbed, pristinely aged bottle of wine.

“Now. Please,” Geoffrey whimpered. The overhead light shone pale against his forehead.

“What is going on here?” Jenna asked.

It was Tiffany who answered. “He’s not mad. He wants the wine. You’re the sommelier.”

Jenna looked over to Geoffrey, eyebrows raised. “Geoffrey?”

He nodded, his head giving a quick up-and-down jerk.

“I’m not fired?”

His head jerked again, this time side to side. No.

“Why not?”

The breath left his lungs in a sharp puff of air as if they’d collapsed. “Please, Jenna—just go! We’ll talk about it later! Please,” he begged, bending his knees and making an odd little hop. “Don’t keep him waiting!” He waggled the bottle back and forth in front of her like a lure, sloshing the wine around.

Jenna reached out and delicately pried the bottle free from the sweaty death grip he had on it. “Gently, will you! You’re mucking up the sediment, it’ll be all cloudy—”

“For God’s sake, woman, just go!” he practically shrieked into her face.

Jenna paused, the realization dawning that somehow her fortune had turned and the balance of power had tipped to her favor. She had a sneaking suspicion she knew who was responsible for this sudden change.

“Geoffrey,” she said and looked him square in the eye.

He clapped both his hands over his face and then shook them apart over his head, a dramatic, silent What?

“Get out of my way.”

He spun around, collecting Tiffany by the arm as he went, and barged a path through the crowd of visibly disappointed onlookers. “Back to work, you dégueulasse animaux, before I fire you all!” he crowed.

Jenna looked down at the bottle of Latour. He wants you to serve it...

You want it, you got it, she thought grimly. But be careful what you wish for, Earl McLoughlin.

She squared her shoulders, raised her chin, stalked out of her office and through the kitchen, holding the Latour in her arms like a child.

Without another glance backward, Jenna strode through the swinging doors.