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“But you like her.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.” The reply sent a shockwave of surprise through Jackson, although
whether it was because he meant it or because he’d said it out loud, he couldn’t be sure.
“So, what? You’re just going to avoid her, all because you acted like a total ass on Saturday?” Shane picked up the one remaining waffle fry from the long-since decimated plate and popped it into his mouth.
“Thanks for the ego boost,” Jackson muttered, sliding his empty glass back over the bar.
Shane ran a hand over his stomach in an appreciative gesture, pushing his plate next to Jackson’s glass. “Don’t mention it.”
Jackson supposed he had the dig coming. He really had been a total ass. And the worst part was, the charade with Jenna had gone off without a hitch. His mother had beamed with happiness that could be seen from outer space every time she looked at him, a delighted kind of relief swimming over her features that he hadn’t seen in years. Never mind that Jackson had been eating the guilt over it ever since the first hint of a smile had crossed her lips.
And he hadn’t been able to eat anything else since then.
Shane cleared his throat in a quiet rumble. “Have you thought about a good, old-fashioned apology?”
All the air whooshed from Jackson’s lungs in a moment of clarity that made his skin prickle with sudden awareness. His gut perked to life, sending the first message of want in four days to his brain.
Feed her.
Clearly, Jackson’s lack of appetite was making him loopy. Still, the impulse filtered through him, shaping itself into an idea with each pass through his system, and it made him hungry. Apologizing to Carly was a far cry from diving headfirst into a relationship with her, after all. While he knew the latter would never happen, the former was starting to have merit, with both his conscience and his stomach. Plus, she’d said herself that she wasn’t looking to stay in Pine Mountain long term. How serious could he get if she wasn’t even going to stay?
His brain tumbled in thought. Carly might introduce Jackson to her right hook for his troubles, but Shane was right. She deserved an apology, a really self-deprecating, sincere-right-down-to-my-toes admission of wrongdoing. And he only knew one way to pull that off.
“Shane, I’m gonna need your help. Are you game for just one more little deception?”
12
“That salmon’s going to be like the fucking Sahara if you don’t get it off the grill, and I do mean right now,” Carly snapped over her shoulder. “And where’s the lemon dill sauce? Come on, people. We’re not going to fill the house with cold food and slow service.”
“Yes, Chef.” Bellamy plated the salmon with efficient movements, offering it to her for approval while Adrian finished the dish with the satiny, butter-yellow sauce. Carly’s hands flew over her work station as she added crisp-tender spears of steamed asparagus and roasted fingerling potatoes to the plate, wiping an errant dollop of sauce from the edge of the dish before sending it out the door with the server. She pulled the next ticket from the queue, barking out orders and plating the next round of dishes with speedy precision.
“Chef di Matisse? There’s a, uh, problem with the dessert menu.” The look on Bellamy’s face suggested that she’d drawn the short straw in the news-delivering department.
Carly’s shoulders knotted together like one big sweater of nasty tension, and she hissed a breath through her teeth. From the minute they’d sent out the first cover tonight, things had been going south. One of the dishwashers hadn’t shown up for his shift, which meant getting everything from clean flatware to proper serving pieces in a timely manner was like getting blood from a stone. Due to an ordering mix-up with the liquor distributor, the bar was nearly out of the restaurant’s most popular pinot noir, which went flawlessly with just about everything on the damned menu. And her pastry chef, while he could practically spin gold from mere butter, was unreliable as hell. Carly got the feeling she was about to find that out—again.
“What.” Carly turned as Adrian sent a plate of seafood Fra Diavolo her way for its out-the-door inspection, and she tucked a wedge of toasted garlic bread on the side of the deep-bellied dish, admiring the orange pop of tomatoes next to the shell-pink of the shrimp. A loud crash snapped Carly’s head up from the front of the line, just as Bellamy blurted something about the pastry chef not making enough peach cobbler before he snuck out early for the night.
“Fix it!” Carly hollered, moving toward the more pressing issue. Thankfully, it turned out to be a jammed door on one of the dishwashers, all bark and no bite. She returned to the pass, snatching another order from the queue. Two more orders came in, one right on top of the other, and plates left the kitchen with their servers just as fast. Another five minutes of more pressing issues passed before Carly could address the peach cobbler—God, she could throttle that pastry chef. She turned and nearly smacked into Adrian.
“Taste this.” He had the fork in her face so fast that she could either open her mouth or wear whatever was on it, and out of instinct, she took the bite. Dense, buttery crust burst against her tongue, followed by the sweet taste of nectarines in a light syrup that danced through the back of her mouth in a smooth, summery glide.
“What isthat?” Carly asked, the demand losing its punch as she shoved another bite in her mouth.
“Sunshine here took it upon herself to solve your dessert problem,” he said, grinning at a wide-eyed Bellamy, who held a saucepan in one hand.
“You said…you said fix the peach cobbler thing, so I figured nectarines were close enough. I just made a quick reduction with simple syrup and some spices and put it over the shortbread in the pantry. It’s not cobbler, but…”
“It’s brilliant. Plate it with some crème fraiche and send it out.” Carly called out the order in her hand before turning back to Bellamy, a wry smile on her lips for the first time all week. “It’s replacing the cobbler on the menu for the rest of the night, so get ready to make more of that sauce. Nice work.”
Mercifully, the rest of the service went without a hitch, although it drained Carly’s energy down to fumes. Her arm was still sore from her weekend escapade, and although she hated to admit it, her ego hurt even worse. That tetanus shot had been nothing in the face of reality.
She’d been conned like the world’s biggest sucker. Yet again.
Yeah, well, not anymore. Carly pulled the last ticket for the night out of the queue. Oh, thank God. Calamari was something she could do in her sleep.
“You want me to take that?” Adrian’s hazel eyes darted to the ticket in her hand, but she moved down the line to one of the lowboys, pulling out the labeled containers of ingredients.
