On the Steamy Side (13 page)

“Go on,” she said, forcing a laugh. “Shoo. We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Great,” he said with relief, and gave Tucker a quick smile before hurrying off.

Leaving Lilah alone with her charge. She looked down at him, and he looked cautiously up at her.

Stalemate.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re gonna have to help me out here. I used to teach kids a few years older than you, and I’ve got lots of younger cousins, but I’ve never nannied before, so if I do something wrong, you hafta let me know.”

Big eyes tracking her every move was her only response.

“My name’s Lilah Jane Tunkle and I’m from a tiny town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Do you know where that is?”

Tucker shook his head, dark curls trembling against his round cheeks. He was really an uncommonly adorable boy. Not surprising, considering he owed at least half of his genetic material to Devon Sparks.

Lilah glanced toward the front of the kitchen where the chef was plating food with single-minded determination, his broad shoulders set in lines so tense they looked about ready to snap.

She didn’t understand the gulf that existed between Devon and Tucker. Why could Devon barely look at his own son? Why didn’t he have joint custody already? And what was with this mute kid? Her cousins never seemed to quiet down.

“Virginia,” she told him now. “The Blue Ridge is part of the Appalachian Mountains, one of the oldest mountain ranges in America.”

Tucker didn’t appear to be listening to her; instead, his gaze had followed hers to the pass. He was staring at his father like Devon was a stranger, or a puzzle he couldn’t work out. It made Lilah’s heart squeeze like a wrung-out washcloth.

“We’ll see your dad later,” she said, steering the boy gently toward the stairs leading down to the locker room and office. She figured they’d be better off to get out of the way.

But Tucker showed his first sign of life, twisting his hand free of hers and planting his feet like a baby mule.

Lilah raised her brows. “What? You want to stay up here?”

Tucker cast her a sidelong glance and, quick as that, the scared kid melted away, buried under a sullen expression.

At a loss, Lilah gestured around them. “Tucker. Come on, this can’t be fun for you. Come on downstairs with me and we’ll . . .” Damnation. Lilah had no idea how to finish that sentence. What on earth were they supposed to do for the next hour?

Panicking, she said the first thing that popped into her head. “We’ll play hangman!” Her cousins liked to play the word game on long car trips, Lilah knew.

The kid snorted, a look of deep scorn arching his brows. Lilah stared. If she’d had any doubt about his paternity before, those doubts were now assuaged.

“Look, kiddo. Everything I know about nannying comes from movies like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music—I realize it’s your job to start out surly and untrusting and I’m supposed to win you over with my charm and warm heart and incomparable singing voice, but unfortunately for both of us, Tuck, I am so not Julie Andrews. So what do you say we skip that part and head straight for being buds?” Tucker looked at her blankly. Dear sweet Lord in heaven, was it possible the child didn’t know what she was talking about?

While she was still struggling with the horror of a kid who didn’t know who Mary Poppins was, Tucker opened his mouth and dispelled any worries she’d had about his ability to speak.

“You talk weird, Lolly.”

His ability to speak politely, however, was still in question.

“I’m from the South,” Lilah said. “As I think I already mentioned.” She struggled for a moment against the hated nickname, then reluctantly added, “And that’s ‘Miss Lolly’ to you.” Tucker stared at her chal engingly. “Does everyone down there take so long to say stuff? You sound like the big chicken in the cartoons.”

Oh, he did not just compare her to Foghorn Leghorn.

Trying to be glad that the child was familiar with Warner Bros. cartoons—at least he had some grounding in the classics—Lilah pursed her mouth and said, “Maybe no one ever explained this to you before, but making fun of the way someone talks is not a great way to make a friend.” Tucker shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t care about making friends. And I don’t want to play hangman, either.”

“Well, what do you want to play?” Lilah felt like she was at sea in this conversation. Who would’ve thought one ten-year-old would be more challenging than a roomful of hormonal teens?

“Hide-and-seek,” Tucker said, smiling for the first time. The grin transformed his pointed face, bringing a sparkle to his eyes and revealing a previously hidden dimple in his left cheek.

Hoping to encourage this kinder, cuter Tucker, Lilah smiled back. “Okay, that sounds like fun. But there are rules, right? Every game has rules.”

Tucker cocked his head, giving every appearance of listening carefully. Gratified, Lilah went on. “The first one is the big one: No getting underfoot.”

He squinted. “No kidding. I don’t want to be stepped on.”

“Not literally under someone’s foot,” Lilah said, chuckling. “I mean don’t get in anyone’s way.”

“Oh,” Tucker said, his mouth curving down into an expression far too bitter and adult for his age. “No problem. I’m good at that.”

Hating the way his mouth curved into an unhappy bow, Lilah hurried to clarify. “I mean the dining room and the kitchen are both off-limits. Got it?”

Tucker shrugged again. Evidently, he liked to shrug. If Lilah had shrugged at her Aunt Bertie, she’d have been snatched bald-headed. Lilah reminded herself that it had been a traumatic evening for Tucker, and that maybe Yankee children were raised differently than she had been. Allowances could be made.

When he took off running, though, with no warning other than a toothy grin that seemed to say

“Sucka!” Lilah pressed her lips together and considered that, Yankee or not, a rude kid was a rude kid.

When she caught that Tucker, he was getting a lesson in manners he wouldn’t soon forget.

Devon blinked sweat out of his stinging eyes and panted, hands planted on the stainless-steel counter.

His right palm edged up against something sticky the color of plums, which part of his weary brain recognized as the port wine demiglace for the grilled rib-eye entrée. He hung his head and watched the reduced sauce stain his hand purple and just could not be bothered to move.

Every muscle ached, in that trembling sort of exhaustion he hadn’t experienced outside of the weight room at Clay, the ungodly expensive gym he trekked downtown to use religiously five days a week.

The worst service of his entire life was over, and all Devon could feel was a numb dread that it was only the first night of a full two weeks of torture.

All around him, cooks were cleaning up their stations in morose silence. Devon watched them mopping up spills and shuffling leftovers into the walk-in coolers and knew he ought to say something. Anything.

About how tonight sucked ass, but tomorrow was a brand-new day. Blah blah blah.

Instead, he forced his hands up to the buttons on his soiled, stained chef’s jacket and started working toward freeing himself from the thing. He imagined once he got it off his shoulders it would feel like being released from a straitjacket.

He wanted, desperately, to go to Chapel and get obliterated. Shrugging out of the jacket, he happened to look up and catch Frankie’s baleful eye. Yeah, the Chapel plan wasn’t going to happen. Frankie’s punk band was playing on the bar’s dingy stage later that night; with a single glance, the sous chef made it clear Devon wasn’t wanted.

A perverse desire to thrust himself into unwelcoming company almost sparked Devon’s natural defiance, but he shrugged it off. Devon didn’t like to admit mistakes; he hadn’t gotten where he was today by being liberal with apologies. But he was honest with himself, always, and he knew the lion’s share of the blame for tonight’s debacle rested squarely on his shoulders.

Not only had he introduced new menu items at the last second, as if he were running a challenge on a reality TV show rather than a restaurant kitchen, but he’d let his personal life throw him into the biggest tailspin imaginable.

The image he’d been trying, with varying degrees of success, to suppress al night came shooting back to the forefront of his mind.

Tucker. His son. Standing right in front of him, looking up at Devon like he was some guy off the street.

Devon barely recalled a word of his exchange with the police officer who’d brought Tucker in. He counted it as a minor victory that he seemed to have carried on a coherent conversation when his mind was filled with nothing but static. From the moment it became clear that Heather was asking him to take Tucker—Jesus, what the hell kind of trouble was she in, anyway? She swore she’d never do this—Devon’s feet had felt nailed to the floor, his mouth coated in super-glue, his brain stuffed with buzzing cotton.

And it had taken the worst busgirl in the history of the restaurant business to break him out of the trance.

Remembering the stricken look on Lilah Jane’s face when she realized she’d just inserted herself into Devon’s fucked-up family politics, he had to smile. Fuck it all, he hoped no one ever knew how close he’d come to bending her over his arm and kissing her senseless for that little bit of meddling.

The woman was a breath of sweet, fresh, uncomplicated air in the restrictive, claustrophobic prison that was Devon’s life.

And if that was dramatic, so the fuck what? He was a celebrity, damn it, he was supposed to diva it up whenever possible.

The kitchen had emptied while he’d been ruminating, and Devon frowned. Where the hell was Lilah, anyway? He thought she’d bring the kid—Tucker, he reminded himself with a reluctant smile—into the kitchen once service was over. Maybe she didn’t know what time it was.

Thinking perhaps she’d gotten Tucker to sleep on the couch in the office downstairs, Devon bal ed up his dirty jacket and threw it on the pile of crusty brown kitchen towels for the night porter to deal with, and headed for the door that hid the stairs to the lower level.

Thoughts of Lilah and sleep in the same brain space reminded Devon to congratulate himself on how handily he’d removed Lilah Jane Tunkle from the roster of restaurant employees, making her fair game for seduction.

Fine, if you wanted to be a stickler about it, she’d still be working for Devon when she became Tucker’s nanny, but that was a short-term gig, and besides, Devon had never made any hard and fast rules to govern the sexual practices of domestic help, so he was more than willing to give himself leeway on this one.

Now what to do about Tucker. Devon pitied the kid—it sucked ass to be stuck with a father who had no idea how to be a parent. His own dad spent the first eighteen years of Devon’s life screwing him up royally; the last thing Devon wanted was to inflict the same fate on someone else. It would probably be better for everyone if Devon just stayed out of Tucker’s way, kept the contact to a minimum. And it was only for a month, he reminded himself. That was good. Talented as he was, there had to be a limit to the amount of damage Devon could inflict in four weeks.

He stepped into the cramped, poorly lit stairwell and paused. Now that service was over and the constant clang and clatter of pans and dishes had ceased, Devon could savor the silence. Not to mention the all-too-rare moment spent unobserved, skulking on the stairs. He let his shoulders slump, only for a second, but the instant’s release from the tension of keeping up his super-chef façade was nearly orgasmic.

Pure, thick, blessed quiet enveloped him for all of ten seconds before he registered a faint but frantic voice calling, “Tucker? Tucker!”

Any peace Devon had achieved in the wake of service shattered like an etched crystal goblet.

He hurried down the stairs toward Lilah’s increasingly panicked voice.

“Tucker, so help me, this isn’t funny anymore. Quit hiding this instant and come here!” Fear gripped Devon’s stomach in an iron fist. He broke into a run and nearly collided with Lilah. He held her plastered against him for a beat, trying to find his equilibrium. Her eyes were wide and silvery green in the darkness, her breath coming in short pants that pushed her chest against his. Devon endeavored not to notice the softness of her breasts or the way her hair had escaped from its severe bun and spiraled in corkscrew curls around her pale face.

“What the fuck have you done with my son?” he asked with what he considered to be admirable calm.

Lilah scowled and wrenched out of his arms. “Tucker is perfectly fine,” she stated. “We’ve been playing hide-and-seek and he doesn’t seem to know when to quit, that’s all.” Shoving her hair distractedly behind her ears, Lilah raised her voice to a shout. “Tucker, come on! Your dad’s here now, and he’s ready to take you home!”

Somewhat mollified by Lilah’s assurance that Tucker was merely hiding, not kidnapped or something as Devon’s paranoid brain had instantly assumed, Devon stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and wandered after Lilah as she combed the locker room, office, and staff bathroom.

No Tucker.

“I have to say, Lilah Jane, you certainly know how to impress a prospective employer. Has he been hiding this whole time?”

He could practically see the steam shooting from her ears as she held in a snappy response. Devon wished she’d just let it fly.

Huh. It had been years since he’d tolerated backtalk of any kind. But there was something invigorating about sparring verbally with Lilah.

Not to mention distracting. Devon was self-aware enough to recognize that on some level, he was trying to provoke a fight with Lilah to keep from having to confront the rising tide of nauseating fear that his son was missing not two hours after being given into Devon’s care for the first time.

“Of course not. I don’t have much nannying experience, Mr. Sparks,” Lilah said through gritted teeth.

“But I’ve been around a lot of kids and I’ve never lost one yet. I’m sure he’s gone upstairs and we’ll find him in the dining room.”

But Tucker wasn’t in the dining room, nor was he in the kitchen, the pantry, the walk-in cooler, or behind the bar.