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  “Hi all. I’m sorry I’m late. I just spent two and a half hours with the decorator.” Her voice was slightly husky and she looked no one in the eye as she propped the cardboard against the wall and lay the papers on a table.

  Too good for eye contact, Steve surmised. He wondered if she didn’t have some henchman she could have sent to fire them all, if that was her intention. Personally, he hoped it wasn’t. Looking for a new job did not fit into his current plans at all. He was too busy with his own project for that.

  The rest of the crew just looked at her. The busboys seemed to be having trouble closing their gaping mouths. George lifted his head and Pat, one of the rowdier waiters, sat up far straighter and quieter than he probably ever had in his life

  “That,” George hissed at Steve, canting his body across the bar toward him, “is one hot chick.”

  Steve just raised his brows. Interestingly, she wasn’t as good-looking as she’d been before she’d opened her mouth yesterday. He wondered if anyone else would feel that way after she spoke to them today.

  She took off her jacket and the temperature in the room went up another ten degrees. George and Pat were now leaning forward at the sight of her tight jeans and scoop-neck shirt. Though it was not a provocative outfit, technically speaking, the clothes clung to her curves with what could only be described as tenacity.

  She lay her coat over the back of a chair and glanced over the assembled crew. “Hi. My name’s Roxanne Rayeaux and I’m the new owner of, uh, Charters. I’m sure you all have been wondering what my plans for the place are, since it’s my understanding that it’s been generally considered an unsuccessful restaurant for some time now.”

  People shifted in their seats. Steve could tell that comment struck them, as it did him, as an accusation—that she held them responsible for the restaurant’s failing.

  Steve cleared his throat. “Uh, that’s not exactly true.”

  Her eyes met his and she gave a little start of recognition. “It’s not?”

  “I mean, it’s true we’re all curious about you. But it’s not true that the place hasn’t been successful. It used to be extremely successful, until a few months ago when management pulled the plug on us,” Steve continued. “The chef quit, the distributors started cheating us out of the fresh stuff and we couldn’t get anyone to sign a check to save our lives. So you see it was all management. With the proper support, this place is a moneymaker.”

  She studied him. “You’re the guy who lives upstairs, aren’t you?” she asked. “What’s your name?”

  “Steve. Steve Serrano. And I can tell you anything you need to know about this place. Including how to get it back up and running at its full potential.”

  He owed it to her, he thought, because she was his new boss, to tell her that she hadn’t just bought a lemon, that they did all believe in the place, though its success had been compromised lately.

  A faint smile crossed her lips. “That’s all right, Mr. Serrano. I have a pretty good idea of what to do here. Now—”

  “Do you?” He smiled. “I don’t mean to tell you your business, but I mean it when I say that up until about six months ago this place was hot. The formula we have here, when adequately funded, works. Happy hours were packed, the dinner crowd was consistent, even lunches—”

  “Mr. Serrano,” she interrupted.

  He stopped, irked by her tone. “Yes, Ms. Rayeaux?”

  “What this place was, once upon a time, no longer matters. If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do with it.” She smiled tightly at him.

  “Well, sure. Go ahead.” He gestured with one hand for her to continue. So much for trying to help her out.

  “Thank you.” She turned the length of cardboard around and leaned it back against a chair. On the face of it were fabric swatches, pictures of furniture, paint samples and various other glued-on pictures that were hard to make out from behind the bar.

  Steve noticed all the heads in front of him lean forward in an attempt to make out the clues, and felt the group’s perplexity rise like a cloud to hover over the bar.

  She lay one hand along the top of the cardboard. “As you can see, my vision is quite different from what this place has been until now. At the end of next week, I’m closing Charters to do a massive redecoration and remodel. I’m having wine caves installed and updating the bathrooms. I’m also replacing all the tables, chairs, carpeting and artwork, so that in the span of about three weeks, this place will be transformed into an upscale French bistro. We will serve only the freshest food, brilliantly prepared by Chef Girmond from La Finesse in New York, and served by a professional staff of well-trained waiters and waitresses. Which brings me to you all.”

  Steve’s heart sank. This was worse than he’d feared.

  Her dark eyes made their way down the line of employees sitting on bar stools before her. Her face was an unreadable mask, until she got to Steve, standing behind the rest of them at the bar. To him, she gave a small smile.

  Was she gloating? he wondered. Could she possibly know how much he hated French food? Not to mention French chefs, French décor and French women who belittled American men with condescending smiles.

  She shifted her look back to the employees. “I’m willing to offer each of you a job if you agree to be trained by the new maitre d’, Sir Nigel Wallings. Some of you may know of Sir Nigel, he’s been maitre d’ at Carruthers, downtown, for many years and we are extremely lucky to have lured him away from that fine restaurant. You’ll be paid your regular hourly wage during training, which I recognize is not much compared to what you make in tips, but you will be guaranteed a job at the end of it.”

  Silence dominated the room before Rita raised her hand. For a moment Steve tried to imagine Rita, who had once escorted an unruly bar patron from the restaurant by gripping him firmly by the balls, brushing bread crumbs from a linen tablecloth with a silver server.

  Roxanne’s gaze settled on Rita. The two of them were like fire and ice, Steve reflected.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve heard of that Sir Nigel,” Rita said, her narrow back ramrod straight. “He’s supposed to be a class-A prick. I don’t know anybody who’s ever worked for him who could say they liked him.”

  Steve sighed. He was going to miss working with Rita.

  For a moment, Roxanne seemed to be weighing something. Then, hands on her hips, she said, “He is a prick.”

  George and Pat tittered and the busboys shared surreptitious smiles. Despite himself, Steve felt a twinge of admiration for her candor.

  “But he knows food, he knows service and he knows people. More importantly, people know him, and they will follow him to whatever restaurant he chooses to work for. I’m not going to hide what I’m trying to do here. I don’t care about keeping whatever patrons Charters happens to have left. If we alienate every last one of them I’ll be happy. I want the high rollers. And frankly, so do you. If you spend two hours waiting on a table ordering burgers, you’re going to make a helluva lot less money than if you spend two hours on a table ordering sweetbreads.”

  “Sweet bread?” One of the busboys, Manuel, piped up. “How much you gonna be charging people for sweet bread?”

  Steve chuckled, but he was the only one.

  Roxanne’s eyes scanned the group for whoever had spoken.

  “Not sweet bread, Manuel.” Steve directed his words to the wiry young busboy. “Sweetbreads. It’s a fancy way of saying ‘brains.’”

  “Brains!” The word popped out of Rita’s mouth and she turned to Steve. “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “’Fraid not.”

  Roxanne looked at him in surprise.

  “That’s right.” He grinned back at her. “The savant knows a thing or two about food.”

  Her lips curved into a smile. “Very good. But it’s actually the thymus or pancreas of a young calf. You go to the head of the class anyway, however, for knowing sweetbreads are an organ meat.”

&nbs
p; George muttered a comment about “organ meat” that made the whole left side of the bar erupt into laughter.

  Steve lifted a brow. “I would, ma’am, but I don’t want my classmates to think I’m trying to be teacher’s pet.” To this insolence he added a wink.

  She stiffened and her expression went cold. “There’ll be no pets in this restaurant, Mr. Serrano, real or figurative.” Her gaze dropped his like a dirty dishrag. “Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to be in the restaurant all weekend, seeing how things are currently done before closing down next week. Those of you who would like to be considered for employment at Chez Soi, please fill out one of these forms.” She indicated the stack of papers on the table. “Next week, I’ll be calling those of you interested in staying on.”

  “What do you mean you’ll be seeing how things are done?” George asked. “I thought you were changing everything anyway.”

  “She means we’ll be auditioning for our jobs, dipstick,” Rita said. “Jeez, don’t you listen?”

  “Is that right?” Steve asked.

  The dark gaze was back upon him.

  “Will we be auditioning for our jobs?” he persisted.

  She seemed to take a deep breath. “My plan is to watch how things are done and make notes on what needs to change. Whether that means personnel or procedure, I can’t really say right now. I’ve never been in here when the place was open.”

  “It’s not much different than it is now,” Pat said.

  “Except it’s crowded now.” George snickered.

  Roxanne looked from one end of the group to the other. “Anybody have any other questions?”

  Everyone was silent. Steve gazed around the room, wondering just what kind of remodeling she planned on doing. If she took out the right wall, he thought, looking at the place where the old staircase used to be, there was a slight chance it could result in a historical gold mine for him.

  “Okay, then,” she said on an exhale, straightening the papers on the table beside her.

  Steve raised his hand. “Yeah, I have a question.”

  She lifted her chin. “Yes?”

  “If you’ve got this fancy chef coming to run the kitchen, and this Sir Nigel character to run the front, and you’re looking at us to possibly keep our jobs, what, exactly, are you going to do?”

  Rita snorted, then quickly covered her mouth with a hand. She shot a laughing glance back at him.

  Roxanne settled those black eyes on Rita, then shifted her gaze back to Steve. “That’s a good question. You should know my credentials and why I’m qualified to create and run a successful restaurant. First of all, I’ve just spent a year at the CIA, and—”

  Rita made a noise between a grunt and a scoff, jutting her chin out in disbelief. “You telling us you were a spy?”

  Steve couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s the Culinary Institute of America, darlin’.”

  “Oh.” Rita pulled her chin back but looked dubious. “She could have just said that.”

  Roxanne’s expression as she looked at Rita was inscrutable but the attention did not bode well for his friend, Steve thought.

  “I should have been clearer,” she said icily. “In any case, I also have years of waitressing experience as well as firsthand knowledge of the business of running a restaurant, with all of its risks and rewards. I grew up working in a restaurant my parents owned in the Adams Morgan section of D.C.”

  “Which one?” Steve asked, if only to draw Roxanne’s focus from poor Rita, whom he knew needed her job even more than he did his.

  “It was a small place—family style—called Mama’s.” Roxanne’s gaze skidded away from the group in a move that looked uncharacteristically vulnerable to him. “My father died and shortly thereafter my mother retired, so it’s been gone for several years now.”

  “I remember Mama’s,” Steve murmured, trying to call up more than just the sign in his memory.

  “In any case,” she inhaled and looked steadily back at Rita, “I’m a pastry chef by training. So I’ll be in charge of desserts.”

  Rita turned on her stool and looked at Steve. Just loud enough for him to hear, she said, “Just desserts, sounds like. Whether we deserve them or not.”

  2

  Bar Special

  Charters Sundowner—in honor of the sun setting on the old Fish House

  Brandy, lemon juice, orange juice, Van der Hum

  Springsteen throbbed over the sound system. Hard to Be a Saint in the City—an old song that Steve had long considered his anthem. The driving rhythm and souped-up bass made the blood pound ecstatically in his ears as he poured a line of lime green Jell-O shooters for George’s friend Billy and two of his buddies.

  It was almost like the old days in Charters, with the place packed and the energy high. The small dining room was nearly full and orders of fish and chips careened out of the kitchen as fast as the line cooks could pull them out of the deep fryer. Girls strutted their stuff and guys laughed too loud over impossible-to-hear jokes while their eyes darted with feral intent from one sexily clad female to the next.

  Of course, it was all a fake. The remaining staff of the dying restaurant had called in their friends to fill the place up, begging them to make a showing so they could have a roomful of happy customers to show their new boss. God only knew what they were going to do tomorrow night. These people sure as hell wouldn’t be coming back for Round Two.

  Steve slid a couple of longneck Budweisers to Manuel’s friends at the end of the bar and waved off their surprise.

  “On the house,” he said over the music.

  What the hell, he thought. No sense making the busboys’ friends go broke so their pals could continue making a couple bucks an hour. What were the chances Ms. Snooty-Pants was going to keep a bunch of Ecuadorians in her fancy French restaurant anyway?

  “Hey, Buttcheeks!”

  Steve looked over and grinned at Rita, with her sharp face and porcupine hair. “Hey, darlin’. How’s the classiest woman I know doing tonight?”

  “I’ll be better with two whiskey sours and a scotch, straight up.” She pushed a pen behind one ear and rearranged the checks in her apron pocket.

  “Wouldn’t we all?” Steve pulled out a couple of tumblers and set them on the bar.

  “So when’s Frenchy showing up?” Rita lay her elbows on the bar and leaned, giving her feet a break. “Don’t tell me tomorrow because there’s no fucking way my parents are coming two nights in a row.”

  “Your parents are here?” Steve looked out over the crowd but wouldn’t have known Rita’s parents if they were throwing back Jell-O shooters with George’s friends. And, knowing Rita, they might be.

  “Yeah, I finally told them about your passionate desire to marry me and they came to check you out.” She rubbed her nose with one hand and scrunched her face. She was allergic to cigarette smoke, Steve knew. “But don’t worry, Dad only brought the twelve-gauge.”

  “Good. For a second I was nervous.”

  Steve set the drinks on her tray and she disappeared into the crowd with it.

  “Steve-arino!” A tall blond man emerged from the horde at the bar and reached a square hand over the teased hair of a woman drinking a margarita in front of him.

  “Hey, P.B.” Steve reached up and shook his friend’s hand, sending the woman with the margarita an apologetic wink. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it, wouldn’t miss it.” P.B., so tall, blond and good-looking he’d been called P.B.—for Pretty Boy—since high school, looked admiringly around the room. “Hey, looks like old times in here. You guys get a new cook?”

  Steve grimaced. “Worse. New owner. This is probably Charters’ last gasp, my friend. Say good-bye to the world as we know it.”

  “What do you mean? The place is doing great, who’d mess with it?” P.B. slid onto the bar stool vacated by Margarita Girl’s cohort.

  Margarita Girl tapped him on the shoulder. “My friend only went to the bathroom. She�
��s coming back.”

  P.B. grinned at her, melting her as only P.B. could, and patted his lap with one hand. “I’m saving a place for her.”

  The girl put one hand into her mass of curls and smiled flirtatiously. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate your keeping it warm.”

  P.B. laughed and turned back to Steve with a conspiratorial look. Having girls come on to him was like a drug to P.B. He had to have a hit of it regularly to keep his high.

  “Hey,” a customer in front of the beer taps summoned Steve. “This beer’s flat.” He pushed a pint glass across the bar.

  “Which one was it?” Steve asked.

  The guy indicated the Bud tap. Steve opened it into a glass and tasted. Sure enough.

  “Sorry, pal. What’ll you have instead?”

  “Bud bottle?”

  “No problem.”

  Steve moved to the cooler and retrieved a bottle.

  “Great crowd,” P.B. said when Steve returned. “So maybe seeing this, the new owner’ll just keep it the way it is. And bring back happy hour. Charters’ happy hour was legendary.”

  “I know. But this, tonight, this is all a show.” Steve delivered the Bud bottle, picked up a pint glass, filled it with Bass Ale from the tap and put it on the bar in front of P.B. “Most of the time these days the place is dead. Ever since Mario left to work at the place downtown and we stopped validating parking. We just called in a bunch of people to make it look good tonight for the new owner.”

  P.B. put a hand to one pocket and frowned. “Shit. You don’t validate parking anymore?”

  Steve moved down the bar to fix a martini for a young guy wearing what Steve interpreted as a stockbroker suit, then came back to his friend.

  P.B. was craning his neck to look toward the kitchen. “So where is he? The new owner? I’ll give him an earful about this place. Hey, you should tell him about all that history you dug up here. That stuff’s great. You can’t close a place with stories like that attached to it.”

  “Something tells me she won’t care about any of that. Besides, she’s not closing us. She’s reinventing us.”