Burn for You (Slow Burn Book 1)(2)

When finished, I quickly handed the plates off to a waiting server. Two more dishes needing final inspection instantly took their place from a server on my other side. The restaurant was filled to capacity, and at only six o’clock I knew I was in for a long night. I couldn’t have been happier.

After all, this was my dream come true. I’d grown up in the kitchen of my mama’s restaurant and had been saving and scrimping for years to open my own. Cooking was in my blood as much as jazz music and the Saints.

My happiness took its first hit when the hostess burst through the swinging metal kitchen doors in tears.

I looked up at her in surprise. “Pepper! What on earth—”

“That egg-suckin’ son of a motherless goat can kiss my ass!” cried Pepper, swiping angrily at her watering eyes so her mascara smudged all over her cheeks.

Pepper swore like a sailor, wore too much makeup, had hair dyed an unholy shade of streetwalker red and skirts as short as her heels were tall, but she was a genuinely sweet girl who had a way with people. The regulars loved her.

Besides, this was the French Quarter. If I required a hostess who looked like a sexless nun, I’d be seating the tables myself.

I took Pepper by the arm and steered her through the kitchen to the back, near the walk-in freezer. The last thing I wanted was my guests getting a side of Pepper’s notoriously salty mouth with their gumbo.

I handed Pepper a tissue. “What’s going on?”

Pepper dabbed at her eyes and dramatically sniffled. “That man who just came in—”

My stomach dropped. “Mr. Boudreaux?”

Pepper nodded, then launched into an outraged rant.

“He said he wanted a table, and I told him unfortunately we were fully committed, and he said what the hell did that mean, and I tried to nicely explain that we didn’t have any available tables, and then he said all snottylike, ‘Don’t you know who I am!’ and demanded I find him a table, and I said I just told you there aren’t any tables available, sir, and there’s a waiting list a mile long, but he cut me off and said—really mean, too, he’s like a crossbred dog!—that his name was all over our menu and if I didn’t get him a table, he’d make sure our name was all over the papers, and not in a good way, either, because he knew all the press! So it was like he threatened me, and when I got upset, he growled at me to stop sniveling! Sniveling! Doesn’t that just dill my pickle!”

Pepper ended her rant with a stamp of her stiletto heel.

I pinched the bridge of my nose between two fingers and sighed. So Mr. Boudreaux didn’t have a reservation after all. And trusting Pepper to do her best hadn’t exactly worked out as I’d hoped.

“All right, Pepper, first thing—calm down. Take a deep breath.”

Grudgingly, she did.

“Good. Now go back out there and tell him—nicely, please—that the owner will be out to speak with him in a few minutes. Then show him to the bar and have Gilly give him a drink. On the house.”

“But—”

“Pepper,” I interrupted, my voice firm. “That is Jackson Boudreaux. Not only could the man buy and sell this town a hundred times over, he’s no doubt connected with all kinds of highfalutin folks, which means that if he feels mistreated, all those people are gonna hear about it, which isn’t good for business. I’m sorry he wasn’t nice to you, but you need to learn how to handle peacocks like that without getting your own feathers ruffled.”

Smiling to soften my words, I squeezed Pepper’s shoulder. “And remember, the biggest bullies are the biggest babies inside. So just picture him in a nappy with a bottle stuck in his mouth, and don’t let him intimidate you.”

With a toss of her head, Pepper sniffled again. “I’d rather picture him with a bucket of crawdads shoved up his tight ass in place of that stick.”

The loud cackle from the front of the kitchen was Eeny.

“Charming, Pepper,” I said drily. “Now go.”

With a final sniff, Pepper turned and flounced out.



It was ten minutes before I could steal time away from the kitchen. When I stepped out from behind the swinging metal doors, I saw Pepper had followed my instructions.

Jackson Boudreaux stood at the end of the bar, glaring into his drink like it had made a rude comment about his mother. Though the rest of the bar was crowded, around him there was a five-foot circle of space, as if his presence were repelling.

I wonder if he smells?

Judging by his appearance, it was a distinct possibility. The black leather jacket he wore was so creased and battered it could have been from another century. The thick scruff on his jaw made it obvious he didn’t shave on anything resembling a regular basis, and his hair—as black as his expression—curled over the collar of his jacket and fell across his forehead in a way that suggested it hadn’t seen a pair of scissors in years.