BIANCA
The first time I laid eyes on the man known throughout the state of Louisiana as “the Beast,” I thought he couldn’t possibly be as bad as his reputation.
As it turned out, I was wrong.
He was worse.
Dressed all in black, standing a head taller than everyone else, his shoulders so broad they cast an ominous shadow over the polished wood floor, Jackson Boudreaux surveyed the bustling dining room of my restaurant with the expression of a king who’d stumbled upon a village of peasants infected with the plague.
His lip was curled. His eyes were narrowed. His nose was stuck so far up in the air, I wondered if he’d come in from the rain to avoid drowning.
“Hoo Lawd ! We got ourselves a loup-garou! Get the garlic!”
Standing beside me at the stove in the kitchen, my sous chef, Ambrosine, made the sign of the cross over her ample chest as she peered through the glass wall at the man in black. Eeny, as she was affectionately called by everyone who knew her, was a retired voodoo priestess with a collection of superstitions almost as elaborate as her African tribal-print caftans.
“Garlic is for vampires, not werewolves, Eeny,” I said, gazing past the tables of diners to the hostess stand at the front of the restaurant, where the man with the presence of thunderclouds stood glowering at the hostess, Pepper. The poor girl was visibly shrinking under the weight of his stare.
A flash of irritation made me frown.
It was the first, and mildest, of many such flashes I’d have tonight.
“That ain’t no werewolf, or no vampire,” grumbled a voice to my right.
I glanced at my pastry chef. Hoyt was a seventysomething Cajun with an accent thicker than bayou sludge, a grizzled white beard, and arthritic hands that still managed to make the best beignets in New Orleans. He jerked his chin toward the newcomer, then turned his attention back to the giant ball of dough on the floured wood board on the counter in front of him.
“I recognize his face from the papers,” said Hoyt. “That there is the boodoo tête de cabri, Mr. Boudreaux Bourbon Jr. himself.”
“Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit,” I said, panicking.
My panic wasn’t because Hoyt had called the mysterious new arrival a goat-headed bully. Hoyt had a way of describing people that was as colorful as the Mardi Gras parade. It was because that particular goat-headed bully was heir to the world’s number one best-selling bourbon empire.
A bourbon I had created my entire spring menu around.
It was a menu that had been extremely well received by my guests and the cause for a surge in reservations. It was getting fantastic reviews from local food critics and had even just this month received a glowing mention in Gourmet magazine.
It was a menu, in all honesty, packed so full of love and soul and hope and sweat that it was like it was my own baby. I’d spent months preparing it, testing it, and fine-tuning it until it was perfect.
But having Jackson Boudreaux himself come in to dine was an event I was completely unprepared for.
I knew he lived in New Orleans—I read the papers, too, after all—but had heard so much talk of him being unsociable and hermitlike, I thought it unlikely he’d ever show up at my door, even if his family bourbon had inspired the menu.
Now here he was.
All six-foot-scowling-three of him.
Scaring the wits out of my hostess and sending an eerie hush through my dining room.
“How did I miss his name on the reservations list?” I cried. “If I’d known he was coming, I’d have made sure to give him the best table!”
Eeny said, “Pepper just seated a family of eight at the best table. It’s an anniversary party, boo. They’ll probably be there for hours.”
I groaned. I was tempted to go out and find a table for him myself, but we were swamped in the kitchen. I’d just have to trust Pepper to do her best to fit him in somewhere as fast as she could.
“Y’all get back to work!” I instructed the rest of the kitchen staff, who had stopped what they were doing to stare at Jackson Boudreaux like everyone else in the place.
When no one moved, I clapped my hands. The staff jumped back into action, knowing that a clap meant business. I never raised my voice with them, even when I was angry, which was rare. I had a naturally sunny disposition.
It was about to be put to the test.
“Henri, I need more pepper jelly!” I called to one of my line cooks as I turned my attention back to the ramekins of duck étouffée I was plating. Every dish that left the kitchen did so only after a final inspection from me. As Henri rushed over with a container of the homemade spicy jelly, I pushed all thoughts of Jackson Boudreaux aside to concentrate on my task.
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.
No wonder Eeny had called him a werewolf. The man had the look of something wild and dangerous you might run across if you were out for a midnight stroll in the woods.
He looked up and caught me staring.
From all the way across the room I felt the weight of his gaze, the sudden shocking force of it, as if he’d reached out and seized me around the throat.
My breath caught. I had to convince myself not to step back. I forced a smile. Then I made myself move forward, when all my instincts were telling me to turn around and find a vial of holy water and a gun loaded with silver bullets.
I stopped often to shake hands with the regulars and say hello as I made my way through the room, so it was another few minutes before I made it to the bar. When I finally found myself standing in front of my intended target, I was dismayed to see his expression had turned from merely unpleasant to downright murderous.
The first thing Jackson Boudreaux said to me was, “I don’t like to be kept waiting.”
And my oh my did the Beast have a beautiful voice.
Deep and rich, silky but with an edge like a purr, it was at total odds with his unkempt appearance. It oozed confidence, command, and raw sex appeal. It was the voice of a man secure of his place in the world—a voice that was as used to giving orders to employees as it was to women beneath him in bed.
A flush of heat crept up my neck. I wasn’t sure if it was from annoyance, that voice, or his disturbing steely-blue eyes, which were now burning two holes in my head.
Before I could reply, he snapped, “Your hostess is incompetent. The music is too loud. And your drink menu is pretentious. ‘Romeo and Julep?’ ‘The Last of the Mojitos?’ Awful. If I were going on first impressions, I’d guess your food is awful, too.”
The flush on my neck flooded into my cheeks. My mouth decided to answer before I did. “And if I were going on first impressions, I’d guess you were one of the homeless panhandlers who harass the tourists over on the boulevard, and throw you out of my restaurant.”
Nostrils flared, he stared at me.
So much for unruffled feathers.
To cover my embarrassment, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. “Bianca Hardwick. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Boudreaux.”
There was a long, terrible moment during which I thought he’d start to shout, but he simply took my hand and shook it.
“Miss Hardwick. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Formal. So he wasn’t born in a barn after all.
“Call me Bianca, please. I apologize for the wait.”
Jackson dropped my hand, and with it, his brief civility. “If I wanted to call you Bianca, I would have. Where’s my table?”
He glared at me, his hand wrapped so tightly around his drink his knuckles were white.
Pepper sure called this one. I owe that girl an apology.
Fighting the urge to kick him in the shin, I instead gave him my sweetest Southern-belle smile. I would not be intimidated, or bullied, or lose my cool on account of this arrogant jerk.
“Oh, it’s here somewhere.” Deliberately vague because I knew it would annoy him, I waved a hand in the air. “As soon as a table becomes available, we’ll squeeze you in where we can. So nice of you to drop by. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to—”
“Miss Hardwick,” he hissed, stepping closer to loom over me. “Where. Is. My. Table?”
I felt a dozen pairs of eyes on us. In my peripheral vision, I saw the bartender, Gilly—almost an older brother to me—red-faced in anger at how I was being treated. And was it my imagination, or had the restaurant gone quiet again?
One thing definitely wasn’t in my imagination. Jackson Boudreaux didn’t smell. At least not bad. Standing so close, I caught his scent: a delicious whiff of exotic musk and warm, clean skin that would have been extremely sexy on anyone else.
But it wasn’t anyone else. It was Prince A-hole, heir to an international bourbon dynasty, devoid of affection for shaving, haircuts, new clothes, or, it appeared, the human race.
Nappy! Picture him in a nappy with a binkie in his big fat mouth!
I lifted my chin and looked up into his eyes. I said calmly, “Maybe you were right about the music being too loud. It must have obstructed your hearing, because I just told you that we’d get you a table as soon as one becomes available. Or perhaps you’d prefer I throw someone out? Maybe that nice elderly couple by the piano? They look much less deserving of enjoying their meal than you do, am I right?”
His lips flattened. A muscle in his jaw flexed. Through his nose, he slowly drew in a breath.
I wondered if he was restraining himself from smashing his glass against the wall. Though my heart was hammering, I stood my ground and didn’t blink.
Finally, he dragged a hand through the thick mess of his hair and exhaled, an exasperated sound that clearly telegraphed how much he enjoyed interacting with the peasants.
Especially ones who dared to get lippy.
He snapped, “How long?”
By this time my smile had died a painful death. “You made my hostess cry. How long of a wait do you think that’s worth?”
Through gritted teeth, he replied, “I’m not a man to be toyed with, Miss Hardwick. As I told your hysterical hostess, I know all the prominent food critics—”
I snorted. “How lucky for them!”
“—and as my name is featured prominently on most of the dishes on your menu, I’d expect you’d be more accommodating—”
“Technically, Boudreaux is your family’s name, correct?”
“—because I make it my business to protect anything with my name on it—”
“Excuse me, how did my menu suddenly become your property?”
“—and if your food is as bad as everything else I’ve experienced so far, including your attitude, I won’t hesitate to speak with my industry contacts, along with my attorneys about your infringement on my family’s trademark.”
My mouth dropped open. I stared at him in horror. “You’re threatening to sue me? You can’t possibly be serious!”
For an answer, he narrowed his eyes at me. A low, dangerous growl rumbled through his chest.
Oh, no. Oh, no, he did not just try to scare me with that wild animal act!
I closed the final foot between us, looked straight into his cold blue eyes, and said, “I don’t care who you are, Mr. Boudreaux, or how much bad press you can bring me, or how many overpaid attorneys you have. Your manners are atrocious. Growl at me again and I will throw you out.”
I stepped back and met his burning stare with a level one of my own. “You’ll get the next available table. In the meantime, have another drink on me. Maybe the alcohol will turn you back into a human being.”
Fuming, I spun around and walked away, convinced Jackson Boudreaux was the most arrogant, stuck-up, bad-tempered man I’d ever had the misfortune to cross paths with. The only thing I could ever feel for him was disgust.
As it turned out, I was wrong about that, too.