The Saturday Night Supper Club Read online

Slowly, for the rest of the afternoon, replies trickled in. Alex started a scrawled, four-column list showing the different Saturday dates and the various invitees’ availability. Only two begged off with requests to be kept in mind once the summer was over.

  It was looking like the Saturday after next, the one following the Fourth of July, was the clear winner.

  The only problem was, most of the invitees written under that Saturday were very serious. If he wasn’t careful, they would lack the levity and good humor necessary to not only make the party come off without a hitch, but to put people in a good enough mood to tweet and Instagram and Facebook their experience.

  Too bad his sister wasn’t living in Denver right now. She had always been great at these sorts of gatherings, winning over even their parents’ stuffiest friends. But she was all the way on the left coast, doing her best to make it as an actress.

  It had been a while since she’d been home.

  Alex picked up his cell phone and dialed Dina, trying not to feel guilty about the little notation that told him it had been over six weeks since he’d used the number. And he was the one in his family who spoke to her the most.

  “D-Rex!” he said when she picked up. “What’s shakin’, little sis?”

  “Ugh,” she groaned. “Do you have to call me that?”

  “Yes. I’m your big brother and I do have to call you that.” It was a variation on what he’d called her when she was a little girl, “Dinasaur,” and had morphed into all sorts of variations on the theme. If you couldn’t hold a younger sister’s prehistoric creature phase against her, what good was having one?

  “So what’s up, big bro? Did Mom and Dad put you up to calling me to make sure I’m not doing those movies?”

  Alex stifled his laugh with a cough. She did such a perfect imitation of their mother, with her Russian accent and her hushed tone when she talked about something the least bit racy, he couldn’t understand how Dina hadn’t picked up a job based on her impression skills alone. “No. Last time I saw them, I told them you had gotten some good roles and were doing fine.”

  “So you lied,” she said. “Not that I don’t appreciate it.”

  “Say nothing of it. Seriously. I was wondering if you might like a trip home for a visit in a couple of weeks. Think you can swing it?”

  “Let me guess. You’re introducing a girl to Mom and Dad and you need me to take the heat off you.”

  He smothered another laugh. Despite the ten-year gap between them, he’d always loved his sister’s brutal sense of humor. He’d forgotten how much he missed her. “Actually, I have a dinner party coming up and all my guests have a bit of a serious nature. I thought maybe I’d throw you in the mix and have you lighten them up a bit.”

  “That sounds like fun. But I can’t. I try to pull doubles on the weekend so I have weekdays free for auditions. If I miss a few days, I won’t be able to make rent.”

  He paused. He’d been under the impression that she really was doing fine, and the few walk-on roles and commercials she’d booked were holding her over through the lean times. “Do you need money, Dina?”

  “Not if I keep showing up for work.”

  There was something in her voice that bothered him, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint what. Now he really did want her to come home, so he could make sure she was okay. “What if you were coming out here for a job?”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Well, my chef friend is going to have her hands full cooking, and we could use a food runner.”

  “Her? You didn’t say anything about a her. Who is she? Is she pretty? Are you dating?”

  Alex chuckled. No sense in lying, because she’d know for herself soon enough. “Her name is Rachel. She is very pretty. And no, we are not dating.”

  “Wait. Not Rachel Bishop? That chef you completely wrecked?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Everyone knows about that. Besides, I follow you on Twitter. Only you would be able to pick up a girl whose life you’d ruined.”

  Alex leaned back in his seat and propped his feet up on his desk. “I did not pick her up, and this supper club is my way of trying to make amends. Introduce her to some people who can speak well of her, rebuild her reputation, find her an investor.”

  “Gotcha. You’re fixing things again.”

  “I do not—”

  “Yes, you do. You’ve been trying to fix things with me and Mom and Dad for over three years now. If I come out there to play waitress for a day, you’re going to talk me into going over to Sunday dinner at their house and hope that we’re going to miraculously get along. You do this every single time, Alex. You need to learn that some things you can’t fix.”

  The words sent an unreasonable current of fear through him, even though she was talking about her damaged relationship with their parents. She was right. So far he had failed at mending the rift between them and Dina, something he would always regret, given his part in it. Surely he wouldn’t fail Rachel, too.

  “So you’ll come, then?”

  She seemed to be considering. “You’ll pay for the ticket?”

  “I’ll pay for the ticket.”

  “And you won’t make me go to Mom and Dad’s?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  Dina sighed. “Okay. I’m in. Book me a late flight from LAX on that Friday and I’ll be there.”

  “If I can’t pick you up for some reason, I’ll send a car.”

  “Yeah, yeah, big-time writer doesn’t have time to get his sister from the airport. I get it.” But her tone seemed a little brighter than it had earlier, and he knew now that he was doing the right thing. There was definitely something going on with his sister.

  “I’m booking your flight now. Love you, Dinasaur.”

  “Love you too, idiot.”

  Alex laughed and clicked off the phone. He would no doubt be able to convince her to work the party before and after with her trademark charm, lighten up the mood. Now he just had to let Rachel know that he’d picked the date and taken care of the server situation.

  Despite the fact that he was only thirty words further along on his proposal, it felt like a good day’s work.

  Chapter Thirteen

  RACHEL HAD BEEN STARING at the boxes she’d brought from Paisley for nearly a week, as if by leaving them unopened, the whole situation might prove to be a bad dream. Like she might magically stumble upon a restaurant lacking a chef and move the boxes straight into her new office as if she had planned it that way.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  She lifted the lid on the first, found the cookbooks that she had dragged around with her since she’d first moved to New York. They were battered and stained, older than her, considering she had found some of them in a secondhand bookshop in Greenwich Village. Larousse Gastronomique, the encyclopedia of French cooking, an early edition. Jacques Pépin’s Complete Techniques. The Escoffier Cookbook, an abridged English version of Georges Auguste Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire. Basically, the books that had helped her through her first jobs in fine dining—culinary school for those who couldn’t afford culinary school.

  She went to the white-painted built-ins in her living room, shoved over a handful of other books, and slid them onto the shelf.

  One by one, she withdrew the composition notebooks that she bought in bulk. Each one had a date written on the front in thick black Sharpie, the day she started a new one. Twelve years’ worth. The early books had notes from the first New York kitchens in which she had worked, some of which were barely decipherable now. The later ones were more relevant, containing ideas for new dishes, flavor pairings, ingredients to try out and the best place from which to buy them. If she lined them up in chronological order, she’d see her growth, her progression from kitchen assistant to line cook to chef. Looking at how far she had come, there was no reason to believe she couldn’t pull off a menu that would dazzle everyone.

  She found the last two, dated earlier this year, and brou
ght them with a pen over to her dining room table. Surely there was something in here she could use for the supper club.

  Rachel flipped through the pages slowly. Some were cryptic: fennel, acid, add crunch. Others were extremely specific, full recipes that she could make right now. They were written to be specials or menu items, with notes on ordering. Not that she couldn’t scale it down to a meal for twelve, but there were some things—shaved truffles, for example—that weren’t practical when the food costs were coming out of her own pocket.

  Focus. Flipping through these books wasn’t getting her anywhere. She’d told Alex she would have some ideas written up in a few days. Right now all she had were columns that said, Amuse-bouche, soup, salad, seafood, meat, dessert, cocktails. She needed to get it together, or she’d be serving them pieces of notebook paper and calling it performance art.

  Her phone, left on silent to filter the trickle of calls she was still receiving from the media, lit up. She saw Alex’s name flash on the lock screen with his text message: Can you meet for coffee tomorrow morning?

  She picked up the phone, happy for the distraction from her current predicament. Going to farmers’ market in the a.m. Meet me at The English Department before?

  I can be there at 6:30.

  A smile spread across her face. Sure you’ll be able to get yourself properly dressed by 6:30? It’s not the sort of place that likes sweatpants.

  Are you flirting with me, Chef? It sounds like you’re flirting.

  A laugh slipped from her lips. You wish.

  You’re right, I do.

  Her breath gave a hitch as she stared at those four words on her screen. Then a follow-up came through. Okay, you win. 6:30. I’ll be the one looking caffeine-deprived but wearing grown-up clothes.

  Deal. She set down her phone and exhaled. She was imagining things. Alex was a jokester; she’d seen that from the beginning. Liked to show off how clever he was, which no doubt translated into women thinking he was flirting with them. There was probably no shortage of disappointed hearts when they realized he was like that with every woman. Unless, of course, he took advantage of the admiring glances he got from half the population.

  Probably not the thing to be thinking about a man who was essentially a business partner, or at least a comrade-in-arms in her mission to rebuild her career. There was no reason the same rules shouldn’t apply to him as they did to the restaurant staff with whom she’d worked over the years.

  Alex Kanin, for more reasons than one, should be completely off-limits.

  * * *

  When Rachel woke to her alarm the next morning, a knot of nervousness immediately formed in her stomach. It took her a moment to remember she was meeting Alex at her favorite LoDo restaurant in an hour, and she still had absolutely nothing to show him. For all her reading and brainstorming and flailing about, she had made very little progress.

  Unless, of course, she defined progress as making a “refrigerator soup” of all the leftovers sitting in her vegetable crisper. An excellent use of things that would otherwise go to waste, but perhaps not the best use of her time considering she was no closer to a completed menu than her initial list of courses.

  She dragged herself out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. By the time she had downed her first cup, she felt slightly more coherent. She had too much time on her hands—that was the problem. She was used to putting together a specials menu in thirty minutes based on the week’s leftovers. Entire days to plan were completely foreign to her process.

  Rachel pulled out the notebook and began another list.

  Amuse-bouche—asparagus mousse on homemade crisp

  Vegetable—braised fennel with apples

  Soup—cold corn gazpacho

  Seafood—pan-seared scallops on summer greens salad

  Meat/Game—duck three ways with something brilliant on the side

  Dessert—whatever amazing thing Melody comes up with

  Okay, so it barely qualified as a menu, but it was respectable and she wouldn’t embarrass herself by having absolutely nothing. It wasn’t like she was married to it. She still had weeks to go through her notebooks, come up with some great ideas, and put together a menu that would wow the guests.

  And then do it however many more times it took to land an investor.

  Rachel groaned and scrubbed her fingers through her messy hair. This should be simple for her. What was with the sudden mental block?

  She glanced at the clock, realized it was already five past six, and darted for her bedroom. She threw on a pair of jean cutoffs, pulled a bright-green tank over her head, and thrust her feet into shoes that were part ballet flat and part sport shoe. No time to deal with her unruly mop, so she twisted it on top of her head, stuck a pair of chopsticks through the bun, and grabbed her market tote from the closet. At the last minute, she remembered her wallet and her keys, somewhat important if she was to drive anywhere or buy anything today. If Alex thought that she’d accepted his help for any reason other than desperation, her appearance today would put that to rest.

  Denver’s Saturday morning traffic was blissfully light, with more cyclists on the road than cars. Rachel found metered parking down the street from Union Station in front of a row of still-shuttered storefronts. As she made her way to the historic building, the pleasant breeze and dawn-blue light put a spring in her step. Later the temperatures would soar into the nineties, the sun shining with enough fury to crisp the skin on her shoulders when she stepped out to water her herb garden, but for now, it was the perfect farmers’ market morning.

  Union Station’s facade—Romanesque revival, she’d read somewhere—was all white stone and filigreed arches, topped with an iconic vintage neon sign that she found unaccountably charming. It barely even functioned as a train station these days, with only a few Amtrak trains and a light-rail line coming through each day. Instead, it had been renovated into one of Lower Downtown’s premier shopping and dining spots.

  Rachel pushed through the double doors into the expansive, gleaming-white hall, then made a sharp turn down the corridor toward The English Department. Hands down it was her favorite morning spot in the city. Common as the design scheme might be, she still loved its marble and vintage tile and weathered wood, not to mention the way it morphed from casual breakfast and lunch to elegant fine dining in the evening. It was a concept that had always secretly appealed to her—part coffee shop, part restaurant, part general store. But this was the chef-owner’s second location, his first award-winning restaurant giving him the clout and name recognition to make the concept a success. It only worked because he’d already risen to the top of the fine-dining heap and could count on his reputation to back the concept, two things she couldn’t say about herself.

  Yet.

  She got in line at the wood counter and ordered herself a black cold-brew coffee over ice. At the last moment, she added one of the gorgeous golden-brown empanadas in the glass display case. That was something she hadn’t considered as a menu option: empanadas. Or some sort of hand pie . . .

  “That will be $6.05,” the cashier prompted her, his tone saying this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get Rachel to pay.

  “Right. Sorry.” Rachel pulled out a ten-dollar bill, waited for her change, and then tucked a buck into the tip jar.

  She was picking up her order when a low voice said in her ear, “You made it. I thought you had changed your mind.”

  A shiver ran down her back, and she inhaled the clean scent of soap and freshly laundered cotton before she realized she was doing it. She turned. “Just running late.”

  Her gaze met familiar hazel eyes, tinged green this morning from the light and their surroundings. She involuntarily looked Alex up and down, taking him in—crisp white T-shirt, khaki cargo shorts, clean running shoes—and felt her breath hitch again. What was wrong with her? It was practically the city’s Saturday morning uniform; every guy in the entire place was dressed like that. And yet . . .

&n
bsp; “I saved us a table outside on the patio. Let me take your food while you grab your flatware.” He took her drink and plate from her hand and headed back outside, leaving her to stare after him like an idiot.

  By the time Rachel grabbed a fork and a knife and a stack of napkins, she had herself together. She slid into the wrought-iron bistro seat across from him and set her cutlery neatly beside her plate. She had to look at this objectively. He was obviously attractive. The looks that the women around them kept casting their way said that clearly enough, as did the way their gazes lingered on her. No doubt they were wondering how someone like her, puffy-eyed and looking like she’d just rolled out of bed, landed someone like him. She felt like telling them to give it a rest since she had no interest in him besides the contents of his virtual Rolodex.

  He unhooked his sunglasses from the collar of his shirt and slipped them on, giving her a glimpse of defined biceps and proving she was a big fat liar.

  “Eat.” He nudged her plate toward her. “We can talk business when you’re done. I’m enjoying the sunshine before it gets too hot.”

  Already too hot for my taste. She stifled a grin. At least she was maintaining a sense of humor about the whole thing.

  Rachel cut into the empanada with her knife and fork and took a bite. “The spinach one is my favorite.”

  “You should try the chorizo. It’s inspired. Although I’ve probably had all of them a dozen times.”

  Here she thought she was setting the meeting on her own home turf and it turned out to be his as well. “You come here often?”

  “At least once a week since it opened.” He swept a hand toward the plaza and the sidewalk beyond. “It’s one of my favorite places to people-watch.”

  “I’m surprised I haven’t run into you. Melody, Ana, and I meet here almost as often. Ana works up the street.”

  Alex sat back in his chair. “The three of you have known each other a long time?”

  “Six years. Or rather, I’ve known them for six years. Melody was a pastry assistant at my first restaurant here in Denver, but she and Ana have known each other for longer.”