Marie Ferrarella - Dangerous Disguise

Maren liked being in control, liked being on top of things and prided herself on being able to meet every emergency with some sort of a contingency plan. She’d come here two days after graduation, her business degree still warm, and gone right to work. That was a little more than five years ago, and she hadn’t stopped since.

After signing for two deliveries, she entered her office and paused to flip the page on her calendar. She’d just passed the new guy, Jared, as he was coming in to work. He’d surprised her and the word “hello” had all but backed up in her mouth.

Maren realized that she was working her bottom lip and stopped. Usually she forged ahead with confidence and rarely second-guessed herself. But she wasn’t altogether certain she’d done the right thing by hiring this new man. She’d hired him on impulse after seeing him in action. Not hiring him would have been on impulse, too, she silently pointed out. Not hiring someone because they were too good-looking wasn’t exactly a credible reason.

Just a gut instinct geared strictly toward self-preservation.

She shook her head, laughing at herself. What self-preservation? It wasn’t as if they were going to spontaneously combust within five feet of one another. And it wasn’t as if she was going to have anything to do with the man outside of the confines of work, she silently insisted. Maren sat down at her desk and picked up the coffee that Max had brought her.

There was nothing to be uneasy about.

Unless, of course, the new man couldn’t cook.

Jared couldn’t make up his mind whether or not his so-called boss was a genuine ice princess, or if Maren Minnesota just believed that there was a strict dividing line between management and staff.

Or if it was something about him that made her act icy.

The thought nagged at him. Granted he’d only been here a couple of hours, but he’d found that women usually warmed up to him immediately. It didn’t matter whether they were young, old, married, single, he had the ability to make them light up like Christmas trees whenever he put his mind to it. Women were also an excellent source of information and he made the most of that, becoming their confidant at lightning speed.

But Maren had ignored every opening he’d left for her so far. Other than the chance encounter this morning, he’d stopped by her office twice, each time on some pretext or other. Each time she’d answered his questions about work crisply, without any embellishments or going off on any tangents. He was dropping bread-crumbs right in front of her and she was oblivious to it all, crushing them beneath her size six shoes.

She didn’t take up any of his leads.

Unlike April, the salad girl with the excellent lungs, he mused. He caught her struggling with a large basket of freshly washed celery. Gallantly he took the basket from her and carried it over to the butcher block. Beaming, she thanked him and he lingered at her workstation, handing her stalk after stalk as she prepared them for the salad bar.

Ever flexible, he decided to cultivate April first. There were a number of hostesses and waitresses he could work on before having to turn to Maren. No point in having her linger on his mind.

But she did.

“How long have you been working here?” He watched April work the large knife like a machete and found himself thinking she needed to go slower.

“Six months.” She slid the coarsely chopped pieces into an aluminum bowl, then took another stalk and began the process all over again. “My uncle got me the job. He knows Joe.”

That would be Joe Collins, the bookkeeper, Jared thought. But there was no way he was technically supposed to know that since the man hadn’t been in during the interview yesterday. He looked at her innocently. “Joe?”

“Joe Collins.” The sound of her knife hitting the butcher-block table punctuated her every word. Her smile was guileless as she added, “Great guy. Heart as big as the Grand Canyon. Maren’s crazy about him. I guess we all are.”

The man who had come to the department with his story about money laundering hadn’t bothered to fill them in on this detail. Jared displayed just the right amount of interest to keep the woman talking. “He and Maren have a thing going?”

He wasn’t prepared for her response. April began to laugh, her knife never missing a beat. “Him and Maren? No way.” Her mind paused to think, but her hands kept going. “Although, strictly speaking, I suppose it would be all right.” She raised her eyes to his face. “I’ve seen movies where that kind of thing happens.”

She’d lost him. It sounded as if April was talking about something unsavory or tasteless. Was the manager sleeping with the bookkeeper? The DMV photograph they’d pulled up of Joe Collins had been of an older man. Was April talking about May-December romances, or possibly something worse?

“What kind of thing?”

“Hey, you—new guy,” Max Anderson, the heavy-set man who occupied the position of head chef as zealously as a despot controls a tiny kingdom, cut into the conversation.

Jared turned to see Max waving him over. His weight and demeanor, not to mention his full black beard, made him look like a Kodiak bear. At the moment Max stood in front of a huge pot that was moments away from boiling over. “I want you to watch and learn.”

“Better go.” April lowered her voice. “Max has a temper and he thinks he runs the place.”

Jared nodded. “Thanks for the tip.”

He made a mental note to get back to the conversation that had been interrupted, even though on the surface it didn’t seem as if it had anything to do with the real reason he was here. Still, knowing everything he could about the people he was dealing with made him feel as if he was better prepared to handle whatever might come up. Because something always came up. It was the first thing he’d learned on the job.

By the look on Max’s face as the other man scrutinized him, Jared figured it was a safe bet that Max didn’t care for competition in his kitchen. Or maybe there was another reason he looked annoyed at having someone new on the premises. New people were liabilities. The competitive thing could have been just an angle, so much camouflage. It bore looking into.

In any event, Jared decided to make it a point for the man not to feel threatened by his presence.

“Heard your résumé was pretty impressive.” Each word out of Max’s mouth was a challenge.

Jared could have sworn he heard the strains of “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” as the other man spoke. He all but expected him to pick up a ladle and draw a line on the concrete floor.

He kept his expression mild. “Where did you hear that?”

The man’s nostrils flared, growing wider. Any second now he was going to start pawing the ground. Dislike oozed from the man’s every pore. “Maren told me. If you think you’re coming in to take over—”

“Just want to put in my time, learn from the best, and go home.” Jared offered Max his most genial, innocent smile. The one that could, with a little effort, look as if it bordered on dim-witted.

“Oh.” For a moment it appeared that the wind had deserted Max’s sails. Unchallenged, Jared had a hunch that Max could be a fairly decent man, if somewhat conceited. “Okay, then.” He seemed placated. “Hand me some saffron.” Eyes on the boiling pot, Max wiggled his fingers in the general direction of the spice table. A wealth of containers were arranged on it in a system known only to Max.

Thank you, Uncle Andrew, Jared thought as he selected the glass jar that contained what appeared at first glance to be red, long-legged spiders. Though he had always been talented in the kitchen, the names of various spices and sauces, as well as elaborate food preparation had mystified him. But then the assignment had come up and Andrew had taken him under his wing. His eyes were opened. Food became cuisine and he had discovered that there were more spices than he thought possible. Andrew had drilled him until he knew each one by name, description and sight.