Chapter 19
“W e’re okay now, aren’t we?” Lou asked, anxious. “Only there’s not much time before Guy Parsons gets here for lunch.”
Shit. Jude had completely forgotten.
Louise gestured at his sarong. “And I’m not saying that pink isn’t a good colour on you, but maybe you could both get dressed before he gets here?”
“I don’t know,” Rob grazed the skin above the knot holding the fabric together.
“Every business needs a unique selling point. Serving food this way might even take a critic’s mind off being quite so scathing.
” His face clouded before only slightly clearing.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised as if convincing himself.
“He’s only booked for lunch. The menu is solid, and if by some miracle he decides to stay over, his room looks perfect.
There’s nothing for him to bitch about, just as long as we stick to the plan.
” He led the way back to the boatshed where they both got ready, Jude’s sarong a puddle of pink fabric that Rob picked up and folded into a neat oblong.
Jude took the cloth Rob held out, turning it over in his hands as he said, “I picked up several of these in markets around Indonesia. I used to take photos of my parents ashore. Show them to the locals. Mum loved markets almost as much as you seem to.”
“Did you ever find anyone who—?”
“Saw them? No.” Jude pulled more lengths from his duffle in shades of vivid blue, yellow, and orange.
“She likes… liked souvenirs, kept every single one that Lou and I brought home from school trips, so I bought these for her; thought they’d be what she would have chosen to bring home.
You know…. Bright and cheerful?” He didn’t use the words that Rob no doubt would have— gaudy tat —sure that he was thinking them regardless.
“I’m not sure why I bothered. It’s not as if they’ll come to any use now. ”
“I don’t know.” Rob fingered the fabric before Jude could stuff it back where it came from. “They are kind of eye-catching.” He asked quietly, “What would she have done with them? Worn them?”
“More likely, she would have made something from them.”
“Made something?”
“For the pub. To decorate it. To show where they’d been.”
“That sounds… jolly?”
“But not exactly five-star, I know.” It was a good reminder. There were still some last-minute touch-ups he needed to make with his pot of white paint. “Come on.”
He left Rob in the kitchen, but not before double-checking. “You sure you want to be stuck back here when he arrives?” Surely it made more sense to have Rob out front? Charming a critic’s socks off was much more his skillset.
“It’s got to be me who cooks for him.” Rob rolled up the sleeves of his white chef’s jacket as if he meant business. “He was one of the first reviewers when Dad opened in London. He wants to compare what I serve him to the meal that Dad served.”
“Seems a bit mean, pitting you against each other.”
“‘Mean’ sells lots of newspapers.” Rob surveyed the contents of the fridge. “Maybe lightning will strike twice.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are thousands of restaurants in London. That review got a lot of attention.”
“Because Guy Parsons slammed his cooking?”
“No. He loved it, and that happens so rarely that Dad’s first restaurant was sold out from the moment it opened. He was booked solid for months.”
“So that’s why he asked him to come to review us early? He wants to give you the same signal boost all of that early good publicity gave him?” That had to be the reason, but Rob acted like Jude hadn’t spoken.
He wiped down his counter rather than look up, speaking under his breath.
“I’ve practised my menu enough times I could cook it with my eyes closed,” he said as if reading a checklist. “Lou’s got the atmosphere in the bar covered.
She’s invited Marc and his friends, plus Carl and Susan, who are bringing their family as well, so it should look good and busy, even if the rest of the village is deserted.
” He was so different like this; stern and laser-focussed when it turned out that Jude much preferred him soft and sleep rumpled.
There was no sign of the clingy octopus he’d woken tangled up with as Rob checked another task off his list. “The bedrooms and bathrooms are shipshape?” he asked Jude, only slightly relaxing at Jude’s nod.
“Then as long as what I cook goes exactly to plan, there’s very little that can go wrong.
” He sounded sure but the hand he used to pick up a paring knife shook. Jude itched to take it from him.
“Let me prep for you,” Jude urged. He had far more patience for it than Rob, who had cut corners Jude wouldn’t have dreamed of at each stage of the contest.
“Nope,” Rob said, perhaps reading Jude’s mind. “I’m not going to cut a single corner. Besides, too many cooks, and all that.”
“Okay.” Jude mentally ran through his own chore list as he pushed the kitchen door open before Rob called him back.
“Hey. Aren’t you forgetting something?” He pointed to his chest, tip of the knife blade tapping right where it would say kiss-the-cook if he wore Jude’s mum’s apron. His expression cracked for a second, worry showing. “Just one for luck?”
Jude could spare more than one, he thought, as he crossed the kitchen.
The knife clattered onto the counter when Jude did much more than peck the cheek Rob offered, his hands coming up to Jude’s nape and shoulder, holding on tight as Jude nudged his mouth open.
Jude was the lucky one, he decided, as Rob melted as their kiss deepened.
No judgement from some uptight London critic could change his opinion.
“Wow.” Rob was nicely breathless, his smile much more cheerful. “What was that for?”
“For luck, like you said.” Jude took another quick kiss, Lou shouting faintly for him from the upstairs hallway the only reason he didn’t steal more. “Not that you’re going to need it.”
“That’s right.” Rob almost sounded convincing. “Lightning’s definitely going to strike twice, he won’t notice that the village is about as bustling as the Marie Celeste , and who wouldn’t love the smell of wet paint in their hotel bedroom?”
“The only thing he needs to notice is the meal. And that’s going to be prize-winning, like the chef who cooks it.”
“Prize-winning.” Rob put some distance between them, perhaps refocussed now, if the way he stared at the paring knife rather than Jude was an indication.
He muttered, “Of course,” like he’d forgotten for a moment that he’d been judged a better chef than all the others in the contest, serving a meal in the final that must have been outstanding.
“Best new chef in Britain,” Jude reminded. “That’s got to count for something.”
“Jude?” Louise’s voice was louder, coming from downstairs now.
“I should go.”
“You two better be decent.” She cracked the door open slightly as if expecting a replay of that morning, her smile small and nervous. “Carl’s here. Wants a word.”
“With me?” Rob asked as he gathered ingredients, lining up his mise en place like an admiral arranging his fleet for battle. “Can it wait?”
“No. He wants you, Jude.” She held the door open for him. “He’s out the front. Says he only needs a minute.”
Carl always came to the back door when he delivered fish to the kitchen.
Jude had a momentary flashback of the shift in Carl’s expression when he’d sailed past that morning and had seen him and Rob kissing.
The walk down the hallway to the front door took forever, distance seeming to lengthen as if judgement waited at its end.
A man of his dad’s generation who also often watched rather than speaking?
Maybe what Carl had seen that morning was enough to finally make him break his silence—say what his dad might have as well if he’d been here to witness Jude being honest.
Jude steeled himself to hear it.
It was a shame, that was all, he thought, one hand on the new door lock before he turned it.
A shame for Louise if Carl was here to cancel, refusing to bring his family and friends to make the Anchor seem busy. And a shame for Rob, one that could have been avoided if Jude had only—
No.
No.
There was nothing he’d change about this morning, not when kissing like that meant there couldn’t ever be more hiding.
Jude turned the door handle. “I’m not sorry,” he said, his voice not even shaking as he pulled the door wide open. Carl stood just beyond it, a crate in his arms that he pushed into Jude’s hands.
“I might be,” Carl said, gruff as ever. “With how much I could fetch for that lot if I sold it instead of giving it away to you.” Sea bass so fresh their eyes still gleamed lay on ice surrounded by shellfish that Carl had taken the time to scrape clean.
“We didn’t order—”
“It’s a gift. From me and Susan. For your posh lunch.
” Carl backed away a few steps. “For luck,” he added before Jude could tell him that Rob’s menu didn’t call for any of these ingredients.
“And Susan said to tell you she’s rounded up a few more friends.
They’ll be here before your critic arrives.
You need anything else before that—you, your sister, or Rob—then you make sure to ring us,” he said firmly. “Your mum and dad would be proud.”
“Proud?”
“Proud of what you three have done with the pub. Keeping this place in the family? And having you back here so happy?”
The crate Carl left him holding might’ve been heavy, but his parting words left Jude feeling so much lighter.
“Jude, that’s all they ever wanted.”