4. Tempering
Tempering
The storm had stopped pretending.
By the time we got back to the estate it had fully committed.
Rain coming sideways off the Atlantic, bending the palmettos along the property line to angles that looked like surrender.
Thunder that didn't roll so much as detonate, one after another, the sky cracking open and closing and cracking open again like it had a grievance it couldn't finish saying.
The estate was old enough and stubborn enough to take most of it.
My grandfather built the original structure to last and my father added on with the same philosophy, but you could still feel the storm in the walls, in the windows, in the way the lights pulled and steadied and pulled again, like something out there was testing what we had on the inside.
The short ribs had gone into the Dutch oven hours ago, seared hard first, deglazed with the wine, then down into the stock with the thyme, the garlic and the patience the cut demanded.
By the time we sat down, all of downstairs smelled like something that had been loved into existence slowly.
The meat was falling off the bone at the suggestion of a fork, the braising liquid reduced to a sauce that ran glossy and almost black in the romantic candlelight I had going between us. It was worth every hour.
"Good?" I asked.
"Another private dinner from The Chef Dillion Duckworth the Third." She shook her head, something almost disbelieving in it. "Everybody is going to be so jealous when I tell them how much you've spoiled me this week, cooking just for me."
I chuckled, cut into my short rib, and let her have that.
She'd come down in silk the color of late honey, thin straps, some garment that had clearly been designed by somebody who understood that a nightgown and a formal gown are separated by one room and one intention.
She'd called it getting comfortable when she came down the stairs.
It was not comfort. It was a celebration, a start of something new.
Madeline Dubois wanted me to take her upstairs and finish what three nights of restraint had started.
Three nights she'd been lying in that bed next to me, three nights of my arm around her and my mouth at her temple and nothing further.
Three nights of being held like a rare commodity by a man she was trying to get to handle her like something wanted, and I understood the difference even if I hadn't been acting on it.
The lingerie said all of it. Tonight the ration book was in the drawer, and the only thing left between her and what she wanted was dessert. I'd built the whole menu around it.
"You look beautiful," I said, because understatement was all I had that wouldn't tip my whole hand before dinner was done.
"Thank you, I've been saving it. Figured it deserved a night that could keep up with it." She picked her wine back up and took a slow sip, watching me over the rim. "Seems like the night's holding its end."
I smiled at that and sat back. "I like how forward you are. It's honest. You say what you mean, in the sweetest, most polite way possible, but you don't hold back. I like that about you more than I've said."
"Speaking of honesty, in the article, they asked why you've never been married.
Handsome as you are, successful as you are, so"—she gestured at all of me with her glass—"everything you are.
And you gave the diplomatic answer. Married to the restaurant, the kitchen comes first, work is the mistress.
Pretty and quotable." She sipped her wine. "What's the truth, Mr. Duckworth?"
I found the woman I wanted to marry seven years ago.
The voice rose from the depths of my soul so quickly that I had to clear my throat, afraid it would get stuck as I pushed it back down to where it belonged.
"That is the truth," I began, and then I built on it.
"Wanting a successful man is one thing. Being with one is another.
I don't have to work the way I work. I could fall back, be more restaurateur than chef, let the kitchen run itself.
But the kitchen was the first place that took me as I came.
I was a boy with a record and hands nobody trusted, and a kitchen looked at those hands and gave them knives.
" I turned my glass slowly on the wood. "Women I've been with, they liked the title. Loved saying I’m with Chef Duckworth.
Didn't love coming second to the hours, the ambition, the phone that doesn't stop.
Capa Dillion is a twenty four hour marriage.
There's not much left over for a second one. "
Every word of it true. That's the thing about the answer I'd built over the years, it would pass any inspection, because it was all real. It just wasn't the whole truth, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself.
"So what are you doing with me?" She asked, then took another sip of wine, eyes on me over the rim of the glass, not blinking.
I rubbed a hand through my beard. She was putting me on the spot, and she knew it, she wasn't going to make it easy on me. "I'm giving you time I've never handed to anyone else. You're a priority, Madeline. You see that, right?"
"I do. But what makes me different? Or am I destined to be the side piece who's jealous of your restaurant because I can't get any time with you? No energy left for attention?"
I smirked at the twenty-one questions. "I'm settling into my role as owner now. Getting older. Priorities shift."
"So you're dating me because you don't want to die old?"
"I'm dating you because I like you." I held her eyes when I said it. "Nothing complicated about it, Madeline."
"But I'll always come second to your restaurant."
It wasn't a question this time. She said it like she'd already run the math and landed on the answer before she ever asked me.
"Madeline." I set my glass down, buying myself a second I didn't need but took anyway. "Your father is one of the most successful business men in the county. I'm sure you've watched him your whole life, seen the sacrifices. You know what it takes."
She ate another bite.
"Right now, we're dating, testing the waters, and I'm giving you more than most. We've got time to figure out the rest."
"Yeah, when you have erectile dysfunction and then decide to slow down at work." She quipped, still eating.
I chuckled at that. "I'm a Duckworth, Madeline. Don't play with me."
"I suppose we'll see tonight."
I sat back and folded my arms, marveling at her. "You are more than what people see." I turned her words from earlier back on her.
"And what's that?"
I leaned in with a smile. "A woman who will never have to compete with my restaurant because she comes from excellence and understands what it takes to build something that gets passed down.
I may not be a DuBois, but Duckworths have done something special in our own way, and whatever woman I choose will have to understand what I'm building towards. "
"You want me to be that woman?"
I loved that woman for seven years.
"You know the answer to that," was the best I could come up with fast enough to shut that damn voice up. Smooth enough, reassuring enough, but without me having to peel back more layers.
She nodded along like a woman accepting terms. The storm threw itself against the windows, and the candle between us bent sideways in some draft the old house was keeping, then straightened back up.
"So, Aurelia," she sprung on me in the same easy tone, not even a change in her chewing. "She doesn't mind coming second to your restaurant?"
My glass stopped halfway to my mouth as thunder clapped. She was watching me now, calm as a woman who'd fired a single shot exactly where she'd aimed it. I set my glass back down without drinking from it.
"That's not a name I gave you."
"No," she pleasantly agreed. "The sweet old man at the market gave it to me. Said it enough times as I was reading about coastal kitchens. He seems so fond of her that he was shocked to see you with anyone but her."
She set her glass down, and the playfulness exited that had been sitting all evening.
"I wasn't going to say anything. Then you gave me that beautiful answer just now, and every word of it true, I could feel it. You're not a liar, Dillion. You're worse. You're a man who's found a way to never have to lie."
She folded her hands and my ears started to get hot.
"So I'm asking the question the article should've asked.
Who is Aurelia? Is that the best friend?
The one everybody says is always around you, the one apparently scares women off, because that's exactly what people said the second I told them we were dating.
" She tilted her head, and the candlelight moved on her face.
"All this time since we’ve been reconnecting, I haven't seen her once, and you have never brought her up. What do I need to know?"
"You got bionic hearing or something?" I slipped.
"What I have," she said, setting her fork down, "is a radar for bullshit. It's never been wrong. It's not wrong now."
"Madeline –"
"Tell me the truth, Dillion."
"Aurelia is my best friend," I sighed.
Then I heard how that sounded. Present tense, seven years of habit in one verb.
"Was my best friend. Or—" I stopped, picked up my glass and took a drink then set it back down. "I don't know what we are right now."
Madeline looked at me across the table while the thunder made itself clear again.
"Is she going to be a problem for me?" she asked.
"Why would she be a problem?" My voice came out harder than I meant it to. "We're friends, or were…whatever. Aurelia isn't in the picture." I looked into her eyes. "I just told you we're not even good right now."
Madeline picked her fork back up, cut into the short rib then began to chew slowly as she looked out at the storm throwing itself against the glass.
"Not in the picture," she repeated, turning the words over.
The candle bent again and the storm leaned into the windows like it was trying to hear.
"Why aren't you two good?" She pressed.