Her Las Vegas Wedding

“Yeah, I’m here. I’ve got our wedding to coordinate.”

“Right.” Reg nodded as if it were just sinking in. He glanced at his phone and read something on the screen that brought a huge smile to his lips. “Please pardon me a moment while I return this message.”

He tapped onto the screen, grinning the entire time.

“Well,” Daniel said using his right hand to pat Audrey’s back and his left to tap Reg’s, “I’ll leave you two to your evening.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

After Daniel walked away, Reg and Audrey each perched on a stool beside the table. One of the four bars on the property, this space was located inside the main lobby and had stylish fun in mind. The decor was done with white barstools upholstered in deep purple velvet set around chrome pedestal tables. Behind the chrome cocktail bar was a giant glass tank filled with undulating purple goo similar to the lava lamps of the 1960s.

Once again, Girard’s interior designers had worked through an idea to perfection. And then capable crews were able to bring the vision to fruition. Audrey could imagine the lounge with chic music playing in the background and filled with trendy patrons choosing drinks from a cocktail menu that offered libations with names like Flip-Out Frappe and Yin-Yang-Yum.

“After all of the talk about us marrying, this has come about rather suddenly, hasn’t it?” Reg asked.

“Is there a problem with that?”

He seemed to be a million miles away. “Not at all.”

“I think the extra push makes sense. Do everything at once. Open the hotel and Shane’s Table. Shane’s cookbook. Our marriage. It’s a cascade of publicity on several levels.”

Audrey knew that the Girard hotels had never really recovered from the events of three years ago. When her mother was dying and her father was unable to concentrate on the business. Audrey had tried as best she could to fill in for him. It was a gift to have the work to focus on since her mother hadn’t wanted her at her bedside.

All of her life, it had been assumed that she’d grow up into the family business. As a teenager, she developed a knack for coming up with advertising ideas and events. The marketing side of the brand was a perfect fit for her after college.

Hotel Girard Incorporated was Audrey’s entire world. Running around the properties as a kid, she had known every secret passageway. Every painting that hung in every guest room. Every item sold in the gift shops. Any happiness she could recollect took place within the borders of the hotels. The staff were loyal to Audrey and she was loyal to them. She’d do anything needed for their good. Even get married.

Besides, she thought Reg was a good match and she had become quite amenable to the marriage idea. He was smart. Nice-looking, too. Maybe a little too much hair product. Those short curls might look better if they weren’t so stiff. He was poised and polite and she didn’t know what the medical condition was that made a person have a sweaty upper lip but, hey, she thought she could overlook that.

And he was, safely, nothing like his brother. That split second ten years ago on St. Thomas flickered in her mind again. A freeze-frame in time that she still secretly compared everything else to.

“Should we go to dinner?” she asked. Reg seemed so uneasy tonight, perhaps a change of atmosphere would help. Devotion to the hotels was one thing but she wasn’t going to go as far as to beg him to wed her if he didn’t want to.

“Shane is cooking for us in the restaurant.” Reg took Audrey by the bony part of her elbow and lead her out of the bar. “We are essentially the first guests at Shane’s Table Las Vegas.”

Along the way, Reg stopped to read and respond to another message on his phone. The same amusement that had come across his face earlier returned while he typed.

But he hesitated when they reached the restaurant’s entrance. “Where is the display that’s supposed to be here?”

“You mean that awful stand-up photo of Shane?”

“Name recognition is what Shane’s Table is all about.”

“I’m well aware of that. But that cardboard cutout was absurd. Brash advertising like that is not how Girard maintains its reputation for taste and understatement.”

Not that a life-size photo of hottie Shane Murphy was hard on the eyes, but it was, nonetheless, inconsistent with the Girard style.

“You personally removed my advertising?”

She’d stood it up in her bungalow for the time being and now didn’t seem the right time to confess that. “Reg, I’m head of public relations. I work alongside a marketing team and together we decide when and how best to...”

“I built Shane’s Table into what it is today.”

Wow, Audrey wasn’t expecting this. She assumed Reg would respect her authority on this topic. He should have at least proposed the display prior to just having it planted it in front of the restaurant’s doors, which was technically Girard property.

Audrey attempted to smooth ruffled feathers. “You know, Reg, perhaps I’m not a hundred percent clear on what our contracts state about my role concerning the PR specifically for the restaurant.”

“I’ll have my lawyers call yours in the morning.”

She stroked his thin arm once up and once down in a gesture of calming affection. “That’s a great idea. Can we just put the issue aside for now and enjoy our dinner? I can’t wait to see the completed dining room.”

The pacifying technique worked because Reg pulled from his pocket a deadbolt key and an access fob to open the front door of the newly finished construction. He reached to flick on a temporary lamp that stood just inside the entrance.

Rock ’n’ roll blared from the far end of the restaurant. Reg gestured for Audrey to follow him across the dark dining room and through the double doors leading into the kitchen.

The lone man in the cavernous space stood with his back facing them, but Audrey easily recognized that long curly hair and the broad shoulders that filled out his chef’s coat. The music was turned up so loud that he hadn’t noticed anyone had entered. His head bobbed and his hips ground to the beat as he sautéed something smoking hot on the stove in front of him. Reaching for a spoon, he tasted from the pan.

“Garbage,” he decreed and, in frustration, threw the spoon into the nearby sink.

Only then did he turn enough to be startled by Reg and Audrey’s presence. He grimaced. His gorgeous full lips twisted. A pulse beat in his neck. His eyes locked on Audrey.

“Audrey,” Reg yelled above the music, “you remember my brother, Shane Murphy.”

CHAPTER TWO

“HI, SHANE,” Audrey said, turning on the polish. In reality, his intense stare made her heart skip every other beat. “Can you believe it was a full year ago when we stood right here after the old restaurant had been gutted?”

Shane slowly, sinfully, with no restraint whatsoever, inventoried her. From the part in her blond hair, across her face, down every curve of her fitted dress and shapely legs, through her sandals to the tips of her orange-painted toes.

Her legs twitched from his gaze.

He mashed his lips together as he shifted something internally and turned his attention to his brother. “I mixed a white sangria and put it on the bar. Why don’t you take Audrey into the dining room and pour it, Reg?”

“Join us for a glass, won’t you?”

Unspoken communication passed between the two brothers.

“I’ll be out with some appetizers in a few minutes.”

Reg ushered Audrey out of the kitchen and turned on the overhead lighting.

The restaurant was a showstopper. One entire wall made of glass looked out to a furnished patio. A wood-burning oven, large grill and two fire pits would allow for al fresco cooking. The open-air space was enclosed by a semicircular wall made of small stones. At three points, waterfalls rained down. The effect was that of a private outdoor world far from the bright lights of Las Vegas.

Inside, shaded lighting fixtures hung from the ceiling to cast a play of light and shadow throughout the room. Tall-backed chairs cushioned in an olive-colored fabric, teakwood tables and booths dotted the dining room, each placed with enough space between them to allow for dinner conversation. Carpeting in a subtle diamond pattern of khaki and red would muffle the din of a full house. Stone tiling on the walls gave the room a lodge feel that was posh but comfortable.

Audrey took her time inspecting it all. “Everything turned out spectacularly.”

Reg guided Audrey by the tip of her elbow again, a trend she wasn’t enjoying, to the one table in the center of the dining room that had been set for dinner.

“I’ll get the wine,” he said as he pulled out one of the chairs for her. Then he hopped down the three steps to the bar to retrieve a carafe. “Shane used a 2009 pinot gris from the local Desert Castle vineyard we’re working with,” Reg announced as he poured each of them a glass. Crisp green apple slices and chunks of fresh peaches floated in the drink.

“Nice,” Audrey said after a quick sip, never one to drink much alcohol. Not after what she had witnessed. “You’re staying in a condo in Vegas?”

“In the Henderson suburb. I suppose when the two of us...” Reg stopped, seemingly at a total loss of how to complete the sentence. “Shane leases a flat behind the Strip,” he added and ran the back of his index finger under his nose.

“Will he base himself mostly in Vegas?”

“For a while. When we first opened in Los Angeles, it took a year until we were functioning smoothly.”

“It takes a long time to build a core staff that you feel confident in. People don’t work out. You hire new ones.”

“Shane is very exacting in what he expects. As you’ll recall.”

A flush of heat spread down Audrey’s neck.

“Ten years was a long time ago.” Audrey made reference to the St. Thomas collaboration. “I was just starting college so I wasn’t really involved, but I do have a vague memory,” she fibbed when, in fact, she remembered every second of that summer.

The twenty-four-year-old wunderkind chef and his demands in the kitchen had been legendary. “Didn’t the controversy begin with some herb we couldn’t get onto the island?”

“I still don’t know how I was supposed to make a yellow mole without hoja santa.” Shane’s thick vibrato filled the dining room. Audrey didn’t know how they had failed to hear him come out from the kitchen.

The surprise sent a blush all the way under the neckline of her dress.

“And your idiot sous chef suggested I use cilantro.”

“I was all of eighteen so, believe me, I was just an innocent bystander at the time.”

“We were on a tiny island, Shane.” Reg lifted his palms. “They weren’t able to fly in your herb.”

Shane held two small plates. Audrey took notice of the black leather cords he had roped around his wrists like the ones he wore in the cardboard cutout. There was something so rebellious about them. She’d never known a chef to wear jewelry on his hands. Yet she found them as mysterious and exciting as the man who donned them. His hands were so massive they made the dishes of food he carried look tiny.

“Nevada appears to be the motherlode for the ingredients I need,” Shane said as he placed one plate in front of each of them. “Chiles en nogada. Poblano stuffed with pork, pear and mango and topped with a walnut cream sauce.”

Audrey’s eyes widened at the striking presentation on the plate. She knew that the sprinkle of diced red and green peppers on top of the white sauce was in homage to the colors of the Mexican flag. The foundation of Shane Murphy’s menus was in the flavors of the Spanish-speaking world.

While Shane waited intently, she took a bite, careful to get a little morsel of each ingredient onto her fork. The rich cream fragrant with ground walnuts brought a decadent lushness to the pork, yet the dots of fruit kept the dish from being too heavy.

Audrey closed her eyes to savor the combination.

Depriving herself of sight, she could sense even more powerfully how Shane’s eyes bored into her face. Making her feel somehow exposed and beautiful at the same time.

She whispered upon opening her eyes and looking at Shane again, “Magnificent.” Possibly in reference to the food.

Shane pulled a fork out of the back pocket of his jeans and showed it to Reg. “There was a mistake with the order that came in today. Three tines? Am I serving Neanderthals?”

Without another word, Shane turned and returned to the kitchen.

Audrey noticed the four tines on the fork she was holding. She appreciated how important every small decision was for these consummate professionals. It was the same level of concern the Girards applied to their hotels.

“Audrey, I need to talk to you.”

They were only on the appetizer and she was already feeling unfocused and exhausted from being around Shane. Reg had just said something, but she hadn’t really heard him. “Has Shane always been so—” she chose her word “—fierce?” Although she guessed the answer.

“Since the day he was born.” Reg shook his head. “Our grandmother Lolly, who taught him how to cook her old Irish recipes, used to call him Mr. Firecracker. Of course, since Melina died he’s been grappling with his own demons. Forks are the least of his problems.”

The loss of his wife had left behind a wounded ogre. Audrey knew the story. The young woman who had been killed instantly in a car accident during a snowstorm in the woods of upstate New York. She hadn’t seen the Murphys very often during that time period, but her dad had sent flowers and reached out to Connor to offer his support.

Audrey asked Reg, “Does Shane talk about her?”

Reg dabbed under his nose and sounded exasperated when he questioned, “Why are we spending so much time discussing Shane?”

* * *

In his kitchen, Shane took out his frustration on the mint he tore for the salad. With a syncopated rhythm, he ripped leaves from their stems and threw them onto a work board. His preferred soundtrack of hard rock music did little to squelch the thoughts stomping through his head.

When he’d first heard this master scheme of Audrey Girard being matched up with his brother, he heartily approved. Reg spent far too much time agonizing over spreadsheets, finding fault with staff members and riding Shane about the cookbook or the lagging business. Hopefully a wife would take up some of Reg’s attention and get him off of everyone else’s back.

But now, face-to-face with Audrey again, the whole idea angered him. Wasn’t she just a little too pretty, a lot too sexy and even a bit too independent to be with uptight Reg? He loved his brother and wanted the best for him, but Audrey was too fine a lamb to be offered up for this sacrifice.

During the meetings regarding the new restaurant, he’d observed petite but voluptuous Audrey Girard in action. In her tight business skirts, she moved with the charged-up energy to match the clack of her high-heeled shoes. In fact, memories of her would linger in his mind for days after every encounter.

While Shane wielded his knife to halve the cherry tomatoes, a tight smile crossed his lips. He remembered the first time he’d met Audrey, still in her teens back then, during that summer in St. Thomas when he was doing a promotional stint as a guest chef.

She had been scared to death of him. Who could blame her? At twenty-four, with his heavy boots and impossible standards, he must have cut a frightening figure. Another sneer broke through as he realized that not much had changed since then.

Except for two massively successful restaurants that had made his name a household word. Although the world didn’t know that the restaurants had ceased making the profits they used to. Had anyone noticed that he was no longer asked to make appearances on national morning TV talk shows? That the public had moved on to new culinary revelations, new rising-star chefs? One thing they did know was that Shane Murphy had lost his wife to a gruesome death.

He plated the tomatoes and crumbled cojita cheese on them. Yes, he still remembered Audrey Girard and that midnight ocean swim. He flicked the mint on top of the cheese. Drizzled on olive oil and finished with a dotting of manzanilla olives. He could do this salad in his sleep.

All afternoon, he had been alone in the kitchen, trying to come up with a fresh idea. Just one new recipe for the cookbook. A start.

But he’d only spun his wheels. Unable to summon a clear vision. Nothing was right.

A muse was nowhere to be found.

“Aha,” Shane heard Reg call out as he entered the dining room with the salads he’d served tens of thousands of in his restaurants. “We were just talking about the cookbook.”

“What about it?” Shane already knew where this conversation was going.

“That perhaps we’ll shoot some photos of you on the patio,” Reg said. “Fire up the grill out there, and you can do street tacos with a party crowd surrounding you.”

Shane placed the salad plates on an empty table nearby so that he could clear Reg and Audrey’s appetizers away before serving. Audrey had only eaten a few bites of the poblano.

“You didn’t like it,” he announced rather than inquired.

Audrey looked up at him with her big eyes. He hadn’t remembered how light a brown they were. The color of honey. “It was delicious,” she answered, as if she thought that was something she needed to say.

“I see.”

Shane kept his connection with Audrey’s seductive orbs while Reg asked, “Are you any closer to actually finishing the cookbook, brother? Or even beginning it?”

“Enjoy the salad,” Shane uttered between clenched teeth.

Back in the kitchen, he dialed up his music even louder.

Even if he didn’t like it, he could see how the pairing of Reg and Audrey would benefit business. That was an important consideration now that Murphy Brothers Restaurants needed to take a huge step forward. A soaring success here could lead to more Shane’s Table restaurants in other Girard hotels.

Shane rocked his hips to the beat of a heavy metal song as he deveined the shrimp for the Guatemalan tapado.

And let’s face it, his brother needed to get married. A woman’s touch was going to be the only way to get Reg to lighten up. Plus their parents, now semiretired, longed for grandchildren. Shane would never marry again or have children. Reg was their only hope.

His dad and Daniel Girard used to joke around about matchmaking Reg and Audrey, but after Melina’s death the talk became serious. Shane had made an impulsive marriage that ended in disaster. His father probably felt he needed to step in to insure his other son had a more controllable fate.

After a hand wash, Shane began sautéing the onions and peppers.

One marriage was quite enough for Shane, thank you very much. He was clearly not to be trusted with the well-being of another person. Not a day went by that he didn’t think about the death that maybe he could have prevented. Had he been a different person. In fairness if Melina had been, too.

Shane added the coconut milk that was the basis of the sauce to the sauté pan. Mixed in a ladleful of stock. Stirred in his seasonings.

If a Murphy brother was to marry, it was definitely going to be Reg.

Then why did he picture Audrey, with those spectacular golden eyes smiling at him, while a voice to the side of them asked, “Shane Niall Murphy, do you take this woman...?” Why was he picturing lifting a white-dressed Audrey up into his arms and carrying her over a doorway threshold into a private suite?

Tossing the shrimp into his sauce, he reckoned that the prospect of anyone getting married probably brought up twisted wedding images for him. He was just having a distorted waking nightmare about Melina.

Swirling in a handful of chopped chard, he finished the dish. He portioned cooked rice onto two plates and spooned his stew on top of each. Another recipe he could cook with his eyes closed.

Coming out from the kitchen with his tapado de camaron, Shane noticed from twenty feet away that Audrey hadn’t finished her salad. Was she one of those girls, who only pecked at food? He’d always noticed the seriously lush curves on that small frame of hers. She didn’t look like a bird who didn’t eat.

Were his flavors too unusual for her? Was she used to a blander palate?

He placed the dinner dishes down on the side table.

“You didn’t like the salad, either.” He hastily snatched Audrey’s barely touched plate. “I sell a lot of them.”

“It was lovely, I’m just not that hungry,” Audrey sputtered like she was making an excuse.

Shane served his entrée.

“Have a seat with us,” Reg instructed, gesturing for Shane to pull a chair over from one of the other tables. Reg refilled his own sangria glass and slid it into position for Shane to have it. Audrey’s was barely touched.

For all of his brother’s annoyances, Shane respected Reg more than anyone in the world. Reg had provided the necessary foresight and know-how to lift Shane’s Table to fame. Shane could never have done any of it without him.

Reg had taught him that he had to play the game sometimes, had to make nice with people even when he’d rather be hiding in the kitchen. So he obeyed his brother, turned around a chair and straddled it backward to sit down with them.

“We need to have a discussion about the cookbook,” Reg said with a concerned look. Had they been spending the whole dinner talking about him? “You know we’ve committed to a date with the publisher and they, in turn, agreed to create a mock-up so we can do marketing with it.”

“If it’s a mock-up, then it could be filled with empty pages—what’s the difference?”

“Because you have a contract with them, saying that you’re going to deliver a cookbook,” Audrey added. “They’re not going to go forward if you’re not going to meet the deadline.”

“The TV taping is going to bring you and the restaurant into the living room of millions of viewers,” Reg said.

“We’ll not only sell cookbooks,” Audrey said, “but it will bring people to Vegas to eat at Shane’s Table.”

“You know we all need this,” his brother added.

“The publicity could put us at capacity for a year,” Audrey stressed.

Reg and Audrey both paused to take bites of their tapado. Reg gestured his approval while Audrey stayed straight-faced and chewed slowly. Reg asked, “Have you even started it?”

“Enough already. I get it. I have to deliver the cookbook.” With that, Shane hitched up from the chair and stomped back into the kitchen.

Annoyed, he portioned the pastel de tres leches he had made this afternoon. He hated being ganged up on like that. Hated all of that aggressive sales-y behavior, even though he knew that was what it took to be successful. Just as he knew he wasn’t at all cut out for it. And as for that smart-talking bombshell Audrey... He’d like to show her how actions spoke louder than words.

Shane, he reprimanded himself, Audrey is going to be your sister-in-law. You do not kiss your sister-in-law. You do not even think about kissing your sister-in-law. For heaven’s sake.

Yet he lingered on a mental image of feeding her something delicious with his fingers.

After he and rock ’n’ roll had cleaned up the kitchen, he’d blown off enough steam to go serve the pastel.

Assuming this would be the fourth dish Audrey picked at but didn’t finish, he placed the plate in front of her without much enthusiasm even though he knew this dessert was always a hit.

She gawked at the cake. Took a small forkful. As she slipped it between lips that were as juicy as the plums Shane’d had for breakfast that morning, he could swear he saw her eyelashes flutter. After her bite, she managed, “Wow.”

“It’s called tres leches because it’s got condensed milk, evaporated milk and cream,” he said of the sponge cake soaked in the custardy milk mixture and topped with whipped cream to make it even richer.

She took another demure forkful. Which was quickly followed with another, not as ladylike in size as the previous. Both Shane and Reg couldn’t help but watch as she devoured one bite after the next.