Perfect Pairing Read online

  “We’re running a food truck, sweetheart, so unless you want food from this truck, go ahead and scribble your digits on a cocktail napkin, hand it over, and stop holding up the line.”

  Heat flared beneath her cheeks. “Listen, I’m not sure who you’re used to working with, but I’m not some sort of booty call. I’m not one of your little unshaven hipster fan-girls. More importantly, I’m not leaving here until I speak to your boss.”

  “I’m not her boss. I’m her chef. We’re a team, like a pilot and a gunner.”

  Quinn wheeled around to see Hal Orion leaning casually against the back corner of the truck in a white chef’s coat with the sleeves cut off. Her dark brown hair sharply angled to a point just above her right eye. She was the exact mirror image of the magazine cover, sans knife, only more enthralling up close. Either her proximity or her magnetism actually made Quinn falter long enough for this Fryboi to continue. “I’m the quarterback and Sully’s my receiver. I’m a rapper and she’s my DJ. I lay the tracks, and she locks the flow. Comprende?”

  “Lace.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The lyric is ‘lace,’ not ‘lay.’” Quinn recovered. “P-Diddy laced the tracks. Biggy locked the flow. If you’re going to drop nineties hip-hop, you should do it right.”

  “Copyright infringement.” Hal shrugged. “The point is, talking to one of my team members like they’re your personal butler is a horrible way to go about getting anything from me.”

  Quinn took a deep breath and released it quickly. Clearly she’d misjudged this woman. No matter. She was more than capable of thinking on her feet. Actually, she preferred it. “Point taken. Moving on.”

  Moving on? Who was this woman? Hal had watched her approach, first from the serving window, then up close. She didn’t even know what possessed her to leave the truck. She often had to deal with a rowdy or drunk customer, but Sully could easily handle a petite blond with entitlement issues. Something about this woman’s tone, or maybe her eyes of steel had pulled Hal closer. The feeling was unsettling. Challenging. And she didn’t like it. Still, this tiny ball of accountant-looking spitfire had just dropped some old-school rap lyrics like her name was on the mic.

  Paradox?

  Quandary?

  Intriguing.

  Still, she couldn’t let Sully be spoken to like a hired hand. The bonds of business and friendship demanded a firm hand here. “No moving on, ’cause I’ve yet to hear an apology.” She nodded from this woman up to Sully, who still watched them from the window.

  The woman’s face didn’t flame, and she refused to so much as frown, no matter how much it may have irked her. The little way her hands tensed quickly, as if wanting to ball into fists, was the only fleeting signal of her ire. Whoever she was, she’d perfected the stone cold business face. “Sully, was it?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Great. Sully, I’m sorry for speaking to you the way I did. I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time.” She turned back to Hal. “I’m sorry for not following the proper procedures for setting an appointment. I wasn’t able to find a phone number on your social media pages, or I would’ve called ahead, but the least I could’ve done is ask for a more convenient time to talk.”

  “Maybe if you’d done that,” Hal said almost wistfully, “I would’ve told you I always stay until the food is gone or the last person is fed. After that, I’m all ears. But you didn’t ask. You got all entitled up in our grill, backed up our lines, insulted my friend, and took me away from my job—a job I love.”

  “And I apologized for that.”

  “You also dropped some old-school rap cred, which impresses me from a woman in a shark suit and three-inch heels,” Hal said slowly. “So I’m going to give you a do-over.”

  “A do-over?” Both the woman and Sully repeated.

  “I’m going to go back in my truck and make some food for all the nice people who understand how a line works, and if at the end, the very end of that line, you happen to want to buy a sandwich, I might talk to you while you eat it.”

  “And if I just walk away right now? You won’t even wonder about what you missed out on?”

  Hal’s short shot of a laugh was unexpected even to her. “Lady, I’ve missed out on more things in my life than you can even begin to imagine. Nothing you could possibly offer will keep me awake at night.”

  “She’s still here,” Sully said after she’d served the last of the stragglers and picked up a scrubbing pad to begin the second shift, which involved degreasing the truck.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play dumb. I’ve seen you checking her out all night.”

  Hal pretended to inspect the knobs on the gas burners. Damn Sully and her attentiveness. She never let her play it cool. Of course she’d been watching the woman all night, but not as closely as she’d watched Hal. She’d sworn she could feel her icy blue stare even from inside the steam-filled truck. What was her problem?

  “She’s got a hard-on for you, dude.”

  “She does not. She’s watching me like a scientist looks through a microscope, all detached and squinty.”

  “Clinical maybe, but not detached. You got her all hot under the collar earlier.”

  Hal didn’t argue, but she did disagree. She hadn’t had much effect on the woman at all, at least not comparatively speaking. Hell, she’d even given her a second chance.

  “Speak of the devil-wears-Prada, looks like she’s ready to swoop in for the kill.”

  Hal glanced up but didn’t respond as the woman approached, more slowly this time, restrained, calculated. She waited until all she could see was the top of her blond head over the edge of the serving ledge before asking, “What can I get for you?”

  “I’ll take a,” she cleared her throat, “Hippy Dippy.”

  Sully smothered a snort, either at the pained way in which the woman pronounced the name, or the fact that she’d chosen, not surprisingly, the preppiest sandwich they made. The combination of goat cheese, honey, and arugula on rye bread was a favorite with the health conscious and uptight, and right or wrong, they did stereotype customers based on their orders.

  “One Hippy Dippy,” Hal called in her best business voice.

  “Got it, Chef,” Sully replied.

  She turned back to the woman. “Anything else?”

  “Actually, I would like to have a word with you, but if you’re busy now, we could schedule a meeting at your earliest convenience.”

  She glanced at Sully who gave her a you’re-asking-for-it look, which she promptly ignored. “Now’s good for me. I’ll bring your food out.”

  Hal waited wordlessly while Sully flipped the Hippy Dippy into a little cardboard food shell, then extended the container to her. Hal reached for it, but once her hand got close, Sully moved her hand back. They repeated the motion twice more before Hal finally snatched it away.

  “Just keeping you on your toes, Chef. I get the feeling you’re going to need the practice with that one.”

  Hal ignored the warning and hopped out the back door of her truck. She strode confidently to the picnic table the woman had chosen behind the line of trucks, shielding them from both the remaining revelers and the acoustic assault of the band still trying to wring every minute out of their last set before someone cut them off.

  “Here ya go.”

  “A personal delivery from Buffalo’s own Fryboi. I’m glad to see you haven’t forgotten your roots, and even happier you’re not a vengeful person.”

  “Oh, don’t go that far until you’ve tried the sandwich. Maybe Sully spit in it.”

  “Somehow I doubt that. If she had, you would’ve warned me.”

  “You’re right, and also Sully would never do that. You know, waste food.”

  The woman smiled, not a full smile, but the corners of her mouth curled up for a second. “Good to know the pecking order around here. Food first, then me.”

  “No, don’t put it that way. There are many, many more things that come
behind food before we get to you.”

  “And you’re honest, blunt even, but not mean. This could really work.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you talking to me, or the voices in your head? ’Cause you seem to have had something mapped out since you bowled your way to the front of my line tonight, but I still don’t even know who you are.”

  “Right, well first of all, what you’re referring to as a line was not a line, but aside from that I’m Quinn Banning. I work in the corporate side of Nickel City Bank, and also as a private real estate investor.”

  “Well hello, Quinn Banning, banker and line connoisseur. Maybe someday I’ll think it was nice to meet you, but right now I’m still not quite there.”

  “Fair enough, but I don’t think you’ll have to wait too long. Give me three minutes to make a pitch and your gratitude for knowing me may just burst out of you like little rays of cheesy sunshine.”

  Hal sat on the bench facing out with her elbow resting on the table beside her. “When you phrase it like that, how can I tell you no?”

  “You can’t tell me no, Hal.” Quinn flashed a smile that seemed more practiced and controlled than the earlier one, but still very effective. “May I call you ‘Hal,’ or do your prefer ‘Halle’? Or maybe ‘Fryboi’?”

  Honestly, a woman who looked like her could normally call her anything she wanted for a night, but something told her there was more to Quinn than her shapely legs and high cheekbones. “Hal’s good.”

  “All right then, Hal.” She glanced at an elegant, silver watch gracing her right wrist. “Three minutes start now. Congratulations, you’re the next big thing. Your reputation precedes you, and the piece in Buffalo Spree only confirms what I’ve been hearing for the last month. You’re the ‘it’ girl, or boi, for Buffalo this summer.”

  “Thanks,” Hal said, not totally sure any of that sounded like a genuine compliment.

  “This isn’t the part of the conversation where you do grateful, because ‘it’ girls and poster bois come and go quickly in Buffalo, especially in summers that last about as long as the lifespan of a gadfly. Your days in the truck are numbered. Hipsters’ days in Buffalo are numbered. Larkin Square itself may even be living on borrowed time.”

  “Is this where I’m supposed to be grateful?”

  “Wait for it.”

  “Sure.”

  “I came out here because I heard you’re more than a flash in a truck-sized frying pan. I heard you have staying power that goes beyond a summer season. I heard you had the charisma, the work ethic, and a quality that’s uniquely Buffalo, a blue-collar sensibility with an Obama-esque sense of hope and change.”

  Hal tried not to get too excited about the assessment. She was clearly being buttered up for something. “Was that in the article?”

  “No, I wrote that on the fly.”

  “Nice, but can we get to the sales part of this pitch? All the foreplay makes me nervous. I never trust anyone until their cards are on the table or their clothes are on the floor.”

  Quinn didn’t flinch. “Here’s the deal. I’m interested in long-term investments. I’m interested in long-term revitalization of the city you and I both love. I’m interested in making money while also keeping money in the community where I live. And I’m interested in raising the bar culturally, without losing the qualities that make Buffalo a place worth fighting for.”

  Quinn paused either for dramatic effect or to search Hal’s expression for some sort of affirmation of their shared vision. Hal wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of either until she was certain Quinn wasn’t trying to sell her a Kirby vacuum cleaner. “And?”

  “And I want to set you up in a real restaurant of your own. You’ll have complete artistic control. You pick your staff. You build your kitchen. You set the menu however and whenever you want. I do all the other work and carry all the financial risk. Your profit share is sizable. All you have to do is be you on a permanent basis.”

  Hal stared at her, her face likely as void as her brain.

  Quinn waited several long, heavy seconds before glancing at her watch. “Okay, that was three minutes on the nose. How happy are you to know me now?”

  Hal rose and ran her hands down the sides of her chef coat to smooth it out. “No, thank you.”

  “What?” Quinn blinked her pale blue eyes, the warmth that had infused them a moment ago frozen once more.

  “I said, ‘no thank you.’”

  “I just offered you a dream scenario. If I made that pitch to any of the thirty other food truck owners here tonight, every one of them would have jumped at the opportunity.”

  “Probably.” Hal couldn’t argue with her logic any more than she would explain her own. “Feel free to track one of them down, but my answer is no.”

  Quinn hopped up and followed her a few steps to the truck. “I’m not sure what you think’s going on here, but I’m not joking. I’d happily show you references, bank statements, proof of capital. I’m the real deal, Hal.”

  “I believe you, Quinn.”

  “But?”

  “My answer is no.”

  “Without explanation or reason?”

  “My reasons are mine.” Hal hopped back into the truck. “And I get that you probably don’t hear this word often. It’s just ‘no.’”

  Quinn opened her mouth to protest, but the words were cut off by the slam of a heavy metal door closing a foot away from her face.

  “So, you want to talk about whatever happened with the blond bombshell?” Sully asked almost an hour later.

  Hal didn’t look up from the corner of the griddle as she scrubbed. “Would we call her a bombshell? I thought bombshell meant all big-breasted and pouty lips.”

  “Her breasts were not lacking.”

  Hal tried to remain neutral at the assessment, but she had a visual memory, and the image of Quinn’s chest rising and falling when she got worked up wasn’t an unpleasant one. Then again the reason why she’d gotten worked up cooled the warmth threatening to overtake her.

  “Besides, you’re not a boob woman. You go for legs, and her legs were shapely. She got your attention.”

  “For a few seconds, that’s all.”

  “Really?” Sully elbowed her gently. “Then why have you been cleaning the same spot for the last ten minutes?”

  Hal lifted her scrubby sponge to see the gleaming surface below. Chagrined, she tossed the sponge across the truck into the sink. “It’s nothing.”

  “Huh. Yeah, seems that way. You get propositioned by beautiful women who leave you slamming doors and brooding every day,” Sully said. “She did proposition you, right?”

  “No. Well, yeah.” A proposition, that’s what Quinn offered, right? “But not in the way you think.”

  “I think about being propositioned a lot.”

  “She’s just a suit looking to make a buck off of me.”

  “She’s a hooker?”

  “Geez, Sul, she’s an investor. She wanted to give me my own restaurant.”

  Silence filled the truck as Sully blinked her dark eyes several times.

  “What? No snappy comeback?” Hal asked, her chest constricting as she let the full impact of the offer wash over her again.

  “I got nothing.”

  “Seriously? How about something about me being a kept woman? A little ball and chain joke? Golden handcuffs? You can work with that.”

  “Dude, a beautiful woman walks in and basically says she’s your fairy fucking Godmother, and you slam the door in her face?”

  “Fairy Godmother, that’s one angle. It would be better if she’d been a gay guy though.”

  Sully slapped her lightly upside the back of her head. “Stop and listen to yourself for a second. This isn’t a joke.”

  “Of course it’s a joke. It’s all a joke. Money, pretty women, security, all one big joke.” Hal’s laugh was bitter. “She said all I had to do was be me on a permanent basis.”

  Sully’s eyes softened and her shoulders dropped. “Oh, so that�
�s what upset you. This reaction, it’s about the permanence thing, right?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Psychoanalyze. Or life-coach me. I’m not lying down on any couches. I’m a food-truck driver. I’m my own boss. I’ve got total freedom and work I love. I’m not interested in selling any of that to some uptight pencil pusher with great legs.”

  Sully sighed. “She did have great legs.”

  “Epic legs,” Hal admitted. “But those legs came with an agenda.”

  “Epic agenda, friend. Can you imagine—”

  “Don’t go there. We’ve got a good thing here. A great thing,” Hal said with a shot of confidence. She then undercut herself by asking, “Right?”

  “Yes, Chef.” Sully smiled.

  “So let’s not fix what’s not broken.”

  “Yes, Chef.”

  “All right, now, you want to go get a drink?”

  Sully smiled and threw her arm around Hal’s shoulder. “Hell yes, Chef.”

  Chapter Two

  Quinn slammed her front door at seven o’clock on Friday night. She’d been doing more of that lately—slamming doors. Car doors, office doors, the door to the ladies’ room at work. The sound was always satisfying. Except no matter how many times she did it, she couldn’t shake the reminder of one door in particular: the loud, metallic thump of the food-truck door still rang through her ears, and she’d begun to wonder if she’d ever be able to even the score.

  No, she didn’t want to even the score. She wanted to beat it.

  Hal Orion, that cocky little wannabe chef, was so far off her rocker, Quinn had spent the past two days dreaming about how satisfying it would be when the food-truck scene went under and Hal came crawling back looking for work. Then she could slam a door in her face. Or maybe she’d offer her a job as a line cook just to knock her down a peg while still using her talent at a grill, because damned if that stupid Hippy Dippy wasn’t the best sandwich she’d eaten in . . . ever. She wouldn’t slam the door until she’d had one of those suckers again. And while she was cooking and begging for a job, maybe Hal would finally offer up those vast and mysterious reasons for rejecting a clearly gracious and generous offer.