Page 2 of Freedom's Kiss
Chapter 2
Present Day, Florida
His failure would have an audience. Wasn’t that swell.
Adam Carrington bent to look out the low horizontal window that ran almost the entire length of the food truck. A line of customers hooked around the block. People milling, killing the wait time by scrolling through their phones. All for a taste of southern comfort food cooked on wheels—his new dream. One that might die this day since the number of consumers and the amount of product did not equal happy customers.
His perusal snagged on a man halfway down the line. Adam would know that head of slicked-back hair, those shoulders that filled out the tailor-made suit hanging just so. He’d know the guy because he’d once been the guy. Or at least the other half. Tweedle-Dee to Hudson Burke’s Tweedle-Dum. Or as others knew them, Burke and Carrington, the best criminal defense lawyers in southern Florida.
And if there was anyone Adam didn’twant to witness his downfall, it was his old partner. The same guy who’d been hounding him night and day for months to return to the courtroom.Not gonna happen.No matter how many times Hudson used phrases likejusticeanddefending those who can’t defend themselves.It sounded good but wasn’t reality. Reality looked more like letting sorry excuses for human life back on the streets to devour those weaker than themselves. All on a technicality. He couldn’t do it anymore.
Hudson raised his face from his phone and connected with Adam’s gaze. Lifted his hand and waved, lips tilted in a smirk. Adam slammed his hand against the cutting board, sending the leftover juice of the tomato he’d cut for salsa splashing against the front of his apron. He really should work a bit cleaner.
He scanned the inside of the food truck, but nothing had changed. The last leaves of spinach wilted in the plastic container, turning in on themselves because of the heat. Sweet tea pitcher filled with nothing but the sugar crystals. A tub of pimento mac and cheese that had been close to overflowing a couple of hours ago, now down to its last dregs.
He couldn’t serve food that wasn’t prepped, and stopping to restock everything would take time. Which meant he would have to slink out the back door and face all those hungry people who had been waiting in the blistering sun…he was going to have to face Hudson, knowing smirk and all, and tell them Southern Charm would be closing for an hour. He’d send them all to Pedro’s Tacos one street over. It would kill him. Turning all those customers away would eat his profits and possibly make it so he lost future business.
Adam pulled his shoulders back so they wouldn’t slump. Failure stung all on its own, but did Hudson really have to be here to see it? Only more fuel for his persuading fire. Not that Adam ever intended to be scorched by that flame again.
One more order. He had enough food prepped for the next customer, then he’d face the crowd with his chin high and do what he had to do. He turned to the grill, sweat running rivers down his spine, the sides of his face, his upper arms. He worked a spatula across the flattop grill and flipped a burger, juices sizzling against the griddle and releasing another plume of steam.
The back door to the truck opened, and he whipped his head around as he slipped the hamburger patty off the grill and onto a toasty corn cake. The sun backlit the intruder, highlighting a silhouette that nipped at a curvy waist. “I’m sorry ma’am, but you can’t be back here. If you would wait in line—” He ducked his head to look back out the window. Still no end in sight. “Actually, maybe try Pedro’s Tacosone street over.” He finished stacking the burger, complete with layers of avocado crema, wilted greens, and fresh pico de gallo salsa. A mound of fried okra, brown and crisp, piled high on the side of the serving boat finished the order off, and he handed the dish with a smile to the person waiting on the other side of the window.
Adam wiped his hands down his apron, a sigh of defeat escaping his lips. Hopefully, everyone would come back to try his food tomorrow. Slim chance some didn’t have anything else to do and would continue to wait. In this heat? Yeah, he was dreaming.
No time like the present.He turned but pulled up short at finding the stranger still within the food truck kitchen, blocking the back exit.
“No one’s going to Pedro’s.” The muffled words came through a curtain of shiny black hair as the feminine intruder bent at the waist and gathered her dark locks at the top of her head, twisted, and then snapped a baseball cap from her back pocket and pulled it over her brow. She straightened, her smile bright, then dimming as her gaze bounced around his kitchen.
He followed her gaze, knowing what she saw. Whathe’dbeen watching all morning. The slow death of his new dream…his new life.
“All right then,” the woman said under her breath before straightening her shoulders. She pulled something else from her other back pocket. A notebook? She tore off the first five pages and jammed the papers into the order bar. She met his gaze, wide eyes that sparked of intelligence set above pronounced cheekbones and a straight nose.
“Order up.” She winked, then turned her back on him.
Adam glanced first at the tickets settling into their clipped position. One salad. One mac and cheese. Two teas. The others were filled in pretty script, written on a real honest-to-goodness restaurant order slip. His gaze bounced back to the woman who now made herself at home in his kitchen, opening cabinets and standing on tiptoe to pull pots down from their shelves.
Who was this woman, and what in the world did she think she was doing? “Umm…excuse me?”
“If you leave your mouth hanging open like that, flies are going to buzz in.” She continued to work, hands in his ingredients, back toward him. Black tendrils of hair—smooth, rich, and so deep a color that it reminded him of the ink from the Cartier ball-point pen that had been an absurdly expensive welcoming gift when he’d made partner at the firm—curved along the base of her slender neck, her toned arms flexing as she shifted things this way and that.
His jaw snapped shut. “You can’t be in here.”
She turned and shoved a plate at his chest. “You said that already.” Her eyes met his, light brown with gold flecks that set off her caramel skin. They seemed to size him up, laugh at his confusion, and challenge him to take a swing at the curveball she threw. His fingers curled around the plate digging into his ribs. Just like that she let go and twirled back around, a hurricane of motion and purpose.
And there he was, left trailing her outer bands. Looking down, he held two perfectly formed ground sirloin patties. He laid them on the grill, the hiss filling the small space before the sound of a knife unsheathing did. His chin brushed his shoulder as he looked back. The woman had withdrawn a watermelon from its place in the bottom cabinet and set it on the cutting board.
“What are you doing?” And what was the point of cooking the burger? His squeeze bottle of crema had run dry, and a few measly cubes of tomato at the bottom of the salsa bowl were all that was left of that. A burger on corn cakes without the accoutrements would be boring and, worse, dry.
She turned to face him, a hand waving in front of her. “Not that this confused look isn’t as charming as the name your truck advertises, but you really are on a time crunch. Think the twenty questions can wait? I promise to answer them all after the rush and not poison any of your customers in the meantime. And this”—she turned back around and speared the melon with the knife—“is to tide everyone in that line over until their orders are ready.”
He stood and stared, lost for words—which given his history and record in the courtroom, never happened.
“Oh good grief. Am I going to have to do everything?” She sidestepped around him and reached for something hanging behind his back. A pot slammed into his chest in the same manner the burger patties had before. “Water. Salt. Boil. Macaroni. Think you can handle it?” She didn’t wait to find out but returned to her carving of the melon. With a large bowl piled high, balsamic reduction drizzled to perfect proportions on top, she exited the truck as quickly as she’d entered.
He’d called it. A hurricane. Unnamed, but by the smiles of those in line, one he’d have to thank later. Pulling bags of spinach and containers of feta from the fridge, he restocked the ingredients for his ever-popular watermelon feta spinach salad with spicy cornbread croutons. Of which he had at least four orders for already lined up above the grill.
Water bubbled from the large stainless-steel pot the Hurricane had shoved at him, and he dumped in the last of the macaroni. In another pot he melted butter, added flour, and whisked in milk, adding in cheese, onion, lemon juice, and the rest of his secret ingredients for the Tricia cheese sauce he’d pour over the noodles.
