Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) Read Free Page A

asked.
    “I do,” I said, keeping mum.
    He leaned in close and I got a whiff of the suave-guy odor. Musk. A little hint of sandalwood. Something else that made me swoon just a tiny bit. “Thoughts?” he asked.
    I thought about it for a moment. “Nice. Smart.”
    “And?”
    “Well, there’s the family money and the incredible good looks, too,” I said. “It’s all good,” I added, more to myself than to the guy across from me.
    He leaned back in his chair. “Fair enough.” He asked for a sip of my beer, a little intimate for a first meeting, I thought, but I had been engaged recently to a really cheeky guy, so I was used to it. As I sat here looking at this guy, I found myself not missing my former fiancé all that much. That was a good sign, the ever-present pain in my gut diminishing a little bit. “So, what do you do, Bel McGrath?” he asked.
    “Chef,” I said, spreading my arms wide. “Currently on sabbatical.”
    His eyebrows went up. Saying you’re a chef always impresses people. “Really?”
    “Yep,” I said. I resisted the urge to tell him that I had won the Rising Star Chef of the Year from the James Beard Foundation ten years prior, because if I told him that then I’d have to tell him the real reason I was back in Foster’s Landing and why I was thinking about becoming a line cook at Five Guys.
    “A chef?” It seemed my beer was now his and I watched as he made quick work of it. I don’t know why he was so surprised at what I did, but I have found over the years that people often mistake curvy redheaded females for jobs other than head chef. Bartender. Waitress. Busgirl. Nanny. “Been doing it a long time?” he asked.
    “Cooking, yes.”
    “And no job right now?” he asked.
    “No. I came back to the Landing about two weeks ago, so I’m still looking.”
    “Came back from where?”
    We must be related. He was as nosy as any other McGrath or McHugh, curiosity running through his veins. “I was in New York City. Working at a restaurant.” I didn’t say which one. Even if he was from Ireland, he might have heard about the one-star Michelin restaurant where a former president of the United States had nearly choked to death on a fish bone that had inexplicably remained in his red snapper. And how the actor who owned the restaurant—a famous curmudgeon in his own right—had fired the chef on the spot.
    And how that chef, a small redhead with a fiery temper that she had seemed to have since misplaced in favor of a dulled sense of not belonging, had—after apologizing profusely to the former president, who just minutes before had propositioned her in her kitchen—stormed out, telling the curmudgeonly actor that the Oscar he had won for playing a North Dakota farmer with the secret CIA past should have gone to another A-list actor for his role as Rambo’s grown, angry son in Axis of Terror, a roundly panned film despite the A-list actor’s performance, an acting tour de force.
    And there was also a flipped table and a broken bottle, but I can’t actually say that I remember that part.
    I do remember, however, the face of the restaurant critic for the New York Times, who between bites of my famous shepherd’s pie—the one made with foie gras—was greedily taking in every detail of the passion play unfolding before him .
    Not my finest hour.
    The curmudgeon had always wanted a Times review. Now he had one. And a front-page story about the restaurant, the ending paragraph insinuating that the chef who had previously wowed diners with her artistry would never work in this town again.
    I didn’t wait to find out. I was out of my apartment, and the New York restaurant scene, within days.
    Declan’s eyebrows went up, almost as if he had read my mind and heard me tell the story out loud. “Sounds exciting. I’ve never met a chef.”
    It was exciting. And thrilling. And life affirming.
    And over.
    “Yep,” I said, staring into the bottom of my empty glass. “But I’m back here