Page 6 of A Taste of Christmas Magic

Chapter Two

As always whenRustin Wildish was exhausted, he pushed harder. He’d finally persuaded his team to go home or hit a local sports bar to unwind after busting it with him all afternoon and evening at the Madrigal Dinner. His root vegetable and lamb stew that he’d served in crusty cheese bread bowls had been slurped to extinction, and his spiced chicken satays on rosemary stalks had been a hit. More than a dozen guests had asked for the chef to divulge the recipe.

As if.

He had created everything in his finally completed and licensed commercial kitchen. His crew, handpicked from his years working in kitchens abroad as well as the past few years working in restaurants in Portland, D.C., Atlanta, and Charlotte, had delivered the food to South Point Abbey College’s staging site for the Madrigal Dinner and plated it to his exact specifications. He trusted his crew, not the hodge-podge of Belmont’s best do-gooder volunteers, especially if they’d known who the chef was and why he was back in Belmont.

A grim smile touched his lips.

The good, church-going folks of Belmont weren’t as smart or as generous in spirit as they told themselves, but their contempt had made him stronger and primed for battle.

He still was shocked that Miss Millie had sold him Millie’s Diner. He’d been cobbling together grants and financing to open a restaurant in Charlotte’s South End so he’d be closer to his mother when Miss Millie had approached him with her scheme. She’d been his mentor and his first employer. As a cocky preteen, unforgettably, he’d told her that one day he’d run Millie’s.

His world had been so small then, but his ambition had burned bright.

But though he’d kept in touch with Miss Millie over the past twelve-plus years, he’d never thought to approach her about her diner. Mayes never sold property. Not ever. And why should they when they had their name slapped on more than a few buildings in town or the surrounding county? Why sell when Sean Patrick whatever number Maye could collect rents in perpetuity?

But Miss Millie Maye hadn’t wanted to lease him the historic diner that had started out as mill offices and a warehouse. She’d wanted to sell it—the whole building, which included two upstairs apartments that he and his brother and a small construction team had worked to remodel, along with the restaurant—to him.

Miss Millie held the mortgage so after a hefty down payment, he paid her monthly, and with the business loan from a Charlotte billionaire’s foundation that took on entrepreneurs from sketchy backgrounds—their words, not his—he’d been able to upgrade the kitchen and remodel the cafeteria into an industrial-looking restaurant with a large deck for outside seating. He’d kept expenses down by using sweat equity: his, his brother’s, and the restaurant’s crew.

Though Rustin was suspicious by nature, Miss Millie Maye had always been honest and fair to him. She’d given him a job cleaning the restaurant after hours first, and then more and more responsibility. She’d taught him how to cook and how to run a restaurant—front and back house and the business end—and she’d helped him harness his roiling anger and resentment and hone it into purpose. As long as he worked, he and his family had been fed. She’d also helped him study for his GED and had sponsored his placement into a culinary institute in Charlotte.

She loved Belmont. It was her home, but she’d pushed him to travel and to hone his craft, and he had. And now he was back, but Belmont didn’t feel like home, yet. But it would. He’d turn The Wild Side into a culinary destination, and that was only the beginning of his plans.

Noticing that some of the brown paper covering the back windows had come loose, he stalked across the darkened dining room just as Taylor Swift’s “Out of the Woods” blared over his Sonos speakers.

Singing the chorus, he grabbed the drooping edge of paper to smooth it back in place and came face-to-face with the widely spaced, large, slightly spooky eyes of Chloe Cramer.

His startled shout and jump definitely dented his bad-boy reputation.

Her mouth, which had always been too big for her fine-boned, heart-shaped face, in his opinion, grinned like she was actually happy to see him.

“Hey, Rustin! Are we?” she yelled through the accordion-style glass doors like they were still kids and she had zero filter. She sang along with Taylor and did a little dance on the nearly finished deck.

“No.” He slapped his hand over the paper, taping it back up as if that would cover up the memories that felt too close tonight. Belmont. The Maye sisters. Jessica, still beautiful, floating across the dark park toward the mansion that glittered like a crown on the other side of everything he’d ever known.

The Mayes were one of the bigger reasons he’d accepted Miss Millie’s offer. There were others of course, but the thought of opening a restaurant and feeding the town—maybe even some Mayes—when his family had been so hungry would be a poke in the eye to the Maye patriarch and his beautiful daughters.

And he’d own the building that had once been the mighty Maye offices and where two generations of Mayes had fed their workers so that they could work longer and harder—double shifts.

Rustin Wildish was back. A self-made man stronger, more determined, and smarter than anyone born sucking on a silver spoon.

*

“Rude,” Chloe staredat the brown paper blocking her view of Millie’s Diner’s new digs.

She’d been itching with curiosity to see the remodel, but Grandma Millie had demanded no peeking. The construction trucks, equipment, and materials for the final stretch of the years-long Riverwalk project, which would connect the downtown park and Belmont to the Riverfront development had made sneaking a peak too hazardous.

But what was Rustin Wildish doing inside? Was he working for Grandma Millie again? Was he going to be the chef? Her heart leaped even as disappointment poked. While she loved the idea of Rustin being back in town, she’d imagined him having a more epic career—his own edgy restaurant with lots of buzz and a string of whatever those things were called…Michelin stars?

Rustin had been her adolescent crush, her fantasy. Jane Eyre’s Rochester, Kathy’s Heathcliff, Elizabeth’s Darcy, and Bella’s Edward and Jacob all smushed together. But she didn’t have time to moon about. She had an entrée times two hundred to plan and a chef’s mercy upon which to throw herself.

Feigning a confidence she did not feel, she rapped on the window.

“Like the Raven,” she murmured, although the night wasn’t stormy.

Nothing.

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