Hungry Heart: Konigsburg, Texas, Book 8 (13 page)

“I didn’t mind waiting,” Darcy called down the hall. “We just do brunch on Sundays and we’re closed on Mondays.”

“Good.” He pulled open the snaps on his shirt, tossing it into the laundry bag near his bed. Another thing he’d have to take care of next week—laundry.

“Porky and I checked your wood,” Darcy continued, “but I didn’t light any fires. I didn’t know if the wood in the firebox was ready to go or not.”

He pulled on one of his working T-shirts and headed back up the hall. “It’s not exactly ready yet. I lay out the hardwood in the morning so I can light them as soon as I get back. I’m going to get a late start tonight.”

“I didn’t see any charcoal.”

“I don’t use much of it.” He stepped back into the kitchen. “Just a few briquettes to help get the fire burning.”

“What do you use instead?”

He shrugged. “Wood. Didn’t you see my piles of logs up there?”

“Wood?” She sat up. “If it’s just a wood fire, how do you keep it going?”

“You add more wood. How do you think you keep it going?”

“So you stay up all night, putting wood on the fire?”

He shook his head. “Come on. It’s easier to show you and I need to get the fires started. They have to burn for a while before it’s hot enough for the meat.” He grabbed his hat from the hook and headed down the outside stairs. After a moment, she followed him.

He glanced at her as they moved toward the kitchen. “How did you get in anyway? Not that I mind, but, well…”

She grinned. “I climbed in a window. But your lock isn’t exactly top of the line, Ace, and Porky didn’t mind. If you’re worried about security, you might want to see about getting something better in the way of locks and watch dogs.”

He shook his head. “Not much in there that’s worth stealing besides the computer. And I’ve got most of the records saved in the cloud anyway. It’s mostly a place to sleep.”

“Nice-looking place to sleep.” She picked up her pace as he moved toward the smokers in the lean-to. The tips of her spiked hair were bright pink this time, the color of cotton candy. He had a sudden impulse to run his hand through them. An impulse he ruthlessly suppressed.

She glanced up at him. “So now what?”

“Now we get the fires started, like I said.” He opened the fire box in the nearest smoker, grabbing the chimney starter.

“Is that loaded up with briquettes?”

He nodded. “That and wood chunks. Once the fire gets hot enough, we can throw on some more logs.” He stuffed wadded-up newspaper in the bottom of the chimney, placing it in the midst of the wood in the fire box and pushing the lighter into the opening at the bottom.

“Logs?” She narrowed her eyes.

“Short ones. I cut them to fit.” He gestured toward the wood stacked along the hillside on both sides of the lean-to.

“Geez.” She stepped closer to the nearest woodpile. “You’ve got enough here for a couple of years.”

He shrugged. “Not really. The first pile is new wood, around a year old. The second is two years, the third is three years. The third pile is all I use right now.”

“And the others are aging?”

He nodded as he set up the second fire box. “Right. New wood is too smoky. You need wood that’s dried out.”

“I thought you wanted smoke.”

“You do. But you don’t want too much. Your meat shouldn’t taste like an ashtray.”

She made a face. “Nope. What kind of wood is this?”

“Mostly post oak.” He nodded toward a bin at the side. “I’ve got pecan chunks in there for flavor. Sometimes I pick up peach wood if there’s been a bad storm and the orchard owners are clearing out the windfall.”

“But you still have to feed in logs all night?”

He shook his head. “Not if I get the fire going right. You don’t want it to get too hot. You can end up burning up your rig by mistake. You have to get the dampers set just right so it’s not too hot and not too smoky. If the fire’s burning the way it’s supposed to, it’ll go for seven or eight hours without refueling.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “You’ve got quite an operation here, chef. A lot for one man to handle.”

He blinked. So far as he could remember, nobody had ever called him
chef
before. It wasn’t a term that turned up too much on the barbecue circuit. On the whole he found that he liked it—at least he did when Darcy used it. “I’ve got a routine. It works. Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“If I get off schedule, like I did today, it can take me a while to catch up. But as long as I’ve got the truck downtown by eleven, I’m okay.”

She leaned back against one of the support posts. “I put the potato salad and slaw in the refrigerator in the trailer. So what do you show me today?”

“Rubs. Maybe another sauce.”

“Rubs.” She nodded. “Let’s do it. By the way, I brought you some beet salad.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not crazy about beets.”

“You’ll like these.” She rested her hands on her hips. “I made them.”

There seemed to be a
you’ll like them
or else
at least implied. It occurred to him that he’d never win a staring contest against those blues eyes, particularly when you considered the effect they had on his lower body. He sighed. “Come on. Let’s go fix some meat. I’ll set the timer for the fire, and we can put the meat on after supper.”

The King apparently liked to believe that his rub was some kind of secret formula. Darcy identified the smoked paprika, mustard powder, salt and cayenne right off the bat, although she had to admit that the herbs were a little harder to pinpoint. She felt pretty confident about the coriander, though, and the oregano. The sugar, garlic powder, and onion powder were pretty much a given.

They’d applied the rub to two packer cut beef briskets, which the King had wrapped in plastic and put back in the refrigerator. Then he’d lifted out the meat for tomorrow, leaving it on the counter so that it could lose its chill before he put it on the fire.

Now she sat at the picnic table at the side of his kitchen shack and watched him as he speared a golden beet on his plate. Porky lay nearby, chewing on a rawhide snack. The salad was a lock—they served it regularly at the Rose for lunch and she knew damn well it was primo, even for beet haters.

He chewed contemplatively, his forehead furrowed. “Passable,” he said finally.

She grinned. “Get bent. Those are rockin’ beets and you know it.”

He shrugged. “For beets they’re edible. That’s about as far as I’m willing to go. And given the way I feel about beets, that’s a major acknowledgement, believe me.”

She sighed. “Those are roasted fresh beets. They don’t come out of a can or a jar. Which probably makes them different from most of the beets you’ve run into up until now.”

He narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. “Contrary to popular opinion, I have actually eaten food other than barbecue in my life. I’ve even walked into a few restaurants that didn’t smell like wood smoke. And I’ve known some first-class cooks.”

“Yeah, you mentioned your grandmother.”

“She was definitely one of them.” He took another small forkful of beets. “Could be worse, I guess.”

“Gosh, thanks.” She took another bite of the leftover sausage he’d warmed up in the microwave, tasting fennel seed, pepper and some chilies. “So are you from around here—Hill Country, I mean?”

He shook his head. “Houston. Home of pork barbecue and atomic hot sauce.”

“Which you cook?”

“Which I grew up eating. It’s East Texas barbecue, which is a lot different from Central Texas barbecue, which is what you’re eating right now. Except for the beets, of course.” He raised an eyebrow “Are these, like, leftovers from the Rose?”

She frowned slightly. He didn’t seem to like talking about his past—which made it sound a lot more interesting all of a sudden. “Yeah. Joe doesn’t care if we take stuff like this home. There wasn’t enough left to make it worth repurposing.”

“What’s the white stuff on top?”

“Goat cheese. Why don’t you like to talk about yourself?”

He pushed his hat to the back of his head as he grinned. “Sweetheart, I love talking about myself. You want to hear my recipe for beans? I’ll even give you a running narrative of how I came to put it together.”

She leaned forward, resting her arms on the table so that she could look at him. “I’ll settle for hearing how you got into cooking barbecue. Your folks have a restaurant or something?”

He gave her another slow grin, but not before she’d seen the sudden wariness around his eyes. “I’m the first one in my family to go pro, so to speak, although a lot of people I know cook backyard barbecue. A few years ago I decided to see if my ’cue was as out of sight as I always knew it was. Got a license for the food truck and set up a smoker. First thing you know I’ve got myself a barbecue empire. Just right for a king.”

She gave him a slow smile of her own. “I assume that’s the short version. Did you build your kitchen up here before you started with the food truck?”

He shook his head. “Used the kitchen in the trailer for a while. I had an old freezer too, out in what used to be a storage shed, where the kitchen is now. And the smoker was outside on the ridge. What you call ‘shade tree barbecue’.”

“How long did it take you to earn enough for the set-up you have now?”

He smiled again, but by now she knew what to watch for. Whatever he was going to tell her wouldn’t be the whole truth. Maybe not even half.

“It was a while. A couple of years or so. I had to figure out what I wanted first, how the set-up would work. It’s not easy getting plumbing in out here. The former owner had some water lines installed, but I had to make a lot of modifications.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Expensive?”

He shrugged. “Some. It worked out, though. Just the way I wanted.” He pushed himself to his feet. “You want a beer? I’ve got some in the cooler.”

Annnd, we move on.
“Sure. I’ve got time for one before I head back.”

Porky half raised his head as the King walked back toward the kitchen, then subsided into his afternoon nap.

The King glanced at her curiously as he opened the door. “Do you work nights too? After you come out here?”

She shrugged. “Some nights I do. Joe likes to be free on the weekends so he can go hear MG play. I pick up dinner Fridays and Saturdays.”

He came back from the kitchen carrying a couple of longnecks. “But not Sunday?”

“Like I said, we just do brunch on Sundays. I have the afternoons off. Plus we’re closed on Mondays. Why? Do you usually do something special Sunday afternoons?”

“Not usually. Next Sunday’s liable to be a little different, though.” He sat down beside her on the picnic table bench. “I’m doing a catering gig. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It’s a little hard to explain.” He took a swallow of his beer, resting his elbow on the table. “You know Chico Burnside?”

“The big guy at the Faro? I know who he is.”

“Turns out he does ’cue—pork and
cabrito
. He’s trying to put together a team for the big July Fourth cook-off in town.”

“A team?”

“A barbecue team. Barbecue cook-offs take more than one person.”

She held up a hand. “Okay, one quick question before we go any further with this, what’s
cabrito
?”

“Goat. Baby goat, actually. Kid.”

Darcy grimaced. “I haven’t liked most of the goat I’ve tasted.”

“You might like this, but you’ll have to taste it some other time. There’s no category in the Konigsburg cook-off for
cabrito
.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure I understand what’s happening next Sunday. Is this a competition too?”

“Not exactly.” He took another swallow of his beer. “More like a preliminary. We’re each going to cook up something in the backyard at the Faro and get a sense of how well we’d work together as a team.”

“You’re trying to see if he’s any good?”

“Yeah, basically. It’s a given that I’m good. And I’m not willing to be on a team with somebody who’s just a weekend griller.” He gave her a dry smile.

Darcy considered what she knew of Chico Burnside. He didn’t strike her as any kind of dilettante. “If he’s good, will you do the contest with him?”

“Why not? It’s about time I got some recognition for my pit master skills. Aside from the enthusiastic applause of my adoring groupies, that is.” He smiled again, his teeth white against his tanned skin. His eyes were velvet dark in the gathering twilight. She felt a tightening deep inside, a warming in her blood.

“Adoring groupies? Why haven’t I noticed them?” Her voice sounded a little breathy all of a sudden.
Steady. He’s just a guy, for Pete’s sake.

He was. On the other hand, she now remembered just why she’d thought he was hot. The slightly long, dark hair hung around his face, framing the strong bones. The brown eyes had flecks of green and gold. He leaned against the table watching her, his body a long, lean stretch of muscle.

Oh, geez.
Maybe it was time to go.