Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
I could see that when it came to Stevie, her sass hadn’t faded with the years.
If anything, she’d only gotten more outspoken.
And damn if I didn’t find it attractive.
Chapter Four: Stevie
I was working my butt off, but I felt like a hamster at a wheel, or like I was running on a treadmill. I couldn’t actually get anywhere no matter how hard I was working. The serving staff got way too cocky after Theo left and now they were used to calling the shots, instead of listening to the kitchen. The kitchen staff had just about given up hope of being listened to, or getting dishes out, or, well, anything.
The ingredients were second rate, and the dishes were overproduced. We needed simpler dishes that weren’t so goddamn pretentious and fresher ingredients and just some new shit in general to shake things up.
And now - Michael was frowning at me like he was regretting hiring me in the first place. Fuck. That was the opposite of what I wanted. I wanted to wow him, but how could I do that with Theo’s dishes, Theo’s options that had long gone stale? They’d made a splash way back when but that was, what, ten years ago when the restaurant had first opened?
So yeah, this wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for when I’d imagined how tonight would go. Especially the look on Michael’s face. But you know what? He wasn’t seeing me get to be myself. He was seeing yet another chef try and work with a menu that had been highly personal to Theo—and a menu that hadn’t aged well and was now second-rate.
I just had to get through tonight, and then tomorrow I could start to put phase one of my plan into action: redesigning the menu.
All right, so that wasn’t phase one of my ‘seduce Michael’ plan but phase one of my ‘get this fucking restaurant back on track’ plan, but hey, I was pretty sure that impressing Michael in any capacity with the restaurant could only help my cause when it came to showing him how happy I could make him in his life and in his bedroom.
Just make it through tonight, I kept telling myself. One step at a time. Michael couldn’t possibly fire me after just one night—only one night was rarely enough to prove to a person that their hire was or wasn’t going to work out, not unless I did something really obviously awful like stand around smoking and playing games on my phone while the kitchen was on fire around me.
But I still felt a twist of fear in my stomach when Michael left. I wanted him to be impressed with me and to see the capable, talented adult I had become. I didn’t want to be pining here uselessly after him like I had in high school.
None of the dishes that I sent out were sent back, which was a good sign. Some of the line cooks—all good people—had told me that they’d been getting a lot of dishes sent back because the kitchen simply couldn’t keep up with orders and corners had been cut by the head chefs.
No way. I told them straight up that wasn’t going to happen in my restaurant. We were going to do things the right way or not at all and if customers waited an extra five minutes for their food as a result, well so be it. I would rather have a customer wait a little extra time and get a dish that they genuinely loved and was what they asked for than wait less time but get something they’d then send back.
Finally—finally—the restaurant cleared out and I could start everyone on closing duties. I made a mental note to have a serious conversation with the waitstaff, preferably with Michael there as well to back me up. They were running the place and being disrespectful to their coworkers in the kitchen and there was no way in hell I was going to stand for that.
I headed back into the office to have a discussion with Michael. I hoped that I could keep my head on straight. Every time that I saw him, it was like getting hit by a truck all over again. He was just so fucking handsome, and charismatic, and I wanted to make him feel better and also wanted him to order me around and it made my legs weak and my head spin…
Focus, Stevie. You’re there to discuss the menu, not to deal with your lust for him. That could come later once this whole restaurant thing had been resolved and I’d proven to him that I could handle things professionally.
“Come in,” Michael called as I knocked on the door.
I made sure to close the door behind me as I entered. The last thing this restaurant needed was the staff overhearing their two bosses arguing, if it did turn into an argument. “When was the last time the menu was changed?”