Page 21 of Things We Burn

He’d taken me to a temporary home, he’d had to leave in the morning, putting me in the cab without asking for my number. The recipe for a one-night stand.

What was I to expect? He was some famous daredevil playboy. He wasn’t going around looking to settle down.

Nor was I.

“A guest wants to come back to compliment the chef,” Michelle, my front of house manager, informed me.

I glanced up from the plate I was garnishing to show her my raised brow.

I did not entertain shit like that. A lot of chefs reveled in the attention, especially if it was from some prominent person or another. I did not.

There was a reason I was back here making the food instead of out there serving it and interfacing with people. I wanted to feed people, give them experiences. I did not want anything else. Not to mention that there was still thirty minutes of service remaining, and I did not have a second to spare. Every moment in my kitchen was precious and accounted for. I expected all of my staff to treat time as the priceless commodity it was, to notwaste it. And I did not expect anything of my staff that I wouldn’t expect of myself.

Michelle knew all that, of course. She’d been working with me for years and was excellent at her job.

“I know, I know.” She reached over to grab a linen to start wiping plates before service.

Michelle didn’t have idle hands. No one in my restaurant did.

“But this guest wasveryinsistent and somewhat famous.”

I rolled my eyes as I moved from plate to plate. “They always are.” The restaurant was the best in the city, had a two-year waiting list for a table, and despite my distaste for the practice, celebrities constantly tried to jump that line. It was the game, and I had to play it, though.

“This is different,” she spoke as she wiped. “This is one you want to let compliment you.”

Again, I didn’t stop moving. Stillness for me was death but I did note her tone—somewhat dreamy which was almost unheard of for Michelle. The woman was not prone to emotional outbursts of any kind. She was straight edge, calm and collected under even the most stressful of situations. She was the most valuable person in the restaurant and one of the few people I trusted implicitly.

“Fine,” I sighed.

I didn’t check my appearance, didn’t round to the other side of the kitchen where waiters were expertly and dutifully taking plates and shouting out tickets.

I didn’t look up as the door to the kitchen swung open, and a large body walked through it. A flash of black. Tall. Male. That was all I noticed.

Whichever celebrity or politician or millionaire who wanted to show off to his friends about ‘knowing the chef’ was going to be offended that I didn’t look up to greet him, and I didn’t care. Letting him in my kitchen was all I could do. Using power andinfluence to gain access to the place I considered my sanctuary pissed me the fuck off.

“I need three more scallops,” I called out, frowning at the sear on the plate in front of me.

Not right.

“Yes, Chef!” Ferris replied.

I pulled a ticket. “Two wagyu, one scallop, one risotto,” I read off. “I need them yesterday; we’re two minutes behind on service.”

Two minutes. An age in my kitchen.

“Yes, Chef!” my team called back.

The clang of pots and the sizzle of pans sounded around me, noises I barely heard anymore, but noises that comforted me with their chaos.

Two minutes behind. My team could make that up. But I was going to be delayed by the person now standing in front of me. He hadn’t spoken. Probably because he expected me to look up, fawn over him.

Still, I worked at plates.

“Impressive.”

The single word had me freezing. For three seconds. Three seconds with my hand hovering over the plate, not doing anything at all.

I’d never frozen for that long in a kitchen.

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