Page 2 of Challenged By You
Elle’s eyes grow enormous. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. You know I just got off shift at—” But I don’t get to finish my sentence as the slamming of a door precludes that.
And then, without any warning, Spencer appears before me and Elle. We both snap to attention. Elle crushes the pomegranate seeds in her hands much like I’m crushing the bones in mine. Not even bothering to acknowledge her, his thick finger points in my direction. “You. Office. Now.” He turns before I can formulate a reply. The volume in the kitchen lowers significantly as my colleagues cease working at his order.
My cheeks flame. I stammer to his back, “I… Chef…”
“Don’t speak. Just move,” he calls over his shoulder.
Momentarily frozen, it gives Elle time enough to whisper again, “What did you do, T?” before I manage to stumble forward.
Because I have no idea, but whatever Spencer thinks I did, it’s apparently dire.
* * *
Forget dire—thisis catastrophic.
“Chef, I swear, I didn’t serve anything off the menu,” I plead for the ninth time in the last hour.
He slaps the stack of papers down against his desk, the sound causing me to jerk back, frightened. “According to this you did. And not only did you serve something that’s off the menu that I didn’t approve,” he sneers, “‘but was it supposed to have a touch of sweetness? It’s hard to say as half of it had been simmered in matcha sauce to an unrecognizable mush.’” He crumples the paper he’s reading into a ball before flinging it at my head.
I duck just as it hits with some force against the glass. “We don’t use matcha here at Seduction, sir. It’s not on the approved—”
“I know what’s fucking approved to be served!” he bellows. “Now, get your shit and get the fuck out.”
I blanch. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Jonas Rice,thebiggest food critic in New York City, just wrote a two-star review about Seduction due to your dessert last night. Once Portland hears about this…” he threatens.
I swallow hard, having heard stories from Chef Spencer about the wrath of Chef Mia Palazzo, one of the owners and head chef overseeing the Seduction Restaurant Group. The dark cloud of doom seems endless.What am I going to do?I think desperately. But then my spine straightens. I’ve survived more than this in the last two years. After all, I gave up the dreams I had for my children because their good-for-nothing sperm donor abandoned all of us. We moved here, to a place where love seems to be secondary to debasement.
And now, anger pulsating through my veins, I’m not about to let an overbearing baboon tell me I did something I damn well know I didn’t. “How do I know it wasn’t you?” I challenge.
“Excuse me?” he roars, taking a step closer.
But I hold my ground. “It wasn’t me.” I shrug. I’m already gone; I have nothing to lose. But I’ll be damned if I go down without a fight.
More and more, the idea of putting my children on a bus and moving somewhere, anywhere, sounds appealing. “I’ll tell you one last time: it wasn’t me. If you need to tell Chef Palazzo, so be it. I’ll be blackballed, and I know it.” I shrug again.
Chef Spencer’s gaping at me as if he’s never seen me before. His mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out.
My own finger lifts in his direction. “But it would behoove you to interview everyone involved in serving Rice-A-Roni last night.”
Chef takes a step back. “You dare to call Jonas Rice by that plebeian dish?” By the tone of his voice, he obviously lives and dies by every word this elitist snob writes. “It’s a good thing you won’t be here much longer if you don’t have appreciation for the people who can make or break you in this business.”
Bending over, I scoop up the crumbled ball at my feet. “You expect me to respect a man who dared to accuse me of serving crap that I never plated? As for you? I trained under some of the most amazing dessert instructors in the country. I then apprenticed with someoneyouused to work with before she booted you to the door. Let me see, what was the reason again? Burning a cake and then trying to scrape off the outer layer to serve at a wedding ceremony? And you expect me to stand here and kowtow to you as if you’ve never made a mistake when it’s obvious this Jonas Rice has?”
He blanches. “There’s no need to go into that, Paxton.” Spencer looks around as if someone can overhear our conversation. Bristling, he glares down at me. “That’s not the point of this conversation.”
“If I’m as good as gone, I’m going to say anything I damn well want to everyone I think should hear it,” I declare.
“You won’t be able to work as a cafeteria worker if you say another word. You and those precious children you yap on about will be living on the street,” he threatens.
“See, the difference between us is this: I love to bake, and I like working at Seduction, but there are two things I love more. If I have to work as a sanitation worker picking up the remains of a cake someone else barfed to make certain they are clothed and fed, I don’t care. I’ll do anything for them, but what I won’t do is let them see their mother degraded by another man.” With that, I unbutton my white jacket as I storm out the door. I don’t wait for Chef to say anything else before I storm out.
I figure they’ll mail my last check.
Flinging it open, I immediately ram into someone who is waiting right outside. “Excuse me,” I mumble into his chest. I don’t bother to look up since I wouldn’t be able to see him due to the tears in my eyes because the reality is hitting pretty hard.
