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)
There had been some pretty big fights between the two of them. Virginia and I hadn’t really had any fights. What was there to fight about? She left me, said she didn’t love me, said she was going to be with Theo. End of story, really. And she’d cheated on me. How could I have trusted her after that, even if I still loved her?
Brooke and Virginia, though. Man those had been some big fights. Virginia hadn’t seen why Brooke was so upset, and it would spiral from there.
But now she was smiling and I couldn’t be more pleased about it. If hiring Stevie made Brooke happy, then no matter what else happened, it was worth it.
“I have a good feeling about all of this,” Brooke promised me. “I think you should take a hands-off approach tonight, really. Stevie can handle it.”
“If you’re sure…”
“You lurking up by the host stand isn’t going to help bring in customers.” Brooke hip-checked me out of the way to take my spot. “Now I can welcome people in with my winning personality.”
“Are you saying I don’t have a winning personality?”
“Go organize your desk or something, Dad, we’ve got this under control.”
Mmm. All right.
I shrugged and headed back to my office to pay some bills, although God knew how much longer I’d be able to do that…and check my emails.
Ah, crap. One of the top emails was from a friend of mine, a fellow restauranteur.
The subject line was: Can you believe this? I clicked on the video link in the email.
Just as I’d suspected, it was an advertisement for Theo’s new cooking show. He’d gone down to L.A. to promote himself as a celebrity chef and with his good looks and charm, and his skills, no wonder he had secured himself a spot.
I hated how once upon a time I would’ve been so proud of him. I would’ve been glad for him to go and do something like this. I’d known that he couldn’t stay in the restaurant forever, that he’d want to spread his wings and forge his own path, but did he have to do it by hurting me?
Asshole.
I had to admit, though, the commercial was well-produced. It was slick and professional, and eye-catching, and, well, overall impressive.
God dammit.
I closed out of the link and shut down the computer. I’d given Stevie enough space, I had to see what was going on out there.
What I saw put me in an even worse fucking mood. The dining room looked close to chaos. The servers were just milling around, and several diners looked angry.
Dammit. I knew she was too inexperienced, I should’ve at least given her a guiding hand, I should…
I stopped short as I stormed into the kitchen.
Stevie was hustling, and harder than the line cooks that were with her. She was multi-tasking like a pro, giving out orders and serving up food onto plates and sautéing veggies. It was only as I saw her working so hard that I realized how laidback and complacent my other workers had become.
One of the servers, Cameron, was waiting at the window. “My table’s been waiting half an hour for appetizers!”
“I told you to 86 the lobster,” Stevie replied. Her tone was firm but not cranky. Chefs could get to be real assholes sometimes so I was glad to see that she was handling this without resorting to yelling. “You didn’t listen. Now you have to wait for the lobster to poach.”
Cameron rolled his eyes and stormed off.
Great. Well, if worst came to worst I’d talk to the table. Cameron was a good server but he was also cocky. A real charmer, and he knew it, and he’d yak it up to his tables and promise them the moon because it got him a good tip but it meant that sometimes the kitchen would suffer for it. Clearly Stevie wasn’t going to take that lying down, and good on her for it.
I walked over. “How’re things going?”
Stevie smiled at me, and heat sparked in my stomach. Dammit. She was smiling at me like we were sharing some kind of secret, and that was a dangerous way for me to take it.
“It’s going slower than I’d like,” Stevie replied. “The menu that Theo came up with is overly complicated and the chefs who came in after him have started cutting corners to try and compensate and of course the staff have followed their example. It means I’ve got to deal with a mixture of inadequate ingredients and dishes that take too long to prepare.”
“Are you saying Theo’s menu isn’t working? Theo’s menu is what got us our Michelin designation.”
“Yeah, and it’s his menu that’s going to cause us to lose it.” Stevie arched an eyebrow at me. “Times change and things change and a restaurant has to rotate their menu and change to keep being relevant. What worked once doesn’t always work a second time and what worked for a year doesn’t always work forever.”