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 shook my head clear of those dirty thoughts. Now was not the time, as tempting as it was to indulge them, to drag her back into a side room and fuck her until she had to cover her mouth to keep from moaning too loudly. “Do you have a moment? Could I talk to you in the office?”
“Sure thing.” Stevie turned to one of the cooks. “Get that fucking chicken off the grill before it burns and can someone takeover my shit?”
Coming from anyone else, the swearing would’ve made her sound angry, but that was just how Stevie was and everyone knew it by now.
I walked her back to my office, the both of us carefully not touching each other. It was tempting, far too tempting, to reach out for her. She was like a magnet, just pulling me into her, and I wanted to shove her against the wall, or even just run my hand over the curve of her hip.
But I forced myself to stay back, to stay good, as I opened the office door for her and she walked inside.
Even just her regular chef’s jacket was tempting to me, knowing what lay underneath. And knowing that she’d let me, if I started to undress her. She’d be putty in my hands, she’d whimper and plead and beg me. The way that she gave control up to me, trusted me and gave herself over to me, was utterly intoxicating. Finding new ways to make her moan and say my name was my new addiction.
“You’ll want to sit down,” I told her.
Stevie had this anticipatory look on her face, and I realized that she was expecting either sex or some good news. Perhaps both.
Fuck, I hated disappointing her.
As I walked around the desk to grab the article, her face fell. “You seem… tense. Is everything okay?”
I wished that I could lie to her. Or even better, that everything was okay and I was about to give her a five star review that I’d found.
“This was in the paper this morning,” I said, handing the newspaper over to her.
Stevie took it and picked it up, her eyes flying across the page as she read the article. Her face, however, didn’t sink into a mask of despair the way I’d expected. Instead it hardened, the lines of it sharpening. She was getting angry.
“Well this is just bullshit!” she said, tossing the newspaper back onto my desk. “What the fuck is this? It’s ridiculous. What kind of…all that pretentious shit he’s spouting, you know that none of that’s true, right? Did he even taste the food? It sounds like he just walked in, looked at the menu, and decided to shit all over it because of that! I mean, what the actual fuck.” She looked up at me, her eyes snapping from fireworks to pleading. “You don’t actually believe all that he said, do you? You know that this is insane. And the stuff he says about Theo? What, did he suck the guy’s dick or something? Couldn’t be more of a brown-noser if he was actually bending over to kiss Theo’s ass.”
“Now you’re talking like a chef,” I said, unable to help a little bit of amusement. Chefs could never take criticism and they could be just as harsh to critics as critics were to them.
Stevie snorted. “I’m not just saying this because of my ego, Michael. I promise. Look, I’m a woman, okay? That means that nobody goes around giving me praise automatically. I have to deal with crippling self-doubt, I did that all through culinary school. The men in my classes would just skate by and be fine, but I had to be perfect. So I’m not the kind of person who can’t take a little criticism. And I learned to figure out when I was being genuinely criticized and when it was bullshit. And this?” She tapped the newspaper. “This is a steaming on-fire pile of horseshit.”
“This critic is insanely respected,” I pointed out. “He’s worked all over the world and reviewed some of the best restaurants in Europe and on the east coast. People are going to listen to him.”
Stevie scoffed. “How is it that I have more faith in this than you do? How can you not believe in this place? It’s just one bad review and the numbers don’t lie. Our business is up. We’re getting more customers, more reservations. You said it yourself, by the end of the year we could be in the green.”
“And this critic says that we’ll be lucky to be open at all by the end of the year.”
“He’s just one fucking person.”
“One person that people respect and listen to. Thousands of people read his reviews. The whole city is seeing this article this morning. And God knows how many people out of the city are reading it. People in Los Angeles, New York, all over. The restaurant world is going to know about this. Possibly even hundreds of thousands of people. And because of that? We’re going to lose business. A critic’s review can make or break your restaurant.”