“You tell me.” Lenny wiped the rim of the fashionably wide bowls—about the only instruction he’d followed. “I don’t speak Spanish.”
“You don’t speak English either, by the looks of it. And what the fuck is going on with that bread?”
“Jenga?” Lenny spread his hands, an impish grin curving his full lips. “You said it was important to make the food appear more intricate than the simple ingredients you put into it.”
“When did I say that?”
“I’m paraphrasing. You actually said posh twats would eat pig shit if you garnished it with hipster micro-cress and charged them twenty quid.”
That sounded closer to something Nero would say, but it didn’t explain the adventure playground Lenny had constructed on Nero’s precious hake dish. Orange zest, garlic, and chopped parsley stalks, there was even a nest of delicately shaved fennel roots. And it looked . . . bloody awesome.
“You would’ve thrown those orange shells out, right?” Lenny said. “The ones you juiced for the sauce? And the parsley stalks?”
Nero growled and turned back to the grill. “Sod it. Send it. And make sure each one going forward is exactly the same.”
And so it went on. Lenny’s lightly flamboyant touch graced every dish Nero sent his way, and after a while, it began to feel normal.
Halfway through, the floor manager, Steph, came into the kitchen and beckoned Nero away from the grill. “Two things: who’s the cutie plating mains? What the hell is he doing to our menu? And why are you letting him?”
“That’s three things,” Nero snapped. “You gotta problem on the floor?”
“Not at all. I’m just curious. Cass never said anything about changing things up and you don’t usually give a shit enough to bother.”
The comment stung, but it was nothing Nero hadn’t heard from her before, and really, who cared if she thought Nero’s simplistic, peasant approach was lazy? She hadn’t complained about . . . other things. “Lenny’s helping me out for a while. A bit of fresh air to make up for my ambivalence, yeah? Now get out of the kitchen.”
Steph scowled and flounced away, clearly knowing better than to argue with Nero when he had a grill full of meat he was itching to get back to. She’d likely moan to Tom about his attitude, but what else was new?
“Did I get you in trouble?” Lenny kept his gaze on the pea shoots he was draping artfully across a ginger beer–glazed pork chop as Nero returned to the grill. “She didn’t look happy.”
“She’s never happy unless she’s chewing my ear off. You sending that, or pissing about with it?”
“I’m sending it.” Lenny called for service. The plates left the kitchen, and he joined Nero at the grill. “These are the last tables?”
“Till dinner time.”
“Smashing.” Lenny yawned. “I need a nap.”
Nero snorted and laid steaks on the resting tray. “Good luck with that. You’ve got an hour before I need you back here to prep for dinner.”
“Back? Where do you want me to go?”
“Wherever you want. Pub across the road does a cracking sarnie if you don’t fancy eating with the riffraff later.”
“I don’t want to go to the pub.”
Lenny snatched the tray of meat and returned to the pass. Nero eyed him, taking in the strain in his slim neck and slight tremor in his fingers as he plated up the final orders. A pisshead, maybe? But drunk chefs weren’t safe in the kitchen, so Cass would’ve told Nero that. So what was it that weighed so heavily on Lenny’s shoulders?
Nero didn’t know why he cared, but he did. More than he’d cared about anything in a long time.
The afternoon passed in a blur of deep-cleaning equipment, prep, and serving up the staff dinner. Service flew by in another haze of Lenny’s artistic anarchy, and before Nero knew it, his workday was over.
He left Lenny mopping the floor with Debs and Spanks and retreated to the office to record the wastage and complete the prep list for the following day. His phone buzzed as he was finishing up. He answered it with a grunt. “Bit late, ain’t ya? He’s been vandalising my plates all bloody night.”
Cass chuckled. “You got him in the kitchen, then?”
“Yep. Kept him close. Had him plating on main line.”
“He get on okay?”
