“Christ!” Grey exclaimed. “You two… look, fine. We’ll use credit card numbers to match repeat orders. Does that satisfy you?”
“It’s not a perfect system,” Rafael said, biting the side of his lip thoughtfully. My eye was drawn to the bite of his teeth like a magnet. His lip was reddened when he let go to speak again. “People might use different cards to pay. Or they might take turns paying if they’re a regular group.”
Grey looked like he was about to boil over.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Using the credit cards will work. We’ll do it that way.”
“Right,” Grey said, then shook his head and rolled his eyes and stalked away, muttering something about how impossible it was to deal with both of us.
“So, you have any thoughts about what you’re going to make?” I asked.
“Nothing I’m going to tell you,” Rafael said, as easy as breathing, almost like he already knew I was going to ask. “I’m not going to help you improve your own ideas.”
I laughed. “As if I need your ideas to come up with my own,” I said. “I was just wondering whether you needed any help. After cooking someone else’s menu for so long, it must be hard to think about something on your own.”
Rafael gave me a slanted look, tilting his head slightly to look at me through the lower part of his glasses. “I came up with half the current menu,” he said with an edge of pride. “Our last Head Chef encouraged us all to grow and develop our skills, and he was happy to take suggestions.”
Shit. I hadn’t known that. Rafael had experience with the clientele here and what they liked, and he’d successfully launched menu items before.
That put me at a distinct disadvantage.
And now he knew I knew that.
Shit. I was trying to psyche him out, but the bastard was too good at playing me at my own game.
“Are you supposed to be checking on the dough around now?” I asked instead of letting him see me panic. I was rewarded with a slight widening of his eyes before they flicked up to the clock on the wall behind me. He rushed off to the ovens with a muttered curse.
I smiled. At least I could still rattle him back.
Nikolai burst into the kitchen with an urgency that startled all of us; everyone in the kitchen looked up at him. His characteristically pale face was even paler today, somehow.
“I just took a booking,” he said. “A huge party for a couple of weeks from Friday. It’s a wrap party for a film crew shooting nearby. They’ve booked out the whole restaurant.”
Rafael whistled long and low. He was standing by a tray of dough that looked exactly perfect; he hadn’t missed out on his timing at all. Damn it. “How close to capacity?”
“Full capacity,” Nikolai responded. “And they want some custom menu items.”
I grinned. This was starting to sound like my kind of party. Rafael, on the other hand, looked uncomfortable at the idea of having to do something bespoke.
Maybe I could claw that upper hand back, after all.
I grabbed a notebook out of the pocket of my chef’s whites and flicked through it. I had a few ideas for new dishes in there – things I sketched out whenever the inspiration took me. I flickedthrough them, my eyes landing on something I’d thought about months ago and the smile on my face spreading wider.
I wasn’t out of the race yet. Not by a long fucking shot.
It was time to see how Rafael would deal with havingthisthrown at him.
Rafael
“No, we have enough tomatoes,” I said, waving Drake’s hand away from my ordering form. He had already wasted enough of my time this morning when he left things in such a state in the storage room that I had to spend half an hour reorganizing everything.
“But we need better ones,” he whined. “This is a film crew. We need to serve them the Hollywood best.”
I glared at him. “If they wanted Hollywood best, they should have filmed in Hollywood,” I said. “Besides, isn’t everything in Hollywood fake? All style and no substance?” I glanced down at his hands momentarily.
He didn’t miss the look, and he didn’t miss my implication.Just like your food.
“People like that are all about style,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to be plating up the steaks, and it’s why I’m going to be pairing them withfreshcherry tomatoes. I’m going to the farmer’s market first thing to pick them up.”
