"Kitchen is here," Archer said, shoving Remy off me.
"Wow, this kitchen is amazing!" I gushed. "It's bigger than my café!" The gleaming kitchen had a huge island that looked like it could seat most of Archer's brothers. There were four ovens, an eight-burner range, and gleaming white terrazzo on the floors. Against the opposite wall was a bank of refrigerators and freezers.
"I could live in this kitchen." I looked around the room. I was practically salivating to use the appliances and sprawl my ingredients on the pristine white counters. Along with my dream of being a famous artist, I also dreamed of an awesome apartment. I would hang up expensive art, display sculptures, and host cool parties. My dream kitchen looked a lot like this one.
"Do you need help?" Otis asked me.
I looked around. "I guess so. You might eat faster."
I was expecting to have to supervise more, but the kids seemed like they had some experience in a kitchen. They washed lettuce and grated cheese while I made the béchamel for the croque-monsieur and croque-madame crepes and preheated the griddles. I was preparing to mix the savory batter by hand, when three of Mace's brothers came out of a large pantry with stand mixers in various colors.
I tried not to drool. Stand mixers were not in my café's budget. I relied on arm strength and a whisk.
"I'm going to Venmo you money," Archer said, slumped artfully at the kitchen island. "There's cash in the safe, but Garrett won't give me access."
"I can't imagine why," I said tartly.
"I feel like you're trying to insult me, but I might be too stupid attractive to figure it out," he said with a small grin, his head resting on his hand. Archer followed my movements as I dumped flour, oil, water, and eggs into the metal bowl and set the mixers going.
I poured the first layer of batter onto the hot griddle and used a crepe squeegee to make it a thin layer. Normally making crepes was a tedious process. But I had found a set of long griddles on which I could make a huge sheet of crepes and cut them into sections. I could make ten crepes at once. The tricky part was flipping them.
"That smells delicious," Archer told me. "Whenever you get tired of day-drinking art retreaters, you should just come here and cook full-time."
"So instead of listening to inappropriate comments from Ida and Dottie, I'd have to listen to your obnoxious comments? No thanks."
"Me?" Archer asked in mock indignation. "You were the one flirting with a student."
"I wasn't flirting with you."
Archer raised an eyebrow. "You were so flirting, and it was so hot."
I smelled smoke. "Crap! The crepes are burning. Go set the table," I ordered him. "You're distracting me."
Archer smirked. "You find me distracting." He pulled at his shirt collar.
"You're doing that on purpose."
"I'm just trying to get a little air. It's getting a little hot in here," he said over his shoulder as he went into the dining room.
I fanned myself. It was a little warm. The crepes were salvageable, so I placed thin slices of ham and nutty Gruyère cheese on them, folded them over, then set them on the large metal sheet pan and moved to the next batch.
The stacks of hot crepes piled up. I had a nice assembly line going. When I had sixty crepes made, I slathered them in the creamy béchamel sauce and slid them under the broiler. The fact that the Svenssons had four ovens made the process painless.
I topped half of the crepes with fried eggs and tossed the salad with a vinaigrette.
"Dinner!" I announced as a few of Archer's little brothers helped me carry the trays into the dining room.
The kids all crowded around the platters.
"Salad," I ordered. "You can't just eat crepes. You need something green."
Archer scooped a hot crepe from the platter. "This is so good," he said around the hot food. "I think I could just marry you right now."
Garrett walked up to the line. "Croque-monsieur crepes, croque-madame crepes, or both?" I offered. "Madame has a fried egg."
Garrett looked from the platters to me.
"Problem?" Archer growled from his spot at the long buffet serving the crepes.
