“They’ll be second tier in terms of recognition.”
Maya’s eye twitched. She was allergic to the term “second tier,” and I briefly worried I’d have to call an ambulance to deal with her inevitable meltdown.
I didn’t blame her. Our situation was less than ideal, to put it mildly.
It was bad enough we had to walk back Derek’s involvement so soon after the announcement. People would be buzzing about his DUIs for weeks, and his rehab stint would come up in any substantive coverage about the collaboration.
What was worse was the strain it put on our production timeline. We neededat leastthree months for product development, followed by another three to six months for mass production, testing, and packaging. That was assuming there were no delays and nothing went wrong.
Basically, we were already behind, and if we didn’t get a chef to start working on the recipes in the next forty-eight hours, we might as well hang up our aprons and call it a day.
“No,” Maya said. “I refuse to believe we can’t find a big-namechef when your family owns half the gourmet restaurants in existence. I don’t care if you have to blackmail them or put a gun to their head. Hell,I’llput a gun to their head. This launch is going to happen, and it. Is. Going. To. Be. Amazing. Do you understand?”
In a clear-cut case of highly inappropriate timing, I discovered that unhinged Maya both frightened me and turned me on a little.
But it wasn’t enough to change the facts.
I unlocked my phone and tossed it at her. “Go ahead. Give it a try. Their names and contact info are in my Notes app.”
Long story short: even Maya’s scarily creative attempts at intimidation and bribery weren’t enough to persuade the world’s most famous chefs to abandon their day-to-day duties in favor of creating a frozen foods line, which they saw as beneath them.
“This is it.” She covered her face with her hands. We’d breezed past bargaining and were currently deep in depression. “This is the end of my career.”
“That’s a little dramatic.”
She spread her fingers to glare at me through the cracks. “You’re not being dramaticenough. This has your name tied to it too. Do you want to go down in history as a failure? Do you want your rivals to laugh at you behind your back?”
She was the only rival whose opinion I cared about, but I kept that to myself. “Look, we can ask one of the lesser-known names. They’re still great chefs, and at this point, we can’t be picky.”
“I guess not.” She sighed. “Do you think your old instructors from culinary school would do it? There are some big names there, and they’re not running restaurants. Maybe—” She stopped, her eyes widening.
Shit. That expression never boded well. “What?”
“Seb,” she breathed. “Youcan do it.”
Ice flooded my veins. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You!” Maya gestured at me, her voice pitching higher with excitement. “You’re not a professional chef, but you might as well be. You have formal training. You obviously know this launch inside and out. And think of the PR angle. The famous Laurent heir rolling up his sleeves to tackle the recipes himself? The media will eat it up. We can spin Derek’s withdrawal as a strategic shift. You’re not the backup; you’re the innovation. The new way we’re doing things.”
Her reasoning made sense, but every alarm bell clanged in my head anyway. “You don’t understand what it takes to create these recipes from scratch. I’m not qualified enough.”
“But you’re not creating them from scratch. Derek gave you his blueprints already.”
My jaw tightened. I wished I could rewind time and go back to the moment Past Me agreed to this stupid project. Clearly, I hadn’t been in my right mind. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t do it.”
Maya’s eyes flashed. “Why the hell not?”
Because I’m terrified I’ll fuck up, and people will die.
Because I’m not ready.
Because it was hard enough for me to cook again for one other person, let alone thousands.
“Because our exec boards will never go for it,” I said instead.
“Our exec boards will have no choicebutto go for it. There’s no other option,” Maya argued.
“There are plenty of other options. The lesser-known chefs—”
