Even a few months of working with him means I’ll have the pedigree, the experience, to open my own restaurant. It’s an opportunity I’d be a fool to pass on.
Now, I wonder if I was too hasty.
If this is how I’m reacting when I’ve not even seen his face, how am I going to interview with him?
I can’t fall apart in front of him. Maybe I should go… I spin around, when a crash from the kitchen stops me.
“I will reduce you to crumbs and serve you with custard,” a man’s voice screeches in a French accent.
"I’ll roast you over a spit like a duck’s hind end," a deeper voice growls.
Ooh. It’s a fight. Chefs are temperamental. And nosy. None more than me. I pause. I want to find out what’s happening.
Surely, I can peek in without being noticed by James?
I turn back and look inside the kitchen. Just as the pastry chef grabs the saucepan from the burner and heaves it at the sous chef. I gasp. As does the watching brigade.
The sous chef steps aside.
The saucepan crashes to the floor. Burnt caramel splashes over his white pants.
He snarls, snatches up the carrots on the counter and flings them at the pastry chef.
The two lunge at each other. They grapple and crash into the counter, knocking off a glass bowl causing it to hit the floor and shatter.
I flinch.
“You’re both fired.” James grabs the two men by their collars and pulls them apart.
Instantly, my gaze flies to his face. Mistake. My senses jangle. The breath is punched out of me.
He looks so masculine. So strong. Every inch of him is tempered by the missions he undertook when he was a Royal Marine.
My stomach drops. My throat closes. The humiliation at how easily he walked away from me singes the backs of my eyelids.
His chest stretches his chef coat, hinting at sculpted planes. The sleeves rolled up to the elbows of his veiny forearms.
A tattoo scrolls up one of them.
That wasn’t there when I last saw him.
I felt the strength of those sculpted arms. Moaned as they tightened around me like they were bands of steel. His touch was possessive, demanding…tender. Like he never wanted to let me go.
But he did.
He holds the two chefs by their coats now.
The sous chef glowers at James. "He started it.”
"No, he did," the pastry chef yells.
"I don’t care. No one disrupts my kitchen. No one. I’ll have your final checks to you tomorrow.” James nods at his staff.
Instantly, two of the tallest, broadest guys among his crew spring forwards. They begin to hustle the two men away.
"I’ll get you for this, James Hamilton. You’re not invincible." The sous chef shakes his fist at James before being pushed out by his staff.
I frown.
