"I need two minutes," she said. "Before I'm back on."
"You've got two minutes."
She kissed me. Not quick, not polite. A kiss that had nothing of work in it, all pressure and need. As if she’d been holding herself together under enormous strain and found exactly three feet of space where she didn't have to.
Her hands tightened on my jacket. I got one arm around her waist and pulled her in, and she made a sound against my mouth that was half frustration and half relief.
When she pulled back, her face was close. Her eyes were steady, but her breathing wasn't.
"That was my two minutes," she said.
"You've got more if you want them."
The corner of her mouth twitched. "I've got a kitchen to run."
She stepped back. Straightened her jumpsuit. Picked up her clipboard from where she'd set it and was already reading down the next item before I'd made it to the door.
I grabbed my crate. Walked out to the floor with my jaw tight and my head considerably less empty than it had been going in.
I told myself she was in the zone. That this event mattered, that we could talk later. I kept telling myself that while the afternoon sped by.
Guests arrived at six. The room was humming by six-fifteen, everything running on schedule. Then one of Nadia's crew found me near the entrance and pulled me aside, keeping her voice low.
The walk-in refrigerator was nowhere near as cold as it was supposed to be, still whirring away. Everything had been sitting and warming for at least an hour, maybe longer.
By the time the woman had moved into a combination of panic and hand-wringing, I was already on my way to the kitchen. I found Nadia beside the open door of the fridge, peering at the controls, her face tight.
She looked at me. "It's nowhere near cold enough," she said, reaching in through the open door. "Damn it, it's probably warmer in there than out here, and yet there's still power."
That sent my gaze to the panel beside her. The labels above the row of switches were faded with age. The setup was archaic enough that it took me a second to notice it: all but one switch was flipped downward.
I reached out and flipped it to match the others. For a second, nothing happened. Then the compressor roared to life. It wasn't the only thing that did, with Nadia cussing under her breath as she slammed first the fridge door, then the panel cover.
That second action told me the fridge hadn't been accidentally switched off.
Nadia was already pivoting. "Get Malakai on the phone. I want to know if anyone was in this kitchen between three and five this afternoon. Footage, witnesses, anything."
I pulled out my phone and called him while she turned to her team and started making calls I didn't have the knowledge to make. I caught fragments while Malakai picked up. Cold appetizers compromised. Main courses fine, they'd gone in hot. Ninety minutes until service.
Malakai answered on the second ring.
"I need security footage from the venue kitchen," I said. "Between three and five today. Someone flipped a switch and shut the walk-in down. This wasn't a fault."
"On it." He was already moving. I could hear it. "I'll get back to you."
When I hung up, Nadia was on her phone, a staff member beside her with a tablet, both of them working fast. I stood back and stayed out of the way. It was the most useful thing I could do.
Within ten minutes, she was running a different operation entirely. I watched her get her supplier on the phone while simultaneously redirecting her team with hand signals I didn't know but her staff clearly did.
One person broke down the compromised cold station. Two moved to the pass-around setup. A server was re-plating on a rolling table, working fast and clean. The backup delivery arrived in under thirty minutes.
I took it at the rear entrance because I was the one standing there, and it went straight onto the bench and into Nadia's hands without breaking stride. She didn't raise her voice once. She didn't repeat an instruction twice.
The kitchen had the energy of people who trusted their commander, and she moved through it like someone who'd done this under worse conditions than a tampered fridge switch.
Her military background was written in every move. Watching her work, I forgot about the cemetery entirely.
The event came together. Not perfectly, but close enough that the Peterson Group coordinator found me near the end of the night and told me it was one of the best-run corporate dinners they'd held in Coogan's Break. She asked me to pass that along to Nadia.
