Chapter 9
RHETT
Just like that, the whole tour was royally fucked. Without Conroy, there was no way I could pull off these menus.
The hot appetizer station was crucial to our flow, and replacing an experienced line cook mid-service was like trying to swap out the engine of a moving car.
I had contingency plans for most disasters.
I had experienced just about every problem that could happen in the middle of a service.
I had dealt with kitchen fires, equipment failures, and even food poisoning outbreaks.
But I didn’t have a plan for losing my right-hand man on the first night of the most important tour of my career.
Yes, there were plenty of people that could do what Conroy does, but he just worked with me. He knew what I needed without me having to ask. When things started heating up, metaphorically, Conroy was the one who settled things.
I couldn’t remember what it was like to be in the kitchen without Conroy. At least not on busy nights.
But Clem? She seemed to be right at home.
I called out the order while plating the main courses, expecting to have to guide her through every step. Conroy usually did the training. I hated training new people. Usually, Conroy worked with them and then I got my hands on them. I did the finishing work while he did the hard stuff.
But Clem seemed competent enough. She was studying the cards above the station, knife in hand. We were about to see exactly what Desman’s kid could do.
Her knife moved efficiently through the basil. Her knife skills were good. They would make any culinary school instructor proud. She toasted the bread to exactly the right shade of golden brown and had all four plates ready before I finished the accompanying entrees.
“Order up,” she called, sliding the bruschetta across the pass with a smile that seemed completely at odds with the chaos surrounding us.
I stared at her for a moment, surprised by her composure. Most people would have been rattled by jumping into a high-pressure service with no preparation. She looked like she was enjoying herself.
The next order came in, then another, then three more in rapid succession. The dinner rush was hitting us full force. Without Conroy’s presence, the kitchen should have been falling apart.
But somehow, it wasn’t.
Clem handled everything I threw at her without breaking stride.
She adapted to my rhythm like she’d been working this station for months, anticipating what I needed before I asked for it.
When I called for extra garnish plates, she had them ready.
When a server needed clarification on dietary restrictions, she fielded the question without missing a beat.
And through it all, she kept that same serene smile on her face. She looked like she was having the time of her life. I remembered what it was like when I first started. I had all that youthful enthusiasm at one time.
It was getting under my skin in ways I couldn’t afford to think about just then. My pants were loose but not loose enough. If I started sporting an erection, everyone was going to know. And I did not need people thinking I got hard over a perfectly cooked risotto. Although it was pretty sexy.
“Behind hot,” she called, moving past me with a pan of sautéed mushrooms. Her body brushed against mine for just a moment. It was professional contact, nothing more, but I felt the touch like an electric shock.
Focus, I told myself. It was not the time.
But watching her work was becoming its own kind of torture.
She took orders without getting pissy about it.
She listened to my instructions with real understanding rather than blind obedience.
When I barked out corrections or adjustments, she incorporated them seamlessly, no ego or defensiveness getting in the way.
I couldn’t count the number of people that had thrown their jackets at me as they stormed out of my kitchen.
I had fired plenty of them as well. I had been told to fuck off, get fucked, and to fuck myself, and I lost count of the number of dicks I had been invited to suck.
“More basil on the classic,” I called out, plating the lamb that would accompany her appetizers.
“On it,” she replied, adding fresh herbs,
She was a good girl who did what she was told. Fuck me. I could not think of her like that. But it was too late. I was never going to get that image out of my head.
Twenty minutes into the rush, one of the newer line cooks started falling behind on vegetable prep. His knife work was sloppy, his timing was off, and I could feel my temper rising with each delayed order.
“Chris!” I snapped, my voice cutting through the kitchen noise. “What the hell is taking so long on the brussels sprouts?”
“Sorry, Chef,” he stammered, his hands shaking as he tried to speed up his prep. “The pan’s not heating evenly, and I can’t get the char right—”
“It’s a fucking vegetable, not rocket science,” I growled, feeling the familiar surge of frustration that came with working alongside people who couldn’t keep up. “Figure it out or get out of my kitchen.”
Before Chris could respond, Clem was there.
“Heat’s too low,” she said calmly, adjusting the burner. “Brussels need high heat and constant movement to get that proper caramelization. Here, watch.”
She demonstrated the technique ,tossing the vegetables in the pan with the kind of wrist action that came from years of practice. That was a bit of a surprise given her age. And I knew she hadn’t spent any real time in a kitchen.
Then again, she was Desman Hartley’s daughter. She probably grew up sautéing veggies.
Within seconds, the sprouts were perfectly charred and ready for plating.
“Just like that,” she told Chris with an encouraging smile. “Trust the heat and keep them moving.”
The young cook nodded gratefully, his shoulders relaxing as he took back control of his station. I watched the whole interaction with amazement. She had defused the situation, solved the problem, and kept the service moving without making anyone feel incompetent or small.
Shit. She might just be better in the kitchen than Conroy. It was exactly what a good leader should do, and I’d been too caught up in my own stress to handle it properly.
Another crisis arose fifteen minutes later when our pasta station ran low on the house-made pappardelle. The server who discovered the shortage looked panicked, already calculating how to explain delayed orders to increasingly hungry guests.
“How long for more pasta?” I called to the prep cook responsible.
“Fifteen minutes minimum,” came the reply. “Maybe twenty. The machine is acting up.”
I felt my jaw clench. Fifteen minutes was an eternity in the middle of a dinner rush. We would have to either disappoint guests or shuffle the entire order sequence, both unacceptable options.
“I saw extra portions in the walk-in,” Clem said quietly, appearing at my elbow. “Behind the sauce containers, wrapped in plastic. Probably backup from earlier prep.”
I stared at her. “You sure?”
“Positive. I helped with setup earlier, remember?”
She was right. Within two minutes, we had the missing pasta portions located and heating, crisis averted without a single disappointed customer.
She solved the problem like she had done this a hundred times before, like she’d been working in professional kitchens her entire life instead of jumping in as an emergency replacement.
“How did you—” I started to ask.
“I pay attention,” she said with a shrug, already moving back to her station as new orders came in. “Part of the job, right?”
Right. Except paying attention was a skill most people had to learn through years of experience and countless mistakes. She seemed to possess it naturally, along with an intuitive understanding of kitchen flow that I’d never seen in someone so young.
By the time we hit the midpoint of service, I realized something that should have terrified me: we were not just surviving without Conroy. We were thriving.
Orders were going out on time. The quality was holding steady, and the kitchen was humming along. Clem had somehow stepped into Conroy’s role so seamlessly that I had almost forgotten we were operating with a substitute.
Almost.
Because every time she moved past me, every time she called out “Yes, Chef” in response to an instruction, every time she solved a problem before it could derail our momentum, I was reminded that this wasn’t just competence I was witnessing.
This was unlimited potential.
“Order fire,” I called out, starting the proteins for table twelve. “Two lamb, one duck, one vegetarian.”
“Heard,” she responded, already reaching for the appropriate garnish components.
The sound of shattering ceramic cut through the kitchen noise like a gunshot. I spun around to see Rose, one of our newer servers, standing over the remains of what had been a perfect plate of lamb. Food was splattered across the floor tiles.
“Fucking hell,” I snarled, my voice carrying enough venom to make several line cooks flinch. “That’s forty dollars of ingredients on the floor. Forty fucking dollars.”
The woman’s face went white as she scrambled to clean up the mess, her hands shaking. I could see the panic in her eyes, the kind of terror that came from knowing you’d just screwed up in front of someone with a reputation like mine.
“I’m sorry, Chef,” she stammered. “It slipped, and I—”
“It slipped?” I stepped closer, feeling the familiar surge of rage that came with watching incompetence destroy my work. “You think sorry fixes this? You think sorry gets that food back on the plate and out to table eight, who’s been waiting twenty minutes?”
I was just getting warmed up, ready to unleash the full force of my displeasure, when I felt a hand on my arm. Not grabbing, not restraining, just a gentle touch that somehow managed to cut through my fury like nothing else could.
“Rhett.” Clem’s voice was calm and steady. “It’s a plate.”
I turned to stare at her. “It’s a plate?”
“It’s a plate,” she repeated, her green eyes meeting mine without a trace of fear or intimidation. “Accidents happen. She didn’t drop it on purpose. We’re all doing our best. We’re all busting our asses. You dropped a spoon and no one freaked out on you.”
“That’s not the point—”
“The point is you’re about to traumatize a twenty-year-old kid over something that can be fixed in five minutes,” she interrupted, her tone taking on an edge that surprised me. “And frankly, you’re being a dick about it.”
The entire kitchen had gone dead silent. I could feel every eye on us, waiting to see how I would respond to being called out by Desman’s daughter. Most people wouldn’t dare speak to me like that, especially not in front of my staff.
“I’m being a dick?” I repeated, my voice dangerously low.
“A massive one,” she confirmed, not backing down an inch. “Look at her, Rhett. She’s terrified. You’ve made your point about standards and consequences. Now maybe try some basic human decency.”
I glanced at Rose, who was still crouched on the floor trying to clean up the mess. She looked like she was about to cry.
Shit.
I took a deep breath. “Get back to work,” I said. “Leave it, Rose. Get the next plate. Refire the lamb.”
Everyone went right back to work.
I glared at Clem. “That will be the last time you are insubordinate in my kitchen.”
She looked properly afraid. “Yes, Chef,” she squeaked.