Chapter 1 #2
“Okay. I know how to make a gingerbread house. I don’t mean, like, a little gingerbread house that is going to sit on a table. I mean the kind they do at theme parks. The kind they do at massive, luxury hotels.”
“You agreed to take that on by yourself?”
“The team is going to help.”
“There is a fair amount of mathematics and engineering involved in that kind of thing.”
“I get that. I’m actually pretty good at that part.”
“But you’re not a pastry chef.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Isn’t that always the way. Your kind always thinks that you can just step right in and bake a cookie, because how hard can it be?
Cooking is often a science experiment, culinary finger paint.
Baking is a hard science. You have to have a firm understanding of that science if you’re going to make it work. ”
He looked like a different person. Like an entirely new entity as he stood there lecturing her on the exacting nature of the art of baking.
“I need you to agree to do the favor for me first. Because that’s time sensitive.
And then afterward, you can look me up, and you can tell me if you want my help. ”
“That feels out of order.”
“Chloe Malone,” he said, breezing right past everything she’d just said.
“Yeah, she’s coming in for a job interview today. Do you know her?”
“Yeah. I know her. She’s my daughter.”
For the second time in the space of thirty seconds, her perception of Pike was completely turned on its head.
He had a twenty-two-year-old daughter. Someone who was old enough to work in her kitchens. She supposed she was physically old enough to be Chloe’s mother, but as she was nobody but one cranky orange cat’s mother, she didn’t really think of herself that way.
Pike was only a few years older than her; she was pretty sure. Which meant he’d been a young father, and the number of follow-up questions she had was monumental.
“She’s your daughter?”
“Yes.”
And then she felt... embarrassed. “I didn’t know you were married. Sorry. I probably shouldn’t tease you the way that I have been.”
He lifted a brow. “I’m not married. Like so many things in life, that story is complicated.
But I’m not here to talk to you about that, I’m just here to talk to you about Chloe.
I would really like for you to give her a chance.
I want her here. On the ranch. I want her to be able to live with me in Mustang River. ”
“That’s great. But what if it doesn’t work out? Because that’s going to make things very complicated.”
“If it doesn’t work out, or you’re having issues with her, I just need you to tell me. Because if you’re having issues with her, I can probably help her figure out what she needs to change.”
Underlying this whole conversation was the obvious truth that Pike had experience in kitchens. Which meant that she could level with him.
“You know how high stress these environments are, I assume.”
“Yeah. I do. She just graduated from culinary school.”
“Yeah, I saw that on her resume. Culinary school. Must be fucking nice.”
“Right?” he asked. “Different life. Different opportunities available to her. Certainly than there were for me. Obviously than there were for you.”
She wanted to dig deeper into that, but also didn’t, because she shouldn’t go getting into the particulars of Pike.
Being attracted to him was one thing, enjoying a little bit of banter with him was one thing, getting to where she knew him was quite another. In this whole conversation, she had learned more about him than in any of their other conversations in the months past.
Not that they had ever talked about anything real. They had just been shooting the shit. That was what he liked to do, at least in her experience. This was the first time she’d ever encountered his intensity. His sincerity.
He was a father.
It was going to take her some time to come to terms with that.
“So if I hire your daughter, and it doesn’t work out, and I explain the whole situation to you, and you try to communicate to her in a way that you think I can’t, and it still doesn’t work out?”
“It’s your kitchen. You have to do the best thing for your kitchen. No hard feelings. I just want her to have a chance. She’s inexperienced, she knows things from a theoretical perspective, but she hasn’t worked in this environment for real yet. I think this is a good starting point.”
“I’m kind of tired of being people’s starting point,” she said. “It’s creating too much turnover.”
“Fair enough. But you hire young people, that’s what you’re going to get.”
“I know. I don’t like to be sexist, considering that I am a woman in the kitchen, but young girls particularly are a risk.”
“Don’t be sexist then. I’m just saying, give her a chance, and you’ll have backup from me if you need help figuring out how to manage her.”
She hesitated, because she didn’t necessarily want to take on a whole project. She hesitated, because she hadn’t really wanted to deal with the unknowns of hiring somebody so young. But she also wasn’t in a position where she could have rejected Chloe if they didn’t immediately vibe anyway.
She had to take the qualified applicants that she got. A lot of people wanted this job with no experience, and she didn’t have any time to train somebody from the ground up. If they couldn’t do mise en place, she didn’t have the time.
Culinary school would at least have taught Chloe the basics.
“All right. I’ll do it. For you.”
“Great. And don’t tell her that.”
“I’m not lying to her. That’s just going to come around and bite you in the ass, Pike.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you... met your daughter? Or any woman? Nobody wants to feel like they got a job because somebody else pushed for it, but they really don’t want to find out at a weird point later.
I’m happy to tell her that you vouched for her.
But I promise that’s the way that I’ll frame it.
Still, I think she needs to know that you’re involved. ”
“If you say so. Chef.”
She ignored the kick of arousal that flooded her veins when he said that. Chef. All sardonic and technically respectful but not at all, actually. “I do.”
“Great. Hopefully the interview goes well. I promised Chloe that I’d have dinner with her tonight, but you look me up, let me know if you want my help, and if so, I’ll meet you here tonight after hours.”
“Okay,” she said.
And then, Pike turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the kitchen by herself, feeling like she might have just hallucinated the whole thing.
After that, she didn’t have very long to get ready for the interview.
She washed all the icing off of her hands, and walked out into the dining room just as a young woman with the same brown hair as her dad, wide, earnest blue eyes, and a thin build walked in.
She was dressed all in black, and had her hands clasped in front of her.
Her hands were tattooed. She definitely already looked like she belonged in a kitchen.
“Hi,” she said, authoritative. She took a step forward and shook Laney’s hand. “I’m Chloe.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Laney Forrester. I just want to tell you, your dad stopped by earlier. Told me that you’re great.”
The expression on Chloe’s face was hard to read. She wrinkled her nose, then smiled just a little bit, but at the same time, her eyebrows furrowed. “Well, that was nice of him. But I hope he didn’t need to do that.”
By the end of the interview, Laney was sure that he hadn’t, in fact, needed to do that. Chloe was competent and delightful, and definitely knew what she was doing. All her same reservations about somebody young persisted, but they were surmountable.
She offered Chloe the job on the spot.
After saying goodbye to her, and nailing down her start date, Laney went back into the kitchen and did exactly what Pike had suggested.
She Googled him.
And after reading everything she found, she sent him a text.
Yes. I want your help.