Rafael
Drake Warwick was gorgeous.
I’d noticed it out in the parking lot, but that was back before I knew who he was. I hadn’t spared him a second glance because today was not a day I could afford to be distracted.
Ironically enough, that was because of the man who now stood in front of me, trying to disarm everyone with a shit-eating smile that did absolutely nothing for me.
Sure, he had beautiful honey-brown eyes that seemed to glow with confidence and charm. Sure, he had the bone structure of at least a lesser god. And sure, I had always been attracted to talent, which he apparently had in spades, judging by what Grey had said about him and his career to date.
But none of that mattered in the slightest, because I was the Head Chef of The Crow, and Drake Warwick was not going to get in my way.
“Let me show you around,” I told him. “Since you’re not familiar with the menu and our processes yet, you can shadow me tonight.” I kept my tone light but pointed. This is my domain . I wanted him to know that.
He wasn’t going to get a chance to do more than shadow me.
“Sure,” he said easily. “I’m interested to see how you do things. We were all about innovation in my last kitchen, so I’m sure we’ll find a lot of new opportunities.”
I glared at him. He wasn’t going to mess up my system. “Of course, it’s easy to bring in a lot of improvements when you start from a low standard,” I replied, keeping my tone honey-sweet and bright. I had no idea about what it was like in the restaurant he’d come from before this, but if he had something he could brag about, he was free to respond. “When you come into an established and professional kitchen like this one, it’s a little different.”
Drake barked a laugh and then closed his mouth abruptly like he hadn’t meant to let on that he found my words funny. “Lead on, master chef,” he said, gesturing for me to go ahead.
I led him through a brief introduction to all of our stations, along with the systems we had for making sure that equipment stayed where it was supposed to and everyone took care of their own areas. When I glanced up and saw him looking pointedly bored, I gritted my teeth and rattled through an explanation of tonight’s menu so fast I hoped he was feeling whiplash.
“Any questions?” I finished. I ignored the fact that Beau and Ainslie were staring at me open-mouthed from the other side of the prep counter. They had to be thinking the same thing: that there was no way anyone could get a grasp on the menu that fast.
“Who’s cooking family dinner today?” he asked, glancing around the room instead of actually directing the question at me. We weren’t far off from the time we’d need to start eating; I had planned to throw something together myself.
But before I could answer as such, Grey – who had been watching us from the door with his arms folded across his chest – spoke up.
“Both of you,” he said. There was a glint in his eye that I didn’t like. “How about you both prepare the same dish? Two versions. Let the family get an idea of your cooking styles.”
I grunted in annoyance. The family – everyone who worked in the restaurant – already knew what my style was like. I cooked family dinner most nights, and I’d been taking on more responsibility in leading the menu for a few months before Jesse left, too.
“That sounds fun,” Drake said. He turned to me with a broad grin that showed most of his teeth. I looked at him and all I could see was a shark. “A bit of friendly competition. What do you say, Raf? Are you up for it?”
Raf?
We weren’t on first-name terms, let alone nicknames .
“It’s ,” I said. “Don’t get comfortable here, Warwick. You won’t be staying long.”
At my flat-out challenge, Drake’s expression didn’t falter. Instead, it only deepened – like he was taking pleasure in the tension. “We’ll see about that after I kick your ass at this family meal. Do you have dried pasta in the storeroom?”
I nodded. “Somewhere in the back. We don’t use it for customers.”
“There’s no time to prepare it from scratch today, so let’s make it all about the accompaniments,” he said. “Chargrilled vegetable pasta – what do you say?”
I nodded with a shrug of my shoulders.
Anything he could do, I could do better. Let him choose the meal. It made no difference to me.
I was still going to – as he put it – kick his ass.
“Good luck, Chef,” he said with a wink. “You’ll need it.”
I snarled at his back as he turned away from me – and then rushed to the walk-in fridge, wanting to beat him to the best of the fresh veggies we had in stock.
The tension rose to a simmering point quicker than the salted water I was boiling for my half of the pasta as we worked in silence. Beau and Ainslie had to get to work on the prep for tonight’s service – there was no way to fit all of it in if they didn’t start now – but they were unusually subdued, not shouting back and forth banter and instructions at all. Grey, Kit, and Nikolai all watched from the front of the kitchen, Grey with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes narrowed as if he was analyzing every single thing we did.
No, not ‘as if’ – he was, I realized, and a trickle of cold sweat ran down my spine.
Did he really not already have enough confidence in what I could do? Was this stupid challenge really necessary to set us apart?
Despite my fighting words, I was filled with doubt – not in my own abilities, but in the outcome of this contest. If Grey hadn’t just promoted me right off the bat without having to bring in some stupid pretender, then maybe he was trying to tell me something.
Maybe he didn’t believe in me as a chef. Maybe he hated my dishes.
Maybe I was about to lose my job.
I tried to block all of the doubts out, but my brain wouldn’t shut up – so instead, I poured that nervous energy into the food. I grilled the vegetables with a manic dedication to flipping and checking them, getting an even sizzle on both sides and ensuring the peppers stayed juicy, the onions didn’t lose their flavor, and the slices of sweet potato cooked through to a melt-in-the-mouth tenderness.
We were close to needing to eat; with one eye on the clock, I grabbed a few leaves of spinach, a handful of basil, another of pine nuts, one avocado, oil, a few garlic cloves, and a block of parmesan. Five minutes later, I was drizzling pesto over each of my plates, finishing off the pasta and vegetables with a richer touch.
I looked up from my work to realize that everyone was still staring. The whole kitchen felt as if it was holding its breath. Drake was still putting the finishing touches on his work. I noticed with a swell of pride and success that he hadn’t managed to make as complex a sauce as mine – he was just using some kind of drizzle that involved olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
“Alright, everyone,” he said, looking up with a calm smile as if he wasn’t worried at all about finishing last. “Let’s eat.”
The room came to life like whatever spell had been placed on everyone was lifted. I saw Nikolai and Kit exchange a glance before heading towards our plated meals as if to ask each other which one to go for. It was an even split of plates, so each of them would have to choose. Me or Drake.
Beau and Ainslie took my plates. Nikolai and Kit took Drake’s. Wait staff versus kitchen staff; I could see why. My cooks wanted to show me they were loyal, but the waiters wanted to know what they were getting into by serving this guy’s food tonight.
Grey took a plate of each of our dishes with relish, and that just left us staring down at the last two plates. I wasn’t going to admit I was intimidated by him, but it did make sense to find out what I was up against.
I reached across the counter and took the last plate of Drake’s food before turning to carry it out to a table, not leaving Drake an opportunity to smirk at me.
A sinking feeling snaked its way into my gut as I looked out across the biggest table we had, right in the middle of the space – usually reserved for events and group bookings – now filled with our staff. There was a very clear difference between my dish and Drake’s, and it wasn’t the comparison I had been wanting.
His dish was… beautiful.
Each chunk of vegetable was grilled perfectly with dark lines that almost seemed poetic, in contrast to my frantically turned and messy slices. His pasta was placed into a symmetrical and gently curved mound evenly mixed through with the vegetables on every single dish, an exercise in consistent precision, while mine looked as though I had simply thrown it onto the plate by comparison.
The sauce he had whipped up was dripped and drizzled in smooth lines and perfectly round drops on each plate, while my pesto had… fallen wherever it fell as I swept my hand above each plate.
Was I really outmatched here?
I sat down, my heart hammering against my chest and leaving me breathless, as I grabbed up a fork and speared a piece of pasta and a slice of pepper, smearing them through the vinaigrette and shoving them into my mouth without any ceremony. I had to know.
I blinked.
The food was… okay.
The pepper was smoky and well-cooked, but a little too greasy in the aftertaste. The pasta was a little too soft – only a tiny touch too far, but enough that a seasoned chef like myself could tell. The vinaigrette just tasted like a vinaigrette; nothing special. It could have been a store-bought bottle, even though I’d seen him make it out of the corner of my own eye.
I smiled to myself, a secret victory smile, and clenched my fist under the table.
His food looked pretty.
But I knew mine tasted better.
“Being fed by two men at once,” Drake said, looking up the table at Grey with his two plates. He winked. “Isn’t that a treat?”
Grey chuckled throatily and raised a glass of water back down the table at him. “To family dinners,” he said.
Everyone, myself included, saluted with their water glasses in return. There wouldn’t be anything stronger with the meal we ate before service – we needed to stay sharp – and anything flavored would have upset the balance of the meal.
“A slightly bigger family, today,” Kit said. He did tend to err on the earnest side. I wanted to scowl at him for welcoming Drake, though I couldn’t quite bring myself to. He was only being friendly. He wanted to be able to work with whoever ended up running the kitchen.
I just wished he’d had the confidence in me to not doubt that that person was going to be me.
Grey took careful bites from both of our plates. Though Drake was trying to play it cool, I knew we were both focused on one thing only. His reaction. Finally, I couldn’t take the silence any longer.
“Well?” I said.
Grey glanced up at me. “Both dishes have their merits,” he said in a flat tone that suggested he’d already rehearsed what he would say if pressed. “So, Chef Warwick, is there anything you need to prepare for tonight’s service? Do you need more information about the menu and our processes?”
I silently seethed. Not only had Grey refused to give an opinion, when it was clear whose food was superior, but he had snuck in a dig at me for rushing Drake through the menu.
“No, I think I have a handle on it,” Drake said with a smug smile. “And please, call me Drake. We’re not in the kitchen right now, after all.”
“Okay, Drake,” Ainslie said with a happy grin.
“Not you,” Drake said, pointing a finger of warning at him. The tone he said it with was playful, however. “You’re on my line, so you call me Chef. But Mr. Monaghan is special. He gets to call me Drake.”
“Grey,” he laughed in return. “Please. Don’t call me Mr. Monaghan. None of these insubordinate shits do.”
Was that why he was trying to replace me? Because I didn’t get down on my knees in front of him – in more ways than one?
“We should get back to prep,” Beau said reluctantly. This was far from a normal family dinner – normally we had half an hour of banter and fun, checking in with each other like family did. Drake’s arrival had changed everything and put too much tension in the air.
“Good idea,” I said out loud. “I’m sure Chef here could do with some extra time to get up to speed. We don’t want customers waiting for service tonight.”
He only smirked at me like he was in on the joke as he got up to head back to the kitchen with everyone else – which somehow made me even madder than if he’d had some snappy comeback.
I walked by the end of the table and delayed for just a second, pretending to look down at something on my shoe, until everyone else had filed back into the kitchen or the back room. I grabbed Grey’s abandoned fork and stabbed it through a piece of sweet potato, pasta, and pesto from my dish. His plate was the only one that hadn’t been fully cleaned – but he’d left half of Drake’s, too.
I shoved the food in my mouth and chewed fast. The sweet potato was soft and tender, flavor bursting over my tongue. The pesto chased it with a rich fullness that turned the pasta decadent.
Mine was the better dish.
I was sure of it.
I nodded to myself and strode ahead into the kitchen, ready to show Drake Warwick that maybe he was the prettiest guy in the restaurant – but I was far and away the better chef.