Chapter Fourteen
Mark was dumb, but he wasn’t stupid. The next day during family dinner, Kian offhandedly mentioned to the staff that they might see Bastian a little more.
“He’s working on the menu for the new restaurant,” Kian had said, even though Bastian hadn’t been entirely clear about what he’d be doing.
Still, the announcement bought Kian what he wanted, which was a reprieve from Mark on his bullshit.
He might push Kian when Bastian wasn’t around, but the threat of him suddenly appearing made him take a step back.
A week passed, with Bastian dropping by nearly every day, usually during prep, almost always staying for family dinner. Most days he left when service began, though once or twice he’d actually retreated to his office, and when Kian walked by, it was obvious he was doing work on his computer.
The kitchen definitely ran better with more of Bastian’s presence, which rankled Kian a little bit, even though he tried to tamp down the feelings of inadequacy. Bastian was a figure of monumental proportions, and he’d spent twenty years developing a fearsome reputation to augment it.
He had his Michelin stars, he had a temper, and he had an insane commitment to perfection that nobody, even Kian, could match.
That, Kian kept telling himself, was fine.
He was good. They were doing better than ever.
Despite Bastian’s clearly uncomfortable feelings about hanging around Xander, and to a lesser extent, Nate, he’d even made the effort to spend some time with Kian at his house.
Everything felt good, if not great, but Kian couldn’t seem to shake the sensation of impending doom.
At first, he’d assumed it was because he felt guilty at hiding just how shitty Mark was from Bastian.
Then, when Mark, no doubt terrified of Bastian and his inexorable retribution, had taken a step back from his normally shitty attitude, Kian justified that the problem had fixed itself and there was no need to confess that it had ever existed.
That wasn’t entirely true, but it was true enough that Kian knew that couldn’t be the issue that kept him up nights, long after Bastian had fallen asleep beside him.
Something was going to go wrong, and because of the pressure cooker nature of their jobs and their tempers, it was inevitably going to be a huge fucking mess.
Bastian continued to battle with Nathan Hess on every point of the contract they still hadn’t signed.
A week in, as Kian was preparing to leave for Terroir, Bastian leaned against the bathroom counter and said, “I’m not going to be in today.
Hess and I have what should be the very last fucking meeting on this contract. ”
“Good,” Kian said. The ongoing contract negotiations had obviously exhausted and annoyed Bastian, even though mostly he seemed to argue with his lawyer over conceding anything.
“Maybe if it actually goes well, we’ll come to Terroir for dinner to celebrate.”
Kian grinned. “Isn’t it a little tactless to rub your perfection in the face of the man you’ve just defeated?”
“Is that what that is?” Bastian asked, but he was smiling too, the giddy, gleeful smile of a man who knew he had his opponent’s number.
“Prevarication isn’t your strong suit,” Kian said seriously, reaching out and brushing some invisible lint off Bastian’s shoulders.
Today he was dressed not for the kitchen, but for business in a dark navy suit with crisp white shirt underneath, a few of the buttons popped open in deference to the more casual tone of Napa.
“No,” Bastian admitted. “I see what I want and I take it.”
For a second, Kian considered reminding him that out of the two of them, it had definitely been him who’d done the lion’s share of the demanding.
Demanding credit, demanding respect, and demanding Bastian in his bed.
But Bastian looked so adorably smug and certain of Hess’ upcoming defeat that Kian refrained.
“Good luck,” he said reluctantly brushing a single kiss across Bastian’s mouth. “Own his ass, please.”
“Done.” Bastian really was unbearably egotistical sometimes, but at least he’d never directed it at Kian before. Kian didn’t know exactly why, but he imagined that Bastian knew better than to try.
Prep started out like most prep did, an interminable parade of mostly dull tasks, all to be completed with efficient speed and measured against exacting standards.
Derek had been doing better the last few weeks, and Kian took the risk to assign him some of the more complicated prep, working on the Japanese mandolin.
He looked very skeptical as Kian carefully explained how it worked, and what needed to be done with the crates of eggplants piled on the counter. “Isn’t that what you cut yourself on?” he asked, eyeing the shining blade dubiously.
“I wasn’t wearing the gloves. You’re going to wear the gloves.”
“Like a pussy,” Mark inserted.
It was the most questionable thing that he’d said in days, long enough that Kian had almost begun to believe that the days of snarky, rude comments were over, and that he’d finally given up on questioning Kian’s authority.
That had apparently been too good to hope for.
“Not like a pussy,” Kian said between gritted teeth. “Like a smart, intelligent person who would like to keep all their fingers.”
“I heard Aquino carried you to the ER,” Mark said slyly.
Derek had the nerve to look guilty. So Mark hadn’t been behaving after all—he’d just been going behind Kian’s back to extract every bit of gossip that he could out of the rest of the staff.
He understood why the kitchen staff gossiped; their jobs were hard, if not actually impossible at points, and gossip helped alleviate some of that unrelenting pressure. And, it had been the moment of a lifetime to watch their notoriously hardheaded head chef lose his mind over an injury.
“I don’t remember that, actually,” Kian said.
“Yeah,” Mark agreed, “because you fainted, like a pussy.”
It was hard, but not impossible, to keep his voice level and calm. “I’m confused here, Mark. Who’s the pussy here? First it’s Derek, for using the gloves. But then it’s me, for not using the gloves and cutting myself so badly I passed out.”
Mark’s glare was belligerent. It was clearly going to be one of those days, like somehow Mark had been in the bathroom this morning with him and Bastian and had heard Bastian wouldn’t be around to witness his shitty behavior.
It was unbelievably annoying, but Kian refused to let him see how it was getting to him.
If he did, Mark would never let it go, and Kian would be forced to either fire him, or report him to Bastian—both of which meant that Bastian would find out that Kian hadn’t been able to handle the problem himself.
Kian wasn’t ready to accept that yet, but it felt like today, Mark wanted to keep pushing him.
“Put the gloves on,” Kian directed to Derek. “Try the first eggplant, I want to make sure the settings are perfect.”
Derek did as directed, while Kian continued to feel the heat of Mark’s glare.
“There, that’s good. Just keep your movement steady and you should be fine,” Kian said.
“Is that what Bastian tells you?” Mark asked snidely.
The problem with Mark was that he wasn’t dumb at all. He was annoyingly intelligent; usually smart enough to make sure that anything he said that was really offensive had another potential meaning.
Kian ignored him and continued to focus on Derek.
The other problem was that Mark seemed to have a knack for knowing just the moment when he’d pushed Kian too far and he always retreated. He had to know that if he pushed too hard and too far, Kian would just snap and fire him on the spot, no matter the consequences.
But he always made sure Kian wouldn’t.
He did this time too, retreating after that last, infuriating comment back to his own station, and his own tasks.
After making sure Derek was all set, Kian stalked off, taking a five-minute breather in Bastian’s office and then venturing out to start the soup.
But maybe he was actually the dumb one, because he’d expected that Mark would mostly leave it alone, at the most do something questionable during service, like forget every fucking ticket Kian called out to him.
And that definitely would have been shitty enough, but Kian would have dealt with it. Maybe he might have broken another plate, even though he still felt a sickening knot of guilt from the last one.
If Mark continued to fuck up the sauté station, all he’d do was make himself look incompetent and lazy. Somehow, he must have figured that out, because he didn’t throttle it back and he didn’t do anything during service.
Kian had made an extra batch of the curry carrot soup for family meal, which paired well with the big salad Derek threw together, and the flank steaks Michel grilled, slicing them thin, still nearly bloody in the middle.
It was a Saturday night, and the reservation list was completely booked, which meant it would be a difficult, stressful service. Too many tables, and not quite enough staff—not quite enough competent staff, Kian corrected—to deal with it.
He’d probably end up at sauté and leave Michelle to give a straightforward if rudimentary glance over the dishes before they went up to the dining room. She’d worked at Terroir for awhile, and he’d seen Bastian rely on her before, so Kian felt okay doing it.
Not great, just okay, but he couldn’t dig Mark out of his mess of tickets and monitor the dishes at the same time.
And if Bastian didn’t like that, Kian thought with a sigh, trying to stretch out the kink in his neck as he sat down to dinner, then that was too goddamn bad, and he should have made sure Kian had the staff he needed to succeed.
He definitely wasn’t counting Mark as a plus in that particular column.
Speak of the devil. Mark sat down next to him, a deceptively innocent look on his face. Of course Kian knew better, but he also couldn’t physically force Mark to shut up. Well, he could, but that would be a Human Resources nightmare.