Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Some girl from London
Georgie
I attack my lips with soft pink lipstick, glaring at my reflection in the mirror.
It’s been sixty minutes since the Great Penis Awakening, and I’m still walking around like I’ve been hit by lightning.
Ugh. What is wrong with this guy? Just strutting around his garden completely naked, probably giving his poor housekeeper the shock of her life when she tries to bring him his morning coffee and gets an eyeful of that massive dick on full display.
Who does he think he is, some Highland sex god?
Normal men step into ice water and immediately experience the “turtle retreat.” Everything withdraws for warmth and safety. But not Patrick “Cryo-Cock” McLaren. Oh no.
I smooth down my navy skirt and white blouse with shaky hands, then attempt to wrestle my fringe into submission.
My glasses need adjusting too—they’re sitting crooked, which always happens when I’m flustered.
Riri used to say I had a heart-shaped face, that it made me look sweet.
At the time, I thought it was a compliment.
Now I wonder if “sweet” is just code for “will never be taken seriously as a sexual being.”
I’m certain that vision of Patrick McLaren’s majestic meat sword will stay burned into my retinas until the end of time.
I’ll be ninety, in my care home, and a sweet nurse named Sandra will be helping me shuffle into a lukewarm bath. Just as she lowers me into the water, I’ll go all misty-eyed. She’ll think I’m lost in a lovely memory of my grandchildren.
“It was majestic,” I’ll whisper.
And Sandra will lean in. “Sorry, what was majestic, love?”
I’ll grab her wrist with the strength of a woman who has seen things and hiss: “The dick, Sandra. The ice bath dick.”
I know I’m projecting. His sex-god theatrics are just throwing my three-year sexual drought into harsh focus.
Which is the whole point of the list, isn’t it?
Thirty minutes later, I walk through the entrance of Clachmòr House and even though I know what to expect, my jaw still drops.
It’s Game of Thrones meets five-star hotel, with soaring stone halls and dramatic wooden beam ceilings.
The reception desk is a hulking slab of Highland oak carved from a single tree, parked exactly where the lord’s high table used to be.
Mary from reception offers to show me to the conference room where I’m to meet the senior kitchen staff. “You’ll get lost otherwise, dear. This place is a maze. We lose at least one guest a week. Usually find them in the whisky cellars, happy as clams.”
She’s not kidding. We go through a door hidden behind a tapestry.
“Original secret passages,” Mary explains cheerfully. “Imagine ordering room service and it appears through a bookshelf. Or finding a wee spiral staircase behind a painting that leads to our private library bar.”
I’m so busy gawking at the sheer grandeur of it all that I nearly walk face-first into a suit of armor standing guard in an alcove.
The conference room is empty. I’m early, obviously, so I sit there, checking my watch every thirty seconds as my nerves ratchet higher.
Twenty minutes pass. Twenty-five.
Finally, I give up and head back to Mary’s desk.
“Is the chef running late today?” I ask, carefully removing the what the hell from my tone.
“Oh, he’ll be in the kitchen, dear.”
“Right, but we had a meeting scheduled,” I say, still smiling. “In the conference room.”
Mary just shrugs. “You know how chefs are.”
Do I?
“Okay, I’ll just pop down to the kitchen and find him there.”
“I’ll show you the way,” Mary says. “Kitchen’s a bit tricky to find if you don’t know where you’re going.”
We wind through what feels like half the castle before she pushes through a set of heavy doors. Gone is the stately, ancient charm. In here, it’s stainless-steel surfaces, clanging pans, and loud swearing.
A rogue potato skitters across the floor.
I clutch my briefcase, clear my throat, and declare with boldness I do not feel: “Hi! I’m Georgie. I have a meeting with Chef MacLeod.”
The kitchen swallows my words whole. I could’ve declared myself Queen of the Sausage Rolls and gotten the same result.
“Where’s my fucking salmon?” someone bellows, and my first instinct is to apologize even though I have nothing to do with the missing fish.
“Chef MacLeod.” Mary nods toward a man barking orders near the stoves. “From Glasgow. Two Michelin stars. Bit of a temper on him.”
He’s about mid-thirties. His chef whites are spotless except for one ominous red splatter that could be jam… or blood.
Mary slams her fist onto a stainless-steel counter. “Chef! You’ve got a visitor!”
The chopping slows. A few heads turn.
Chef finally turns and graces me with a glare. “We don’t have time for this now.” He waves a very large, very sharp knife in my direction. “Ten minutes, lass.”
“Right, ten minutes,” I say, trying to salvage some authority. “It’s not ideal but I’ll work with it. Can you come with me to the meeting room?”
He jabs the knife toward a small stretch of counter that’s just been vacated by a vat of potatoes. “Set up there.”
I blink. “Oh—I really think it would be much better if we could just pop into the conference room where—”
“Come on, lass. We don’t have time for fannying about.”
Right. Of course. IT demonstration in an active professional kitchen during what appears to be lunch prep. Exactly how all smooth corporate rollouts begin.
This was not the plan. The plan was me, Chef MacLeod, maybe two senior staff, all sitting in a quiet room with a projector and proper chairs.
I’d walk them through IRIS, answer thoughtful questions, sip tea like reasonable humans.
Then, once they saw how brilliant it was, we’d ease it onto the wider team.
Instead, I’m about to attempt a software demo in the middle of a Michelin-starred war zone.
Craig assured me everything had been “sorted.” This feels distinctly... not sorted. This feels like Craig fired off one vague email about a “quick IT thing” and considered the matter closed.
“Of course! No problem.”
I wrestle with the clasp on my briefcase, hands fumbling, trying to get the laptop out.
“So!” I begin, placing my laptop onto the steel counter. “I’m here to show you IRIS—the new kitchen management system for ingredient tracking, order forecasting—”
He cuts me off with a grunt. “Aye. I heard.”
Mary, my one ally in this stainless-steel hell, pats my shoulder. “Good luck, dear,” she says, then abandons me.
I open the laptop, palms slick with nerves.
The kitchen staff crowd around me in a loose semicircle, their expressions ranging from mildly curious to actively irritated. At least three of them are holding knives, which feels unnecessarily threatening.
But without Craig hovering behind me, I’m only about 87 percent terrified instead of my usual 96 percent.
Small wins.
IRIS boots up flawlessly, and pride swells in my chest. Months of coding, testing, and caffeine-fueled nights, and there it is, glowing on the screen.
I launch into my spiel, waxing lyrical about IRIS’s predictive analytics and how it can revolutionize ordering.
Blank stares.
Chef MacLeod sighs. “Give us real examples, lass. Not computer bollocks.”
“Of course! Right, so IRIS learns your patterns. Like if you usually need fifteen kilograms of salmon on Fridays, but historical data shows you only need twelve when it’s raining because fewer tourists venture out—”
A sous chef with neck tattoos snorts. “You think we need a fucking computer to tell us when it’s pissing down outside?”
“But IRIS monitors weather forecasts and cross-references them with your historical booking data.” I beam at them and barrel on. “It’s about data-driven decisions. Smart alerts like ‘Your tomatoes expire in two days, promote the Caprese,’ or ‘Excess chicken breast, make it tomorrow’s special.’”
Neck Tattoo’s expression goes from bored to murderous. “That’s my fucking job.”
“We already know our stock,” another chef chimes in. “That’s called experience.”
“It saves time,” I babble, hearing my voice rise into panic pitch. “No more manual inventory tracking that’s prone to inaccuracy—”
“Inaccuracy?” Neck Tattoo steps forward, brandishing his chef’s knife. “You saying I can’t do my fucking job?”
“No!” It comes out as a mouse squeak. “Just—we’re all human! Everyone makes mistakes sometimes—”
“More bullshit from London corporate,” he snaps. “Send some girl up here who’s never worked a day in a kitchen to tell us we’re doing everything wrong. Fuck this.”
And with that charming exit line, he storms out.
My face burns hot.
Every single person in that kitchen stares at me—the silly little girl in her silly please-take-me-seriously blouse who just told a room full of knife-wielding professionals they’ve been doing their jobs wrong.
“That’s enough!” Chef MacLeod’s voice booms across the kitchen. “Listen, lass. Why don’t we pick this up another time, aye? When things are a bit calmer.”
Somewhere deep inside, a small voice is begging—Come on, Georgie! Salvage this! Stand your ground!
But the words won’t come. Not after a tattooed sous chef just basically told me to fuck off with his eyes and his knife hand.
“Of course. Another time would be... better. I’ll just pack up.”
My laptop snaps shut with trembling hands.
How did I mess this up so badly?
Craig’s voice replays in my head: “First thing tomorrow. Senior kitchen staff need to see the system. Don’t wait around. They’re expecting you.”
Expecting me. Sure. He probably told them they were getting a new blender.
And I walked in there, clutching my briefcase like I was about to revolutionize the kitchen.
What I actually did was imply they were incompetent.
Absolutely fucking brilliant, Georgie. You’ve really outdone yourself this time.
I spend the rest of the morning doing what I do best: becoming invisible. Retreating behind my screen like a crab into its shell, quietly getting things done where no one can yell at me.