Chapter 8
EIGHT
LEXI
Rory Grady
Did you finish the managerial course yet?
Lexi
Yep
Liar
Why’d you ask if you knew the answer, counselor?
First thing you learn in law school. Never ask the question you don’t know the answer to.
I’ve been busy.
Let me rephrase.
Don’t put off that course, there’s a lot in there that will help you and you won’t have as much time once the restaurant is open.
Can’t wait
School wasn’t my strong suit. I was more of a recess kid. Hang out with friends, get some snacks, that was the only subject I excelled in.
This managerial course isn’t going much better for me than the required algebra class did in high school when I asked our teacher why I had to study this if I was never going to use it.
His answer that we wouldn’t have a calculator on us all the time has aged like strawberry milk.
That math feels about as relevant as what I’m reading about on this stupid website.
It’s not that it isn’t teaching me things I should probably know as a brand-new business owner and manager of a restaurant when I’m totally new to food service.
But who really gives a shit about paperwork and all the annoying details? I’ve got a little sister who’s good at all that.
My plan is to make sure my staff follow the health codes, make good food, keep customers happy, and ring them up for it.
That hasn’t changed with a single module of this online course, and I’m sure the next one won’t help either.
Clicking into it on my computer, I’m thankful for the quiet of the upstairs office. The window cracked behind me lets in some morning breeze, cooler than the sultry temperatures of midday thanks to the shade of the trees coming in clutch.
Ah yes, the human relations module.
With barely ten staff, all but one I’ve known for decades—actually—I’m confident I can scroll through most of this stuff, skimming it just enough to be able to pass the quiz at the end of each section.
A metallic crash sounds from downstairs, and I stand to check on it, but hear Charlie call out, “I’m fine, everything is fine!” and sit back down instead.
“Awesome,” I mutter. Not exactly wiggle room in the budget for new pots or pans if he dents the ones we’ve got. Hopefully Samuel’s there to help.
A red timer pops up on the screen, pulling my attention back to it.
Are you still there? it asks, ticking down.
I wish I weren’t.
Did my dad have to do this crap when he owned the diner?
When I click on yes, the timer vanishes and the heading behind it catches my breath somewhere around my stomach.
Sexual relationships in the workplace.
Gulping, my eyes trail the rest of the screen, finger spinning the scroll wheel as fast as it’ll go to keep up.
Consult with your legal team to clarify what your company’s policy is regarding sexual relationships in the workplace.
Common policies include prohibiting them entirely, or requiring notifying HR ahead of the relationship so as to avoid potential complications of a legal matter that may endanger the company.
What if I’m the one grinding on my employee’s leg? What then?
Blowing out a stiff breath, I nibble my lower lip in thought.
Am I supposed to put policy in place?
Do I report myself for coming on my chef in the freezer? Give myself a violation for an unauthorized orgasm?
In my defense, that was before he’d officially started, right?
It was definitely before I’d taken this course and had to consider putting a note in my own file for getting off in the walk-in.
Though, as the owner, maybe I can give myself a pass for one free orgasm. Surely that’s within my rights?
Maybe it’s better we just don’t worry about the fine print right now and focus on getting the restaurant up and running first, like I keep telling Wilder.
I click out of the stupid course and do the other task I haven’t been looking forward to. I reply to Wilder’s email.
When does the fun part of this job start again?
From: Heights Bites Management
To: Wilder Amante
Re: Menu Tasting
Chef Amante,
I can confirm all Heights Bites staff will be attending the new menu tasting this Friday at 4.
Even myself, as you specifically requested. Unless literally anything else comes up that can get me out of it.
With less than one week to opening, I hope you and the BOH team are ready with this new menu.
Don’t make me regret this.
Regretfully,
Heights Bites Management
A moan that should never have penetrated my ear holes makes it to my consciousness. “Oh my God, Chef!” There’s a warble in the words that screams of a kind of pleasure few men have ever given me, and definitely not with anything other than their mouths.
One of the servers—Tracy, who is happily married to her high school sweetheart with three kids and two grandkids at forty-one—closes her eyes, head thrown back as she chews so slowly it looks like a kind of sensual moment my innocent kitchen doesn’t need to see.
Her free hand slaps the stainless steel surface of the line repeatedly as she takes way too long to chew the bite and finally swallow.
“Right?” Charlie’s not making pornographic noises, he’s far too wholesome for that, but his eyes are lit up in a way I only see them do when he has to run out to a fire call. Bright, almost liquid in appearance as he nods, licking his own lips, dark mustache twitching excitedly with the motion.
“Insane,” Carl, our full-time dishwasher—or Dishy, as Wilder dubbed him—agrees, rubbing his puffed out stomach through his white tee shirt.
My staff are traitors.
Every single one of them.
“For real?” Wilder asks, looking from person to person, where we are all standing around the line. “You’re not bullshittin’ me?”
Gripping my Diet Coke so hard it’s about to geyser out of the can, my jaw nearly pops open at the chorus of “no”s that echo off the PVC-paneled walls and assault my ears.
Not with the volume, with the sentiment.
Like this new menu he’s prepared for today’s tasting is just so much better than what Samuel and I had planned.
“Absolutely not pullin’ your leg, Chef. This is next level,” Samuel tells him.
Fucking traitors, I tell ya.
The man worked for my father for decades! Where is his loyalty to the family?
“How about you, Boss?” Wilder’s midnight eyes fucking sparkle beneath the LED lighting as he calls me out in front of our entire staff, front and back of house.
“Get you some, Lexi!” Wanda hollers from across the kitchen, Tracy nodding in encouragement.
“There’s no way it’s that good,” I grumble, mostly to pity nods and unspoken you’ll sees from the rest.
“You’ll never know unless you open your mouth and taste it for yourself.” The twisted grin Wilder shoots me does nothing to lower my rising blood pressure, and the table beneath my grip is at risk now.
“You sure are funny, Chef,” Wanda says, a single puff of a chuckle on the tail of her words.
One by one he’s won over every single employee of Heights Bites these past couple of weeks since he arrived.
It’s been infuriating to watch.
Overhauling the kitchen protocols, prepping the new menu, setting up the back of the house for optimal flow during production hours, organizing our inventory, working out our weekly orders from suppliers, and even planting his own herbs right in my sacred garden.
“Tell us again,” Dishy demands, nodding with his chin at Wilder. “Why’s that sauce so good, Chef?”
The New Yorker rubs his hands together, grin on his face that looks like it doesn’t quite belong there.
Then again, nothing about this man seems to belong.
“Clean, high-quality ingredients—nothing from a plastic jar—herbs I grew in the boss’s garden just a few blocks from here, and they’re all made with love. You can taste the difference, right?”
The resounding nods all around me are the last straw.
“Wait until the boss lets me put some of my own dishes on the menu. These were just the upgrades to the original menu.”
That irritating crooked grin of his is back, and he pairs it with a wink that seems tied directly to my heart rate. The scar in his brow twitches as his dark eyebrows waggle.
Even the silver chain he always wears around his neck seems to be goading me.
It’s time to pop this sandwich artist’s ego.
Stabbing the reddish steak through the darker crust seared along the top, I make sure to get as little sauce as possible on the bite just to piss him off before jabbing it in my mouth as fast as my arm allows.
Colors explode across my tongue.
Like seeing harmonies, or smelling sounds.
It makes no sense how flavorful this one single bite is.
My palate begs for more of that sauce—the delicious herbaceous tang of it teases, invites my other senses to come out and play—and I lock my knees so they don’t buckle and give me away. I curse my ten-second-ago self for only getting a drop of that sauce on the corner of my bite.
I would swim in that sauce if Wilder weren’t looking. Might do lines of it off the counter when his back is turned.
With every cell under my control, I pull my face into a frown and shrug a shoulder.
“It’s steak. It’s fine.”
It’s also tender, juicy, and cooked unlike any other steak I’ve ever tried before.
After tasting this steak, I know why I’ve never enjoyed them that much before. It wasn’t prepared by Wilder fucking Amante.
Rubbery, brown, dripping with grease is how I remember it when my dad ran the diner when Rory and I were growing up. A burnt potato on the side that was still hard in the middle, and that was the steak special. There was nothing special about it. But plenty of people ordered it just the same.
“Fine?” Charlie’s brows reach for the tube LED lights overhead, head jutting forward.
Wanda laughs, like she’s in on some secret, and walks away, tutting. I think I catch a “only around chef,” as she goes.
The other staff all have things to say, too, but their new head chef pipes up, quieting them down. “We all have different tastes. Let’s not begrudge the boss her opinion.”
What, is he being understanding now?
Seriously, what a dick.