Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
“Holy crap this menu,” Hope mumbled under her breath even though she knew the microphone would pick up absolutely everything.
This menu was something else.
Pages and pages and pages of items, ranging from American food to Asian delicacies, to Indian, to Spanish and more.
She couldn’t even comprehend it. Every time she turned a page it was something else entirely.
Why would anyone do this to themselves? The restaurant would be drowning in the necessary items to make all this, and no one could specialize in absolutely everything.
No one.
Not even her.
Could she make things from every place in the world? Yeah. But she wasn’t good at everything. Running her fingers over the back of her head, Hope flipped to another page. She mentally catalogued everything. Hundreds and hundreds of ingredients.
Hope glanced over her shoulder toward the kitchen and pressed her lips together hard. She knew that the chef in there wasn’t as seasoned as she was. He was newer to the business. That didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t know enough, but she doubted he could keep up with this.
A waitress came over, a nervous grimace on her face. “Was there something I could get you?”
“I don’t even know where to start.” Hope sighed with a laugh. “Is it typical that people are lost with the menu?”
The waitress nodded, but she still seemed so tight with nerves. That was going to have to change if they were going to spend the next week on Virginia Beach fixing this hotel up. Sometimes Hope swore she’d seen everything when it came to restaurants, but someone always threw her a curveball.
Hope dropped her gaze to the woman’s name tag and smiled at her again. “Maria, what would you say are some of the most popular items on the menu?”
“Umm…” She bit her lip and looked around the room. “A lot of people just order the American food or the seafood, but most of it is sent back to the kitchen, so I wouldn’t exactly call them popular.”
Oh, Maria was going to be her new best friend. Hope was going to need someone like her, someone who would be honest to a fault about exactly what was going on here. Because she couldn’t keep up the ruse any longer.
Three years ago when they’d started filming, she might have allowed some of those games to play out, but not now. Now she needed answers swiftly so they could work on solutions and get out of here faster. Maybe she wasn’t as cut out for this as she thought she was.
“Is that a chef issue or… something else?”
Maria shrugged and genuinely looked like she didn’t know the answer.
“Right.” Hope went back to looking at the menu. She still hadn’t gotten through every single page of it yet. Rolling her neck, she slapped it shut. She really didn’t need to see any more. Straightening her shoulders, she looked toward the kitchen doors. “I think I’ll go inspect the kitchen now.”
She hesitated a minute before bolstering herself and moving straight for the kitchen. Cadence and Mandy were behind her with the camera. She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d find in there, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know either. Biting her lip, Hope pushed open the door and stepped inside.
“Right,” she whispered again, getting her bearings.
Two men stood inside. That was it. Two men in tattered t-shirts and with tattoos all up and down their arms. They hardly looked professional, and they hardly looked like they had any training. Hope eyed each of them over and then smiled. “I’m Chef Hope Lawrence. And you are…?”
She waited, but it was clear they were wary of her.
Did they think she’d fire them on the spot?
Or perhaps yell at them? Either that or she just wasn’t allowed into their little two-person club.
When neither of them responded, she put her hands on her hips and straightened her spine a little.
Sometimes her added height helped her come off as imposing.
“Is it just you two working back here and Maria out front?”
“Yes,” the one on the right replied.
“Yes, Chef,” she corrected. These two were cut from rough cloth, and she was going to have to put up the lines of how she would be treated immediately. “What’s your name?” she asked him directly.
“Trey.”
“You’re the chef here.” Her eyes lit up, and she walked toward him with her hand outstretched. “It’s good to meet you, Chef.” She used the same salutation, hoping that would tell him that she expected this respect thing to go both ways.
“This is Enzo,” Trey said.
“Your right-hand man, I’m sure.” Hope shook Enzo’s hand and then put her fists back on her hips. “Did the Borjeses talk to you about what we’re going to do here?”
“They said you were going to fix the problems,” Trey answered.
“In essence, yes. But usually I come in and observe first. I noticed that your menu has quite the variety of items on it.” She paused, hoping that would spur on some kind of conversation, but it didn’t seem to be working.
They were still wary of her, seeing her as an enemy rather than someone who was there to help out.
“Did you come up with the menu? Or did someone else…?”
“Joy did,” Trey said quickly, his mouth slamming shut as soon as he said that.
“Joy Borjes?” Hope asked for clarification.
He was either not going to take responsibility and throw anyone he could under the bus, or Joy really was just that much of a control freak and thought she knew everything about a kitchen and made unreasonable demands.
But Hope hadn’t met her yet, so she wasn’t entirely sure which it would be yet.
That was something to tease out fully later.
Right now, she just had to build enough rapport with these two gentlemen that they actually trusted her—
“Trey!” Maria pushed her way into the kitchen. “There’s a diner!”
Hope furrowed her brow, turning to look at Maria. Why would she be so excited about that? It was as if…
Holy fuck.
Did they not have regular diners? Did they not have tables filled ever? Was this so out of the ordinary that Maria and Trey would be that excited that they’d come in and celebrate?
“Go take their order!” Trey said in hushed tones. “We’re ready.”
Fuck.
Hope’s assumption was probably correct. She held her breath and stepped to the side, letting them do what needed to be done. She made a quick spin around the kitchen, cataloging everything she noticed, right and wrong. Then she pointed toward Cadence and walked toward her.
“I need to talk with Ange.”
“Then talk with her.” Cadence looked up at her with those wily and curious eyes. “No one’s stopping you.”
Hope hummed, because she wasn’t entirely sure why she was hesitating on that front.
She and Ange had been in a better place before they started filming, better yet before she’d gone to Italy for the summer, and now, with all of the stress and fatigue from filming, Hope just knew that Ange wasn’t going to take kindly to her barging in there and changing the subject.
She said nothing as she stepped back into the dining room, past the couple that was sitting awkwardly in an entirely silent dining room.
She’d watch the footage back later to make sure that she knew exactly what was going on and how Maria was serving them.
But right now, she needed to focus on Ange and having a real heart-to-heart conversation about what was happening in this hotel.
Because it was bad.
Real bad.
Angelica stood at the front reception desk, her back to Hope, her hips slim in that stunning royal-blue dress she wore that followed the lines of her curves exactly.
The black heels with matching blue soles only added to the elegance of her outfit.
But the way her shoulders were set told Hope exactly what she needed to know.
Angelica was mad.
Or upset.
Or something.
Either way, something had gone wrong, and Angelica was standing there dealing with it. Her arm was stretched out to the side as she pointed toward the elevator and her voice echoed through the reception area.
“What do you mean you don’t have the staff?” Angelica barked.
“W-we don’t have them.” The woman cowered slightly, but her face remained impassive. If Hope was standing where Angelica was, she probably wouldn’t even have noticed that the woman seemed upset.
“Ange,” Hope jumped in, catching Angelica’s attention and giving the woman a bit of a break. “I need to talk with you.” She nodded toward the woman. “Are you… done here?”
Angelica frowned, shifting her gaze from the woman to Hope. “How’s the staffing situation in the kitchens?”
“Non-existent.” Hope wrapped her hands together in front of her. “A chef, a dishwasher, and a waitress.”
Angelica frowned, her brow furrowing together in concern. “There’s no hotel staff except Joy, her brother, Ross, and one night manager. That’s it. No housekeeping. No janitorial. No maintenance.”
Hope’s stomach plummeted. That’s not the information they’d been given about the hotel at all. It could have changed since they’d done their audition tape and since the crew had come out to do interviews, but it couldn’t have changed that much. Could it?
So they’d lied.
Flat out.
“Office.” Angelica pointed in the other direction and gave Hope a hard stare.
“Yes,” Hope agreed, the shorthand they had from working so many years together coming in handy.
Hope followed Angelica into the office, trying her damnedest not to stare at her ass as she walked on ahead of her.
But that was impossible, and as she moved to shut the door behind her with Sy right next to her with a camera, she caught Rex’s eyes and knew he’d noticed.
But at least he didn’t seem perturbed by it. In fact, he seemed almost amused.
Of course he would be.
Hope bit her lip and turned around. Angelica stayed right where she was, and Hope stepped in closer.
They were nearly nose to nose, but neither one of them seemed to move.
Were they both craving the same kind of closeness that they hadn’t had in weeks now?
Because God, Hope would give anything for that.
“They lied,” Angelica said.
“Agreed.” Hope pursed her lips. “I thought they had a full staff, but it’s clear they don’t. Maria, the only waitress, was excited that even one customer came in for dining. Which means they aren’t having regular people in at all.”
Angelica hummed and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. “Joy and Ross are doing everything. I imagine they’re both putting in 100 hours a week, minimum.” She sighed again and shook her head. “They’re in way over their heads.”
“So it’s a management and a money issue.
But what else?” Hope asked, needing more answers.
“The kitchen is fairly clean and up-to-date. It’s clear Trey doesn’t have proper training, but he is keeping everything up to code in there from what I could tell.
I didn’t do a deep dive into the fridge and freezer yet. ”
Angelica rocked side to side and then stopped.
“You don’t think it’s a control issue, do you?” Hope asked, more tentatively than she typically would. But she had to voice that concern, the one she’d thought but hadn’t been able to truly investigate.
“What do you mean?” Angelica leaned in a little closer to the point that Hope could feel her breath against her cheeks.
“The menu is gigantic, like I’ve never seen a menu that big before.
When I talked to Chef Trey about it, he implied it wasn’t his decision.
” Hope wanted to reach forward and touch Angelica’s arm, just have the physical contact that she craved.
But she held herself still. They’d built rules about what they would and wouldn’t do on camera.
“You think Joy and Ross—”
“I think Joy,” Hope corrected to make her point clear. “But I need more information before I’m willing to throw around accusations.”
“All right.” Angelica nodded to herself. “We’ll work on that one. In the meantime, we are going to need to find some more staff for this place and start to dig a whole lot deeper into their finances.”
“That’s more your area than mine.”
“I could use the help.” Angelica paled slightly.
Hope frowned, about to ask what was going on, but she stopped herself. Cameras. Angelica wasn’t likely to actually answer that anyway. “I can do that. Tonight?”
Angelica nodded. “Tonight.”
One of them would talk to Rex or Cadence and get them to film some of it. It’d make for good downtime and moments between them to add to the tension. But Hope didn’t want to say that out loud, not right now anyway.
“Is there a theme or something I can start to work off when eliminating ninety percent of that menu?”
Angelica pursed her lips and shook her head. “Your guess on that one is as good as mine.”
Hope grunted and then sighed. “I’ll work with Trey and see what his expertise is in and go from there.”
“Probably a good idea.” Angelica nodded. “I have to get back out there before they make something else more of a disaster than it already is.”
“Fair.” Hope dropped her hands to her sides and started for the door. “Money talks tonight, then.”
“Yes,” Angelica confirmed. “Money talks tonight.”