Chapter 8
REESE
TRACK: Florence + The Machine “What Kind of Man”
The next week passes in a blur of preparation for the show, which includes everyone pitching in to take care of all the projects we’ve had on the back burner since I started.
That and placating Jacques, who over the next few days takes up half my day with his complaints about this, quote, reedeeculous television program.
He’s so off the handle, everyone is sure he’s going to up and quit, but I know better.
I’ve known my fair share of cantankerous restaurant people in my life, and Jacques isn’t even close to the worst. Besides, despite Jacques acting like it’s the worst thing that’s happened to him personally since the invention of the air fryer, I know he’s secretly pleased about Chef’s Apprentice.
I mean, he’s the chef. Even if our spa manager didn’t tell me herself, I can tell he’s been getting those sandblasting facial treatments on his days off.
And his mustache looks especially well-waxed.
Yes, our French chef has a twirly moustache.
He might as well wear one of those poufy chef’s hats they wear in the cartoons.
Jacques privately idolizes Gordon Ramsay, and I think he thinks Chef’s Apprentice might be his big break.
Into what, I don’t know, because I can’t see Jacques being happier anywhere other than L’Aubergine.
When Cassandra found him, he’d been in the middle of a scandal involving his ex-husband and the restaurant they’d run together in New York.
But he’d always been a spectacular chef.
Luckily, between Jacques and tightening my already tight ship by taking care of every last detail to make this place TV ready—down to replacing the labels on the spice containers—I haven’t had a moment to even think about Eli and our fake date the other night.
Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve thought about it a lot. The way Eli looked at me all night made something warm unravel in me, even if it was all for show. The way he touched me, and how it felt so natural. Like he wanted to do it anyway.
I’ve tried not to think about it. But in those moments when I’m alone in my office, between songs and paperwork and timesheets and Jacques-handling; and when I crash into bed at home, off Rolling Hills grounds, they come poking into the seams of my thoughts.
Luckily, no one at the restaurant appears to have heard any rumor that we might be together.
So now, as I come out of my office for my second round of the restaurant—I do several a day, the first at opening, the second now, ahead of the brunch rush.
I take a long deep breath, trying to soak up the sounds of my regular restaurant kitchen—the clink of a whisk on a bowl; the sizzle of something in a pan.
This will be the last time for the next six weeks I’ll be able to do this without cameras everywhere I turn.
But my bracing breath is interrupted by the sight of one of my servers rushing through the kitchen door, looking nearly in tears.
She’s got a glass in her hand, and when I call her name, she startles, and it nearly drops.
Rufus catches it with a meaty hand swung low, impressive seeing as it’s still holding a spatula.
He gives me a quick look and I come up next to them. “Erica, what’s wrong?”
She’s new here, but she came with plenty of experience.
“Just a customer,” she says. “I’m sorry, Reese, I don’t normally let them get to me—” She looks up, blinking fast. “This guy, he’s just…he’s such a dick! He already called Sophie a bitch after she refused to reseat the table next to him.
Rufus’s knuckles go white around the spatula. Then he comes around beside us. “He said what?” His voice barely contains his sudden fury, and pinkness spreads from his beard across his freckled cheeks.
“Not to her face,” Erica says quickly. “But she asked me to get you, Reese.”
He looks like he’s about to snap the spatula in two, so I raise an eyebrow, then point my chin at the onion that’s beginning to stick to his pan.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he hisses.
But he scrapes at the onion and turns down the heat, then wipes his hand on his apron. “I’m coming with you.”
“No,” I say. “Rufus, I’ve got this. I mean it. I don’t need you decking a customer.”
I see his jaw clench under his beard as I lead Erica away.
“Did he say anything to you?” I ask, taking her toward the kitchen door.
“Not beyond the normal bullshit—I swear, I know what I’m doing. There’s just a certain type of asshole…”
“I know,” I say. I know all too well. “Show me.”
She points to a weaselly-looking guy over by the far plate glass window, sitting with a pretty woman in a purple sweater, who’s got her face tilted down to her plate.
My stomach twists at the sight of her. Her whole comportment is so familiar it stings.
At the table next to them, closer to the window, a dignified older woman in a pantsuit sits, tapping her fingers on the table, looking irked.
Sophie, who’d been at the bar with George, our elderly daytime bartender, explains the man was trying to insist they switch spots, with the woman. “He said she had ‘the view he’d paid for.’”
“He’s just treating everyone like shit,” Erica says, her voice close to tears. “He told Sophie if she came over and talked to them again he’d have her job.”
“Then he demanded to speak to you,” Sophie says, sighing.
I nod at Sophie, then pat Erica on the hand. “I’ll take care of it, okay? You just look after your other tables.”
Erica smiles gratefully, trying to apologize again, but I just shake my head.
I don’t normally take over for my servers when they’re dealing with difficult customers—Sophie handles that if they need the help. But I don’t want Sophie near this asshole again. I don’t want any of my staff near him.
“George,” I ask my bartender after I come out of the kitchen door, which opens behind the bar. George is an older man with ebony skin and hair going silver at the temples. He’s filling drinks for one of my servers, staring at the man with thinly disguised anger.
“A mimosa please?”
“You taking care of that piece of work?” George asks.
“Absolutely.”
He nods and pours the drink. George has been tending bar for a millennium and has seen it all.
The jerk is talking to his girlfriend as I pass by his table to the woman next to the window.
“I’m telling you, Sherry, the blue top would have been better. I can see all the… you know.” He gestures to her upper arms.
My hand tightens over the champagne flute so hard I think it’s going to explode. This kind of talk—this intense criticism veiled as helpfulness—feels like a knife in my side.
I remember what that was like.
“On the house,” I say to the woman next to them as I lower the mimosa on her table. “For the inconvenience of the seating arrangements.” I don’t even try to lower my voice, but the guy behind me keeps blathering, unbothered.
The woman is sophisticated-looking, with porcelain skin and a sweep of silver-blonde hair in a tight chignon. “Thank you,” she says sharply, but I know her tone is not directed at me.
“Do you want to move? A lovely table has opened up over there, by the far end of the window.”
“But I love this sweater!” the woman behind me says. I can hear the hurt in her voice.
“I’m only telling you this because I care about you. You know that right? Right sweetheart?”
The woman in front of me meets my eye, and I see the same fiery rage in her eyes as I feel in my chest. “Thank you, but I’m fine,” she says. “Though you may regret giving me this as I feel like I might be about to make a scene.” A tiny vein pulses under the swoop of hair at her temple.
I smile politely.
“Sherry, listen, I know what’s best for you, and I’m telling you, you need to order something low-fat, and then you need to get down to that gym.”
“Norm, Jesus, would you stop!” Her embarrassment is painful to hear. Mostly because it’s so familiar my heart thunders as if it were me at that table.
“I’m just telling you what you need to hear. Trust me. You trust me right?”
“I—”
But he doesn’t even let her speak. Because of fucking course he doesn’t.
“What’s with this menu? They must have dumbed it down for the TV show.”
It’s the menu that’s the final straw.
“Sir,” I say, turning around, blood boiling.
“I couldn’t help but overhear.” I want to tell him to leave his girlfriend the fuck alone.
To shove him off his chair, then turn back to her and tell her it doesn’t have to be like this.
She doesn’t have to listen to a man who tells you sweet things just enough to keep you strung along while he bears down on what’s left of your self-esteem.
But I can’t do that.
So I do the other thing.
“I’m so very sorry you feel that way about L’Aubergine. Yes, one wing of the resort is still under renovation. But I assure you, both the hotel and L’Aubergine are doing everything to keep our guests’ experience five stars.”
I may be seething at how he talks to his girlfriend, but digs about my restaurant make me angry too, and that’s something I can actually address.
I may not have my heart in this industry, but L’Aubergine is my baby.
Cassandra gave me free rein over shaping it into what it is today—from middling to gold star, thanks to me and Jacques and my incredible staff, several of whom I know are watching this play out as they move around the floor.
“Is there anything I can do to make your experience more pleasant?” Besides removing you. I’m one step away from doing that anyway.
“Well you can start by bringing me one of those,” he says. He’s eyeing the woman’s mimosa. “Two, actually. I’m thirsty.”
Two mimosas he wants. Not one for him and his girlfriend, but both for him. It’s almost funny.
But I’m not laughing.
I feel eyes on us—from patrons sitting nearby, and in the corner of my eye, from someone who’s just come into the restaurant and has paused by the bar.
Once, I loved being the center of attention.
That man who talked to me like this one does to her did his very best to snuff that out of me.
But anger is bubbling up to that dangerous point now where I forget that.
I can’t see anything but red. Which is why my body works without my brain’s permission, revolting against all my service industry training to always act my best.
“Oh,” I say, turning back to the woman behind me. “Do you mean—”
She hasn’t touched her drink yet. “Do you mind?” I whisper to her.
She gives me a nod that’s like a signal between two soldiers.
“You want one of these?” I hold the mimosa up. “The thing is, these are complimentary and exclusively for valued customers.” I brush my fingers along the napkin I lay on the woman’s table, and in one quick move, I brush it to the floor.
“And sir,” I whisper, leaning in. “You’re not one.”
But as I make like I’m going to return the glass to the woman behind me, I hook my foot under the napkin.
I gasp, arranging my face in a hopefully believable expression of shock as I let my feet stumble. Then I jerk the glass forward. An arc of orange juice and champagne flies from the rim, landing exactly where I want it to—directly onto the crotch of the man’s pale chinos.
“What the!” he exclaims, shoving back from the table and turning bright red. He darts his glance around the room.
So he doesn’t like being the center of attention either.
Too bad, buddy.
“Goodness, I am so sorry, sir!” I say in mock horror, pinching my lips to tamp the laugh that wants to bubble up as I eye the spread of wetness at his crotch. It looks just as I wanted it to—like the wetness came from inside his pants.
“I heard that!” he says. “I heard what you said. You heard it too!” he snaps almost accusingly to his girlfriend.
I signal George, jerking my eyes toward the restrooms.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” the woman behind me says. I can hear the restrained smile in her voice.
“Let me help you, sir,” George says as he appears behind us. “We have stain remover in the restroom.” He guides the sputtering man up and away.
“You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!” the man says through his teeth as he crosses the floor.
The woman behind me snorts. “Bravo,” she says to me when he’s out of earshot. “There’s no case here. Not with me as witness.” I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a senator or something.
“I’ll get you another mimosa,” I say.
Then I turn my attention to the other woman—the bewildered girlfriend in the beautiful purple top. She looks at me with a mix of shock and incredulity. But not the horrified kind.
“I’m sorry he’s like that,” she says.
“No,” I say softly, meeting her eye. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
I take one of the rags George left and begin patting up the mess around her.
I keep my voice low so not even the woman behind us can here.
“I know it’s not my place to say, but you look beautiful in that sweater.
And…and I’ve been where you are. I need to tell you no one deserves to be spoken to that way. No one.”
My hand grips the rag so tightly my muscles ache.
The woman’s eyes fill with tears.
My heart skips. Suddenly, I worry maybe this goes deeper than the negativity and criticism.
But she shakes her head. “Yes. I’m fine. Better than fine, actually.” She lifts her chin and pushes up from the table. “If he asks, tell him I’m…”
I stand up, ready to help her any way I can.
“Actually, don’t tell him anything,” she says, then strides from the room with her chin high. “Let the asshole guess.”
The woman behind me actually whoops.
It’s only then that I look up and see the man standing next to the bar, grinning widely.
It’s Eli.