Making my way to the dining room, I’m pleased to find my sommelier and all my sous chefs, line cooks, and pastry chefs waiting to start the meeting. I breathe a sigh of relief when I find Alice standing between Shanice and Mario with a pad of paper and pen in hand. My paranoia about Edward disappears as she flashes me a cheeky smile.
Line cooks, Misty and Warner, finish pushing together three dining tables for the meeting.
Misty takes a step back and looks at the arrangement curiously. “Why are we missing a chair?”
Alice shoots me an uncomfortable glance, and I have to suppress a laugh as I remember the dining chair with the suspicious wet spot, which I placed in the trunk of my Lexus last night.
“Just get another chair,” I say to Misty, taking a seat at the table.
As everyone takes a seat, I find myself wishing I could beckon Alice to sit next to me. Instead, Misty pulls a chair from a nearby table and squeezes in on my right.
As we discuss possible menu offerings, Misty’s gaze bores into me, and her knee occasionally bumps mine. I’m unsure why I’ve never noticed this before, but my line cook is definitely flirting with me. And judging by the way Alice keeps glancing in Misty’s direction, I’m not the only one who’s just becoming aware of this.
I ignore Misty’s hyper-focused attention. But by the time we’re all in the kitchen, testing the menu options we came up with during the meeting, Alice appears on the verge of tears.
I pull her into the walk-in cooler, trying not to think of the similarities between this situation and what happened in my awful nightmare. “Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, her gaze focused on the shelf behind me, as if she’s unable to look me in the eye. “I promise I’m not a jealous person. It’s just… I had a bad dream last night. I dreamt you left me for a fitness influencer whose entire Instagram was just before-and-after pics of her Brazilian butt-lift. And her page had theme music, but it was this sort of disembodied voice that kept screaming ‘Fitspo! Fitspo! Fitspo!’ It was a nightmare.”
I can’t hold back my laughter this time.
“It’s not funny,” she groans. “I may need therapy.”
I shake my head. “What you don’t seem to understand is that I’m obsessed with your arse, if I’m being perfectly honest.”
She rolls her eyes. “No, you’re not.”
I take a step toward her, ignoring the way she glances nervously at the door. “Let me put it this way. If I had to choose between never eating again and never touching your irresistible arse, I’d starve to death.”
She looks shocked, but there’s a hint of a smile she can’t hide. She opens her mouth, as if she’s going to dispute this ridiculous claim, but she stops herself. Then, she looks around the walk-in cooler as if she’s suddenly realized where we’re standing.
“Wow,” she whispers. “The last time I stood inside a walk-in with a man, he said something very different about my ass.”
I ignore the pang of jealousy in my gut and the hesitation in her eyes as I take her face in my hands. “Those days are over, love.”
She smiles as she seems to sigh with relief. “We should get back to work.”
I nod as I let her go, landing a soft slap on her bottom as she reaches for the door. “See me in my office after your shift. I want to talk about your promotion.”
She freezes with her hand on the door handle. “Are you rescinding the offer?”
I chuckle as I shake my head. “No, no. Nothing like that. Just see me after your shift.”
“Okay,” she replies then presses her lips together to temper her grin as she exits the walk-in.
Throwing caution to the wind, I palm her arse-cheek on our way out. As she jumps forward, I sense the vibration of her mobile in her back pocket. She looks over her shoulder, as if she’s confused whether the vibration came from her phone or my hand. But she flinches when it vibrates again.
Panic washes over her face as she pulls it out and looks at the screen. “Hi, Dad,” she says, shooting me a worried look as she answers the call.
I force myself to maintain an impassive expression, but my heart is hammering against my chest.
“You want to have lunch today? But I have a lot going on at the restaurant today. We’re planning—” She looks annoyed as her father cuts her off.
I motion to get her attention, then I mouth the words, “Go ahead. We’ll be fine.”
I really don’t need to give her father a reason to be upset with me before I ring him tonight. But this is definitely not how I envisioned today going.
Every week, when the cooking staff plans the new tasting menu, we sit down for “family meal.” This is where we eat our “test” dishes to see which ones will make the cut. The sense of family and community we get out of this ritual is my favorite part of working in this business. I was really looking forward to sharing a proper meal with Alice.
“Are you sure?” she mouths to me, and I nod adamantly. “Okay, that’s fine,” she says to her dad. “Eleven o’clock? Isn’t that kind of early? Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there.”
As Alice wraps up her conversation, Shanice steals my attention with a question about the foie gras confit for the first course. But I’m only half-listening, as my brain is still concentrating on Alice, on high-alert for any indication Cristian knows about us.
“What do you think?” Shanice asks.
I blink at her. “About what?”
She glances at Alice and smiles. “A black truffle vinaigrette over the foie gras instead of a champagne vinaigrette? A champagne vinaigrette might be too crisp.”
I nod vigorously. “You’re absolutely right. A truffle vinaigrette sounds perfect.”
She nods and retreats to her workstation as Alice ends her phone call and heads toward her own station. I fight the urge to pull Alice into the walk-in again, to grill her on the conversation she had with her father. But I need to keep my cool.
Just a few more hours and all this sneaking around and worrying will be over.
Chapter 18
ALICE
As I enter aRoqa, a small, modern Indian eatery a block away from Forked, I spot my dad sitting in the center of the single line of tables running along the right side of the restaurant. The entire left side of the dining area is occupied by a slick bar, with a private dining room tucked away beyond that. The hostess smiles as I wordlessly indicate I’ll see myself to my father’s table.
My father has never seen me in my casual Forked-branded black T-shirt and distressed jeans uniform. I always leave for work after he’s already left for the office, and I arrive home after he’s gone to sleep at nine p.m. sharp.
He looks at me curiously as he plants a kiss on my cheek. “That’s not what I imagined you wore to work at a fine dining restaurant.”
I shrug as I take a seat across from him. “It’s dressed-down fine dining, Dad. All that stuffy sports-coat-required nonsense is a relic of your generation.”
He pretends to be offended. “Are you calling me old?”
I shake my head as I glance over the lunch specials menu. “What did you want to talk about?” I ask, eager to get this lunch, and whatever awkward conversation my father has planned, over with.