The Chef's Choice: The Chef's Choice

“Ready on the rib eye, one salmon in the salamander, one on the grill,” Roman responded.

“Risotto’s done. One minute on the lobsters,” put in Rosalie, winding pasta around a meat fork to provide a bed for one of her lobster tails.

By the time she’d finished speaking, Damon had the veal seasoned and into the pan with the shallots to sear off. “Okay, stop where you are on the last order. Let’s focus on getting this eight-top out.” Reaching into one of the ovens, he pulled out two sauté pans, each with a piece of meat that was finished cooking. Lamb loin, Cady recognized.

He flipped the meat onto the cutting board and deftly sliced each loin into medallions, leaving them together like a sideways stack of poker chips. Even as he reached out, Rosalie passed him a pair of plates with mashed potatoes piled in one corner. He pulled a bubbling sauté pan of what looked like wine sauce from the stove and drizzled a circle onto each plate, then used his knife to lay the stack of medallions in the middle, pressing them gently over so that the perfect rounds of lamb lay against one another in the ring of red.

“Veg, Rosalie,” he said, sliding over the two plates so she could add the tiniest zucchini and yellow squash Cady had ever seen. Meanwhile, Rosalie had traded him her two lobster plates. With a squeeze bottle, he added a few precise dots of lemon butter sauce around the edges of each, adhering to some vision that only he could see.

Meanwhile, Andy the expediter was madly sprinkling sliver-thin parsley chiffonade over the lamb and risotto and sticking what looked suspiciously like fancy potato chips into the top of the mashed potatoes. He and Damon slid the plates across the counter to the pass.

Less than a minute had elapsed.

“All right, table ten up,” Damon called. “Let’s go, people. Hands on hot food.” He clapped his hands. The runners swarmed in.

Cady cleared her throat. “Chef?” she said.

Damon turned from adding knobs of butter to two of his sauté pans. He started to flash a smile. Until he saw the plate in her hands. “What’s that?"

“Fois gras glazed tenderloin from table four.”

“I can see that.” He flipped the veal. “The question is what is it doing back in the kitchen?"

This was the delicate part, she thought. Little was more irritating to a chef than having to interrupt the complicated dance of getting orders out the door to redo a plate he’d thought was safely gone. And when that chef was Damon Hurst, almost anything could happen.

“The customer isn’t happy. He says it’s too dry. He wants a sauce."

Damon’s eyes narrowed. “Table four, that was medium well, right?”

Cady nodded.

“Well, yeah, it’s dry. It’s been cooked to death.”

“I tried to suggest the rib eye, but he didn’t want to hear it.”

“Roman, toss this one in the Frialator,” Damon directed, slapping a new piece of tenderloin onto a sizzle platter and sliding it down the counter as if he were playing kitchen shuffleboard. “Set phasers for medium well."

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Roman grinned.

Damon turned back to the stove to get the veal in the oven and add scallops to the other two sauté pans. “Now what’s his sauce issue?"

“He says when he saw glazed, he wasn’t expecting a crust,” Cady said.

“Did you tell him that’s how the dish is made?”

“He didn’t want to listen to me.” “Maybe he’ll listen to me,” Damon said with an edge to his voice.

The printer chattered. “Three lobster, one scallop, two tenderloin medium, one lamb rare,” Andy read. “I don’t really think—”

“I’ve got to get some entrées plated,” Damon interrupted.

“But what do I tell him?” Cady asked desperately.

“Leave it to me. I know how to handle these kinds of idiots. Now go take care of your tables.” He turned away, hands already moving in a blur.

Chapter Eight

Cady went back out to the dining room, mind buzzing. On the positive side, he hadn’t actually gone ballistic. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? If he’d planned to kick them out, wouldn’t he have stormed into the dining room?

Leave it to me. I know how to handle these kinds of idiots.

He’d looked well and truly ticked. And no matter how she tried to respin what he’d said, it didn’t sound good. She’d seen it before on camera, seen that intensity flare into scorching temper.

Well, it wasn’t going to happen here. Clamping her jaw tight, she headed for the kitchen just as Damon strode out. She moved to intercept him. “Don’t even think about it."

“Think about what?” he asked without stopping.

“Kicking him out.” Cady followed hot on his heels.

“It sounds to me like he’s got it coming.”

“My parents don’t.”

“Leave this to me,” he told her. “I’ll deal with it.”

That was what she was afraid of. With every minute Damon was out of the kitchen, the line fell further and further behind. He wouldn’t be in the dining room unless he was planning something.

The part of her that had been predicting disaster should have felt unsurprised—vindicated, even—to see it all play out as she’d predicted. But, she suddenly realized, there was another part of her that had begun to hope for something different. There was another part of her that had begun to believe things had changed.

“You are not going to make a scene,” she hissed, seizing his arm to tug him behind the high barrier of the empty waiters’ station. “Don’t you dare kick him out."

“Why not?” He stepped toward her, backing her into the wood of the barrier. “Give me a good reason not to, just one."

She could hear the suppressed anger in his voice and she knew suddenly he wasn’t talking about a dissatisfied customer.

Dark eyes, simmering intensity, a stare that didn’t ask but demanded. Her hand fell away from his arm as she breathed in slowly. “This isn’t the—“

“Time or place.” Damon caught her wrists. “You say that a lot. You ask me, it’s long past the time and place."

A treacherous weakness began to seep through her. “Not here,” she said desperately.

“Then where? When?” “Later, all right?” “At the end of the night?” “Whatever you want, just don’t—” “Good.” And he turned toward the table before she could catch him.

“Good evening,” he said to the couple, inclining his head. “I’m your chef, Damon Hurst. I hear you’re not happy with your meal."

“It was terrible,” the balding man grumped. “Poorly cooked, not what the menu promised."

“I see.” She could see the tension in Damon’s shoulders.