Page 120 of Culinary Chaos

Eva holding her hand.

They stared at her oddly, not moving from inside the elevator to leave it, and Angelica not stepping inside to join them. She couldn’t, could she? Her heart hammered.

“Ange?”

Angelica shook her head and stepped inside, turning her back to the wall so she could face the door. She had to get out of here as soon as possible. She couldn’t be forced to stay in here with them. Breathing slowly, Angelica tried to calm herself down enough to make it up to her room.

“I passed the test!” Eva said, her voice bright.

Angelica had to shake her head to focus and realize that Eva was actually talking to her. “What test?”

“My math test.” She beamed.

“Congratulations.” Angelica smiled, though she feared it didn’t quite reach her eyes this time. Hopefully Eva wouldn’t notice.

“Eva…” Hope said quietly. “When we get upstairs, I want you to go into the room and get ready for bed, all right?”

“All right!” Eva beamed.

They stepped off the elevator, and Hope slipped Eva the keycard before snagging Angelica’s hand and tugging her back to stay a little. She didn’t even wait until Eva was in the room before she stared directly into Angelica’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“N—”

“Stop it.” Hope sighed heavily. “Something’s wrong. What happened?”

Angelica didn’t have words. All the pain and hurt that she’d been avoiding came rushing into her chest, and she couldn’t bring herself to say any of them. Because they would hurt Hope. They’d shatter her into a million little pieces, and Angelica couldn’t be the one to do that. She had to protect Hope from this.

She just had to figure out why.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Angelica said firmly, stepping back and away. “I hear we have a scene to shoot tomorrow.”

“A scene?” Hope frowned.

God, they were still keeping her in the dark. When would that end?

“You can talk to Rex or Kyle about it. I have… work I need to get done before morning.” Angelica stepped back again. She needed to escape. Now. She said nothing else as she turned on her toes and started down the hallway.

Please just don’t follow me.

Chapter

Thirty-Nine

“Are you ready for a service run through tonight?”

Hope started at Angelica’s voice. Something about last night had been off, and all she’d wanted to do was to help, but Angelica had pushed her out even more. She certainly hadn’t expected Angelica to come down to the kitchen randomly. She glanced toward Kyle who didn’t seem surprised at all. She sighed. That was a massive problem that really needed to be solved. Why he was the director instead of Rex was beyond her, but it needed to be changed.

“Absolutely.” Hope gave Angelica a smile worth a thousand words as everyone around her continued to work and prep for lunch and dinner service. They were doing a soft run for lunch with the new menu items and a hard run for dinner, which would actually be filmed so they didn’t look like complete fools. Not that Hope thought they would. This crew understood what was happening.

“Good.” Angelica paused by the edge of the counter, her hand resting on it. She looked into Hope’s eyes, searching for something.

Were they supposed to have more of a conversation?

An argument?

Hope again glanced toward Kyle, but she wasn’t given anything. Not one hint as to what was supposed to be happening. “How’s training going?”

“Not half as bad as expected.” Angelica clenched her jaw tightly, looking around the kitchen as though someone was going to jump out and knife her right there. What was she so scared of?