Page 41 of Culinary Chaos

“Suck it up! That’s life!”

Angelica snorted and shook her head, rolling her eyes. “That’s life? Tell me, Josef, I’m assuming that John came tocomplain to you about what I’d said. Some sort of argument about how emotional I was and how unruly I am.”

Josef’s lower lip trembled, and his eyes widened.

“Did he or didn’t he?” Angelica pushed.

“He didn’t say it like that,” Josef defended.

“He didn’t call me emotional?”

“He said ‘bitch‘.”

“Ah, another wonderful derogatory term reserved for women in leadership roles. Works perfectly with my point.” Angelica held his gaze, making him even more uncomfortable than before. She would work this until she didn’t have to. And that might be until the day she died, but she wasn’t going to let anyone push her around. “John is a misogynist, and he’s purposely not taking the advice Hope and I are giving him because we’re women. Going forward, we need to do a better job about weeding people like him out.”

“You can’t pull the episode.”

“I don’t plan on it.” Angelica clenched her jaw. “He talked to you.”

“Yes.”

“And he said he’d do anything to keep us here to fix this fucking hotel.”

“Yes.”

Angelica’s lips quirked slightly, and her eyebrows rose up and down quickly. “Then my plan worked perfectly.”

“Plan?” Josef squeaked. “You did all of this to get him riled up so that I had to deal with him?”

“Well, he wasn’t going to listen to me.” Angelica batted her eyelashes at him. “So you were the next best option.”

“Angelica!” Josef straightened up and paced toward the door and then back to her. “I can’t believe you.”

“Why not? Like you pointed out, I have plenty of experience navigating precious male egos.”

The door to the conference room slammed open. Angelica jumped slightly, and Josef turned to face Hope—rage glistening across her face. She practically trembled as she stumbled forward and leaned over the table much in the same manner that Josef had moments before. Angelica’s entire heart was in her throat. She flicked her gaze to Josef who stared widely at Hope.

What the hell was happening?

“Do you get off on scaring the shit out of people?”

Angelica was about to speak, but Hope barreled on.

“Seriously. I thought you were better than that. I thought you were kinder than that. You say you don’t care about anyone, that you don’t want friends, but I didn’t think you could be such an entitled and unemotional jerk.”

Ironic that John would call her emotional, and Hope would call her unemotional. Angelica clenched her molars together, her eyes widening. Josef stared at them both with rapt attention.

“I thought we had an understanding.” Hope leaned down even more, her eyes locked on Angelica and no one else. Did she even know that Josef was in the room with them? “I thought we had a connection.”

Angelica’s heart skipped a beat. What had Hope just said?Connection?What the fuck did she mean by that? Angelica’s lips parted in shock, but Hope shook her head and straightened her back.

“I was wrong.” Her voice was nearly a growl.

Angelica didn’t even have a chance to speak as she stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Angelica swallowed the lump that suddenly appeared in her throat, her head already pounding with the back-and-forth and all the arguing today. The last thing she wanted to do was deal with Hope. To deal withthataccusation.

“Ange…” Josef shook his head at her, coming to stand across from her. “What wasthatall about? You haven’t done anything… have you? I thought you learned your lesson with Leanne.”

Angelica bit back the bile in her stomach. “Leanne is moving on, and nothing I did with Leanne was wrong. Everything was consensual, Josef. And if you’d taken more than just a quick glance at my relationship with her, you would know that. Don’t spread lies where there are none to spread.”