Page 86 of Culinary Chaos

Hope scoffed, but she followed Angelica into the dining room. It was early enough that the room was empty, thankfully, because Angelica had a feeling that this was going to be a blowout of a conversation. Hope was certainly in a mood, and Angelica had no idea how to navigate it. She’d never quite dealt with this from Hope before.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Angelica asked, clenching her jaw when she realized far too late that Rex and his team had followed her and now Kyle and part of his team were following Hope.

“Me?” Hope dropped her chin and looked down her nose at Angelica. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m just damn peachy.”

Angelica squinted. Where was this coming from? Hope wasn’t someone to just pick a fight from her experience, but then again, she could be entirely wrong about that. They didn’t know each other all that well, did they?

“Cut the crap, Hope.” Angelica hated how she sounded so angry just then. She’d wanted to come in here and be compassionate. “You’re terrorizing them in there.”

“That’s rich coming from you.” Hope stepped in closer.

Why did she always do that? It was as if she had no understanding of personal space, especially where it concerned Angelica. But Angelica was going to give as good as she got. She turned slightly, decreasing the space between them even more. She lowered her voice to a threatening level and pointed toward the kitchen.

“You can come at me all you want, but you don’t treat employees like that. You’re better than that.” She hoped thatechoing some of Hope’s own accusations at her would snap whatever this was, but it didn’t seem to work, or if Hope even remembered accusing Angelica of the same thing.

“I can’t even begin to tell you what a disaster that kitchen is, or the piss poor shape of not only the training of the staff but of the facilities itself.” Hope pointed back toward the kitchen. “I can’t fix that kitchen without a renovation.”

“What?” Angelica’s face fell, cold washing through her.

“It’sthatbad.” Hope dropped her gaze from Angelica’s eyes to her lips and quickly flicked them back up again. “The kitchen is literally rotting, the freezer isn’t holding temp, the grease is so thick that I’m surprised there hasn’t been a fire in there yet.”

“Hope…” Angelica shook her head slowly. “All right. What’s the plan then?”

“Plan?” Hope squeaked out. “I don’t have a plan, but I can tell you that I won’t serve a single damn meal from that kitchen. Absolutely not. It’s a cesspool of illness waiting to make someone sick and then kill them.”

Those were strong words coming from Hope. Angelica clenched her jaw. “What do you need to fix it?”

“I need a bigger budget, a whole new staff, and I need it yesterday.”

“Budget I can help with.” Angelica squared her shoulders. “Maybe. How much are we talking?”

Hope’s lips parted in surprise. “It’s out of range.”

Angelica’s stomach sank. “How much out of range?”

Hope’s look said everything that she needed to know.

“Get me a budget with line items, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“That’s not all of it.” Hope seemed to soften and calm down slightly. “Ineeda whole new staff. There’s not one good egg in there, pun intended, and they all need to go.”

Angelica was glad to see at least some humor coming through. She sighed and put her hands on her hips and noddedat Hope. “Then get it done. Tell me what you need from me, and I’ll help when I can. First or last round interviews? I’ll take care of it.”

Hope nodded. “The problem is, we have this event coming up, so I can’t fire them yet.”

“The Technology Symposium.” Angelica had tried to rework the schedule to avoid this, but Josef had insisted that they come this week because it’d add more promotion to what they were doing. And the Symposium had agreed, shockingly enough. “Get it done, Hope. I’ll support you in whatever way you need, but if you walk back into that kitchen the way you walked out of it, they’ll all leave you high and dry.”

“I know.” Hope sighed heavily, running her hands along her sides as she stared at the kitchen door. “I know.”

“Good.” Angelica nodded at her. “You okay to go back in there?”

Hope’s lips thinned, and she shook her head slightly before nodding. “No, but do I have a choice?”

Angelica wanted to tell her that she did. That she could walk away and come back in an hour, but she honestly wasn’t sure they had that kind of time. She wanted to pull Hope to the side and really figure out what was going on, solve it, ease whatever was bothering her.

And that was exactly what Angelica couldn’t do.

Hope nodded at her and then bit her lip, once again dropping her gaze down to Angelica’s mouth as if she was thinking about something else entirely. Then she turned on her toes and walked away. Angelica stayed put until Hope was fully inside the kitchen, her voice much calmer when she shouted out orders to everyone in there.