Page 19 of Culinary Chaos (Hotel Bombshell #1)

Chapter

Fourteen

“ W here do you get off thinking that you have the authority to pull the plug on this episode?” Josef leaned over her chair in the conference room, using the bulk of his size and height to try and impose on her.

Angelica frowned. “I don’t.”

“Then why the hell would you tell John that you’re going to do just that when you know very well we won’t agree to it?”

“Because John doesn’t respect women.” Angelica closed her iPad so that Josef couldn’t look at it and see what she’d been working on. The last thing she needed was for him to see her looking up Leanne and where she was interviewing next.

“Respect women?” Josef’s voice rose. “That’s not anything you haven’t dealt with before.”

“You’re right, it’s not.” Angelica crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, eyeing him. Was this really what he wanted to argue about tonight? Because she was exhausted after the day, after picking a fight with Hope, after really picking a fight with John. “And I’m tired of dealing with it.”

“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 to complain 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 with that accusation.

“Ange…” Josef shook his head at her, coming to stand across from her. “What was that all 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.”

Josef clicked his tongue at her. “You’re having a relationship with Hope Lawerence? Does Rex know?”

“No, I’m not. There’s nothing going on between Hope and me.” Angelica sighed heavily. “And there won’t ever be anything.”

Because Hope was married.

Straight.

She had to be.

And God, Angelica didn’t want to like her at all.

“There better not be,” Josef warned. “I told you when I offered you this position that there couldn’t be any dramatics. Not like that. I won’t have you take this show down because you can’t keep it in your pants.”

Angelica snorted, shaking her head again. “You wouldn’t have a show without me. And don’t you forget it.”

That was a confidence grab if she had one.

Josef certainly could have found someone else for the show, but Angelica wasn’t about to discount her own value, not when she knew she was damn good at what she did.

She might not fully understand the show business side of things, but when it came to her role as a producer, she was damn sure that she was adding value every second that she was on set.

“Don’t make accusations that you know nothing about,” Angelica added.

She stood up, snagging her iPad and walking out of the room.

She had nothing else to say, and she needed to cool down before she had an actual conversation with him.

They all needed a night to let everything just settle and then come back to it tomorrow.

She took the elevator up to her floor and stopped.

Hope.

They were staying on the same floor. Why hadn’t it occurred to her until that moment that they’d been put in neighboring rooms?

Angelica clenched her teeth, that anger rising in her chest. Hope was just out to start even more problems for Angelica, wasn’t she?

Surely she wasn’t aware of the situation with Leanne, but that didn’t mean that Hope couldn’t be more careful.

“What the hell is your problem with me?” Angelica asked, the words spitting out of her mouth before she could stop them. She pushed her way off the elevator, letting the doors close behind her. Hope could wait for it to come back for all she cared. She wanted to have this out.

“My problem?” Hope asked, shaking her head.

“Yeah, your problem. You come in here, and make wild accusations, and then you run out without even explaining what the hell is going on.”

“Me?” Hope slapped her hand across her chest, the white tank top she wore sliding under her hand slightly. “Do you get off on pissing people off? Seriously. What the hell were you thinking with John?”

“I was thinking that I could get exactly what we needed, and I did. I got him to bow to what we’re demanding.” Angelica clenched her fist against her side, holding her iPad tightly in her other hand. “I got everything that we needed.”

“By trampling over every other person in that room.” Hope shook her head, eyes wide. “I thought you were better than that.”

“Better?” Angelica’s voice cracked. “What the hell do you mean by better? I’ve never done anything to you. I’ve never once told you that you weren’t worthy of this job.” She may have thought it, but she hadn’t actually said it to Hope’s face.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Hope stepped even closer, the space between them minimizing to the point that Angelica could barely breathe even though Hope wasn’t touching her.

“Get what?”

“You’re my fucking problem.” Hope leaned in, her added height making Angelica feel as though she was backed against the wall.

“Me?” Angelica shook her head. “What have I ever done to you?”

The silence was deafening. Angelica’s heart raced so loudly that she swore Hope would be able to hear it if she could stop thinking whatever had just gone through her head and focus on Angelica.

But she definitely didn’t want that either.

Hope leaned in slightly, then pulled back.

Angelica furrowed her brow in confusion. What the hell was?—?

Angelica froze.

Hope’s lips pressed against hers, heat searing through the touch. Their breath mingled. Angelica dropped the iPad, and it clattered to the ground next to her foot so loudly that it sounded like a gunshot had just gone off. But Hope still didn’t move back.

Panic swelled in Angelica’s chest, coming up from her belly and grasping onto her neck, surrounding it in a tight grasp and squeezing so tightly that she swore she’d have a bruise mark in the morning.

She trembled, her entire body shaking as she raised her hands, slapping them against Hope’s shoulders and pushing her back immediately.

She hyperventilated. Hope just stared at her, wide-eyed and as confused as Angelica was.

Angelica’s lips parted, but no words would leave her mouth. Words were completely gone. Nothing made sense. Not this moment. Not the last five minutes. Not the last four weeks since they’d started on this hotel hell journey.

Shaking, Angelica stepped back once before she swiftly walked around Hope. She couldn’t look back at her. She couldn’t bring herself to even think about what had just happened.

Josef was right.

Fuck off.

He was right. And Angelica was in far deeper shit than she realized. Hope kissed her. Fuck. Hope had kissed her. And not just kissed her, but they hadn’t even talked about what the hell was happening or had happened, and no way in hell did Angelica plan on that happening.

She fished in her pocket for her key card, swiped her way into her room, and shut the door as fast as she could. Angelica leaned against it, closed her eyes, and finally breathed.

Had she actually not breathed that entire time?

Had that actually happened?

Angelica dashed her tongue across her lips, tasting Hope against her. It was a taste filled with spice, something that Angelica didn’t recognize, but something that she could definitely say was Hope and no one else.

Okay.

So that had actually happened.

Hope kissed her.

If Josef found out, Angelica would be out of a job faster than she could come up with an excuse or even reach for it to give him if she had one.

Because this wasn’t her fault. Hope had been the one to initiate.

Hope had been the one to cross that line.

Not Angelica. This wasn’t her doing. Josef couldn’t blame her for that.

Except that he could.

Because she had a history of this.

Groaning, Angelica spun around and pressed her cheek to the door to look out the peephole. Hope was nowhere to be seen in the hallway. Had she gone back to her room? Had she vanished outside for a breath of fresh air that they both clearly needed? Because…

What the actual hell?

Angelica relaxed her shoulders and closed her eyes.

She was safe in here. Even if Hope did try to talk to her, she could just not answer the door.

She could hide out here until the morning, until she could figure out some sort of plan going forward, because she wouldn’t let this ruin the show.

She wouldn’t let Hope’s inability to keep her hands and her mouth to herself be the reason she lost out on the opportunity of a lifetime.

Which was exactly what this was.

No. Angelica wouldn’t allow it.

Stripping out of her clothes, Angelica tossed them into the pile with the rest of the dirty ones. She glanced at her running clothes and whimpered. It would make her life a million times better if she’d just put them on and head out for a late-night run.

But she was scared.

Scared that Hope would be out there waiting for her. Scared that she’d have to actually face what had just happened. Scared that Josef was actually right and the only thing Angelica was good at was ruining coworker relationships.

And she didn’t want those fears to be true. She didn’t want to even entertain that they might have a grain of truth in them. Turning on her toes, Angelica headed straight for the bathroom and hit the spray on the shower. This would be the next best thing.

Because hell would freeze over before she’d step out of this room tonight.