Page 40 of Culinary Chaos (Hotel Bombshell #1)

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

“ A nge!” Hope said loudly as soon as she opened the office door. She didn’t even knock. She couldn’t wait. She didn’t have time to let this not happen. She didn’t even care that there were camera’s everywhere, her panic was evident, and Angelica needed to help her deal with it.

Now.

“Yeah?” Angelica said sharply from her seat at the desk. She had her iPad open, papers everywhere, and a calculator. “Don’t tell me you need more in the budget.”

“No.” Hope paused, her heart racing as she looked Angelica over, the way her hair fell over her shoulder, hiding part of her face.

Angelica moved her head sharply, pushing the curl that always seemed to end up over her eye out of her face.

All the words and anger and frustration and fear raced right out of Hope, and she was struggling to find them again.

“Hope?” Angelica furrowed her brow in confusion. “What is it?”

“We need to cancel the symposium coming tonight.”

“Not possible,” Angelica responded, going back to her iPad and dismissing Hope.

“No, I don’t think you understand. We need to cancel it.”

“We can’t. They’re already here in their meetings.” Angelica glanced up and made eye contact.

Hope sighed heavily, stepping up to the other side of the desk and leaning over it. “Remember when I told you that some people needed to be fired.”

“Yes?” Angelica dragged out the word.

“Well, I fired them. They were making a bigger mess. Henry’s out trying to hire some new staff because what happened when I fired a few key people? The rest of them walked out.”

“No.”

“Yes.” Hope’s chest rose and fell with a surge of energy she didn’t know she had.

Her heart raced with the panic that she had scarcely let herself feel before, but now that she was here, in Angelica’s makeshift office, she could be calm.

She could breathe these words out and let Angelica catch them. Because she had to, right?

“How many are left?”

Hope bit her lip, shaking her head.

“None?” Angelica asked.

“None,” Hope answered. The guilt ate its way further into her, and she still couldn’t stop it.

She’d put them in this situation. If only she’d waited another day to do the terminations, but she hadn’t been able to.

They were going to kill someone if they didn’t stop, and all of them were just feeding off each other.

“Hope!” Angelica’s voice was sharp this time.

“What?” Hope blinked, prying her way out of the fear.

“What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” Hope jerked back, standing up straight.

“I don’t have a plan, Ange. I don’t even have an idea of what we can do.

I shut down the restaurant for tonight. That was an easy choice, but I can’t get anyone in there to work in the next two hours and be trained on what they’re supposed to do.

I don’t have a restaurant in Seattle to even pull my own people!

There is no backup plan, and I can’t do it by myself. ”

Angelica canted her head to the side. “We can’t cancel. They’re already here for the start of the Symposium.”

“Then what the hell do you propose?” Hope shoulder hurt from how tense they were.

“What do you need to get that dinner done?”

“People.”

“How many?” Angelica was already standing up, coming around the side of the desk so that they were standing nose to nose.

“One? Two?” Hope threw her hands up in the air. “It’s only thirty people, thankfully. But the meal that was planned…”

“Change it. If it needs to be simpler, then change it.” Angelica grabbed for Hope’s hand, squeezing. Then she slid her fingers up Hope’s arm to her shoulder, squeezing again. “How many people?”

“One.”

“And you have one.” Angelica nodded, stepping back and straightening her shoulders.

“Who? Rex?” Hope pointed toward her husband. “He won’t touch a pot unless it’s to clean it.”

“Me,” Angelica said firmly.

“You?” Hope pointed at her in complete shock. “You know how to cook?”

Angelica paled. “Do I need to know how to cook or do I need to know how to follow directions?”

“Can you follow directions?” Hope’s brow knit together, and her voice rose unreasonably. She knew it was a dig at Angelica, but she was being damn honest. She’d never seen that woman listen to anyone else. Not once. She always did what she wanted.

Angelica scoffed. “Do you want to make one thing go right or not?”

Hope’s lips parted, her jaw dropping. She looked Angelica over, the black shirt and black suit that she always wore, the heels that made her inches taller than she actually was, the perfectly done-up makeup and manicured nails.

Did Angelica ever actually cook? Hope so rarely saw her eat that she was pretty sure that Angelica never did unless Hope brought her food, which would mean that she never cooked.

“I don’t…” Hope started and shook the thought from her head. “Yes. Fine. But you need your running shoes.”

Angelica put her hands on her hips and continued her stare. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

“Fine.”

Hope left the office. She stepped into the hallway, cold air rushing to her lungs. What the hell had she just agreed to?

She said nothing to anyone as she made her way back down to the kitchen and started preparing everything that she could.

Angelica had no experience in the kitchen, so Hope was going to have to give her the simplest tasks possible and hope they worked out.

This wouldn’t be a dinner filled with finesse, but it would be a dinner like they’d promised and had been paid for.

She had everything set out and ready to go when Angelica showed up.

Angelica had pulled her hair back into a bun at the nape of her neck, her bangs loose on the right side, always in the way.

Hope had to hold herself back when she looked at her.

They now had an hour and a half to make thirty meals.

Not impossible, but it certainly wasn’t going to be easy.

“I told Henry to play host. Hopefully he can’t screw that up.” Angelica stepped up to the sink and started washing her hands.

“Better out of my kitchen than in it. I’m too mad to deal with him right now. And the more I look at him the more pissed off I get.”

“Understandable.” Angelica dried her hands on a towel.

Hope still hadn’t moved. What the hell was she doing? She needed to move. She needed to be in charge. Pointing at the apricots, she said, “Peel those and dice them up into one-inch chunks.”

Angelica pursed her lips but said nothing as she snagged a knife and started to do as she was told.

Hope focused on the duck and getting it onto a hot skillet.

She’d finish baking them, but she needed to sear the top sides of them to start rendering the fat.

She sliced hatch marks into the breasts and set them into the hot pan.

The sizzle was exactly what she needed to hear. Focusing on what she could manage to get done in the time that she could manage to do it, Hope ignored everything else that was happening in the kitchen until she had all thirty duck breasts prepped and ready to be slid into the oven.

The oven had barely kept temp the entire time she’d been there, so she wasn’t holding her breath on that one either. She would check it constantly, and if it was holding temp, then she’d lower it each time she opened the door to check, but hell if she wasn’t going to fuck up this meal.

With the meat in the oven, she straightened her back and looked over at Angelica.

She was struggling. Massively. She’d barely gotten through the apricots, but Hope didn’t have a choice.

She washed her hands and then pulled over a large pot and filled it with orange juice and sugar, starting the heat under it so she could reduce it down for the chutney she was making.

She didn’t say anything as she took another knife and started to mimic Angelica. Or rather, do it correctly and in half the time.

This was a mistake.

It was all a mistake.

“What are we making?” Angelica asked.

“Roasted duck with apricot chutney.” Hope glanced up at Angelica’s face.

She looked disgusted.

“Don’t take it that’s your cup of tea.”

“No.” Angelica frowned. “I have history with duck, and it’s not a good one.”

Hope snorted. “Do you eat anything?”

“Of course I eat,” Angelica chimed back smartly.

Hope winced. She could see how that could have been taken as an attack. She hadn’t meant it as that, but she couldn’t help herself when she was this stressed. It was too damn hard to control her emotions.

“You don’t eat tomatoes or peppers. You don’t eat duck.”

“I eat tomatoes and peppers,” Angelica fired back. “When they’re cooked properly.” She shot a look over at Hope, her jaw clenching tightly.

Oh, Angelica wasn’t liking the turn of this conversation, was she?

“Are you saying I don’t know how to cook?” Hope’s voice reverberated through the kitchen.

“What?” Angelica stopped slicing the apricot, her hands still. She looked around the room at the film crew and then shook her head. “No. That’s not what I said.”

Suddenly hyperaware of the cameras and the fact that Rex was watching everything go down, Hope tensed sharply. “Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that there are certain foods I don’t like.” Angelica shook her head, that damned curl sliding over her eye again until she shook it off. “Just like I’m sure there’s some you don’t like.”

“I eat everything,” Hope muttered. She moved over to the pot to stir the sugar into the orange juice.

She had to stop herself. She was being combative for no reason—well, there was a reason, but Angelica wasn’t the source.

It was Henry. It was this damn restaurant.

It was the fact that everyone had just walked out on her and left her to fend for herself.

It was the film crew because they wouldn’t get out of her face.

It was Angelica…because Hope couldn’t stop thinking about her, wanting her, feeling her presence all around her.

“Yeah, like hot honey… whatever that is.”

Hope froze. She held the whisk tightly in her fingers and looked over at Angelica. “What did you say?”

“Hot honey.” Angelica stared right back at her. “You said something about that when we first met.”

Hope’s lips parted in surprise. How the hell did Angelica remember that?

Of all things for her to remember, of all conversations for them to have had, that very first one was what Angelica remembered?

God, she’d been such an idiot that day. Flirting outrageously because she’d been so damn nervous and pent up with anxiety over being so fucking late for the photo shoot.

“Hope?” Angelica asked.

“Nothing,” Hope mumbled going back to stirring the sauce for reduction.

Ignoring Angelica’s confused look, Hope pulled out the dried cherries and raisins and dropped them into the sauce.

She turned away from Angelica and started to pull the spices that she would need.

She couldn’t look at Angelica right now.

She couldn’t look at anyone in the room because they would see the surprise and arousal written all over her face.

She set everything down and then bent to check the duck breasts roasting in the oven. The thermometer at least still worked. But when she read it, she stilled.

“Damn it.”

“What?” Angelica asked, moving to bend down with Hope.

Hope slammed the oven door shut and cranked up the temperature. She had to get it higher. “It’s not holding temp again.”

“You ordered the new oven, right?”

“Yes.” Hope rolled her eyes. “But they don’t just appear out of thin air, Angel. They take time to arrive and then be installed.”

“I know that,” Angelica hissed. “I don’t need the attitude.”

“Attitude?” Hope squeaked the word out. “I’ve been slaving away in this kitchen for days trying to get it up to par, and you know what?

It’s impossible. The oven’s broken. Two of the burners on the stove don’t work.

The freezer won’t hold temp, so I had to throw out all the food in there because who knows what condition it was kept in.

This restaurant came straight from the bowels of hell.

I’m serious. No one should ever eat here again. ”

Angelica held still, focusing entirely on Hope as she finished her rant, her hands thrown wildly around her. The silence between them was strong, but it wasn’t filled with intensity like it had been before. This time there was relief there.

“Feel better?” Angelica asked.

Hope blew out a breath and rubbed her nose on her bicep. “A little bit. Yeah.”

“Good.” Angelica dashed her tongue across her lips, her eyes not moving from Hope’s face. “Think we can get back to it?”

“Yeah.” Hope shifted entirely. She moved back to the stove and checked on the reduction and tried to concentrate on what needed to happen next.

Apricots.

They still needed to finish peeling and dicing those. She stood next to Angelica and started to work in silence. When she looked up, she met Rex’s eyes. He made a continuing motion at her, but she didn’t understand it. Then he mouthed, “Fight. Get mad.”

Hope wrinkled her brow and focused back down on the food in her hands. She didn’t want to fight with Angelica. She wanted to scream and yell at just about anyone else right now, but not Angelica.

Angelica must have caught the look too, because she stared directly at Hope as if waiting for the other shoe to drop and for a new argument to start. Hope clenched her jaw and went straight back to dicing. She wasn’t going to add any more stress to her already stressful day.

She wouldn’t survive the night if she did that.

Though she and Rex would be having words as soon as they were alone.

Didn’t he realize how bad this was for her?

Didn’t he understand?

Because Angelica did. Hope could see it in her eyes when they looked at each other, when Angelica had asked if she felt better or if she was all right. Hope took the apricots and dumped them into the pot to simmer down for a few minutes.

She stirred everything together before letting it sit off the heat and checking the temperature of the oven. Good, it was finally holding. At least for now. Hope closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Angelica touched her arm lightly and nodded at her.

“It’ll be good, I’m sure.”

“It’ll be exquisite,” Hope said, though she wasn’t quite sure that she felt it this time.

She wanted to, but she was getting lost in Angelica’s eyes, in the compassion that she so rarely showed to anyone.

Hope gave her a wan smile and then rolled her eyes.

“We need to start the rice and then start dessert.”

“Just tell me what to do, Chef.” Angelica’s light teasing tone brought a small twitch to Hope’s lips.

This had been the right decision, at least for tonight.

At least she didn’t doubt that.