Page 43 of Culinary Chaos (Hotel Bombshell #1)

Chapter

Thirty-Two

“ H ave you seen this?” Josef slid a stapled pack of paper in front of Angelica’s face.

Angelica glanced over it, instantly wanting Josef to give far more of an explanation than he had.

It was a state inspection on the kitchen.

One that had been failed. She glanced at the date, seeing it was for yesterday, when the kitchen had been finished and refilled with food. She flipped to the second sheet.

“Hope failed the inspection,” Josef added, glancing at Rex behind the camera.

“She certainly did.” Angelica sighed, reading through page after page littered with different violations. Some of them were minor, but some were egregious. The total fine at the end was astronomical, as were the requirements for fixing it within the next ten days.

“You should go talk to her,” Josef added.

Angelica looked at him curiously. “Is that want you want?”

“Yeah.”

“You want a scene of me confronting Hope about this? Instead of a scene about how we’ll resolve it?

” Angelica dropped the papers onto the table and kept her eyes locked on Josef.

She needed more direction from him, because the last couple of days had been absolute hell.

She’d started to feel as though she had a place on the show only for all of that to be taken away as soon as they’d arrived in Seattle.

And it was wearing on her as much as she was sure it was wearing on Hope.

“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks!” He clapped his hand on Angelica’s shoulder, moving her slightly with the force of it.

Angelica ignored him and picked up the papers again.

If she was going to go into this for an argument, then she would…

she stopped. The date on the front sheet was yesterday.

The date on the last page…was two weeks ago.

She’d nearly missed that. Angelica pursed her lips and looked from the paperwork to Josef.

“Is this all the violations?”

“Yes.”

“And you were given it this morning?”

“As soon as it came in.”

Angelica nodded slowly at him, her brain churning. How long had it taken him to come up with this idea? More than that, who else was involved in it? She didn’t dare look at Rex or the camera crew. She didn’t want to know how deep this ran, because she was sure it went beyond just Josef.

“You’re mad, aren’t you?” Josef asked.

“Mad as hell,” Angelica mumbled. And she wasn’t lying.

She just wasn’t pissed off at Hope like he thought she was.

And she needed to figure out a way to let Hope in on that fact, because she couldn’t continue the torment and bullying they wanted her to participate in.

Tightening her grasp around the papers, she looked directly at Rex. “You ready for this hell?”

She didn’t even give him a chance to respond as she walked out of the room.

Rex deserved to wallow in the pit of his own making.

She wasn’t going to save him, but she strongly suspected that he was in on this.

She wouldn’t put it past him or Kyle. They’d all know, because they’d all be waiting for Angelica to show up and throw her fit and scream at Hope.

Well, they were going to get what they wanted.

And so was she.

Angelica slammed her way into the kitchen, the few staff she’d pulled from her hotel in SeaTac all looking at her as if they knew exactly what was coming. They should. They knew who she was and what she was capable of, but they also respected the hell out of her.

“What’s this?” Angelica shouted, finding Hope immediately.

They stopped by one of the steel counters, facing off each other.

Angelica threw the papers down onto the top of the counter and waited for Hope to pick them up and look at them.

Hope seemed confused, and calm, which wasn’t what Rex and the others wanted.

Angelica refused to look over her shoulder at them, either.

She didn’t need confirmation that this wasn’t what they wanted.

What she needed was for Hope to start firing back at her.

“It’s an inspection report.” Hope flipped through it quickly. “What the…”

“You failed it!” Angelica raised her voice again, noting those around them flinching already.

“Are you going to tell me that you, world-renowned and celebrity chef with her own damn show, doesn’t know how to pass a simple state inspection.

Don’t you own restaurants? Maybe I should send inspectors to all of those? Hmm?”

Fuck, Angelica wasn’t holding back. She was going to keep up the anger in her voice, the tension in her body language, the glare on her face for as long as she had to.

“I don’t understand…” Hope trailed off, flipping through the pages again.

She seemed so confused, and Angelica’s heart broke over that.

She hadn’t been told this was happening, and Angelica had suspected as much.

They weren’t actors. But they were real people, and Josef needed to get that through his damn head.

Angelica ripped the papers from Hope’s hand and flipped to the last page.

She pressed the document onto the counter, her pointer finger on the date next to the signature from the inspector. The date that was correct. Then she leaned onto the counter, making sure that her arm blocked the cameras so they couldn’t see what she was pointing at.

“How could you screw up so bad?” Angelica doubled down, tapping her finger against the paper. “Look, this is the worst of it. Cross-contaminated and rotten food. We agreed to get rid of that.” She tapped her finger again.

Hope’s wide eyes looked from Angelica’s face down to her finger.

Another tap, tap, tap.

“Oh,” Hope said, the word enough to let Angelica know that she understood. “I…”

“You what?” Angelica snatched the papers up, opening them again. She started listing off offenses one after the other. Then she pointed at her staff and asked them. “Do you know how to properly store shellfish?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you!” Angelica pointed at another employee. “Do you know how long until it goes out of date?”

“Yes, Ms. Shields.”

“Are you just incompetent?” Angelica turned on Hope again, throwing the papers back onto the table and shaking her head. “Or is this job too big for you?”

“You’re over the line,” Hope fired back, a light in her eyes that Angelica was hoping to see. Hope stared at her intently.

“Am I? Looking at this, you deserve to be taken down quite a few notches.” Angelica once again pointed at the paperwork. “Ten days to fix it all. I hope you have the manpower left to do that.”

“Oh, I’ll get it done.” Hope leaned over the counter, her palms flat against the metal. She was so close to Angelica, inches away, nearly nose-to-nose.

Angelica’s heart raced. She couldn’t make herself look away.

She was stuck there, staring into the eyes of the only person who might actually be on her side in this entire show.

And everyone else was pitting them against each other.

Angelica parted her lips, ready to throw another accusation in Hope’s direction when she stopped.

She dashed her tongue across her lips, watching Hope’s gaze drop to her mouth and follow the motion.

Oh they really were fucked.

And not in the way she’d thought before.

“I’ll whip this kitchen into the best shape you’ve ever seen.” Hope’s voice was low, threatening. “Don’t you dare come in here again and throw this shit around. And don’t you dare treat me like I’m on my first job either.”

Angelica felt the full force of Hope’s anger—well, almost. There was a twinkle in Hope’s eye that told her she now knew exactly what was happening. Angelica poked her fingers at the paperwork again.

“You better figure out how we’re going to pay for this fine, since it’s your fault it happened in the first place.” That was an absolute lie, but what else was she supposed to say? Josef had handed her paperwork and intended for her to run with it, so she had.

“Failures happen all the time, Angel. You’d know that if you paid closer attention to the restaurants in your own hotels.”

Angelica gasped.

Angel .

She slowly straightened up to her full height. “Fix it, Hope. Now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hope mimicked the tone of her employees, even daring to give a very slight bow. “Can’t have the Ice Fairy upset, can we?”

Oh, she was playing with fire now. Angelica breathed heavily, giving Hope the best glare that she could summon. Without another word, she gripped the paperwork and walked out. She needed air. She needed to breathe. What the hell was that all about?

“Ange! Ange! Wait up!” Josef jogged slightly to catch up with her.

Angelica spun on him. “What?”

“That was brilliant!” His enthusiasm leached into his words.

“Brilliant?” Angelica scoffed.

She tried to walk away again, but Josef caught up with her. “Yeah! That’s exactly what we need!”

“You need me to be a bully?” Angelica clenched her fists at her sides, rumpling the paper in the process. “You need me to be such a dick that no one would ever work for me again, not in my actual business and certainly not on the damn show.”

Josef’s smile faltered.

Good.

He needed reality to be slapped into him.

Angelica took a deep breath before she launched into her next argument against this.

“There are plenty of shows out there that are successful without this kind of drama, plenty of dual hosts that work together and get along well and easily resolve conflicts that happen. We don’t need this kind of bullshit on ours. ”

“Yeah. You’re right.” Josef came closer, towering over her. “But you know what’s different about those shows?”

“What?”

“They have a female and a male lead.” Josef stopped there, glowering. “Not two women. Not two headstrong and competent women who know exactly what they’re doing.”

“So you want us to pretend we’re stupid?” Bile rose in Angelica’s stomach at that thought.

“No.” Josef softened his tone. “No, you don’t have to pretend to be stupid. But you do need to understand the rules you’re playing by now.”

“Rules?” Angelica shook her head confused.

“You’re women .”

“I’m fully fucking aware!” Angelica’s voice rose. “What’s your point?”

“Viewership loves a good cat fight.”

“Oh my God.” That sense of disgust filled her, taking over her entire body.

“They do, Ange. They want the drama. They want the arguments. They want you and Hope to step all over each other while you work your way up. They don’t want collegiality. They want the spice.”

Angelica was going to be sick. Her stomach churned so much that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stand there much longer.

“You got too complacent in Estes Park. You and Hope were getting along too well. Hell, we’re struggling to even find any footage that we might be able to use to make a full episode because you didn’t deliver.

” Josef leaned in even more, the scent of coffee on his breath making Angelica want to instantly puke. “I need you to do your job.”

“My job is to come into these hotels and fix their problems, to get them up to basic standards. My job isn’t to piss the world off.”

“No. No, that’s where you’re wrong. Your job is to do exactly what I tell you to do.” Josef’s nose wrinkled.

Angelica shook her head, stepping back from him. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement, and when she turned to look, she found Rex and Kyle standing just behind Hope. What side would they end up on? Because this was all their jobs on the line.

Focusing back on Josef, Angelica took the papers in her hand and slapped them against his chest. “Next time you want to create drama, you should lie better. Or maybe that was your intention the entire fucking time, to lie and then tell them all that I’m the loose cannon and need to go.”

“What?”

“Change all the dates on the fucking inspection results if you want me to believe that a chef and restaurant owner as brilliant as Hope Lawrence failed an inspection so miserably that she’d risk shutting down an entire restaurant. Make your lies believable.”

“Ange.”

“No. You got exactly what you wanted, Josef. You got the argument you were so insistent on, and you made it so no one in this crew gives a damn about what happens next. If this show goes down, you’re the one who’s to blame for it.

Not me.” Angelica pushed in a little more as he took the papers she still held plastered to his chest. “Fuck you.”

She stormed off. She didn’t care where she went or how she got there, but she had to get away from that.

She walked outside into the cold Seattle rain, and she didn’t stop.

She walked along the piers and the docks, letting the rain soak into her clothes and against her hair.

Ansel would kill her for it, but right now, she couldn’t bring herself to care about that.

Her phone blew up with texts and calls from Josef and other producers.

From Hope.

Angelica winced, but she didn’t answer it. She just needed a few minutes to herself. That was it. A few more minutes.