Page 1 of Recipe for Romance (Applewood #2)

~A iden~

A warm breeze traveled through the trees of Kemp Family Farm.

While the sound of rustling leaves might be soothing to his younger brother Travis, Aiden found it irritating beyond measure as he leaned back against the trunk of an apple tree.

The only other sound in the large expanse of the orchard was the occasional chirping from the barn swallows.

The small birds loved to take up residence in the eaves of the various buildings that dotted the land his family had owned and cultivated for the last hundred or so years.

It felt as if it had been almost that long since Aiden had heard it.

The birdsong was bright and melodic, something Aiden’s mom had suggested that he listen to in an effort to ease his troubled mind, but it was doing the opposite.

The sound grated on his last nerve, something that wasn’t difficult to do given his near-constant irritability, but it was worse today.

Peaceful sounds of nature, the smell of damp earth, and new life in the form of nearly ripe apples made up his brother’s happy place, not his.

He needed the noise and organized chaos of the kitchen to set him back to rights.

Unfortunately for Aiden, that likely wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.

As he continued to stare up into the trees, the sun shining brilliantly through the canopy of leaves a stark contrast to his current mood, Aiden willed himself to find peace with that fact just as he’d willed himself to do so many other, more challenging tasks in the past. He’d graduated from high school and moved halfway across the country for God’s sake, traveled the world working at the finest restaurants, and learned from the best of the best all while becoming one of them himself.

Getting over one mistake should be easy enough.

Except that one mistake had been a colossally stupid one, something Aiden could have easily avoided if he had just played the game like he’d seen so many other chefs do, but he’d been stubborn.

Now that one mistake was like a hundred-pound ball and chain strapped to his ankle, dragging him down into the career abyss.

Like all the other incidents Aiden tried to move past, he just ended up playing the whole episode over again in his mind.

Zoretti’s, the flagship restaurant of one of the most lauded restaurant groups in Chicago, was just the latest in the history of executive chef positions Aiden had gotten based solely on his reputation.

He’d worked his ass off in culinary school and at many illustrious restaurants for years after to the point where, if he was available, Aiden had his pick of numerous prominent positions.

Aiden hadn’t lived in Chicago before and thought the windy city might finally be the place where he would feel at home.

Neither New York, Los Angeles, nor Boston had felt like somewhere he could put down roots.

As exciting as it had been to live overseas in London and Berlin some years back, those cities hadn’t felt right either, nor had the many places he’d traveled to during his very limited time off.

The food was always amazing, but there was also something always missing from the equation that kept him moving along.

Chicago had been shaping up to give the other places a run for their money, a city where he would find the sense of permanence he’d been longing for lately.

Although, he hadn’t loved the feeling of claustrophobia in his downtown apartment.

Or the icy winters. Aiden had also never understood the hype over deep-dish pizza.

It always tasted more like a casserole masquerading as a pizza than anything else.

As much as that bothered him to an almost irrational level, it was something he could have eventually gotten over if the job had panned out.

But it hadn’t. Not six months after starting as the Executive Chef at Zoretti’s, Aiden had slipped up and gotten himself canned.

Never before had he been let go from a position at a restaurant, and it took a while for the shock to wear off and the reality of his new situation to sink in.

The firing hadn’t been his fault, not completely, though now that more than two months has passed since it happened, Aiden could see how it hadn’t been his best moment.

Not that there were many of those anyway.

Aiden knew he was a grump. He always had been and probably always would be to some extent, but in an odd way, it had served him well in life since it stemmed from a desire for excellence.

Determination was something that was instilled in him from a young age.

Nolan and Cora Kemp expected their boys to always put in a valiant effort.

While they would stress that it was the effort that mattered, not the result, Aiden disagreed.

What was all that effort worth if the results didn’t follow?

So while his mother would show him how to cook a meal and be happy as long as he tried, Aiden was only happy if he not only completed the task to her specification but also improved it somehow.

When she taught him how to make the family’s favorite pot roast, he added extra butter and pepperoncini, making the sauce richer and more flavorful.

Baking a chocolate cake with her had been straightforward, but then he decided to slice it, layer it, and add a fresh raspberry compote on the side to elevate the simple sheet cake.

His mother had given him the basics, and Aiden had taken those and perfected them.

Perfection was something he aimed for and demanded of anyone working for him.

If someone didn’t live up to his high standards, then they didn’t make it in his kitchen.

Aiden had fired a fair number of people in his time, but none had brought as much ruin to his career as the last one.

All of his intense focus and the near constant striving for perfection had only made him grouchier as the years went on, so Aiden was under no illusions that he was anything other than a giant asshole.

By the time he landed at Zoretti’s, his reputation as a seeker of excellence had preceded him.

The staff knew exactly what he expected of them and they delivered night after night, churning out elegant dishes that had been cooked and plated with precision.

If they did it with a look of fear in their eyes, well, that was fine with him.

The same should have happened the fateful night of his firing, but things had gone sideways in the worst possible way.

Aiden had already been in a sourer mood than usual that evening.

He’d barely slept the night before. What little rest he had achieved was swiftly cut short when dirty water had dripped from the ceiling above him and onto his face.

It turned out that the bathroom of his upstairs neighbor had flooded while they were on vacation, so the entire apartment was underwater.

After dealing with the building superintendent and trying to clean up the mess, Aiden had also missed his train and arrived at the restaurant much later than he liked to.

Once he’d finally made it to Zoretti’s, he saw that prep was already well underway.

Aiden was eager to jump in, needing the focus that came over him when he cooked to unruffle his feathers, but then came the notice from the manager that there would be someone staging in the kitchen for the next week.

Unpaid interns had always been a thorn in his paw, with their incessant questions and undeveloped skill set requiring a patience he did not possess, but Aiden tried to grin and bear it, especially since the intern in question happened to be the son of one of the restaurant owners.

Aiden had put nineteen-year-old Luca on vegetable prep, something the young man sneered at.

Ignoring the kid’s attitude, Aiden tried to get on with his night.

At the start of service, Aiden noticed that service seemed much slower than usual.

Serving a dish more than twenty minutes after being ordered wasn’t something he would do anywhere, let alone a Michelin caliber establishment.

Passing over expediting duty to his sous chef, Aiden marched toward the vegetable prep station, finding it abandoned.

After a short search, Luca was found chatting with a few delivery people while he took a smoke break.

Red had clouded his vision, but Aiden swallowed his anger and gritted his teeth.

Swallowing the biting remark he would normally make, Aiden tried for something more diplomatic.

“You may not have been made aware, but smoke breaks aren’t to be taken during service.

” Aiden knew for a fact that Luca had been told the rule, he’d overheard the conversation with the manager himself.

“Get inside, wash your hands, and get back on veg.”

“Aren’t you going to ask nicely?” someone scoffed from behind Aiden.

Ignoring the insubordination, Aiden barely glanced back at the young man from over his shoulder. “No,” he replied curtly. Thinking that was the end of it, he went back inside. Little had he known, that was only the beginning of what would turn into the worst night of his life thus far.