He turned on his heel, still working at the sauce. “What is it now?”
“Actually,” I said, steeling myself. “I wanted to apologize to you. For the whole Reggie thing. I messed up.”
Nolan seemed almost stunned to hear my apology. “That’s what you’re interrupting me for?”
“Uh, yeah,” I answered. “Mr. Klein pointed out that the fugu was a lot of trouble.”
“Everything I do is a lot of trouble,” Nolan replied. “That’s why I’m the one doing it, and not some two-bit line chef off a derailed food cart.”
I had to admit that Nolan, too, was soft on the eye—something in the SoCal water, probably—but he was striking in a different way. Freckles danced across his face, and his dark eyes were perfectly complimented by his deep red hair. It was enough to distract me from his anger.
“Of course,” I said, clearing my throat. “Anyway, that’s why I need to apologize. I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you.”
Nolan paused what he was doing and glanced over his shoulder. “Damnit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I over-stirred this,” he grumbled at me. “It’s ruined. And they’re coming for that wedding menu tasting in two minutes.”
3
Adriana
Oh, shit,I thought as I noticed how red Nolan’s face was getting. I glanced down at the bowl of sauce in his hand. It didn’t look ruined to me. Then again, I wasn’t a chef. There was still a chance that Nolan was overreacting, though.
“It should be fine, shouldn’t it? A minute of extra stirring won’t make that much of a difference,” I pointed out carefully, watching how his jaw twitched and his brows furrowed. I instantly realized that I had very much said the wrong thing entirely.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Nolan said tightly, and there was a sudden silence that hung across the kitchen. Everyone who had been running around was now staring at us with wide eyes.
My mind started running at a million miles a minute. If the sauce truly was ruined, then we didn’t have much time to remake it. I needed to fix this, and to do that, I had to be confident in my decisions. I glanced over at the counter, where the ingredients for the sauce still stood.
“Okay, well, then we should get it made fast, right?” I said, stepping closer to the counter and reaching for the thyme.
Unfortunately, my fingers managed to brush against it without actually gripping onto it, and it toppled over. The lid popped off as it did so, sending thyme flying everywhere. The silence became even more intense, and Nolan completely froze, as if he simply could not believe what he was witnessing.
“It’s fine,” I said, barely managing to keep my voice from shaking. “I’ll just get that cleaned up. Why don’t you start mixing? We can’t stand around like this. They’ll be here soon.”
People began moving again at this point, maybe to avoid getting in Nolan’s way, or to avoid getting screamed at. But at least it triggered Nolan to look away from me. He handed the ruined sauce to the closest assistant and someone else gave him a clean bowl while he shook his head and muttered under his breath.
I needed to find a broom to get my mess cleaned up before it caused more issues.
Turning on the spot sent me crashing right into one of the sous chefs, who was carrying a new container of thyme toward Nolan. The container fell, but I managed to catch it just before it hit the ground. I twisted and put it on the counter in a flourishing move, pretending as if the whole thing was going exactly according to plan.
“Thank you,” I said to the sous chef, who had raised an eyebrow at me and simply walked off to get to her next task.
I weaved through all of the people in the kitchen to get to the broom closet, which was harder to find than it should have been. Most of the cupboards looked exactly alike, and I wondered how everyone seemed to know instinctively where everything was anyway.
When I finally found what I’d been looking for, there was some hope. I could be helpful, and we could get things done beforean absolute disaster happened. I made my way back to where the mess was, while trying to avoid running into anyone else. Twice I managed to bump my shoulder against someone, and I got scathing looks. But I kept my focus on the task at hand. No matter what, I was going to fix this.
Nolan ignored me as I started sweeping thyme up from the floor. I managed to get most of it, though the spot would’ve needed another go-over once the issue had been settled.
Then I picked up the container with a confident smile, and placed the lid back on.
“See? No problem,” I said to Nolan, who turned to face me. “We’ve got this under control.”
Almost dancing with the broom and dustpan in my hand, I swung to walk away. Unfortunately, the thyme in the dustpan wasn’t in the mood to stay put with such a triumphant movement, and some of it managed to fly in Nolan’s direction. A sprinkle got into his fresh bowl of sauce, and I could have sworn that he was vibrating with fury at that moment.
Someone quickly grabbed the broom and dustpan from me, and my heart fell to my feet.
