Page 27 of Falling for the Grumpy Bad Boy

She demonstrated the technique ,tossing the vegetables in the pan with the kind of wrist action that came from years of practice. That was a bit of a surprise given her age. And I knew she hadn’t spent any real time in a kitchen.

Then again, she was Desman Hartley’s daughter. She probably grew up sautéing veggies.

Within seconds, the sprouts were perfectly charred and ready for plating.

“Just like that,” she told Chris with an encouraging smile. “Trust the heat and keep them moving.”

The young cook nodded gratefully, his shoulders relaxing as he took back control of his station. I watched the whole interaction with amazement. She had defused the situation, solved the problem, and kept the service moving without making anyone feel incompetent or small.

Shit. She might just be better in the kitchen than Conroy. It was exactly what a good leader should do, and I’d been too caught up in my own stress to handle it properly.

Another crisis arose fifteen minutes later when our pasta station ran low on the house-made pappardelle. The server who discovered the shortage looked panicked, already calculating how to explain delayed orders to increasingly hungry guests.

“How long for more pasta?” I called to the prep cook responsible.

“Fifteen minutes minimum,” came the reply. “Maybe twenty. The machine is acting up.”

I felt my jaw clench. Fifteen minutes was an eternity in the middle of a dinner rush. We would have to either disappoint guests or shuffle the entire order sequence, both unacceptable options.

“I saw extra portions in the walk-in,” Clem said quietly, appearing at my elbow. “Behind the sauce containers, wrapped in plastic. Probably backup from earlier prep.”

I stared at her. “You sure?”

“Positive. I helped with setup earlier, remember?”

She was right. Within two minutes, we had the missing pasta portions located and heating, crisis averted without a single disappointed customer. She solved the problem like she had done this a hundred times before, like she’d been working in professional kitchens her entire life instead of jumping in as an emergency replacement.

“How did you—” I started to ask.

“I pay attention,” she said with a shrug, already moving back to her station as new orders came in. “Part of the job, right?”

Right. Except paying attention was a skill most people had to learn through years of experience and countless mistakes. She seemed to possess it naturally, along with an intuitive understanding of kitchen flow that I’d never seen in someone so young.

By the time we hit the midpoint of service, I realized something that should have terrified me: we were not just surviving without Conroy. We were thriving.

Orders were going out on time. The quality was holding steady, and the kitchen was humming along. Clem had somehow stepped into Conroy’s role so seamlessly that I had almost forgotten we were operating with a substitute.

Almost.

Because every time she moved past me, every time she called out “Yes, Chef” in response to an instruction, every time she solved a problem before it could derail our momentum, I was reminded that this wasn’t just competence I was witnessing.

This was unlimited potential.

“Order fire,” I called out, starting the proteins for table twelve. “Two lamb, one duck, one vegetarian.”

“Heard,” she responded, already reaching for the appropriate garnish components.

The sound of shattering ceramic cut through the kitchen noise like a gunshot. I spun around to see Rose, one of our newer servers, standing over the remains of what had been a perfect plate of lamb. Food was splattered across the floor tiles.

“Fucking hell,” I snarled, my voice carrying enough venom to make several line cooks flinch. “That’s forty dollars of ingredients on the floor. Forty fucking dollars.”

The woman’s face went white as she scrambled to clean up the mess, her hands shaking. I could see the panic in her eyes, the kind of terror that came from knowing you’d just screwed up in front of someone with a reputation like mine.

“I’m sorry, Chef,” she stammered. “It slipped, and I⁠—”

“It slipped?” I stepped closer, feeling the familiar surge of rage that came with watching incompetence destroy my work. “You think sorry fixes this? You think sorry gets that food back on the plate and out to table eight, who’s been waiting twenty minutes?”

I was just getting warmed up, ready to unleash the full force of my displeasure, when I felt a hand on my arm. Not grabbing, not restraining, just a gentle touch that somehow managed to cut through my fury like nothing else could.