Page 58 of Falling for the Grumpy Bad Boy

I would have jumped at the chance when I was in school. Hell, I was out of school and I was jumping at the chance to take his obnoxious behavior just so I could be in the kitchen with him.

“So what did you think of working with him?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual. “I mean, he can be pretty intense.”

“Intense is an understatement.” The woman laughed, but there was genuine admiration in her voice. “The man is a complete perfectionist. But God, the things I learned today… I filled up an entire notebook just from watching him work.”

“Really?”

“Are you kidding? Did you see what he did with that fish preparation? The way he built those flavors layer by layer?”

“And when he tasted my dish earlier, he didn’t just tell me it was wrong—he explained exactly why the knife cuts mattered, how the size affected the cooking time and flavor release.”

Carlos nodded emphatically. “He’s tough, sure, but everything he does has a reason. Like when he made me redo that sauce three times? Each time, he explained what was off and how to fix it. By the third try, I understood seasoning in a way I never had before.”

I found myself squirming a little, remembering how irritated I had been when Rhett dismissed my suggestion about his management style. Maybe there was more to his approach than I realized. It wasn’t my way, but that didn’t mean it was the wrong way.

“But doesn’t all the yelling get to you?” I asked. “The way he demands absolute perfection?”

“I’ve heard horror stories from other kitchens,” one said. “This was actually pretty chill.”

I thought he’d been particularly harsh today, but apparently there were worse chefs.

“The way he moves around a kitchen, the instincts he has, it’s like watching an artist work.”

“An incredibly attractive artist,” added a petite blonde who had been quietly prepping garnishes most of the evening. The other women in the group immediately started giggling and nodding their agreement.

“Did you see those forearms when he was breaking down that whole fish?” a woman sighed. “I barely heard a word of his technique explanation.”

“And those hands,” the blonde continued. “You just know he’d be amazing at⁠—”

“Okay, okay,” Carlos interrupted, laughing. “We get it. Chef Voss is dreamy. Can we focus on the food?”

But the men weren’t much better when it came to discussing their admiration for Rhett. They talked about his knife skills with reverence and described his palate as supernatural.

They all admired him.

“He’s like a jazz musician,” one explained. “He knows all the rules so well that he can break them in exactly the right ways. Pure instinct.”

“A natural,” Carlos agreed. “You can’t teach that kind of intuition.”

I listened to them gush about Rhett’s talent. It was like he had them entranced. Did he put me under his spell initially and I somehow broke out of it? Was he the alpha asshole chef who humiliated me this morning? The skilled seducer who had me melting in his hot tub?

The smooth dancer?

The inspiring teacher?

The mama’s boy with a dream of cooking?

He was so confusing.

He was all of these things, apparently. And I had no idea which version was the real Rhett Voss.

“Here we go,” the blonde announced, carrying a dish to our makeshift table. “Pancetta and vegetable pasta with lemon herb butter sauce, courtesy of leftover ingredients and pure exhaustion-fueled creativity.”

We were just settling in to eat when Rhett walked into the kitchen. I tensed automatically, expecting him to lecture us about using ingredients without permission or hanging out instead of cleaning. Instead, his face lit up with what looked like genuine pleasure at seeing the group gathered around our makeshift table.

“Now this looks like a proper end to the evening,” he said. “Room for one more?”

“You can sit here,” the young man said.