Page 70 of Falling for the Grumpy Bad Boy

The kitchen went dead silent for exactly three seconds. Then Rhett exploded.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” His voice pitched up an octave, the way it did when he was truly furious. “Are you fucking kidding me right now, Jeremy?”

Jeremy stood frozen in the middle of the wreckage, his face pale as paper. “Chef, I’m sorry, I⁠—”

“Sorry doesn’t unfuck this situation!” Rhett’s voice carried across the entire kitchen. I saw several of the other students wince. “We have sixty covers going out in exactly—” he glanced at the clock “—four minutes, and you just destroyed the only component that makes this dessert work!”

I watched the seconds tick by on the kitchen timer, my mind racing. The panna cotta was already plated, sitting in the walk-in cooler waiting for its final garnish. Without the candied pecans, it was just plain. Boring. The kind of dessert that would make food bloggers write scathing reviews about uninspired hotel restaurant fare.

“What the hell are we supposed to do now?” Rhett continued his tirade, pacing back and forth. “Tell me, Jeremy! What brilliant solution do you have for this clusterfuck you just created?”

I had to save the poor kid. I scanned the kitchen in hopes of inspiration.

Then it came to me. I grabbed a saucepan and turned on a burner. Pumpkin puree from tonight’s prep. A bottle of maple syrup. Cinnamon, nutmeg, a pinch of cardamom. Heavy cream from the lowboy cooler.

“Chef,” I called out, my voice cutting through his continued verbal assault on Jeremy. “I can fix this.”

Rhett spun around, his eyes wild with anger. He was about three minutes from a total crashout. “Fix what? There’s no time.”

“Trust me,” I said, already whisking the pumpkin puree into the warming cream. The mixture turned a beautiful golden orange. “Two minutes. I just need two minutes.”

I could feel every pair of eyes in the kitchen watching me as I worked. The smell that rose from the pan was pure autumn. I grabbed a piping bag from the equipment shelf and fitted it with a star tip.

“Hartley, what is that?” Rhett asked.

“Pumpkin spice mousse,” I said without looking up, transferring the mixture to the piping bag while it was still warm enough to pipe but cool enough not to melt the cold panna cotta upon contact. “With cinnamon sugar and toasted pumpkin seeds.”

I was already reaching for the seeds I’d prepped earlier for garnish.

“Plating now,” I announced, grabbing the first tray of panna cotta from the cooler. He stared at me and watched as I did my thing.

His expression was blank but he wasn’t freaking out. That had to be a good thing. I finished plating. The entire kitchen held its breath as we waited.

“Go, go, go!” Rhett shouted to the servers waiting at the pass.

The kitchen exhaled collectively. I leaned against my station, suddenly aware that my hands were shaking slightly from the adrenaline rush. Jeremy looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor, but Rhett had already moved on, barking orders about breaking down stations and cleaning equipment.

“Nice save, Hartley,” someone said.

If I was looking for praise, that was the best I was going to get.

I kept waiting and watching Rhett, waiting for some acknowledgment of what I had just pulled off. A thank you maybe. Or at least recognition that I probably saved the entire service from disaster.

But I got nothing.

Nada.

Zip.

We broke down our stations, cleaned equipment, and restored the kitchen to its pristine state while the guests in the dining room enjoyed their coffee and after-dinner drinks. I could hear occasional bursts of laughter and applause filtering through the service doors. It was the sound of a successful evening winding down.

Around eleven-thirty, just as we were finishing the deep clean, one of the front-of-house managers appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“Chef Voss?” he called out. “They would like you out front for the closing remarks. The emcee wants to do a brief interview, and the guests are asking to meet the chef.”

Rhett stripped off his apron and smoothed his hair back. It was part of the show. The mysterious celebrity chef emerging from his kitchen kingdom to accept the adulation of wealthy food lovers.

“You all did good work tonight,” he said to the kitchen staff, his first positive words of the evening. “Clean up and get some rest.”