AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her body language spoke to extreme agitation, or perhaps it was the fact that she whipped off her apron and beelined right for Jules.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said to Jules with a toss of her auburn fall of hair, her blue eyes wide with worry.
“What’s up?” Jules asked.
“Come with me. Now.” Kennedy was already steering her through the tables toward the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” Jules urged again. The actress in Kennedy was in full throttle, shaking her head dramatically without actually parting with any information. “Kennedy, you need to spill.”
The spitfire threw open the swing door to the kitchen and pointed. “That’s what’s going on.”
The kitchen was small enough that she could take the details in with a single glance and a slight sniff: half-finished prep at the counter, a plume of smoke wafting from the troublesome pizza oven, and one big bear of a chef slumped over the sink, losing enough blood to make him pale as his starched chef whites.
“Derry!” She raced to his side and turned over his huge hand to reveal an ugly gash bisecting his palm.
“Fine,” he muttered. “First-aid kit.”
Kennedy produced the red box and rummaged around in it, removing a couple of scrappy bandages that would barely cover this man’s pinkie.
“We’ve only got these small ones.”
The slice looked deep enough to have damaged a tendon or some nerves.
“You need to get to the emergency room,” Jules said, grabbing a clean kitchen towel and wrapping it around his hand. “I’ll take you.”
Derry grunted. She knew enough about his flavor of guttural communication to discern that was disagreement.
“I’ve already told him that,” Kennedy said in exasperation. “The big oaf won’t budge.”
Jules held his cloudy gaze squarely. “That hand is your livelihood, Derry. Even if you could stop the bleeding, there might be permanent damage.”
She shared a glance with Kennedy, who shook her head solemnly.
“Need—a chef,” he ground out.
Around his tree-trunk forearm—her fondness for forearms didn’t quite extend to Derry’s—Jules’s gaze curved to the prep station where colorful yellow peppers were dotted incongruously with drops of blood. It was a sanitation nightmare.
Her mind searched frantically for a solution. “I’ll call Jack and get him to send someone over.”
“You could do it,” Kennedy said blithely as she unpeeled a finger bandage from its wrapper and held it over Derry’s hand. Her forehead crimped in annoyance; she tried another one. “I’ll take him to the ER. It’s so dead out there that you should be able to manage until Tad gets here in thirty.”
“I—I can’t,” Jules said, bobbing between Derry and Kennedy, neither of whom seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation. Derry was bleeding out, Kennedy was planning to leave them server-less, and Jules Kilroy was the one to save them all?
Ignoring Jules’s clear distress, Kennedy tucked a guiding hand under Derry’s elbow. “All right, Dare-Bear, do you need me to carry you or do you think you can walk to my car without fainting like a little girl?”
Derry’s grunt this time sounded slightly less disapproving. The bastard was going to leave her.
“We’ll go out back,” Kennedy said, steering him toward the alley door. “Don’t want to make the customers gag on their Chardonnay. Well, no more than usual, right,Julia?”
Talons of panic clawed at Jules’s innards. “Seriously, you guys, I don’t think I can do this.”
Kennedy was already shoving Derry out the door. “It won’t get busy for another hour so Bella can serve in between seating guests. I’ll text Brooke and Tad on the way to the ER and tell them to get their tushes over here lickety-split.”
Derry spoke out of the side of his mouth. “You’re ready, Jules.” The door closed behind them with a condemning whoosh.
Shit.
She whipped out her phone, still cracked from when she’d smashed it after Simon called. It worked just fine, but immediately she questioned whether a call to Jack or Tony would actually save the day. By the time anyone arrived, customers would be fainting with hunger and composing their nasty reviews on Yelp.
