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Chapter 9
RILEY
The last few days with Daniel have been amazing but exhausting. Working on opposite ends of the clock. It’s been hell on me, so I can’t imagine how it’s wearing on Daniel. Of course, he hasn’t complained. He won’t. There’s also nothing he can do to change it. Even being his own boss, he can’t blow off work every day.
I’m sick of only seeing him in passing. Not even being able to sit down to a proper breakfast.
Daniel can’t do anything about it, but I can do something. At least, I can try.
“Chef Taylor? Do you have a second?”
Chef doesn’t even look up from her paperwork. Just gestures at the empty seat on the other side of her desk in the stark white office.
I sit down and wait for her to finish what she’s doing before I get into it.
“Well?” She insists. “Are you just going to sit there all day wasting both our time or are you going to tell me why you’re here?”
“Sorry. Yes. Um. Firstly, I want to thank you so much for this opportunity. I know how rare it is for an establishment as prestigious as yours to hire someone as green as me.”
“Or as arrogant.”
“I’m not… I—.” What the hell? Did I do something to piss her off at some point?
I want to ask but I don’t want to risk doing further damage before making my request. Which is going to be even harder than I expected if she has a problem with me.
Shit.
“Why are you here, Ms. Halford?”
Might as well just get it out there. “I was wondering if—not permanently or anything, but just sometimes—I could get the lunch shift. Maybe on a rotation with someone who wouldn’t mind switching things up now and then, you know? Just something I’ve been thinking might help me do my job better. The dinner service goes so late and it wears on you, you know? I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve been thinking. But if you—“
Chef raises her hand to stop my rambling.
I should probably thank her. That didn’t go at all how I planned. Now I want nothing more than to take it all back. From the look on Chef Taylor’s face, she does too.
“Ms. Halford. This kitchen has been running like a well-oiled machine for almost ten years. Do you know why?”
I shake my head, scared to open my mouth again and make things worse.
“Because I don’tswitch things up.” She leans forward in her seat resting her forearms on her desk and leveling her gaze at me.
There’s a lump in my throat I can’t swallow and worry might make its way up instead of down.
“I hired you for dinner services because that’s where I need you. If where I need you and the way I run my kitchen isn’t to your liking, you can find a job in someone else’s kitchen. So, unless you’re going to tender your resignation, I’ll see you in my kitchen, Ms. Halford.” She keeps her eyes on me for a beat or less before sitting back in her chair again and returning to her paperwork.
There’s a lead weight in my stomach. I keep telling my body to move but it won’t listen.
“You’re dismissed, Ms. Halford,” she says keeping her attention on her work.
“Yes, chef,” I say, at last, then drag my defeated ass out of her office for another night of work I don’t want to do wishing I had quit when she suggested it.
∞∞∞
Using my new key, as I have every night since Daniel gave it to me, I enter his apartment on tiptoes. Careful not to wake him, but then I see the glow of the television spilling into the hallway.
“I didn’t think you’d be up,” I say entering the living room. “Are you—” I bite my tongue when I find him passed out on the couch. Rounding the couch, I step in a puddle of ice-cold water. It drips from the ice pack that’s now just a bag of water strapped to his knee.
After sopping up the puddle and removing the wasted ice pack, I turn off the TV. Then, next to Daniel’s ear, I whisper, “Come on. It’s time for bed.”
