Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [4]
All to impress the assembled food snobs of Manhattan. And the critics! Christ, he really hoped they hadn’t invited that woman from Délicieux, the one who never had a nice thing to say about anyone. He knew he should’ve kept a closer eye on the guest list, but he’d kept accidentally-on-purpose forgetting about the party.
Like he didn’t have enough to do, getting the crew and the restaurant ready for the actual opening next weekend. The damn menu wasn’t even finalized yet, and here he was, about to go upstairs and dance for the assembled gourmet elite like a trained monkey. Well, okay, he was giving a speech—there’d be no dancing. But still.
He huffed out a sigh. Why couldn’t he just impress them all with the food? Why did they have to put on tonight’s ridiculous show?
Because Eleanor fucking Bonning says so, Adam reminded himself. And until the restaurant is a giant-ass success and you can buy her out, you’ve gotta follow her instructions like a suburban housewife watching Julia Child.
Anything that would get that woman out of his hair faster was, by definition, a good thing.
Eleanor was supposed to be attending the party tonight, checking up on her investment, and Adam grimaced. Yet another reason to hide out in the bathroom. It hadn’t always been like that, but lately, whenever they were in the same room, it got kind of ugly.
Eleanor wasn’t technically a woman scorned, since she’d dumped him, but she couldn’t have been any more furious if she had been.
There was a second, slightly less tentative knock, and an unfamiliar voice called out, “Chef? Are you in there? Grant’s looking for you. He says it’s ‘time and past.’ ” The kid’s voice went into an exaggerated drawl on the last few words, mimicking the restaurant manager’s distinctive Virginia accent. Fucking out-of-work actors masquerading as waiters.
“I’ll be right there. Are the canapés going over well?”
There was a pause, just long enough to make Adam’s heart freeze in his chest.
Electric rage pulsed through him a moment later, reanimating everything, when the kid quavered, “Uh . . . Frankie said not to serve the food yet. So we waited. Was that not what you wanted?”
Adam threw open the door, and the kid winced at whatever he saw on Adam’s face. Not that Adam usually had to work at intimidating his underlings, since he was built more like a boxer than a cook, but he imagined his current expression was probably pretty fierce.
God damn Frankie, anyway. Best friend, sous-chef, and indispensable kitchen asset or not, Adam was going to kill him.
“Get back to work,” he snapped at the kid, who hurried off like the hounds of hell were after him. Adam turned to the stairway up to the dining room, any concern over the state of his tie forgotten.
He could hear the party in full swing, voices and laughter echoing down the stairwell. It sounded good, like happy customers, and Adam let the fantasy spin out for a second, let his mind and chest fill up with the satisfaction of running a really fine restaurant, full of people enjoying themselves.
Possibly enjoying themselves a little too much. He took the stairs two at a time, visions of magazine critics crashing into TV Cooking Channel executives dancing before his eyes.
A wave of chatter and tinkling glasses broke over Adam like boiling water from a kettle as he reached the top of the stairs. He felt his neck flush hot, but he grinned his signature grin, the one Frankie said made him look like an escaped lunatic, and started shaking hands.
The third time a woman dressed all in black—seriously, did women in New York ever wear any other color?—fell on him, gushing about the raspberry cocktails, Adam knew he’d been right to panic.
These people were hammered.
Christ, how long had he been in the staff bathroom? While he’d been angsting out over his speech, these people, these serious professionals of the food world, had obviously been up here swilling down rosewater-flavored vodka at an alarming rate.
He righted another