Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [68]
He’d been one of those kids once. Okay, so in most ways he probably still was. But that was a good thing! He never wanted to lose the sense of shock and awe he got over a perfectly caramelized carrot or a stock so clear you could read the newspaper through it.
Billy didn’t have his own knife set so Adam lent him a good eight-inch all-purpose chef’s knife and sent him running for the boxes of carrots, onions, and celery that Adam had picked up that morning from the Union Square market.
Adam watched him long enough to see that he’d gotten a good start, but then he got called over to mediate a heated discussion between Frankie and Quentin on the best way to score the meat to ensure maximum penetration of the marinade. He lost track of things for a while, and before he knew it, there were some angry tones emanating from the vicinity of the stock station.
Ah. Rob was here. Miranda, too, looking a little frazzled as the shrimpy, red-faced extern faced off with the calm Hispanic kid.
Adam knew who he’d put his money on.
He sauntered over. “Problem?”
“Yes,” Rob said, puffing right up with indignation and smug self-assurance. “The dish boy,” he said, sneering, “is off his station. Worse than that, he’s pretending to man my station.”
Adam was amused. “Not to get all Queen of Hearts on your ass, but all the stations around here belong to me. Nobody works anything except on my say-so. And I say you were late, so ‘the dish boy’ gets a shot.”
The told-you-so look Rob Meeks aimed in Miranda’s direction was unexpected, and Adam frowned. Wordless communication seemed to point to a level of intimacy that made something ugly coil and tighten in Adam’s gut. They’d arrived around the same time. Together? He took another look at the extern: still thin-faced and sallow, with pockmarks and a bad attitude.
Not possible. Not with the way she’d caught her breath this afternoon when Adam pressed close under the pretext of showing her how to roll out the pastry dough.
Just in case, though, he sent Rob over to help Milo with garde-manger prep. The little pisser went, with a barely concealed glower of dissatisfaction.
Adam winked at Miranda and beckoned her over with a slight nod. “How about you stick with me tonight? See how we do things up at the pass.”
She stiffened for a beat, then appeared to force herself to relax. “You mean I get a break from dicing? I’m there. The blisters on my blisters are starting to get blisters.”
Adam laughed at her mock-aggrieved expression and made the appropriately impressed noises over her proffered palms. There were indeed several deeply red and abraded spots, right where the handle of the knife pressed against the knobs of bone at the ends of her fingers. Pretending a need to examine them more closely, Adam took her hands in one of his.
“Yeah, the knife work can be brutal when you’re first starting out.” He stroked one finger lightly down the center of her palm and was highly gratified by her immediate and pronounced shiver.
“The key,” he continued, rubbing delicately at the sensitive skin surrounding her cute little protocalluses, “is to keep at it. Build up new, thicker layers of skin that can withstand the constant repetitive motion.”
Miranda jerked her hands away. “So. You’re saying I should go help Rob with the prep so I can toughen up?”
Adam frowned. “No, I still want you with me tonight. It’ll be good for your book.” There, that was believable, right?
Or not. Miranda raised one skeptical brow, but she didn’t call him on it, and Adam let out a surreptitious relieved breath. Not that it was a total lie. Truth was, he’d mellowed on the whole book thing over the last week. Once he’d had time to think about it, it wasn’t such a