Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [71]
Watching Jess pass his fork to the next server with a sunny smile and an appreciative sidelong look at Frankie, who’d dreamed up this particular dish, Miranda was pretty sure she knew what her brother’s answer to that question would be.
Since it was Frankie’s show, his special, Adam seemed to have left the gaggle of wait staff to make one of his tours of the kitchen. He did that periodically throughout every service, doling out compliments and critiques in equal measure. She hadn’t heard him raise his voice since that first day, when they’d almost served slimy soup to a customer—until now.
“Christ Almighty! What is it with you?”
Every head in the kitchen swiveled to see who was the hapless object of Adam’s aggravated snarl, and Miranda’s heart gave a stressed squeeze when she saw that it was Rob Meeks.
He’d been giving Miranda see-what-did-I-tell-you looks ever since they hit the kitchen, and she’d passed jumpy about an hour ago. Now, watching her secret source get chewed out, Miranda couldn’t help but shrink back a little. Even knowing that a true journalist would have whipped out her notebook at the first sign of conflict.
The struggle had to do with her own totally inappropriate and intensely inconvenient feelings for Adam.
Hard-nosed journalist or not, Miranda defied anyone to withstand days of unfairly adorable banter, sweetly earnest one-on-one cooking lessons, and the onslaught of Adam’s powerful, immensely attractive body, without falling a teensy bit under the guy’s spell. If it was all a con to get her to puff him up in the book, it was a masterful one—but, thinking rationally, Miranda was nearly positive Adam was completely on the level. He wasn’t a terribly complicated man: what you saw was what you got. His overriding characteristic was passion, which could be a lovely, lovely thing to be on the receiving end of. Miranda’s skin tingled just thinking about it.
Or, depending on the situation, Adam’s passion could explode in a far less pleasant manner, all over the person unlucky enough to have trifled with his search for perfection.
Poor Rob. Even if she didn’t like him very much—a week of clandestine meetings in sleazy bars hadn’t improved on Miranda’s initial impressions of Rob Meeks as a slippery little suck-up with a gigantic sense of entitlement—she had to cringe at the absolute frenzy of disbelieving fury Adam was whipping himself into at Rob’s expense.
Over . . . what was it? Miranda attempted to pick up the thread of the tongue-lashing.
“What is it with you, kid?” Adam was asking. “I mean, seriously, I want to know. What the fuck is it with you that every single day you come here and screw something up?”
He paused as if waiting for an answer, but when the red-faced Meeks opened his mouth Adam steamrolled right over him.
“No, I know what it is. I’ve seen it before. You just don’t care. You don’t care if the veg is diced fine and even, you don’t care if the stock simmers long enough, you don’t care if the parsley’s wilted, you don’t care if the leftover roast gets wrapped up and put in the walk-in before it cools down all the way.”
Adam’s voice rose to thunderous on that last one. For the first time, Meeks looked scared and belligerent instead of just belligerent.
“Do you have any idea how dangerously unsanitary that is?” Adam asked, dropping his voice to a lethal near-whisper that was no less frightening than the yell. “The bacteria that breeds, the sickness we could spread to our customers if we used that meat?” Adam narrowed his eyes. “Of course you do. You’re an Academy of Culinary Arts student, as you love to remind us all. I know for a fact this gets covered in Basic Principles of Sanitation. So why the hell am I looking at a sheet of plastic wrap around a warm end of veal roast?”
This time Rob didn’t even bother. He hung his head in silence, his mouth a sullen line.
Adam shook his