On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [36]
Nerves jangling, she jostled past the knot of servers clustered around the computer where they entered their orders and pushed open the kitchen doors. A lady at table fourteen needed a new bread plate—the one she had showed a visible finger smudge that looked innocent to Lilah, but apparently was entirely unacceptable.
The swinging kitchen door opened onto the pit of hell. Lilah shrank back from the immediate blast of heat, ovens pumping, flames leaping from the grill and illuminating the intense set of Frankie’s usually sardonic face. The sous chef was working in a silent rush while everyone around him shouted and swore, hurrying up and down the line, slipping on wet spots on the floor.
Gone was the serene, happy kitchen of this afternoon. Gone was the cheerful crew of lovable, quirky cooks Lilah had gotten to know over corn salad and tacos at the family meal.
These people were angry, red-faced demons who looked like nothing so much as the tormented souls in the illustration of the fifth circle of hell in her ancient copy of Dante’s Inferno. And presiding over these lost souls was the devil himself.
“We’re in the shit, you fucking monkeys,” Devon Sparks shouted, kicking a trash can so hard that it fell over. “Get your heads out of your asses and back in the game!”
Beyond some extra hunching of the shoulders, not a single person acknowledged Devon’s rant. Not that Lilah blamed them. If anyone ever spoke to her like that, she didn’t know what she’d do. It was appalling, truly, and she couldn’t help clucking her tongue a little, even though she knew it made her sound like an old biddy. Luckily for her, the clatter of pots and pans and curses of struggling chefs drowned it out nicely.
Now how in the world was she supposed to get to the dishwashing station where the clean plates were stacked? There were a whole lot of fast-moving, knife-wielding objects between here and there. Lilah did her best to suck in her belly and attempt to become invisible, squeezing past flailing arms and shuffling feet.
“You!”
The enraged voice of the head chef froze the blood in Lilah’s veins and turned her feet to immovable blocks of ice.
Oh, Lord. Here we go.
Pasting on a pleasant expression, Lilah faced him with a light, “Yes? Can I help you?”
Sparks lowered his head like a bull about to charge. “You can get the hell out of my cooks’ way, is what you can do.”
Lilah’s eyes darted to the dishwashing station, so close and yet so far. “I just need one little, teensy plate and I’ll be out of your hair,” she said.
Oh, no, please don’t tell me there aren’t any clean bread plates . . .
“Christ!” he snarled, accepting a full dinner plate distractedly and wiping spattered sauce from the rim with the white cloth tucked in the apron tied at his waist. “If there’s anything you don’t need, it’s more plates you can smash on the dining room floor.”
Lilah winced. She should’ve known he’d heard that.
Devon turned away to send the waiting server out with a heavily-laden tray, then turned back to Lilah, eyes snapping. He pointed directly at her.
“One more fuck-up like that . . .” He raked her with a scathing, dismissive glance, mouth pulling into a sneer. “And I don’t care how pissed Grant gets, I’ll kick your ass out of here in a heartbeat.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The kitchen gods Devon had thanked earlier were evidently intent on reminding him that control was an illusion. From the instant the first order for the first four-top came in, Devon’s first dinner service as Market’s head chef was an unmitigated disaster.
Nausea swirled in his stomach, sending hot flushes of blood straight to his head. He probably looked like a maniac, the way he’d been running his fingers through the carefully ordered spikes of his hair. He was at the pass executing orders, calling out tickets and plating the food that came up as quickly as he could, but everything