by Meg Benjamin
He watched her for a moment. The sun poured across her shoulders, setting her hair alight. Barnyard Goddess personified. Time to go, Joseph. He pushed himself vertical again.
“So come to the kitchen tomorrow. We’ll put you to work.”
She smiled, a little hesitantly. “What time?”
“Just bring the eggs and stick around. You can start the prep with breakfast.”
The smile turned rueful. “Six in the morning? God help me.”
“Hey, farmers and cooks, darlin’, we all got to get up in the morning.” He allowed himself one more slow smile, then turned to go.
“See you tomorrow,” she called as he reached the side of the house.
He turned once more, raising his hand. She stood silhouetted against the sun, her arms folded beneath her breasts. Barnyard Goddess, for sure.
Yeah, okay, more than time to go. He gave her one quick wave and headed back up the road.
Chapter Four
As she drove down the gravel road that led to the inn the next morning, MG wondered if she’d ever find getting up at five anything but grim. She felt as if she were operating mostly on caffeine and poverty, with a soupçon of determination thrown in for good measure. The fact that she could even think of the word soupçon at this ungodly hour was maybe an indication that her brain was beginning to function, although the rest of her body was still far behind in spite of two cups of coffee.
She parked in the same spot she’d used the day before, then carried her eggs into the kitchen. This time the green-haired woman barely glanced at her. “Joe,” she yelled, “delivery.”
LeBlanc emerged in his Super Chef suit. She still hadn’t quite gotten used to him in his kitchen whites. Yesterday he’d lounged against her fence post in a Hawaiian shirt so vivid it seemed to vibrate in the sunshine. And now here he was in that spotless jacket, his shaved head covered by the black cap.
“Hey, Miz Carmody. Right on time.” He grinned at her again. At least her toes didn’t automatically curl anymore when he did that. On the other hand, other parts of her body were definitely taking notice. Apparently LeBlanc was more effective as a wakeup than coffee.
“Hi.” She held up her basket. “Seventeen this time. I might have a couple more when I get back home.”
“Good enough.” He took the basket out of her hand and unloaded the eggs into a bowl. “You can toss the basket and your jacket in the staff room. You’ll need an apron, but there’s a stack of them back there, along with kitchen towels. Hey, Darcy,” he called, turning toward the woman with the green tips.
She glanced up at him, then at MG, her forehead furrowing. “What?”
LeBlanc nodded in her direction. “Your new assistant. Get her set up, okay?”
Green hair’s furrowed forehead transformed to a full-fledged frown. “Huh?”
He sighed. “I said I’d find somebody to help you with the prep work. Meet MG Carmody, your new assistant. You can show her the ropes and work with her until she finds her footing.” He gave the woman a long look that seemed to have some significance MG couldn’t fathom.
After a moment, green hair nodded, still frowning. “Okay, sure. I can do that.” She turned toward MG. “Come on. You’ll need an apron. Then you can get to work.”
“Darce?” LeBlanc arched an eyebrow.
She paused, looking back at him questioningly.
“You might want to introduce yourself.” His voice sounded carefully neutral.
She blew out an exasperated breath, then shrugged. “Darcy Cunningham. Now come on. We’ve got stuff to do.”
MG grabbed her basket and followed the rapidly disappearing Darcy Cunningham down a hall at the far end of the kitchen and then to the left.
“Staff room’s in here,” she said quickly. “Hang your stuff on the rack over there. You have any money with you?”
MG blinked, then shook her head. “Just the five bucks I got for the eggs.”
Cunningham shrugged. “Keep it in your pocket. We got no lockers or anything secure back here. Same with your keys. Here.” She thrust a red bib apron in MG’s direction. “Put this on. You ever wear one before?”
MG shook her head. “Not like this.”
“Knot it around your waist.” She pointed to her own apron where she’d pulled the cords around her waist to tie them in front.
MG dropped the apron over her head and did as she was told. “Do I need anything on my hair?”
Cunningham squinted at her, then grimaced. “Yeah. Board of Health regulations say your hair’s got to be covered if you’re doing prep.” She glanced around the room, then grabbed a baseball cap with a beer company logo. “Use this. It’ll do for now. Bring your own hat tomorrow.”
She turned, heading back toward the kitchen without checking to see if MG was following. MG hung up her jacket, dropped her basket on a chair, and trotted after her.
In the kitchen, Cunningham was already setting up her cutting board again, her chef’s knife in her hand. “Potatoes,” she said without looking up. “There.” She gestured toward a sack of potatoes leaning against the counter. “Scrub, peel, grate.”
MG blinked. “With what?”
Cunningham gave her a dark look over her shoulder. “Brush, peeler, processor.”
She stared at the immaculate counter space. “Where are they?”
This time Cunningham turned all the way around. She pointed at a rack over the sink. “Scrubber is there. Brush on the end. That’s the produce sink. Use cold water only. Let me know when you’re done. I’ll show you where to peel.”
MG glanced at the bag. “All of them?”
Cunningham was already back at work slicing mushrooms. Apparently, the answer was so obvious she didn’t even bother to turn around. Sighing inwardly, MG headed for the sink.
Scrubbing fifteen pounds of potatoes was nothing compared to peeling fifteen pounds of potatoes and then feeding those fifteen peeled pounds into the huge food processor to shred them down to what looked like a mass of white worms. Cunningham studied the heap critically, then tossed her a towel. “Wring them dry.”
MG blinked again. She felt like she’d been blinking for most of the morning. “What?”
Cunningham rested her hands on her hips, narrowing her eyes. MG had learned to hate that particular look over the past hour. “Wring out the potatoes. What do I have to do, write it out for you?”
“But I’ve never… I mean…”
Cunningham jerked the towel out of her hand and piled it high with shredded potatoes, then turned to the sink, twisting the towel tightly until water dripped out. She flipped the now-dry potato shreds into another bowl. “When this towel’s too wet to work, grab another one.” She turned back to her cutting board without pausing.
MG grabbed the towel and piled in potatoes, wondering how it was possible to simultaneously feel like an idiot and feel annoyed that Cunningham agreed with her. Fifteen minutes later her biceps were screaming and the potatoes were wrung dry.
Cunningham stared at the bowl, her hands on her hips. “Jesus, it took you long enough. Get these over to Leo. He needs them now.” She pointed to the chef at the stove, flipping perfect potato pancakes onto a plate.
MG carried the bowl to the stove, placing it on the counter beside the chef.
“Other side,” he snapped, without looking at her.
Such a friendly, caring place. She moved the bowl to the other side. The chef gave no indication that he knew she was standing next to him.
Cunningham glanced at her when she returned. “Now you can do onions. What we don’t use for breakfast, we’ll use at lunch.” She nodded toward a bin at the side. “They’re in there.”
“What about a knife?”
Cunningham turned slowly to stare at her. “You don’t have your own knives?”
MG shook her head. Was this a trick question?
“Do you even own a knife?” Cunningham’s mouth was pursed in a grimace.
“I have some at home.” MG gritted her teeth.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
“A professional knife. One you can use in a kitchen without cutting your finger off by accident.” She brandished an eight-inch chef knife. “A knife, dammit. You need your own knife—hell, you need your own knife set.”
“I can go out and buy something, I guess.” MG blew out a breath. Please God don’t let them be too expensive.
“Groovy,” Cunningham snapped. “Go to K-Mart or someplace. You burn through knives in a kitchen. Here.” She reached across her counter and then turned back with a smaller chef’s knife, maybe six inches. “Use this. And don’t mess it up. Quarter-inch dice. You know how to chop an onion?”
MG gritted her teeth again, nodding. You need the money, damn it.
Cunningham folded her arms across her chest. “Show me.”
MG turned back to the counter where a single yellow onion reposed majestically on the cutting board. She sliced it in two through the stem end, then pulled off the first onion layer along with the skin. With the cut side flat on the board, she made four horizontal slices and then a series of vertical cuts, careful not to slice through the root end. Finally she chopped through the vertical cuts, producing a quarter-inch dice, or close to it.
Cunningham narrowed her eyes. “Needs to be a lot faster. And more even. Some of these are closer to half-inch than quarter.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” MG managed not to snarl.
By the time she’d chopped all the onions on her board, which required numerous stops to wipe her streaming eyes as well as ferry chopped onions to the silent, sneering Leo, the morning rush had begun to die down. Placido, whose job seemed to include both loading the dishwasher and cleaning up the kitchen, was loading the last trays of dishes while the busboys gathered clean linen and silver to get the dining room set up for lunch.
A chef with light brown hair and an impeccable white jacket came through the swinging door from the hall. MG figured he was the guy who was responsible for the lunch prep. He was smiling faintly, head up, the picture of success. He even wore a classic white chef’s hat, unlike the black caps on nearly everyone else’s head. It stood up straight, like a starched white mushroom. He glanced around the kitchen, then stopped, his gaze fastened on her. His forehead furrowed into a frown. “And who is this?” he said in a silky voice.
Cunningham half turned, giving him a grim look. “Kitchen slave,” she said, turning back to her counter again.
The chef braced his hands on his hips. “Who hired her? Darcy? Did you?”
Darcy turned back again, her expression blank.
The chef waited for a moment, then shook his head. “You’re not authorized to do any hiring. That’s my job. I’m going to be talking to LeBlanc about this.”
To MG, he sounded a lot like a prissy first grader. She purely hated being talked about as if she wasn’t in the room. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure what she could say to him.
“You’re going to be talking to LeBlanc about what?” Joe walked across the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. “What’s going on?”
“This woman was hired without my authorization.” The chef gestured toward MG. “Darcy has no right to hire anyone.”
Joe leaned against the counter, folding his arms across his chest. “Darcy didn’t hire her. I did. This is MG Carmody. She supplies us with eggs, and she’s our new prep assistant. Any problem with that?” One black eyebrow arched imperiously.
The chef straightened, although his expression was still grim. “I wish I’d known you were doing this in advance. I could have set up some training that wouldn’t have interrupted the meal prep.”
Joe’s eyebrow stayed up. “I didn’t notice any interruptions out on the omelet station. Did anything happen in here, Darce?”
Darcy shrugged. “No problems.”
“Leo?” he called.
The chef at the stove turned slightly. “Huh?”
“Any trouble with breakfast?”
Leo shook his head. “Nope.” He turned back to the cooktop.
“We did fine,” Joe said. “And Darcy’s doing the training. No worries.”
The chef looked as if he had a few more things he wanted to say, but after a moment he subsided. “Glad to hear it.”
Joe turned toward MG. “This is Todd Fairley. He’s the sous chef, which means he’s the second in command here.”
From where she was standing, MG had a partial view of Darcy’s face. She could swear she mouthed a particularly ripe obscenity at the phrase second in command.
Fairley gave her a slightly stiff bow, hardly more than a brief bob of the head. For a moment, she felt like curtseying. He turned back to Joe. “I guess we can discuss her hours and her duties later this morning.”
Joe shrugged. “If you think it’s necessary.”
“I do, yes.” Fairley’s clipped words told her something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure what.
“All right then, let’s do it now.” Joe pushed himself to his feet. “You all right here, Darce? You know what you want MG to do?”
Darcy nodded. “Sure.”
She walked to the stove. Her face looked carved from stone. If MG had known her at all, she would have asked her what the hell was going on. But she figured asking anything like that under the present circumstances was likely to provide further fodder for Darcy’s relentless march toward Queen Bitch status. Better to let it ride.
She gathered the last of her diced onion into a small pan and covered it with plastic wrap. “You want this in the cooler, Chef?”
Darcy’s head whipped around like something out of The Exorcist. For a moment, she stared flatly at MG, as if she was looking for some kind of hidden message. Then she shrugged. “Joe and the Beav are the only ones you call chef. Put the onion on the third shelf. That’s where we keep the dinner prep.”
“Right.” She headed for the cooler, wondering how long she could keep this up. If nothing else, maybe she could write a song about it.
Joe really hoped Todd Fairley wasn’t going to be an asshole. He’d planned on spending the lunch shift in his office working on menus, and if Fairley threw a hissy fit, he’d have to cancel his plans. He might also have to cancel Fairley, but he hoped not. The guy had only been there a day.
“I didn’t realize we were looking for a cook’s assistant,” Fairley said stiffly.
“We’re looking for a prep cook.” Joe shrugged. “MG’s a fill-in until we can find somebody permanent. Darcy needed somebody now—she’s swamped with the prep work.”
“It’s a job a lot of culinary students would like to have. We could probably fill it with an extern.” Fairley still looked like he had a sizeable stick up his ass.
“If you’ve got contacts at any of the culinary schools, you have my permission to ask around,” Joe said easily. “We could actually take a couple of externs. Meanwhile, MG can do the scut work.”
“Does she have any kitchen experience?”
Joe shrugged. “Not professionally. She doesn’t need much to do what she’s doing now.”
“Still.” Fairley sighed. “I like to make sure anybody who comes into the kitchen will fit in with the personnel who are already here. This woman may be fine, but I wish I’d had a chance to talk with her first.”
Joe felt like sighing himself. He really didn’t want to fire Fairley on his first day, but the guy was beginning to annoy him. “Okay, in the future I’ll let you know when I hire somebody. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing—MG was available, and we needed a body ASAP.” He hadn’t actually promised Fairley he’d have any say in the decision, but maybe it was enough to keep him on board.
Fairley looked somewhat satisfied, although he still had a vaguely disgruntled expression. “I’m running lunch then?”
Joe nodded. “Right. Menu’s posted. Jorge should be in within the hour. He, Leo and Darcy will all be on line, with MG as runner. The prep’s being done now. Everything should be ready to go by eleven.”
Fairley nodded. “I’ll check to ma
ke sure it is.”
“You’ve met Bryson? The head waiter?”
Fairley nodded again. “And the delectable Ms. Maldonado.”
Joe managed not to frown. Kit Maldonado, the manager of the restaurant, was indeed delectable. But he wasn’t crazy about hearing Fairley say so. “There’s a new hostess, Martha, a friend of Kit’s. Things may be a little slow at first, but they’ll pick up by noon. Lunch is our biggest meal, what with all the daytripper tourists.”
Fairley nodded again. “Right. Anything else I should know?”
Joe debated with himself. He hadn’t decided what to do about the whole contest thing, but Fairley was here and it was a decision he should be in on. “There’s this,” he said, pulling the letter from the bottom of the stack of papers on his desk.
Fairley’s eyebrows went up as he read. “A ‘culinary competition’?”
“Yeah, well, Craven, the guy in charge, gets a little carried away sometimes.”
“A contest?”
“Sort of. More like an exhibition. The Wine and Food Festival is a big deal around here. One day. Pulls in several hundred tourists. Up until now it’s been mainly the local wineries who get the attention. Craven wants to do something to feature the restaurants this year.” Craven had, in fact, come up with this idea after a particularly alcoholic lunch at the Rose.
Fairley frowned as he looked at the letter again. “He says it’s going to be the climax of the day.”
“That’s just because it’s the last thing they’re going to do. Two hours at the end when we do a sample dinner—appetizer, entrée and dessert. Four restaurants. The judges will give prizes for each.”
“Like Top Chef or Chopped.” Fairley gave him a delighted grin.
Joe managed not to grimace in return. The last thing he wanted was to take part in some idiotic television contest. “Sort of like that. But we get to choose what we fix—they’re not giving us some half-assed basket of mystery ingredients.”
“So we just go with our specialties, right?” Fairley looked faintly disappointed, like he’d been hoping for a chance to show what he could do with dried squid.
