Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 31254 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31254 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
“You’re full of shit. No one is allowed up there.”
“I’m not no one.” This time I step toward her. “I’m his fiancée.” I can’t stop the words from coming out. Damn it and my mouth. I’m sure word is going to get around now.
“No.” She shakes her head rapidly. “It’s impossible. I know it.” She spins around, almost hitting me in the face with her ponytail before marching off and down the hallway.
“Are she and Brooks a thing?” I can’t help the jealousy that begins to creep its way in. He told me he’d never slept with anyone, but I’m not sure I’m buying that. It’s easier for me to think straight when he’s not near.
“I’m not in this,” one of the other girls says, turning to follow after the rude one.
“You really with Brooks?” the last girl asks, giving me a soft smile.
“I don’t know what Brooks and I are,” I tell her honestly.
“But you were up there.” She nods up. “At his place?”
“Yeah.”
Her smile grows bigger, showing off dimples. “Good. I’m Quinn, by the way.”
“Slater.” I glance down the hallway. I need to get out of here. Dark Hair might be snitching on me. “I’ve got to go. It was nice meeting you,” I tell her, heading for the side door we came in, pulling my phone out in the process. I need a ride.
“I’ll be seeing you around, Slater,” Quinn calls after me.
My ride doesn’t take long to show. I wait until I’m back home and in my place before I text Brooks, letting him know I arrived safely. I can see he read the message, but he doesn't respond. I toss my phone down, telling myself that he’s busy and that I don’t care.
I guess I am a liar after all.
Chapter Ten
BROOKS
“What do you mean they delivered our beef to La Boeuf?” I stare dumbfounded at my sous chef, Jess.
She wears an equally pissed expression. “The butcher has a new boy working logistics, and for some reason they entered your order into La Boeuf, who had also ordered the same meat, so it’s not like we can even go there and get the overage from them. It just doesn’t exist. And the butcher said that the only extra stuff he has left are choice cuts, not prime.”
I spit out a curse so vile half the kitchen flinches. We cannot serve choice cuts at The Plate. Our customers would flay us alive in their reviews and deservedly so. “We’ll have to do lamb then. Get on the phone with some suppliers and see what you can find. If I have to drive to another state, so be it. Anything within—” I check the time. Only six hours until the first service. “One hundred miles.” This puts a wrench in my day. I’d planned to spend it with Slater, but I’m needed here.
“I need someone from the front of the house to run upstairs for me.”
A few minutes later, I spin around to see Gabby, one of our front of the house staff, waiting to speak to me.
I start to order her to go up to my apartment then realize no one here knows what’s happening in my life. The Plate is not a large place. My staff of about fifteen provides two services a night to forty people in total. Because we are small, we are a family. We yell, we curse, we cry here, and so they should know before anyone else that our family has grown by one. I send Gabby out to get the rest of the staff.
Once everyone is assembled in the kitchen, I announce, “I’m getting married.”
From the collective gasps, one would’ve thought I said I’d murdered someone. Jess, my sous chef, clasps her hands over her mouth. Her eyes are wide with surprise.
“Why is this so shocking?”
Jess drops her hands back to the stainless steel counter. “Because you’re…you.” She waves a finger in the air as if that one word explains everything. By all the nods of agreement in the room, I guess it must.
“I am getting married, and it is to Slater Braxton.”
Another chorus of gasps sweeps around the room.
“The critic?” Jess’s mouth is agape. “With you?”
I clench my jaw in irritation. “I did not know that she was a food critic when we met, but I do now.”
“How will that work?” This comes from my pastry chef, who leans against the marble island that serves as his station with his beefy arms folded across his chest and a frown on his mouth.
“I was told that this is not the type of establishment she usually reviews, so there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“But if she’s part of the establishment, she doesn’t have the same independence that she did before,” he points out.
Terry, the head of the line prep, shakes his head. “Yeah, it’s like her reviews will be tainted because she’s an insider now. Before she was one of us, I mean, not us, but like one of the people.”