Page 1 of Love on the Rocks
Chapter 1
Mia Morgan had never felt so out of place. Nervously, she sipped at her champagne and tugged at the too-tight bodice of her borrowed dress. She peered around the ballroom, wondering if the wealthy guests would see her for the fraud she was. A lowly maid in a ballgown, pretending she still belonged at elite charity events like this.
- One Week with the Greek
CALLIE
Iclosed my eyes and brought the warm spoon to my mouth for another taste.Shallot. Tarragon. White wine. Just the right amount of salt.
But it needed something . . .
Blocking out the noise and activity of the busy kitchen, I tried to go to that special place in my mind where it was just me, my food, and the story I wanted to share with our diners. In my mind, I saw a cozy fishing village on the coast of Brittany, platters of fresh shellfish on rustic wooden tables, and sail boats silhouetted against the setting sun. But the lobster bisque I’dbeen working on all day simply refused to comply with my vision.
The problem was, this wasn’t just any lobster bisque. It was a three-star Michelin chef’s signature dish—one that had made Chef Marcel’s reputation, that had left food critics speechless, and that had tourists booking tables months in advance, their black American Express card in hand, ready to shell out the 300£ for his tasting menu.
Today, with almost zero notice, Chef Marcel had left me in charge of the soup with the explicit task of modernizing it without changing its essence, an enormous responsibility and a challenge that I was one hundred percent up for. I’d been waiting for the chance to prove myself for the past six months since I’d been working here at Marcel, the top French restaurant in London.
And I was not about to blow it. I needed to figure out what was missing, fast.
“Two tournedos and three lobster bisques!” shouted Marcel’s sous-chef, Roman, as I reached for my prepped ingredients—the slivers of pickled apple and marigold oil that I’d let infuse overnight. Except that, goddammit, my prep had suddenly disappeared. This wasn’t the first time this had happened this week. I was seriously off my game and couldn’t figure out why. I was starting to suspect sabotage.
I threw a quick glance at Roman, the last person I wanted to know that I’d fucked up again. Somehow, I had to leave my station and get back before he noticed and started to gloat again.
When he moved off to the other side of thegarde manger, I darted through the kitchen, zigzagging around hot pans filled with oil and rapidly moving hands wielding incredibly sharp knives.
“Behind! Behind!” I warned, moving like a dancer in an intricately choreographed ballet, except here a wrong move could result in third-degree burns or blood on the floor.
This. This is what I lived for.
The heat, the energy, the smell. God, I loved that pinch of anxiety followed by that hit of dopamine, the rush of feeling that made me feel invincible. Like I was all atoms, everywhere at once, and yet hyper-focused on my task, which, right now, was making sure that the food critic in the main room would write odes to my deconstructed seafood bisque in tomorrow’s paper.
If I didn’t find my missing ingredients, though, that was not going to happen.
Through sheer luck I spotted the stainless-steel bowl with my pickled apples stashed in the cold-prep area. Had I put it there? With no time to think about it, I raced back to my station to find Roman hovering over my pot, a deep frown on his face. Then before I could stop him, he poured an obscene amount of cognac into the bisque I’d been slaving over all day.
“What the hell, chef?!” I pushed him out of the way with a stiff elbow to the ribs, making him inhale sharply. “That’s my bisque!”
“It was a little bland.” He shrugged, his eyes cold and emotionless beneath his heavy dark eyebrows. He was annoyed that Chef Marcel had put me in charge of the bisque when he’d been dying to revamp it for months and had been giving me the evil eye all day. Pretty fucking petty, if you ask me. Wasn’t it enough that he’d been promoted to sous-chef over me?
No, he was one of those guys who wasn’t content reminding you that you shit on the floor, he also had to rub your nose in it. He’d been like this since we’d apprenticed together at the Plaza Athénée in Paris. Paranoid that everyone was out to get him, he had this huge chip on his shoulder and, at the same time, an ego the size of the Eiffel Tower.
This wasmynight, and if he ruined that bisque any thoughts of a promotion were off the table for me. I brought another spoonful of bisque to my mouth. Dammit! He was right, it did taste better, but there was no way I was going to admit it.
Roman folded his arms over his chest, gloating. The little weasel. “What, no thanks?”
I narrowed my eyes at him then turned back to my charred Cornish crab claws, slicing them into tender medallions. After two years in some of the most prestigious kitchens in France and England, I was done with men trying to intimidate me. This profession wasn’t easy for a woman. We had to work twice as hard to prove ourselves. But I was up for the challenge. In fact, I craved it.
“Looking for this?” He held up my plastic squeeze bottle with the bright green marigold oil.
I snatched it from him. “Where were you hiding this?”
He held up his scarred hands. Like all chefs, he had battle wounds: burns, scars, pink indentations where the knife had shaved off bits of skin. “It was in your bottom drawer. You’re too distracted lately, chef.”
If anything was distracting me it was the frustration with giving my all in this kitchen and still being left behind. Sometimes it made me want to throw in my apron and go back to Ohio and open a Chili’s.
I turned my back to Roman again. Once I felt him move away, I released a deep breath. Cocky young guys were awful. Cocky young chefs, the worst.
I put the finishing touches on the new bisque—a drizzle of the marigold oil, the crisp pickled apple, and the crab—then watched as the first tureens went out, praying that the food critic would love it.
