Page 10 of Culinary Chaos
It was her own fault. She should have known better than to date her employee. And Josef had made his point clear. He wouldn’t work with her if she didn’t clean up the PR disasters that could come her way. Being a lesbian wasn’t the issue. It was the fact that she played fast and loose with the rules sometimes.
Angelica hit reply on the email and typed quickly.
Leanne,
I’ve received your letter of resignation, and I thank you for all the time and work that you put into making The Riviera Retreat what it is today. I will schedule a time with you and Aubrey tomorrow to talk about transition items.
A. Shields
She’d almost writtenAngebut she’d stopped herself. She needed to be professional. Leanne hadn’t crossed the boundary into personal since they’d broken up, and Angelica needed to respect that. She had enough problems to deal with. She didn’t need to add a new one into the mix. Well, not that this one was new.
It took them thirty minutes before Lyric pulled up at the hotel. The photos the Matlocks had sent didn’t do the hotel justice. Matlock Manor looked run down and on its last legs.
“This is it?” Angelica asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll make sure your things get to your room.”
“Thank you,” Angelica said as she stepped out of the vehicle. She wasn’t more than ten feet into the lobby when Josef found her, a worried look crossing his rounded face as his dark bushy eyebrows drew together. “What’s wrong?”
“We have a meeting with the Matlocks. Now.” He glanced at his watch and then nodded his head to the right. “In the conference room.”
Angelica was surprised they even had one. She followed Josef curiously. They’d had several Zoom calls with the Matlocks already, and she knew they were going to be a tough couple to handle. Then again, Angelica had worlds of experience on them. When she wasn’t fucking things up—literally.
They stepped into the conference room, and a chill raced across Angelica’s skin. It was cold in here, way colder than it was in the lobby. She nodded toward the Matlocks and smiled at them.
“Mr. Matlock. Mrs. Matlock.” She shook each of their hands before settling into a seat. She was going to let Josef run this, since he knew what it was about. “It’s good to meet you in person, finally.”
“You as well, Angelica,” Mr. Matlock said.
The sign of disrespect hit her squarely in the chest. She’d used salutations to show respect, and he had completely disregarded that. Still, she wasn’t going to comment on it unless she had to.
“You had some questions you wanted us to answer,” Josef said, sitting next to Angelica.
“A few.” Mrs. Matlock looked like she’d just eaten something really sour. Angelica kept her eyes on the woman. Which one of them was going to be the bigger problem? It was difficult to size them up over video and phone calls, so now was the time to get a real sense of who these two people were. “Your crew is taking over the hotel. We don’t have any room for guests.”
Angelica tightened, but she managed to keep her face as bland as possible. “We’re all staying here, yes. That was part of the initial agreement and contract. It reduces our costs and gives you a boost of being full and having the experience of what it’s like to need to function with customers.” She wanted to add that the customers were employees so they’d be a whole lot more forgiving than regular people staying there, but she kept that thought to herself. Now wasn’t the time to start picking at them.
At least not yet.
“You can also expect the restaurant to be full for the opening and closing nights of filming. We’ll make sure that the seats are filled with hungry people and that you can manage to serve them all without causing a scene.” Had she said that out loud? The look on Josef’s face told her yes, and she wasn’t going to stop now. “This is what you agreed to, and we’re going to deliver on it. You need our help to fix your hotel and rectify the mistakes you made. You can either accept that help or not.”
Mrs. Matlock huffed sharply. “And where do you suppose we should put the actual paying customers?”
“After the show airs, you should have plenty of them to figure that out.”
“That won’t be for months.”
“You’re right.” Angelica raised her chin, staring down her nose at Mrs. Matlock. “It’ll be quite some time before the show airs, but there is press that will happen before that, and if you do what we tell you to do, you might not need the show to boost your revenue.”
Angelica looked to Josef. She had thought at one moment he would take charge of this conversation, but she’d bulldozed her way right in there, hadn’t she? She should have known herself better than that.
“What other questions do you have that can’t be answered in the briefing tomorrow?” Angelica asked.
The silence was loud, and before either one of them could answer, Angelica pushed her agenda forward. “Right, then we’ll do the briefing in two days when Mrs. Lawrence arrives and we can talk to everyone about the plan of action going forward.” She flicked her gaze toward Josef. “Do you have anything you wanted to add?”
“No, I think you about covered it.”
Angelica nodded toward him, and then she stared at the Matlocks until they got up uncomfortably and left the room. Angelica sighed heavily, relaxing into the chair a bit more now that they were out of the way and gone. She really should have known that she’d be dragged into something as soon as she arrived.
