Janine shook her head, still clearly impressed with what she’d witnessed. “Everyone was shaken, but Teresa just stepped up and took charge. No one questioned her. They got back to work, and in spite of what had happened to Louis, the staff never missed a step. She’s still down there now, running things. I thought you should know.”
Rico didn’t know whether to be grateful or furious. Once again Teresa had proven herself to him and to his staff. She wasn’t cowering in his room, as a proper hostage should be. Instead, she was making herself a part of the fabric of Castello Tesoro. He knew, too, that the fabric would unravel once she was gone.
And she would be gone.
He couldn’t risk believing in her again. Couldn’t take the chance of keeping her here with him, knowing that her thieving family might show up at any time. But that wasn’t the truth at all. He didn’t give a damn about Teresa’s family and knew he could handle them if they ever showed up on Tesoro again.
This was about her. The woman he’d once married. The woman he had trusted. Believed in. Only to be betrayed.
Well, if she was trying to ingratiate herself with him now, it wouldn’t work. Of course he’d allow her to help; he wasn’t an idiot and a talented chef didn’t fall out of the sky when needed. But her help was all he was interested in.
Pushing up from the desk, he barked out orders. “Contact the hospital. Take care of Louis’s bill and get him whatever he wants. I’ll go see him later.”
“Right.” Her gaze tracked him as he stalked across the room toward the office door. “Where are you going?”
“To the kitchen.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’ll see for myself if Teresa is working out as head chef or not.”
A few minutes later Rico stood in a doorway, watching the choreographed confusion in the gigantic kitchen and couldn’t help but be impressed. The first thing he noticed was that the classical music Louis insisted on piping through the room had been replaced by rock, with a beat that kept the entire staff moving from station to station at a busy pace. The pastry chefs worked at a mound of dough, the salads were being prepared at a long marble counter and the prep chefs were busily preparing tonight’s soup selections, as well as setting up the ingredients for the rest of the menu.
And in the middle of the chaos stood Teresa. Her black hair was pulled back and tucked up under a chef’s hat. She wore a white coat over her street clothes and directed traffic in the big room like a traffic cop at a particularly busy corner.
She paused to take a sip of a sauce, then directed the chef to add something else. She inspected the pastry chefs’ work and grinned at them in approval. Someone shouted a question and before they’d finished speaking, she was there, lending a hand.
Rico shook his head as he watched her. Sunlight poured in from the skylights in the roof and that golden light seemed to follow Teresa wherever she went. She shone, plain and simple. He was impressed. He didn’t want to be, but there it was. Teresa had stepped in when she was most needed and was taking charge of what could have been a disastrous situation.
Everyone knew that the chefs in any big kitchen had rivalries and jealousies driving them. Without Teresa, there would have been a power play with several of the chefs making a bid to step into Louis’s position. With her, the kitchen was running as well as or better than it had before.
Frowning to himself, he had to admit that there was much more to this woman than he had long believed. She wasn’t here of her own free will. He had practically kidnapped her, blackmailed her, holding the freedom of her family over her head. Yet instead of standing by and watching disaster strike his hotel, she had jumped in, unasked, to save the day. Why? He had to wonder.