Mixed Up(21)

"Accidentally. Honestly, you sleep with a guy once and he thinks you're in love. I had to fire him because, no matter how pretty he was, he couldn't make a Screwdriver...And he was a little crazy."

"You are the authority on crazy." I flashed her a grin.

"Keep talking, Parker Hamilton."

"That's Chef when you're in my kitchen, thank you."

"Let me show you all the fucks I give." Her intense gaze never wavered. "Oh look, I ran out."

My lips pulled to the side. Fucking hell, she was sass central, wasn't she? "They must have disappeared to where mine have. Now, thank you for lunch and the water, but get out of my kitchen."

In a great show of defiance, she opened the fridge and yanked out a bottle of water. It was so petty and childish that laughter bubbled up deep inside me. Both the fridge door and the kitchen door slammed in her wake, because she left in a flash of dark hair, leaving behind such a silence that my music seemed to boom. 

I'd forgotten it was on.

I shook my head, ridding it of thoughts of that crazy, sassy woman I worked for, and got back to work.





***





Much to my surprise, Wes was the whizkid I'd dismissed when in the kitchen. He chopped everything to perfection, and his batter for the calamari was pretty damn good. By the time we'd finished serving food, he was practically floating out of the kitchen, and I'd permanently delegated batter-mixing to him.

That was the best thing about being in control.

You got to delegate the shit you hated to others.

I shut off the lights for the kitchen after one last look around and stepped out into the bar. Raven and Sienna were both slammed behind the bar. The girl-I'd already forgotten her name and she'd told me five times-they'd hired to run the food had finished her shift when the kitchen closed forty-five minutes ago, and they were clearly alone.

I took some empty glasses from the table nearest to me and set them on the end of the bar.

"Thank you!" Sienna yelled over the music.

I hadn't realized it was so loud in the kitchen. Looking around, I saw why. Some of the tables had been cleared and there was now a dance floor at the opposite end of the bar. It was darker than it was the night I came in here, and now I understood why she had fairy lights. The bright-white bulbs she had in place emitted a light pretty close to daylight, and it was just bright enough that the bar was completely illuminated.

It looked even better like this.

"Do you need some help?" I offered.

"No," Raven shouted just as Sienna shouted, "Yes!"

Both women stopped and looked at each other.

Raven's eyes seemed bluer in the light as she flitted her gaze between me and Sienna. She held up one finger and then smoothly poured a yellow liquid from the cocktail shaker in her hand into two glasses, filling them halfway up. Seemingly without blinking, she pulled cranberry juice from the fridge and poured, topping them up. The vibrant, red liquid mixed with the sunshiney yellow until the middle strip of the cocktail was a bright orange.

I would never understand how people made those layered cocktails.

It was some mad fucking skill.

She ran the order then, holding two fingers up to her next customer, she slinked past Sienna in the bar and leaned over the edge of it to me. She grabbed my shirt and pulled me into her, putting her mouth right next to my ear. "One of my girls is on vacation in Jamaica and the other called in sick. I'm trying, but we're running out of glasses. Can you grab all the empty ones and run them through the washer in the kitchen? We have both running and they're taking forever. I just need them clean."

"Sure."

She released me the second the word left my lips, and her hair tickled across my cheek when she turned and called, "Sorry about that! What can I get you, sir?"

She stepped from mild panic into a smooth, calm bartender in a heartbeat.

"Motherfu-"

My hand shot out and grabbed the falling glass before it could drop too far. I winked at Sienna as I handed her the glass. She dipped her head, blushing, and put the glass down to reach for a clean one.

"Thanks!" she called as I put my things just inside the bar.

I smiled and caught Raven's eye.

Her expression was flat-hard. She dropped her gaze to the back of Sienna's head before turning away and dropping two shots of spirits into a shaker. I hesitated for a moment, but Sienna hadn't noticed, and now Raven was busy with the cocktail.

I shook that off like I had so many things Raven and focused on getting the empty glasses. The second time I returned to the bar, Raven whipped a black, circular tray out from the depths of the bar and handed it to me over Sienna's head. She had a shaker in the other hand and was talking to a customer getting his order as she did it.