Читать книгу And Then There Is Love - Lori Buckman - Страница 10

Would it never end? For five mornings Barbara had been disappointed and angered to see the discrepancies between her remembered totals that she had entered the night before and the ones in her computer in the morning. So far that month nearly $15,000 had mysteriously disappeared. She was seriously considering resigning as manager. Though she wasn’t the embezzler, she was no closer to finding out who was. She was a failure. But suddenly she smiled. She laid her pencil down and sat back. Her eyes blurred and she smiled blissfully as she thought once more of Fiore’s new hire. Every time she thought of him she felt the delicious clench of her stomach. She had never been so attracted to a man before. She wanted to be alone with him. Italian and handsome all rolled into a neat 6’2” package… But his halting English slightly bothered her; wouldn’t she be taking advantage of him? “Maybe he’d be taking advantage of me. Ever thought of that?”She quickly looked about and over each shoulder as if someone might have heard her conversation with herself and noted her hooded and unfocused eyes. But she slapped her desk, angry with her self: “Why am I embarrassed? What’s wrong with thinking of a man?” How long had she waded through the depths of unfulfilled want of a man’s mouth on her lips, her neck, her breasts and elsewhere until her legs parted? And how long would she have to wait to hear loving words spoken from a sexy man’s lips?

She wasn’t loose. She would ask him to dinner. “Yes, an innocent dinner.” She would get to know him first. “Yes, for I’m not a Carol, by God! But he’s got a body that won’t quit and that face! Makes me want to kiss every part of him.” A knock at her door shook her out of her sexual reverie and she fanned her burning cheeks. “Come in, Carol.”

Her friend stuck her curly head in the door and as if the occurrence happened every day said, “Kitchen fight.”

Barbara rushed out of her office. She looked back at Carol. “Between?”

“Not between. Just Carl.”

“Carl? What about?”

“Just keeps exclaiming, ‘Merde!’”

They hurried through the lounge, nearly empty, it being after the lunch hour. Once they stepped up to the dining room, even though the kitchen doors were closed, Carl’s voice drowned out the rock music that someone had turned on. Carl, Fiore’s head chef, was holding a frying pan above his head as if to brain someone. His cheeks were red and he was in the midst of a diatribe to no one in particular using more French than usual. The rest of the kitchen help had hid behind workstations or had scampered out the door.

Barbara knew Carl had a temper, had even quit in a huff numerous times, but he had always returned. He was absolutely necessary to the restaurant. His dishes were exquisite and they were the main reason for Fiore’s rave reviews that it had been receiving in all the Bay Area newspapers.

“Hold on, Carl!”

Seeing Barbara, he slowly lowered the frying pan and came away from his beloved stove. “Pourquoi as-tu fait cela?”

“What?” Her French was quite limited. “What’s this about?”

He ground his teeth and repeated, though in English, “Why? Why cancel my order of Kobe beef?”

“I didn’t do that, Carl. Why would I do that?” If there had been an order, had it disappeared between the kitchen and the office?

The frying pan began to rise. “I’m Fiore’s chef! What am I to do now?”

Barbara had to diffuse the situation immediately. “Don’t worry, Carl. I’ll call Giordano’s and ask if they have any of those food items to spare.” And as Barbara began to leave she looked over at the employees that still remained. “Everything’ll be taken care of.” She raised her voice, “Get back to work!”

Standing out in the dining room, Carol joined Barbara. “What was he yelling about?”

“Someone canceled his order of steak.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah. Just what I need.”

“Maybe Carl just thought he ordered it but forgot to.”

“No, he never forgets anything.”

Carol had to trot to keep up with Barbara. When they reached the office, she closed the door as her friend sat down in her desk chair with her head in her hands.

Speaking through her hands she asked, “What’s going on here, Carol? Missing that order, well, it’s more important than Billy’s missing receipts. More and more things are going wrong! Find me that guy who nixed Carl’s order and we just might have the criminal for everything else.”