Valentine's Day. Nicola Marsh
waited until last and found herself in the space furthest from him. She filled her glass with water before anyone could put anything more ill-advised in it from the rapidly emptying bottle of chardonnay doing the rounds.
Getting tipsy in front of Zander once was bad enough.
‘First point of the evening to the woman down the end. What’s your name, petite fleur?’
All eyes snapped her way, including Zander’s.
Every awful moment of her school career came rushing back with the unexpected attention. It never paid to be the brightest—and poorest—at secondary school. It led to all kinds of unwanted attention. ‘Georgia.’
‘Well, Miss Georgia,’ Chef improvised in ever-thickening French, ‘while wine is perfection for enjoying the consumption of a meal, water is, without question, the best choice for preparing one. Until you know what you’re doing, of course. You want your tastebuds unassailed. You want your nose and palate unconflicted and clear-headed as you assemblé the ingredients you’ll need...’
‘An unconflicted palate. Score one for me,’ she murmured.
Their prosaic teacher was fully underway by now and his continental theatrics and charm managed to recapture the focus of the women in the room. But Zander still stared at her, eyes lightly creased.
Stop smiling, her eyes urged him. We’re supposed to be strangers. Though there was something just slightly breath-stealing about the game they were playing. Pretending to be strangers. Hiding a secret from the whole room.
It was vaguely...kinky.
Which said a lot about how very not kinky her life usually was.
She forced her attention back to Chef. Did her best to listen and understand what he was saying and not pay any further attention to Zander perched at the end of the bench, deftly deflecting the interest of the two women closest to him and studying everything that was happening in the room. Parts of what the chef was saying really resonated for the scientist in her—the parts about the chemistry of food and how ingredients worked together—but they were totally overshadowed by his try-hard vocabulary and his staged theatrics, which really didn’t work for her. She caught herself smiling more than once at something ridiculous he said or the way he gushed over his rapt female audience. She was fairly certain he wasn’t actually French.
‘Excuse me, Chef?’ she interrupted when he paused for a rare breath and before she could change her mind. ‘Will we get to cook something tonight?’
‘So enthousiaste,’ he fawned, and she groaned. ‘Non, you won’t get hands-on until week six. In Chef André Carlson’s class we first develop appréciation for the art of the food, then we progress to construction of the food.’
And clearly much drinking of the wine, despite his own protestations.
She nodded, politely, and started counting the endless minutes until her first class was over. How would Zander feel about her dumping the first thing he’d sent her to? She glanced up. He had a resigned nothing plastered to his face. It hit her then that she was wasting two people’s time on this terrible class.
‘Excuse me, Chef?’ This time he looked more irritated to have been interrupted mid-fake-French-stream. ‘I have a terrible migraine. I’m going to have to leave.’
Much clucking of concern and old fake-French remedies for migraines later and she had her handbag over her shoulder and her feet pointing towards the door. No one cared.
‘You’ll need someone to walk you to your car,’ Zander volunteered and then excused himself from the woman next to him. That got their attention, but he reassured them, ‘I’ll be right back.’
No, he wouldn’t. Not if he was as dumbstruck by that class’s awfulness as she was.
They practically bolted down the hall for the street door, together.
‘You were going to leave me there!’ he accused as they fell out into the street.
She laughed as she skipped down the steps to the footpath. ‘Sorry. Every man for himself on the culinary Titanic.’
‘That was awful,’ he gritted. ‘Why would anyone put themselves through that?’
‘They looked like they were having a good enough time.’
‘I can’t imagine anyone coming away from that actually appreciating food more.’
Her laugh redoubled. ‘No.’
‘I take it the migraine was fake?’
‘As fake as his accent. I think we should just cut our losses.’
He halted her with a warm hand to her arm. ‘No. You came here tonight wanting to discover what’s so special about cuisine.’
God, was he warming back up to another invitation to see his etchings?
‘Let me just make a call...’
He made it. Brief and murmured, his back half to her. Then he turned and smiled at her. ‘OK, all arranged.’
‘What is?’
‘We have a job for the night.’
‘A job?’
‘In a commercial kitchen. That’s where you’ll see what cooking is really all about.’
‘I can’t cook in a commercial kitchen!’ She could barely boil water in her own home.
‘Trust me, Georgia.’ He slid his hand around behind her back and smiled. ‘We won’t be cooking.’
* * *
He wasn’t kidding. Within fifteen minutes they were installed up to the elbows in suds in the back of the busy kitchen of an Italian restaurant and they’d washed more dishes in less time than she’d even dirtied in her whole life. But she didn’t even notice.
The owner of the restaurant where Zander had called in his favour elevated the usual dishwashers to kitchen assistants for the night and had one of his demi-chefs explain everything happening in the kitchen for their benefit.
She and Zander eavesdropped on every word between suds.
And his digital recorder—totally approved by the owner—captured it for EROS’ segment.
The kitchen ran like a ballet. Every item on the menu choreographed; every technique a combination of hard-learned steps. Every resulting dish a work of art, never the same twice.
The chef—a real, proper chef this time, with a real accent—yelled at everyone just enough to keep them moving, and didn’t hesitate to yell at his trainee dishwashers if she and Zander fell behind. She felt more welcome being yelled at in this kitchen than being fawned over in the last one. The clunk and clatter of knives and pots and whisks merged with the hiss of frying fat and draining pasta pots to create a symphony of experience that had so much more excitement and interest than just how to cook a good cordon bleu.
And such language! The night was an education for more reasons than one. She loved even that. Though she knew Zander’s editors would be busy with the bleep button.
The symphony and ballet went on for hours. She grew transfixed trying to take it all in even as her feet started first to ache, then protest and finally give up and just burn. But her sore feet were the least of their worries. A whole dish went wrong and sent the kitchen into desperate chaos catching back up and she felt the adrenaline of the race, the thrill of contributing, the deep satisfaction of getting the replacement meals out in time. Even if her role was only keeping the clean cutlery coming.
And now the night was nearly over. The last customers were on their desserts and only one big pot bubbled away in the half-empty kitchen. The promoted-for-a-night assistants were more than happy to cook something simple for the people who’d triggered their unexpected elevation, and Georgia and her sore feet were more than happy to be cooked for by them.
Who