a look? I didn’t know this was going to be in today’s edition of the paper so I haven’t actually seen it yet.’
That sounded suitably under control and not totally panic-stricken. Didn’t it?
Lorenzo silently pushed the newspaper her way with the tip of one finger. He still looked ready to pitch a fit over the topic. She should feel defensive about that. No, she should be aggressive about it, in an ‘I’m in charge here and this is just another aspect of performing your tasks for the restaurant so don’t bother complaining about it’ kind of a way.
Instead, she kept thinking how strong and manly he looked with his muscles locked that way and irritation and displeasure stamped on his face.
‘Right, well, let me just take a quick look.’ Scarlett had never skimmed a piece of print quite so quickly. As she did so she felt Lorenzo glowering down at her. She finally forced her gaze up, to meet stormy brown eyes. ‘Um, maybe you’d like to shut the door while we discuss this.’
‘Shutting the door isn’t going to make a bit of difference, Scarlett.’ His words weren’t shouted, but they were strong enough that they would carry. ‘I’m done here for the night, anyway. If you want to maintain some privacy on the topic of an article that I hadn’t even heard about, I suggest we take this elsewhere.’
Right. Well, that seemed like an eminently sensible idea. Scarlett shot to her feet. That was, she rose gracefully, and calmly gathered her laptop into the all-purpose carry bag that housed her room key and other necessary items a girl couldn’t do without, and stepped confidently towards the door.
And through it.
Without revealing even slightly that her heart was racing in a highly unprofessional way.
Oh, she wasn’t scared of him.
She just hadn’t had time to absorb the implications of this arrangement, and therefore didn’t exactly have a plan in mind for dealing with Lorenzo’s feelings about the whole matter. And she had this compulsive and extremely unprofessional urge to offer to rub his shoulders or in some other way unruffle his clearly ruffled feathers for him.
‘We’ll go to my bedsit. It’s close and the owner is away so I know we’ll be quite private even if you need to express your sentiments…’ Loudly? Vociferously? With gusto? Scarlett decided it might be wiser not to finish that sentence.
Instead she strode through the restaurant ahead of Lorenzo, and they walked in silence across the square to her bedsit. She let them in quickly, set her laptop down carefully against the wall inside the door.
Lorenzo drew a deep breath and advanced two steps into the centre of the room.
Which also brought him two steps closer to Scarlett who happened to be standing just shy of that same centre of the room herself.
‘Why is this the first I’ve heard of a cook-off that’s to take place between Sorella and Rosa? What do you hope to achieve from this? Have you thought of the possible ramifications?’
He was unapologetically irritated. And yet his eyes stayed gentle.
Scarlett frowned. Not at Lorenzo, but at her own thoughts. Now was not the time to take stock of Lorenzo’s eyes, or to feel that she wanted such gentleness from him.
‘The response from the local body handling my application ended up in my e-mail spam folder almost a week ago and I didn’t find it until today.’ Scarlett would contact them to find out just why she’d received no follow-up when she had failed to respond to the e-mail. It really wasn’t appropriate for the matter to be settled upon and advertised when one of the restaurants hadn’t actually agreed to the terms!
‘And don’t you think that as Head Chef I might have been made aware that such a cook-off event was a possibility in the first place?’ His hands came up to perch on a set of lean hips. ‘What if I didn’t want to participate in a cook-off?’
‘Well—’
‘And not only that.’ He paced from one end of her very small living area to the other and back again. ‘I’ve effectively got six days to get ready to do this, and try to make sure that when I participate, Rosa wins. It’s not going to look great if we don’t, for the restaurant or for my career. I can’t afford to lose another job, Scarlett. I’d hoped this job would be different, that I’d have a chance to prove myself and not be judged by rumours spread by Marcel—’ He broke off and turned his face away for a moment before he whipped it back. ‘This whole thing—’
‘Is going to be just fine, despite the fact that I messed up by not following up on my approach to this local body, and by only finding the e-mail in my spam file tonight.’ Scarlett owned her mistake without hesitation, and injected all the assurance and confidence into her tone that she could possibly muster.
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