Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B?

by Terri-Lynne Defino

Genres: Family Life; Friendship; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

For everyone who loved The Bear! An utterly winning, crowd-pleaser of a novel about a disgraced celebrity chef, her striving protégé, and their path through the kitchen to redemption.

Regina Benuzzi is Queenie B—a culinary goddess with Michelin Star restaurants, a bestselling cookbook empire, and multimillion-dollar TV deals. It doesn’t hurt that she’s gorgeous and curvaceous, with cascading black hair and signature red lips.

She had it all. Until she didn’t.

After an epic fall from grace, Queenie B vanishes from the public eye, giving up everything: her husband, her son, and the fame that she’d fought to achieve. Her shows are in rerun, her restaurants still popular, but her disappearance remains a mystery to her legions of fans.

Local line cook Gale Carmichael also knows a thing or two about disaster. Newly sober and struggling, Gale’s future dreams don’t hold space for culinary stardom; only earning enough to get by. Broke at the end of the week, he finds himself at a local soup kitchen in one of the roughest parts of New Haven, Connecticut. But Gale quickly realizes that the food coming out of the kitchen is not your standard free meal—it is delicious and prepared with gourmet flair.

Gale doesn’t recognize Regina, the soup kitchen’s cranky proprietor, whose famous black mane is now streaked with gray. It’s been more than ten years since Queenie B vanished into her careful new existence. But she sees Gale’s talent and recognizes a brokenness in him that she knows all too well. The culinary genius in hiding takes him under her wing.

Teaching Gale, Regina’s passion to create is reignited, and they both glimpse a shot at the redemption that had always seemed out of reach. When Gale is chosen to compete on the hit cooking show, Cut!, it’s a turning point for them both.

It’s Gale’s time to shine. And that means Queenie B might just have to come out of hiding…

Release date: April 15, 2025

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 336

Sample

1

Mise en place: French culinary phrase meaning “putting in place,” referring to the organization and preparation of ingredients that a chef will require for the menu items to be prepared during a shift.

New Year’s Eve 1999

It is too hot inside. Too noisy. Too much booze and too many drugs and more people than she ever imagined she’d know. But she knows them. Kind of. They certainly know her. The whole world does.

The balcony overlooking Times Square isn’t any quieter. Only cooler. Cold. January in New York City. In a few minutes, anyway. New year. New decade. New millennium. But not really. That will be 2001, but, as always, facts don’t matter. What’s the big deal, anyway? The earth isn’t keeping the same time humans do. Hell, not even all humans keep the same calendar. It’s all a construct. All that Y2K nonsense. No way the world is going to end when midnight strikes because the computers get confused. If anyone is going to end her world, it’s going to be Queenie B herself. She’s been trying a long time, and . . . nothing.

Sipping her cocktail—something gin heavy and cranberry light—Queenie feels the numbers clapping—Bam! 49. Bam! 48. Bam! 47.—counting down on the giant Discover Card light board, kitty-corner to where she stands. Below, a giant Father Time puppet seems to float, accompanied by an equally colossal red dragon. The masses whoop, champagne corks pop from their bottles, everyone is ready for the crystal ball to slide down its pole into the year 2000.

Inside the apartment—can it be called an apartment when it’s bigger than a mansion in the burbs?—Dick Clark is speaking. From the television. An eighty-inch monstrosity all those who’s whos in New York gather around instead of watching it all unfold from the balcony.

Fifteen seconds. Ten.

Others crowd onto the balcony. Queenie presses up against the railing to make room. She even smiles at those crushing her, laughs with them. Someones she should know but can’t remember. It’s hard, when there’s no telling whether she’s actually met those someones acting as if they’ve been long acquainted or they simply recognize her signature black hair and red lips on sight. Queenie B. Goddess of the culinary world. Superstar. The who’s whoest.

. . . three . . . two . . . one . . .

Happy New Year. Happy 2000.

Cannons shoot literal tons of confetti into Times Square. Fireworks sparkle. Queenie slams back her gin-heavy drink, takes a flute of champagne offered and slams that back too. She kisses the men. She kisses the women. Everyone whoops and she kisses and kisses and kisses. Everyone. So many someones. None of whom matter to her. Where those who do went, she doesn’t want to think about.

Queenie takes several kamikaze shots from a tray on the long, black-marble bar. Down. Down. Down the hatch. Two more. She throws back that heavy ink-black mane Osvaldo once claimed had sentience all its own, to do a line with the twentysomethings cheering her on. The world, blurred by way too much alcohol, comes into sudden and sharp focus before blurring again. Too much of one. Not enough of the other. Queenie B knows the balance. Too well. Hers is off. The world is fuzzy.

Someone is calling her name. A voice she knows. A face familiar. Her brain takes its sweet time catching up. Saskia. Sweet Saskia. The girl

thought she’d landed her dream job when Queenie B herself pulled her out of a line of hopefuls to be her assistant. Her keeper. Her PR disaster fixer. Poor Saskia. Poor kid. She doesn’t jibe with the “if money can fix it, it isn’t a problem” mentality. Good thing Queenie B can afford to pay her well . . .

Queenie is in the elevator. She is pressed up into the corner, spandex and sparkle hitched up to her hips. There is a man thrusting between her thighs, his face buried in the luxury of her hair. She has no recollection of how she got here, or when, or who this someone who is no one truly is. His hair is black, like hers, and whatever he’s doing inside her, he’s doing it well. He’s making her groan. He’s lighting that fire, lighting her up. Queenie feels it in the roots of the hair he’s buried in. And then he’s done, and she’s not. She pushes him down, onto his knees. He doesn’t protest, but gets to it.

Ah, there it is. That glimmer. That roar. Dulled by alcohol, but still pretty damn good. Queenie pulls him up by his hair. She kisses him without opening her eyes, feeling for the elevator buttons that will send the car on its trajectory down.

Up.

It doesn’t matter.

She’s finished.

Time to go.

 

2

On the line: The “line” is the kitchen space where cooking is accomplished. Being “on the line” means one is a line cook, an essential foot soldier of any functioning restaurant brigade.

2015

February in Connecticut. The most boring month in the whole year, unless you skied, which, despite living in New England, Gale Carmichael did not. A New Haven boy, born and bred, where trips to the country were few and far between, even though the country could be found with a car and a few miles’ worth of gas. February’s only highlight was Valentine’s Day wooing couples out to restaurants for that special dinner. One and done, like St. Patrick’s Day for local pubs, Irish or not, though there were a bunch of those speckled throughout the city. The winter holidays, on the other hand, crammed too many parties into a little over a month, catered and in-house. Once the patio opened to outdoor dining, winter-month doldrums would burst into warm-weather festive. But in February it was never busy on random Friday nights. Typically. Tonight was an anomaly, and, of course, Gale was on the line. By himself, except for the new kid who couldn’t pull his own weight yet.

Leaning against the brick wall, Gale didn’t even shiver against the coarse cold seeping through his chef coat. Winter didn’t make the kitchen any less a furnace. All he needed was five minutes to cool down, to uncurl the clench in his hands, ease the band of aching heat across his shoulders. Chopping, stirring, flipping, plating. He craved a cigarette, fantasized flicking the lighter, inhaling deeply, feeling the nicotine prickle into his toes. Only fantasized. He quit smoking when he quit everything else. His sponsor said, as long as he was having those cravings, it was better to have a cigarette than a relapse. Eighteen months, and Gale hadn’t had a drink, a smoke, or a hit. It was all horseshit anyway; AA mentality chafed, but court ordered was court ordered. Gale had served his time for a full year, still had his year-sober medal thing. At least, his mother, Lucy, did. He hadn’t been to a meeting in months.

“Hey, Gale!”

His shoulders tensed. “I’m on break.”

“There are no breaks during dinner service. Hurry up, before Marco notices.”

Frances, Marco’s sous chef, took no breaks, so no one else was allowed to either. She’d left the line to chastise Gale. She wouldn’t do it again. At least she called him out, and not Marco. She was right, of course. A line cook’s job was grueling, often chaotic, and rarely appreciated. No glory; it all went to those higher on the culinary ladder—sous chef, executive chef.

Low pay, sharing tips with the waitstaff who couldn’t be trusted to be honest when cash was concerned . . . such was the life of a line cook, and the price of getting to sous chef. Chef de cuisine. Executive chef/restaurant owner. Celebrity chef. At least he’d already done his time as busboy, food runner, dishwasher—the lowest forms of life in the kitchen. The better restaurants had fancier-sounding names for the brigade from front of the house to back. Gale had learned them all in culinary school, but he’d never worked in a restaurant fancy enough to call its line cooks chefs de partie.

“Back on the line,” Frances barked.

“Heard, Chef.”

Gale fell back into his place. Into the frenzied heat of a working kitchen. Marco’s, an established fine-dining experience where New Haven locals—the ones who could afford a $45 steak—ate. Being near Wooster Street, they got a lot of overflow traffic

when the more landmark waits were too long. He was still just a grunt in the brigade, but at least it was better than working the line over at the vegan restaurant by Yale.

“Fire two scallops, a calamari, and crab cakes for table twelve,” Marco boomed from the pass. “Heard?”

“Heard that,” the whole brigade called back.

Gale put the crab cakes on the flat top to sear with one hand, tapped a knob of butter into a hot skillet with the other. The butter foamed and sizzled, the taste and texture of perfectly sautéed and basted scallops phantom in his mouth. Tender, slightly caramelized to perfection. Two minutes, turned once, two more minutes. He flipped the crab cakes. Perfect. Now a squeeze of lemon, a sprinkle of fresh herbs, and, “Scallops and crab cakes walking. Risotto ready?”

“Risotto walking.”

“Calamari walking!”

Marco waited at the pass. “Beautiful.”

“Thanks, Chef.”

And that was all. Back to his station. More orders called. More food prepared. An endless cycle of sizzle and aromas that somehow excited him every time.

Home sweet home, man.

The only place he ever wanted to be.

 

Service was grueling, but it went fast. Gale walked home only half aware of where he was going. His feet knew the way. His body. No brain activity required aside from that deepest deep within the medulla oblongata. Animal brain. Caveman, maybe. He remembered learning it was where the brain stored the most basic functions. There was breathing. There was fight or flight, a term he’d learned in those few college days he had before realizing his foodie heart was incompatible with the career as a biologist that his high school career test had recommended. Gale was an artist whose art lived on his tongue, in those tiny bumps—papillae—that differentiated sweet from sour, bitter from salty. And umami, a word learned only because he quit college and went to culinary school. With Sean. Where so many things started to make sense—and fall apart.

“There’s no money in it,” his mother said. “Restaurants open and close overnight. You’ll end up in debt up to your eyeballs. Wait and see.”

“No one ever trusts a skinny guy like you to feed them,” Danny Carmichael said. “The Irish aren’t known for their culinary prowess. Cooking is girlie stuff anyway. What’re you? A homo?”

He loved his dad, but the man could be an idiot. The cooking world was still and unfairly male-dominated. Besides which, Gale wasn’t gay, and was only half Irish. Kind of. His claim on Ireland being several generations behind his dad, intermixed with so many other nationalities, the cultural claim to the Carmichael name had overtaken the bloodlines long ago.

 Lucy was Italian, born and bred. Being Italian didn’t make her a good cook any more than being Irish made Gale a bad one, only a delayed sort of food-woke. He was sixteen before he tasted food that was not fast, pizza, boxed, or from a jar.

The apartment was as cold as the kitchen was hot, evidenced by the cloud of breath accompanying his sigh as Gale let himself in. Thermostat said it was fifty-eight degrees, though it was set to sixty-eight. Kyle called the landlord days ago; apparently, no one had been sent to see what the deal was.

Gale yanked open the fridge; a crescendo of beer bottles clanking together made his mouth water a little. He shoved aside take-out containers, searching for his lone carton of chocolate milk, the kind he used to get in elementary school on Fridays, when his mom let him spend the extra nickel. Gone. He looked in the trash; there was the empty container, sitting right on top. At least he ate at work, but damn, he’d been looking forward to that chocolate milk.

“Dude.” Kyle Sisto shuffled into the kitchen in his boxers, rubbing his eyes. Unlike Gale, Kyle wasn’t a skinny chef no one would want cooking for them. He scratched his soft, hairy belly. “You just getting in?”

“Yeah. Did you drink my chocolate milk?”

“That was yours?”

“You knew it wasn’t yours.”

“Sorry, dude.” Kyle shrugged. Fucker. If he had anything in the fridge besides beer, Gale would have consumed it out of spite.

“Supe stopped in this afternoon, said he was getting on the heat situation this week.”

“Yeah, right. Jimmy here?”

“Nah. He and Nando went out someplace.”

“Out? Neither one of them’s contributed to the internet bill in months.” Fuck, he was sounding like his dad. “Jimmy was supposed to pay me back that ten bucks I lent him.”

“You don’t lend Jimmy money.” Kyle grunted. “You give it to him.”

It’s true. You know it is.

“What am I supposed to do for breakfast? I didn’t get tipped out—”

“Again? You got to stop letting the waitstaff get away with that shit.”

He’s right.

“—and I don’t go in until three tomorrow.”

Kyle opened the fridge, pulled out a container. He opened it, sniffed, made a face. “This is his. Some kind of curry from the other night.

I’d say you bought it off him.”

“I wouldn’t pay a dollar for that crap.” Gale took the container anyway. Mold laced the edge of the topmost layer. If he had to, he could scrape it off. He handed it back.

“Yo, we should go to that soup kitchen I told you about,” Kyle said. “Free food.”

“No thanks.”

Beggars can’t be choosers, man.

“Dude, seriously. I heard it’s good. Nice.”

“A good, nice soup kitchen. In New Haven.”

Kyle sniggered. “Yeah, I know. I haven’t been there myself, but I got it from a good source. A few guys at work go there when the money runs low and the shifts don’t align with the hunger pangs.”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Your call. If you change your mind, let me know. I’ll go with you.”

Leaving the kitchen—such as it was without a working stove, only a microwave and a hot plate to cook on—Gale gave a thumbs-up over his shoulder. He stepped into his room and out of his shoes, his clothes, grateful he’d obeyed his mother and changed the sheets yesterday. It felt good to get into a clean bed, even if he needed a shower, big-time.

You should go with him.

Gale closed his eyes. Mistake. Sean, pale and too thin, burned like an afterimage behind his eyes. Always this haggard specter he became, never the blond-haired, blue-eyed charmer he’d been. “Not now, okay?”

Whatever, man. I only wanted to say good on you. Encouragement, you know?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The beer. You didn’t cave. Good on you.

“I wasn’t even tempted.”

If you say so, man. I’m still proud of you.

Gale rolled over onto his side, phone in hand. He found a text from his brother that he’d heard come in and forgotten about. Brian—the success-bound Carmichael brother in his second year of law school—would be home for their dad’s birthday on the twentieth; would Gale be around? Gale sent him a thumbs-up. He wasn’t getting out of joining the family festivities. Birthdays were sacrosanct. They’d even celebrated his own in rehab.

He scrolled. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. His parents paid for the phone. Just so he had no excuse not to call. Check in. Let them know he was alive. Okay. Not wasted. Speaking of, he clicked into a text:

Hey, Mom. Just getting home. Beat to hell. I'll see you for Dad's birthday next week. Love you.

Eighteen months hadn’t eased her insta-panic, because even at that hour, the little dots that said she was typing, that she had her alerts on through the night, appeared on his screen.

. . .

. . .

. . .

A full thirty seconds

of dots.

Good to hear from you, buddy. See you soon. I love you, too.

Gale felt bad but grateful his mom had deleted whatever had taken so long to tap in. It was going to be a while, if ever, before her first instinct wasn’t to gush relief, keep him talking, ascertaining his level of coherence by the speed and clarity of his response. Or lack of one. Maybe the longer Gale stayed clean, the more that whole catastrophic thinking would ease up. For her. For them both.

Leaving her message on the screen, Gale plugged in his charger. He set the phone beside him, illuminating a circle on the clean sheets. As if his mother were there, watching him sleep.

Night, man.

Gale sighed. “Night, Sean.”

 

3

In the weeds: Phrase meaning a cook is overwhelmed by tickets, trying to do it all and not necessarily succeeding.

2015

Jimmy didn’t pay Gale back, but he did get him a free Egg McMuffin and coffee the next day; there wasn’t a fast-food place in town where Jimmy couldn’t get free food. The superintendent fixed the heat that they weren’t allowed to turn up higher than sixty-eight, but it was way the hell better than fifty-eight. Gale’s dad’s birthday came and went, punctuated by Brian blessing them all with his exalted presence for two days before heading back to Boston and the Harvard law degree—to complement his Yale undergrad—it was going to take even a lawyer half a lifetime to pay for. Danny Carmichael did that Dad thing he did, comparing his sons and finding one lacking in the most loving and humorous way, that being not at all funny but coming from a place of concern. Lucy told her husband and Brian to knock it off before she cracked some heads, as always and obviously worried that any adversity was going to send Gale off the deep end.

Stay the course, man. Don’t prove them all right.

Gale stayed the course. He worked. February turned into March, bringing milder temps. Walking home from work wasn’t quite as grueling, even after a Saturday night shift. March wasn’t typically any busier than February, and this one didn’t prove out of the ordinary. Gale couldn’t blame the cold or exhaustion for his carelessness, his lack of street savvy. He could, however, blame the asshole who rolled him.

“I don’t have any money!”

“Give me what you got.”

It was dark. The street, deserted. And Gale had been scared shitless. He couldn’t tell the police or the ER staff anything about his attacker, only that he—or a very deep-voiced she—had shoved him hard from behind, and then when he was on the ground had taken the three bucks and change in his pocket, a lighter, and a container of Tic Tacs. His attacker left him with his easily trackable cell phone.

Good thing you didn’t have your knife kit, man. Or get tipped out. Again.

“That’s a pretty bad wrist sprain,” the ER doc told him.

“Do I need a cast?”

“No cast, but you need to keep it braced.”

“Can I use it? I’m a line cook in a restaurant.”

“Knives? Hot stoves and pans? I suggest you take a couple weeks off. For safety’s sake.”

Yeah. Right.

Gale refused the prescription for codeine, but accepted the one for superstrength ibuprofen. The thought of walking home after a full shift, half the night in the ER, and an extra couple miles to boot, wouldn’t even form into a maybe. He called his dad, knowing what would result, but deemed worth it in the end. This would set everyone back on the comfort scale. Maybe his father wouldn’t tell anyone else.

Wouldn’t count on that, man.

Waiting outside, trying not to think about the throbbing in his wrist, Gale dry-swallowed the ibuprofen. It’d hopefully kick in by the time he crawled into bed. He spotted his dad’s 2006 yellow Subaru Baja—hard to miss—pulling into the ER parking lot, waved over his head with the braced hand. Maybe seeing the brace

 would prove he hadn’t been lying about what happened.

Gale got into the front seat. “Hey, Dad. Thanks for picking me up. I’m wiped.”

“You look wiped.”

Ire rose. Gale tamped it down. “I didn’t—”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, son.”

He sounded sincere. Gale let go of the lingering ire in a sigh so soft he barely felt it.

“What’d they get?”

“He. One guy. Nothing, really. Three bucks.”

“Damn. Sure worth sending someone to the hospital for, am I right?”

For some, yes. “I landed on one hand when he shoved me down. Doc says it’ll be a couple of weeks for my wrist to mend. She doesn’t know kitchen life.” Gale chuckled. His father did not.

“You need to take time off?”

“For this?” He held up his hand. “Pssh, no way. Seriously, I can’t afford to.”

“I can give you a little money to get by.”

Again, sincere. “I’m thirty, Dad. Besides, it’s not just the money. Two weeks out of the kitchen puts me back on the line. I’m working hard to get higher—”

Well, you can’t get much lower, man.

“—on the ladder. Two weeks out isn’t an option.”

Danny Carmichael grunted appreciation of his show of toughness, even if he still didn’t approve of his vocation. Lucy Carmichael would have kept arguing.

“What’d they give you for pain?”

Ah, there it was. “Codeine.”

His father’s knuckles whitened on the wheel.

“But I told them no thanks.” Gale shook the bottle of ibuprofen. “Got this instead. It’s just superstrength Advil.”

“Good call, Gale.”

The sincerity was going to make him cry if it didn’t let up soon.

“What’d the bill set you back?”

“Nothing,” Gale told him. “When you make as little as I do, you qualify for Husky D. Free insurance. Free everything, pretty much. It’s one perk of being poor.”

“Sounds like socialism to me.”

“Not having this discussion, Dad.”

Another grunt. More familiar ground. Gale actually smiled.

“Does Mom know?”

“About this?” His dad gestured to the brace. “Nah. I’ll tell her when I get home.”

Good call, Mr. Carmichael.

“Where does she think you went at this hour in the morning?”

“I don’t have to report my comings and goings to your mother.” Then, “I told her I had to go into the shop early.”

Gale let it go. It was all sorts of fucked-up and his brain wasn’t in the mood for the self-recriminations that would result if he didn’t.

His father pulled up in front of Gale’s apartment—the second floor of an old Victorian converted into four units. The house had once

been beautiful. Home to wealthy New Havenites, back in the day. Now, like most of the area, it showed only paint-peeled shadows of its former grandeur. Danny didn’t even take the car out of drive. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah.”

Pressing a twenty into his hand, his father only shook his head, eyes closed, when Gale tried to give it back.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Gale got out. “See you, Dad.”

“See you, son. Call your mother!”

Walking backward, Gale saluted. His dad pulled away from the curb, waved. Barely seven in the morning, and Gale hadn’t slept but for the doze he fell into while waiting to be treated. It’s all he wanted. Bed. Sleep. Oblivion . . .

Too far, man. Too far.

“Sorry.”

Slippery slope.

“I know. Sorry.”

The other guys were still asleep. Restaurant work made them all night owls. Gale kept as quiet as he could, even though they all slept like logs. He opened the refrigerator door, more out of habit than desire, beer bottles, as always, clanking. There, right in front, sat a little carton of chocolate milk. A note attached. In Kyle’s chicken-scratch writing. Gale’s name, and a skull.

Taking it from the fridge, Gale closed the door carefully, so the beer bottles wouldn’t clank. He opened the lip, tipped all eight ounces down his throat in a few satisfying gulps. Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. Sad, when the kindness of a replaced chocolate milk could make a grown man weep.

Not sad, man. Appreciation is a noble thing.

Gale appreciated the sentiment. He appreciated Kyle’s gesture. He appreciated the free insurance that got him fixed up in a world that generally disdained people too poor to insure themselves. He appreciated that he was alive, even though Sean was dead. Even though it was his fault that he was.

 

“You’re going to slow down the line.” Frances, hands on hips, shook her head. “I’m sorry, Gale.”

“Please, I can’t—”

“She’s right.” Marco blew a breath through his lips. “Sorry, kid, but you can’t work the weekend shifts like that. It’s a safety issue.”

“I’ll take the brace off. Come on. I can’t afford not to work.”

“I hear you. I do. But—”

“Trust me, okay? I won’t slow down the line.”

Bushy eyebrows raised, Marco looked to Frances. He’d cave before she

would. Classically-trained-at-the-Sorbonne Frances was his right hand; Gale wasn’t even his left. That would be Santos, sous during the services Frances didn’t work, and who Gale had worked under until his recent promotion to weekends.

She’s going to ice you, man. Think fast!

“What if I go back to Tuesday through Thursday, and Sunday?” Gale asked. “Kitchen’s way slower.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” Marco crossed beefy arms, knife tattoo barely visible under all the hair there. “Santos has been griping about losing you.”

Frances groaned. “Who would you put in Gale’s place?”

“Dai?”

Another groan. “I guess he’s better than Gale with the brace. But his skill level is hardly up to the task.”

Could that have been a compliment?

Gale tried not to fidget from foot to foot. Tips were a huge part of his pay, when the waitstaff got around to tipping him out. They always did. Eventually. They were a family. Dysfunctional, but a family. Everyone knew how important those tips were. Especially the Friday/Saturday shifts, the only time those tips amounted to anything. But lower pay was better than no pay.

“Only for two weeks,” Gale burst. “The doc said I’d be out of the brace in two weeks.”

Frances let go a long exhale. “Fine. Dai it is. But you better be back to fighting form in two weeks, Gale, got me?”

“Heard, Chef. I don’t want to lose my place on the line. I worked hard to get there.”

“You won’t,” Marco said. “I promise.”

But Frances did not, and that was crucial. She just stood there, hands still on hips and lips pursed. How did a woman as small and slight as a hummingbird give off bird-of-prey vibes? An eagle, or a hawk. Some kind of raptor, for sure, able to spot prey, swoop down, and swallow it without mercy. Gale used to think it was her elite education in France that intimidated everyone. Until he started working in her brigade. Nothing got past her. No quarter given. Gale was more than a little afraid of her. He almost felt sorry for Dai, truly not up to the task. If the kid had any brains, he’d work extra hard to win Frances over and steal Gale’s spot. It was nice for Marco to promise, but he’d been so long off the line, he probably forgot how cutthroat a kitchen could be, family or not.

Frances left them to finish prep. The air shifted. Marco uncrossed his arms, shaking them out as if released from a straitjacket. “You’d never know I stole her from a hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout, huh?”

No freaking way.

“But . . .” Gale fought for words. “I thought . . . didn’t she graduate from . . . ?”

“The Sorbonne,” Marco finished for him. “Yup. Look, Gale, I know you’re afraid of losing your spot, but I appreciate your

talents. I’m not going to fuck with your place in the kitchen. In fact . . .” He put that beefy arm around Gale’s shoulders, drawing him away. “Funny thing is, I was talking to Santos, just last night, about trying out that chicken thing you made last month, you know, as a special. Remember? The one with the portabella and smoked mozzarella.”

After hours, two months ago, in fact. There’d been chicken that didn’t sell—because it wasn’t a very good dish—and needed to be used. Gale transformed what was left, taking what he found in the pantry and fridges, into one of the best chicken dishes he, personally, had ever eaten. Frances had plenty of critique—the chicken wasn’t pounded thin enough, the cheese overpowered the delicacy of the sauce, which she found slightly too sweet because he used sweet vermouth instead of dry, it could have used a little acid—but she ate every bite.

“That’d be awesome. Do you think Frances’ll know how to replicate it? Or should I—”

“Tell her how?” Marco boomed laughter, like he boomed everything; he had that kind of voice, that kind of presence. “It’d go over like a lead balloon. You know?” More quietly now. “With you going back to your old schedule—”

“Temporarily.”

“Yeah, temporarily. That’s what I meant. So maybe you could do that dish this week. You know, on a slower day. Wednesday, you think? Santos wouldn’t mind you subbing in, unlike . . .” He jerked his head in Frances’s direction.

Damn, dude. That’s awesome.

Every hair follicle on Gale’s body crackled. “Yeah?”

“You sure you’ll be up to it?”

“Absolutely. Wow. Thanks, Marco.”

“Don’t mention it.” He leaned in. “And I mean, don’t mention it. Frances’ll have my nuts in a vise if she finds out.”

“I won’t. Again, thanks.”

Silver lining, man. Silver lining.

“I’ll see you Tuesday then,” Marco said. “Leave me a list of what you need and I’ll add it to today’s order.”

His own dish. Cooked by him. It was every line cook’s dream. And he’d missed working with Santos, those less frenzied services that afforded him downtime to create things like that chicken dish. If he hadn’t sprained his wrist, it might not have happened. ...