“Oh, we all applied to the retreat.” Becca waved an arm, and Ava realized it was meant to encompass the other sous chefs. “Liza picked us for this instead.” She shrugged, as if she didn’t quite get it either.
“Wow. I didn’t even realize that was a thing.”
Becca nodded. “Yup.”
Conversation stalled momentarily, mostly because Ava was so painfully bad at small talk. “So, um, what about you? Where are you from and stuff?”And stuff? Jesus, Ava, way to be creative.She managed not to roll her eyes at herself. Instead, she leaned against the counter and forced herself to pay attention.
“I’m from North Carolina. Near Charlotte. I own a really nice restaurant there.”
“You own it?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Thanks. Takes up about ninety-five percent of my life,” she said with a soft laugh, “but yeah. I love it.”
Ava loved her job. She loved working in a restaurant, loved the bustle and busyness of it, how it worked like a beehive, with the worker bees doing their individual jobs and the queen bee overseeing and the lot of them producing deliciously sweet and golden honey. But she could not imagine doing Goldie’s job. Being the queen bee? It sounded good in theory, but managing all those people? No, thanks.
“So? What do you think Liza will have you make first?”
“That is an excellent question I wish I had the answer to.” She’d been scanning all the ingredients on the back shelves, hoping for a clue, but it seemed like the inventory pretty much covered anything.
“What do you love to make?” Becca asked, her blue eyes twinkling with curiosity.
“That, my friend, is a very broad question.” Ava grinned. “I mean, whatdon’tI love to make?”
“Okay, then that.”
“What?”
“Whatdon’tyou love to make?”
“Pie crust,” Ava answered without missing a beat.
Becca blinked, then kind of snort-laughed. “Pie crust? Random. Why?”
“Because I suck at it. I can’t get it to be flaky without it also being dry. Mine always ends up dry.”
Paige spoke up from behind her. “Oh God, me too,” she said with a frown. “No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get it right, and it messes with my head.” She sighed.
“I get that. Pie crust is hard,” Ava said. “Took me a long time, and I still struggle with it.” She held out a fist for Paige to bump. “To the pie crust failures.” Paige grinned at her and bumped.
As Becca mimicked Ava from earlier and began to pull out drawers and examine their tools, she said, “So, I’m here to help you in whatever way you need. Don’t hesitate to give me something to do, okay?”
“I’ll remember that,” Ava said.
“Good.” Becca went back to checking out all the gadgets.
Ava glanced across the way to see Regan chatting with her assistant. She said something and the assistant threw her head back and laughed heartily, and that’s when Regan met Ava’s eyes, held them for a beat before letting them go and returning her attention to the laughing assistant.
A weird flutter tickled low in her body.
“You know her?” Becca asked, clearly having seen the whole thing.
Ava forced her attention back to their own kitchen space. “Nope. Not at all.”
* * *
