Chapter 1
Caitlin Moray walked into the locker room at the Hawaiian Peak Resorts, ready to start her day in the kitchen. A cook sat on a bench, changing into her uniform. When the woman saw her, she snapped to attention.
“Morning, Chef.”
At hearing the title, Caitlin gave an arrogant tilt to her head. “Good morning.” She peered down her nose at the woman. “What’s your name again?”
“Quinn Riley,” she said, holding her body straight.
Caitlin stepped closer to the girl, inspecting her from head to toe. She observed an almost nonexistent food stain at the cuff of the cook’s sleeve. She pinched the material. “Did you wash your uniform?”
“Yes, Chef.”
Caitlin’s eyes glided down to the underling’s hands. “Are your nails trimmed with no nail polish?”
“Yes, Chef.”
Caitlin allowed her face to become stern. “Part of our policy is that each employee must have a contagious and enthusiastic attitude.”
Quinn raised her brows, wiggling them as she bared her teeth in exaggerated enthusiasm.
“That’s better,” the Chef said. Then unable to keep a serious face, they burst out laughing. “Let’s clock in and enjoy another day at the Hawaiian Peak —”
“Are you two done yet?” a voice demanded. Caitlin turned and noticed the sous-chef standing at the door, his hands planted on his thick hips. His strained face had the no-nonsense expression she had tried to imitate only moments before. “The actor Scarlet Lewis is dining in the restaurant tonight. I won’t tolerate any mistakes. Do you hear? Now get yourselves organized and start on the prep list.”
“Yes, Chef,” Caitlin and Quinn said in unison.
When the sous-chef left, her friend slammed her locker door shut and grimaced. “Welcome back to reality.”
“For now,” Caitlin said with a wry twist to her lips. “A girl would go insane if she can’t dream.”
But there was no time to dream during her shift. She spent hours preparing soup stocks and other recipes that needed to go to the appropriate lines. Then she had to contend with the constant chopping that needed to be done before her shift ended.
She glanced over at Quinn and groaned. “These potatoes will be the death of me,” she said, gesturing to the pile of spuds that sat in the middle of the metal prep table. The game of peeling the root vegetables in long, unbroken strips had become old, and she just wanted to go home.
“Well, the carrots are going to do me in.” Her friend didn’t even bother to look up as she continued to julienne the root.
“Yeah, death by vegetables. What a way to go.” Caitlin put down her peeler and placed her palms on the small of her back, tipping backward to release the tension there. The long day killed her feet and made her body ache. As she was doing her stretch, she glanced over at the clock for the hundredth time today. And as much as she looked at it, the minute hand continued at a snail’s pace.
In her mind’s eye, she saw herself age like in a time-lapse movie. The wrinkles on her face started to show while her hair gradually became gray. All the while she had a spud in her hand, peeling and chopping the suckers. She shook her head, trying to get rid of the awful image. This was not what she wanted. She had far better aspirations than to waste her life away as a prep cook.
Enough time had elapsed for her to know that her prospects of being promoted were slim. If she knew this beforehand, she should have stayed in San Francisco and continued to work the phones for a start-up. She shook her head to dispel the line of thought. That particular job wasn’t a dream position either, although the income helped to pay back some of her college loans. She remembered how desperately unhappy she was in that occupation. It was only when her best friend Jessie Bates challenged her to find something better that she decided to go on a search. Back in college, Caitlin used to cook for her friends, and it was something that she enjoyed. She loved how their faces brightened whenever they ate the food she prepared. It felt great that she had somehow contributed to their happiness. So with that, she decided to make an about-face and enter into the food industry. After a dull day at the call center, she would come home and research the job market. From her online search, she discovered that she had to work her way up the hierarchy. That meant starting at the bottom as a dishwasher.
Things started to shift when she went to visit Jessie and her sister Maya in Hawaii. Caitlin hadn’t seen her friend since she’d moved there and set up an alternative health clinic in Waikiki. And Maya had relocated to the place to attend the University of Hawaii.
Then like many people before her, Caitlin fell in love with the tropical island once she arrived. On a whim, she decided to move in with the sisters. While she loved living in paradise, she never expected the cost of living to be so high. And with her money running out, she expected to return to the mainland, but as luck would have it, she discovered that all her stars were aligned, and she landed a job at a prestigious hotel restaurant. Her hopes were high, and she believed she would one day find fulfillment working in the industry.
Unfortunately reality set in all too soon, and with each passing day, she became less and less sure this route would take her toward her goal. Although she handled food, she wasn’t doing any real cooking. Still, she worked long, difficult shifts toiling in the crude restaurant environment. Often she wondered whether she’d fallen back in time, and was among foul-mouthed soldiers from the seventeenth century.
But, she reminded herself, working in the kitchen was far better than following in her mother’s footsteps. Due to whatever issues her mother faced, she had abandoned Caitlin as a baby. Caitlin was raised by her grandparents, who had reared her to become strong and independent. Now it was her turn to take care of them. And when she started in the workforce, she regularly sent them a part of her paycheck after all her expenses were paid off. It was the least she could do for them.
Caitlin reached up to wipe a thin film of sweat from her forehead. The light fixture hung low over the prep table, illuminating the work surface, but the proximity of the necessary fixture made it seem like a heat lamp. Underneath the black toque and kitchen uniform, she roasted, and knew that she’d be sweaty and gross by the end of the day. She let out a sigh.
Quinn glanced over at her, noting her restlessness. Normally Caitlin loved being in the kitchen, immersed in the sounds of frantic busyness. People in the kitchen didn’t walk, they ran. Metal spatulas banged on pans while the oven door slammed somewhere in the vast, high-tech cooking space.
“I really need to get out of here,” Caitlin said, shrugging as she grabbed another potato. But Quinn didn’t take the bait and didn’t ask her to expand on her statement. She was in the same position as Caitlin, although her friend had worked at the resort for a longer time.
The mound of peeled spuds was growing, and Caitlin needed to start dicing them soon. Usually, she could block the small questioning voice inside of her, but today it crashed over her other thoughts. The head chef knew his stuff, but he wasn’t interested in teaching anyone or pushing any boundaries. He was satisfied with the status quo, and he felt no need to go beyond that. His position was envied by almost everyone in the kitchen. He was the captain of the brigade, and everyone followed his orders.
“Although he wasn’t a good captain,” she muttered sarcastically under her breath. But she shook her head, trying to stem her negativity.
She swept all the vegetable peels into the garbage bin beside the table. Then she grabbed one of the potatoes and started to cut it with more force than was necessary. Day in and day out she washed, peeled, chopped vegetables, and dried greens in the spinner. During her time here she’d made hundreds of salads and could probably assemble one in her sleep. There was no creativity involved in her tasks, or rather there was the possibility to use creativity, but she wasn’t allowed to deviate from Chef Dan Crawley’s formulas. She understood that he wanted to produce consistent and good food, but she needed growth as a cook.
Caitlin glanced over at Junior who toiled away several paces down from her. One of the oldest members of their crew, he didn’t seem to mind that he worked at the lowest rung in the kitchen. In fact, he seemed happy with his position as a prep cook and had no aspirations to accomplish more.
But not Caitlin. Ambition burned into her since she was a kid. That drive allowed her to work through college. And that same fire made her forge a path into the food industry. Except now the hotel had stifled her drive. After working here she’d seen three prep people actually cook something and move up to become line cooks. Perhaps being female held her back. Certainly people moving up in the hierarchy happened to be males.
A sudden string of loud expletives came from the pass, the section where the food was inspected before it left the kitchen. Caitlin looked up from her work and stared at the pass. She couldn’t help it, and neither could anyone else that worked in the prep area.
The shout was followed by the shattering of a plate flying against the wall.
“What’s happening?” Quinn whispered.
Caitlin squinted and saw the head chef gesturing to the plate. “I think one of the servers brought back some Dead Food, and Chef’s having an aneurysm about it.”
Quinn’s face turned white. “Uh-oh, he’ll be in one of his moods again. You should keep your eyes down and continue working.”
Caitlin should have listened to her friend, but she was too busy gazing at the green cook who got the verbal beating. If Chef had chosen Caitlin to work the line, she would never have messed up like her coworker. When Dead Food came back from the front room, it meant one of two things: the dish was improperly cooked, or the patron didn’t order what was sent out. Caitlin recalled the sous-chef mentioning that a celebrity was dining at the restaurant tonight. If the line cook had prepared the food for that patron, then it was no wonder Chef was spitting mad. It made his crew look like an amateurish bunch of fools. And because he ran the brigade, it reflected badly on his reputation.
“You!” Chef shouted, his voice reverberating across the suddenly quiet room.
Caitlin’s eyes swung to him, and her heart shrank when she saw that his finger pointed straight at her. She swallowed hard, wishing that she had heeded Quinn’s warning.
He marched to her workstation. “What the hell are you looking at?”
“Nothing, Chef.” She dropped her eyes to the cutting board and resumed her chopping. She gripped the knife handle, the whites of her knuckles showing as she tried to stop the trembling in her hands. From experience, she knew that once Chef got into his tantrums, he became scary and out of control. He was in fact known to make grown men and women cry. And Caitlin knew that the angrier he got, the more sadistic he became. The last thing she wanted was to incite his tyrannical temper. But before she had dropped her gaze, she had already glimpsed the crazed spark in his eyes. Suddenly she had a sinking suspicion that she was already too late.
“How long have you been here?” he barked.
“I’ve been here for nine months, Chef,” she said, licking her dry lips.
He narrowed his eyes.
Holding her breath, she prayed that he would go back to man the pass. But it wasn’t meant to be. His beefy hand wrapped around her upper arm, yanking her to the side as he gazed down at her cutting board. He glanced at Quinn, who was furiously slicing her carrots, pretending that nothing was happening. His gaze turned back to Caitlin, and as he spoke, his grip tightened on her arm, shaking her. “Nine months here, and your chopping is still shit,” he growled. “Your potato pieces are so uneven that my five-year-old could do better. The only thing that you have going for you is your looks.” He reached down and grabbed her crotch. “You might have more talent using this in the streets than in my kitchen.”
Shock shot through her and her mouth dropped open. He had assaulted her. No one was ever allowed to touch her like this. In the next moment, her anger rose to the fore. She seized his hand and flung it aside. “Don’t you dare touch me again,” she snarled.
“Oh, so what are you going to do about it?”
He bared his teeth, although she could tell that he was enjoying this. He knew full well that he held the cards in this game. The green cook wasn’t enough to satisfy his anger, and he wanted another target. Unfortunately for him, she wasn’t willing to be his target. She took a step back, her fingers fumbling on the knot in her apron strings. When the tie released, she dragged the material over her head.
“I quit,” she said, throwing the apron on the table with as much force as she could muster. Then pivoting on her heels, she marched out of the kitchen.
Caitlin wasn’t sure how she managed to get to the change room without collapsing. She knew there was no way she would take back her words. Since she worked here, she was already aware that verbal abuse came with the territory. But she wasn’t prepared to be sexually assaulted on the job. And then as she started to clear her locker, reality sank in. What was she going to do now? She needed the money from this job.
Caitlin’s cell phone began to ring. Slowly pulling out the device, she looked down at the screen. It was her grandparents calling. She didn’t feel like putting on a cheerful voice and talking to them, so she allowed the call to go to messaging. Debating whether she should check her phone, she sighed and decided to listen to the message. She knew that if something bad happened to them, she would never forgive herself. They said that they were all right, but she still felt responsible for their welfare. Except now she was jobless, she reminded herself. And she couldn’t afford to keep sending them money when she needed to fund her living expenses. Groceries on the island were expensive, and she had to pay her portion of the rent. And while her roommates might sympathize with her situation, and would help her out while she got back on her feet, she couldn’t rely on their generosity indefinitely.
But what was her plan now? The question echoed in her head, and she felt the hard lump in her throat. When she awoke this morning, she didn’t think she would be unemployed. She banged a fist against the metal door, the force of the hit giving her no satisfaction. All this time she was in Hawaii, she didn’t mind living frugally. But her hopes and dreams fueled her. Obviously, she had to find another job, but news of this episode would spread in the restaurant circles, and Chef would likely tell lies about her. No manager would want to hire anyone perceived as trouble. Suddenly her dream of becoming a chef seemed impossible to reach.