Bliss

by Hilary Fields

  And I think… maybe I’m being a bit of a bitch myself right now—to poor Enzo if not to Blake, Sera realized, suddenly shamed. It was coming back to her now. She’d invited the eighteen-year-old Lorenzo, who had made no secret of his crush on her these past couple months, to this chilly rendezvous out of some vague notion of payback. If Blake can make out in the kitchen right under my nose, why shouldn’t I do the same? Serve the chef some of his own sauce; see how he likes it, she’d thought with a spurt of juvenile spite. But all the time another part of her had been thinking, wishfully… Maybe he’ll be jealous; regret what he’s done?

  Dumb ploy, Sera. Really, magnificently, dumb.

  Enzo didn’t seem to think so. Her pants, thanks to his efforts, were puddled around her ankles, and the lusty busboy had only his jockey shorts going for him at the moment. Smashed salmon paste caused Sera to slide precariously atop the marble-topped prep station, threatening to topple them both to the floor in fishy disgrace. As if this wasn’t enough of a mistake, she thought, wincing. Nothing says “oops” like your naked ass skidding in the salmon mousse.

  She’d met Blake over mousse, as a matter of fact, though it had been chocolate, not salmon, back then.

  It was Sera’s final semester at the French Culinary Institute, and she was just a credit or so shy of graduation. She was also deeply, alarmingly in debt and facing a future of pitiful pay and ungodly hours for the next several years—a purgatory known in the industry as “paying your dues.” She’d made her peace with that, though it meant putting off her dream of starting her own line of custom cakes and confections until she was more established. But in order to get established, she’d have to land that all-important first job.

  Blake Austin had the power to offer her that. Those who worked in his kitchens… well, they could write their own tickets—if they survived the experience. It was whispered that not everyone did.

  “He looks like Gabriel Byrne,” her friend Mindy murmured in her ear as they held up the wall in the institute’s test kitchen, making themselves inconspicuous. “With a little Colin Farrell mixed in.” She said this with none of the sighing or breathlessness such an observation might be expected to engender. Rather, her tone was clinical.

  Mindy was a butcher. Big, burly, with a nostril ring and short, spiky bleached blond hair, she was prone to wearing T-shirts with logos like “Meat Is Murder… Tasty, Tasty Murder” under her bloodstained aprons. She could butterfly a veal chop in seconds flat, make you a sweet Italian sausage fit to weep over, or cut you a chateaubriand that would have your guests offering you sexual favors for life. But she couldn’t care less about sweets. She was only in this class to fill out her requirements. Thus, she alone among the twenty or so students assembled in front of their final projects failed to tremble at the palate of the great Blake Austin, who had deigned to drop in on this class—on the condition, it was rumored, that he got to poach the best student for his newest restaurant venture.

  “Shite!” A fork ricocheted from the nearest sink. “Absolute shite. You call this a torte? My aunt Sally could shit a better torte, and she’s been dead seven years! Get out of my sight.”

  One by one, her classmates were dismissed and humiliated. By the time it was Sera’s turn to be critiqued, she was sweating, nauseated, and not at all sure she wasn’t about to faint. When Austin’s spoon dipped into the deceptively simple triple chocolate mousse she’d concocted, it felt like he was delving into her soul. But would he find it wanting?

  “Hm,” he grunted. “Hm, hm, hm.” Cunning black eyes skewered Serafina, and she felt herself grow warm unexpectedly. “Is that… cardamom I taste?” One arched brow cocked itself, as though almost too weary to complete the gesture, but was making a special exception for her.

  Sera nodded, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. She’d added the spice to the white chocolate layer at the last second, wanting just a hint of the exotic to linger on the tongue.

  “And do I detect a soupçon of… what, is that, orange essence… in the bittersweet?”

  “Ah… yes, Chef.”

  There was a pause, during which Serafina died several times.

  “Bloody brilliant,” he proclaimed. “I don’t mind telling you, when I caught sight of that mousse, I thought I might perish from sheer boredom—I mean, really, who makes chocolate mousse anymore? But you’ve surprised me, and that doesn’t happen often. Damned if you haven’t completely reinvented the dish. It’s like you’ve perfumed the air around the mousse, the spice is done with such a light touch. And yet it adds ten dimensions to the taste. And the texture. Fuck me, but I’ve never had a mousse so bloody delightful. It’s like getting blown by a thousand-dollar hooker, that mousse is. Makes you beg for it. You—what’s your name, little bird?”

  “S-S-Serafina, Chef,” Sera stuttered, oblivious to both the envious glares of her classmates and Mindy’s alarmed gaze.

  “Sera-fucking-fina. Bloody brilliant. Well, Serafina”—he drew her name out like he was licking it off the spoon he still held—“they’re going to be begging for you at my new restaurant. So what do you say, girl? Are you in?”

  And in a quavering voice, Sera had said she was.

  She’d said the same when he’d asked if she was game for a quickie.

  Somehow, she hadn’t said no to anything since.

  She’d signed a contract to be Blake’s executive pastry chef, and her life had never been the same. Her career had taken off, her name and fame spreading throughout Manhattan’s culinary circles. When he’d suggested branching out into socialite weddings and celebrity events, she’d been one hundred percent on board—not so much because she liked rubbing elbows with the rich and famous but because those were the people who had the disposable income to pay for the kind of fantastically elaborate cakes and pastries she most loved to craft. With his knack for knowing what the fickle foodie community craved and her timeless confectionary brilliance, Blake had assured her, they would have the A-list beating down their door. She’d believed him, and he hadn’t been wrong.

  Sera wasn’t quite sure she’d loved Blake Austin exactly. But he’d easily engulfed her whole world.

  Getting to the top of the heap in New York City’s exclusive culinary circles was like being the lead singer in a rock band—you had groupies of all shapes, sizes, and sexes panting after you. To her eternal shame, Serafina had been one of Blake’s. She’d been flattered by his attention and extravagant praise of her talents in the beginning, dazzled by his practiced charm as he pursued and easily won her. In awe, shy and insecure, she’d written off his abrasive manner, excusing his hot temper and over-the-top insults as part of his celebrity chef schtick. He isn’t the first egotistical chef to rule a kitchen with an iron hand, she’d told herself. He’s just striving for perfection—in his own way. It’s admirable, really.

  And at first, he’d been so charming when they were alone. Whispering sweet nothings about her sweet creations in a way that was absurdly gratifying, and more than a little sexy. She’d felt like she was the only woman in the world who truly knew the real Blake Austin—brilliant, demanding, intense… and all hers. To have the attention of such a man… to be the woman he chose? What woman wouldn’t be a little swept away?

  By the time he’d dropped the flattery and begun belittling Sera for her very personal, private “shortcomings,” telling her no other man would tolerate what he termed her “limitations,” she’d been so humiliated and confused she’d actually felt grateful that he continued to “put up with her,” as he put it. Desperate to please, to measure up, she’d put on a brave face, kept a bottle of liquid courage in her apron, and soldiered on. At least, she’d consoled herself, he appreciates my professionalism in the kitchen.

  Or he had.

  If he catches me like this, drunk in the walk-in with the busboy…. Oh, God… he’ll eviscerate me! And God only knows what he’ll do to Lorenzo.

  I’ve got to stop this, Sera thought, panicked. But it was too late.

  Tw
o things happened at that moment.

  Enzo made a play for her panties…

  And the door swung open.

  “Serafina, stop your dawdling and get back to work!” Blake roared before he was halfway through the walk-in’s wide doorway. He stopped stock-still, however, when he caught sight of his girlfriend en deshabille and in flagrante delicto with his most junior busboy.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Sera let out a shriek that probably shattered half the country club’s champagne flutes.

  Lorenzo yipped like a coyote and dove for his pants, leaving Serafina exposed on the marble-topped counter among the smashed appetizers and smeared amuse bouche.

  For a moment Blake said nothing, simply surveying the scene as the rest of his prep team gathered behind him to witness the confrontation.

  Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck…

  With fingers made clumsy by booze, Sera reached for her bra straps and fumbled to fix her clothes. A knife of dread cut through the last of her fast-dying buzz. Her face burned bright red as she saw her fellow cooks peering avidly over their leader’s shoulders to see what was going on.

  One thing was immediately clear. She might have served the chef a taste of his own sauce, but it was her goose she’d cooked. Sera’s mouth worked, but no words emerged. She was frozen, breathless, gaze riveted in terror upon her boyfriend’s face.

  Blake’s black eyes narrowed, but his countenance remained expressionless. It was a conceit of his that he always dressed for the weddings he catered as an invited guest rather than in chef’s whites, mingling with the partygoers and schmoozing before getting down to business in the kitchen. Today he was sporting an impeccable cream linen suit, silver-blue pocket square, and pale pink Ralph Lauren shirt she herself had picked out to complement his swarthy Black Irish good looks. And look good, he did—only the slight twitch around his deep-set eyes marred his appealingly louche features. By comparison, she looked like someone had dropped her off a three-story building to land—splat!—on a loaded banquet table.

  “Well, well.” He sighed as if positively smothering in ennui. “Of course it would be the freezer. You’ve always been a cold fish in the bedroom, Serafina. I suppose it only stands to reason this is where you’d go to get off.”

  There were gasps and titters from the cooks and caterers behind him. None of them, however, could guess how pointed Blake’s barb really was. It struck Sera a devastating blow. The high color drained from her face and left her completely gray. She struggled to her feet and righted her stained garments, standing panting before the marble-topped altar of her shame.

  I didn’t even practice a revenge speech, Sera thought with a pang. Instead of “How’s it feel, big man?” or “See how you like it!” she could do no more than gulp wordlessly now that the moment was upon them. It was that, or throw up in front of all of these people. Her head spun. Man, I could use another drink right about now. Maybe twelve.

  Her boyfriend didn’t appear concerned with her lack of explanation—or her betrayal. In fact, he seemed to have dismissed her from his mind entirely. Addressing his crew, he said, “All this will have to be thrown out. The Wagyu filet mignon. The wild Alaskan sockeye. The Petrossian caviar. Anything that has been in contact with this filth”—he waved demonstratively—“is unfit to be served to our guests. Oh, and Lorenzo—you’re fired. ¡Estás despedido! ¿Comprendes? Now, Serafina…” He returned his attention to her with menace as rich and smooth as one of his famous terrines of foie gras.

  “Perhaps, Serafina, once you have… composed yourself, you will care to explain to four hundred of New York’s wealthiest, hardest-to-please socialites that they’ll be eating Mickey D’s for dinner when they return from their mimosas on the beach instead of the six-course feast they expect.”

  “I… but…” He couldn’t seriously mean to trash all this food? But the others were already filing past her with garbage bags, reaching into the shelves with stoic expressions. Out went the amuse bouche. Out went the gravlax. The blinis and the cheese puffs and the crab-stuffed mushrooms also met their doom. Sweet heavenly biscuits, the appetizers alone represented three days’ work on the part of their entire team! All because her unclothed bum had been somewhere in the vicinity? “No, Blake, wait! We can still save—”

  “No excuses!” Blake snapped coldly. “You have single-handedly ruined half the comestibles in this kitchen. Fix this, Serafina, or face the consequences,” he threatened, waving the filleting knife under her nose. “Now get out of my sight. I have no time for amateurs.”

  He thrust himself away from the refrigerator door with a shrug of his shoulders and turned to snap at his minions. “And would somebody, for the love of all that is holy, be so good as to sanitize this fucking station before the health inspector arrives and demands to know why there are arse prints on surfaces on which food is prepared!”

  When nobody moved, Blake’s voice rose to its usual roar. “Move!”

  The kitchen crew scattered.

  * * *

  The ladies’ room door couldn’t shut behind Sera fast enough. Not wanting to run into any of the catering staff—who were surely snickering into their sleeves at her misfortune right now—she’d escaped the kitchen and found a restroom down one of the country club’s lavishly decorated halls. Safe at last, she darted into the stall farthest from the front, snapping it locked behind her and leaning her back against the divider. Her hands trembled as she reached in her pocket, withdrew the flask she’d secreted there. Just one more belt. To take the edge off. To calm her down. To forget the awful, hateful look on Blake’s face and make this disaster somehow just a nightmare she could still wake up from. Screwing the cap back on, she stuffed a piece of gum in her mouth, chewed despite the dry Sahara her mouth had become. Wouldn’t do for the Andersons to catch their pastry chef smelling like a distillery, would it?

  Though how Blake expects me to explain to them why he threw out $20,000 worth of perfectly good canapés just to make a point, I don’t know, she thought with a spurt of terror. He hadn’t had to go that far. But Blake was given to grand gestures—the more spiteful, the better.

  Yet who was more hateful in this situation? After all, hadn’t she just gotten an innocent kid fired due to her shenanigans? Wasn’t she the one kicking up drama and putting a woman’s wedding celebration in jeopardy in the process?

  Fix this, Serafina. Stop fucking around and figure out a way to salvage the situation.

  Exiting the stall reluctantly, Serafina washed her shaking hands and splashed cold water on her face. She stared at her reflection in the mirror with loathing, and not just at the outward signs of her distress—the bloodshot gray eyes, wan greasy skin, and lank black hair unflatteringly caught back in a hairnet. Bad though she looked on the outside—like a candidate for A&E’s Intervention, if she were being honest with herself—it was what was inside that truly appalled her. What would her parents have said had they been alive to see how their daughter had grown up? What would Aunt Pauline think of the darling niece she’d raised to know right from wrong? There was little trace of that bright, hopeful girl in the mirror now.

  “C’mon, Sera,” she said to her reflection, slapping her own cheeks to snap her back into focus. “This is no time for a come-to-Jesus moment. You’ve got four hundred hungry WASPs to placate—and fast.”

  Inhaling the deepest breath of her life, she forced herself to face the music, striding back into the country club kitchen with her spine stiff and the vodka singing a siren song through her veins. C’mon, it was telling her, it isn’t that bad, you’re Serafina Wilde! You can fix this. You can fix anything.

  Maybe the Maidstone Club could do something—after all, they regularly hosted several hundred guests at a time during the summer season. Their deep freezers had to be packed with the fixings for your basic surf-and-turf. If she could track down the general manager, if the staff would cooperate, maybe she could still salvage something of this mess—at least, if not to save her own reputation, to kee
p the bride from having the kind of disastrous wedding her social set would whisper over for seasons to come. She owed Lexi Anderson that much. The girl might be a starveling size two with a five-carat ring and highlights that cost more than Sera’s annual income, but she wasn’t half bad for all that. To ruin her big day… Christ on a cupcake, that’s enough bad karma to keep me in crappy boyfriends for the next six lifetimes.

  At least, Sera consoled herself, the cake would exceed all expectations. It was her masterpiece. Her finest creation in a long line of justly celebrated and much-coveted confections. It was gorgeous. It was scrumptious. It was…

  At a kid’s party in Brooklyn Heights.

  Serafina stared in horror at the contents of the oversized box marked, inexplicably, “Simpson Birthday,” trying not to scream at the sight of the pirate-ship-shaped chocolate fudge galleon that sailed gaily on a sea of foam-flecked fondant.

  No way. It wasn’t possible! No amount of vodka would make Sera fuck up this bad. She knew she’d packed up and correctly labeled the right cake for this wedding. One didn’t easily mistake a lovebird-themed, lemon buttercream–filled extravaganza with twelve tiers and eighty hours’ worth of gum paste flowers and sugarplum birdies painstakingly appliquéd to each layer for a third-grader’s dark chocolate buccaneer boat! She’d seen the Simpson cake off on its maiden voyage just this morning. So how had it drifted so far off course…

  There was only one explanation. And it was wearing a cream linen suit.

  And smirking at her.

  Sera could feel the eyes of the kitchen crew on her. Watching her wither under Blake’s bullying, as she’d done so often in the past. Watching her lose what little was left of her self-respect.

  Something inside her snapped. The years of humiliation, of kowtowing to this man… groveling for his approval, apologizing for her shortcomings while excusing his. God, why had she never seen what a douchebag he really was? Why had she so easily swallowed her pride, along with her self-esteem, washing them down with alcohol when they stuck in her craw? This wasn’t the woman Aunt Pauline had raised.