by Beth Bolden
It was a gamble, but the chance to work for Chef Aquino was worth any risk.
* * *
“I asked you to recommend your top three students,” Bastian Aquino said, leaning back in the chair opposite Charles’ desk. “Instead of three, I’m inundated with recommendation letters. Are you telling me that everyone in this graduating class is equally untalented?”
Charles shook his head, his full head of wavy, graying hair flopping over his eyes. Bastian had long been of the opinion that Charles was someone who fell into the category of “those who can’t, teach.” The hair was just another piece of evidence that he’d been right about him. Someone that sloppy couldn’t ever belong in a truly disciplined kitchen.
“There are some very talented students,” Charles said diplomatically. Another reason Bastian had never liked him; he wasn’t really honest, he was fucking diplomatic. And he’d learned in a twenty-year culinary career that you couldn’t ever be both.
Bastian cut right through his crap to the heart of the matter. “Who is the most talented? The one you’d most imagine fitting in at Terroir?”
Charles hesitated. Bastian, not usually the most patient person in the world, wanted to reach across the desk and squeeze his solid neck until the name fell out of his mouth. Three months ago, he’d decided he wanted an intern, so naturally had gone to the most prestigious academy of culinary arts with the intention of selecting their very best student.
It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. Charles wasn’t supposed to send him fifteen recommendation letters, all essentially the same. There was supposed to be someone who stood out. Someone who he instantly recognized as having the qualifications, the skill, and the talent to at least do what he told them to.
“There is one,” Charles finally said. “Unfortunately, he didn’t apply for your internship.”
Bastian stared at him. “He what?”
Charles cleared his throat. “He didn’t apply. Every single other student applied. But not this one.”
Shoving his chair back, and running a quick hand through his hair, Bastian prowled back and forth in front of Charles’ desk. “He what?”
“He didn’t apply,” he repeated, wincing. “He wants to go to Europe.”
Just that fact alone convinced Bastian that this was the intern he needed. Someone who knew he was better than everyone else. That was the student Bastian wanted to hire.
“Let me talk to him,” Bastian said. “I can persuade him.”
“I’m really not sure you can. He’s very determined. And I’m sure he’ll receive job offers from the European restaurants he’s applied to.” Charles shrugged, like Bastian was just supposed to accept that he wasn’t going to get the best student this graduating class offered. Clearly, he didn’t know Bastian very well, if he believed that was going to happen.
Bastian didn’t just expect the best—he demanded it. Out of the staff that surrounded him, out of the ingredients he cooked with, but most importantly, out of his own self.
He leaned forward, fists gripping the chair. “Let me talk to him.”
Charles continued to hesitate. “That’s not really our way here.”
Holding his breath, Bastian tried to count to ten like his anger management counselor had told him to do. He made it to four.
Not success, but progress, at least.
“You want me to continue to accept graduating students from this academy at Terroir?” Bastian demanded. “If you do, you will let me speak to this student. Now.”
“Now?” Charles looked confused.
“I’m here to finalize this decision. I don’t care where he’s at. Go get him now.”
“He’s not even here yet,” Charles stammered.
Bastian stared at him in stony silence, punctuated only by a knock on the door.
Rising to his feet, Charles shuffled over and opened it, exchanging a quick word with the person on the other side. Bastian, his patience in its death thralls, rolled his eyes. Finally, Charles opened the door wider, and Bastian saw the boy whom he had seen in the kitchen classroom yesterday. The one who’d gone out of his way to insult him, and in nearly the same breath, swore that he possessed the best set of qualifications.
“Kian, this is Chef Aquino,” Charles said. “He is here to select an intern for his restaurant, Terroir.”
Kian was so young. Had he been this young in culinary school? Bastian couldn’t remember. But Kian was definitely young, and slight, his white chef’s jacket nearly dwarfing his narrow shoulders and thin arms. Only an air of fierce determination and the look in his light blue eyes grabbed Bastian’s attention. This was someone who knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was Bastian.
That wasn’t very unusual. What was unusual was that, for the first time in a very long time, Bastian wanted back.
“Kian is our best student,” Charles added. “He was the one we were just discussing.”
Bastian prowled a bit closer to him and tried to ignore the feeling that he was a big bad wolf, after a particularly tasty bit of prey. He glanced up at Charles. “Not available? Not even here yet?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “He seems to be here now.”
Shrugging his shoulders, Charles gestured towards Kian, like you wanted him, there he is, my work here is done. Maybe that was why he’d ended up here, instead of working in a restaurant or even, God forbid, some hotel somewhere: a willingness to do the bare minimum and call it good.
Bastian eyed Kian resolutely. So he wanted to work in Europe, did he? Thought, just because he was the best in this small culinary school, in this even smaller graduating class, that he deserved better?
What he deserved was someone who was prepared to remind him every second of every shift that there was a higher ideal he was aspiring to. Someone who was willing to help him unlearn every bad habit instructors like Charles had instilled in him.
“So you want to go to Europe?” Bastian asked, and took in the momentary panic in Kian’s eyes. Had Charles been wrong? It probably wouldn’t be the first time, if he had been.
“I do. I did,” Kian said.
“Willing to work seventy hours a week for peanuts?” Bastian paused, gaze focused on Kian’s narrow, handsome face. “Willing to scrape plates for a year, just to get into the kitchen?”
He had no poker face whatsoever. Surprise, shock, denial flashed through his eyes in rapid succession. Charles, who still thought he was needed or useful, inserted a heavy sigh into the conversation.
“You’re supposed to be preparing these students for what comes next, Charles,” Bastian continued, barely wasting a breath. “Instead, you’re filling their heads with dreams and ideas. Even if they take him, they won’t let him near a stove. You know that. But it seems like he doesn’t know that.”
“He has a name,” Kian inserted testily. “And he wants to know the truth. If I work for you, will I get into the kitchen? And not just to scrape plates?”
Bastian knew he was a bastard. Knew that sometimes his employees even risked life and limb to call him that behind his back. Occasionally a recently ex-employee would even be ballsy enough to call him the Bastard to his face. But he never felt like one, not when he was demanding what he knew he deserved out of his employees—which was the very best. But he felt like one now, with Kian, all nervous naivety, not even given the basic information on what to expect from instructors who should have known better.
It felt wrong to take advantage of that lack of knowledge, but still, Bastian didn’t pause. He wanted the best; he needed it. And while Charles was a fucking moron, he’d identified Kian as the best. If he had to manipulate him and his overly obvious emotions, he’d do it.
“With Charles as your instructor, I’m surprised you weren’t training to be a dishwasher,” Bastian said cruelly.
“I’m here to be a chef. Not a dishwasher.” Kian’s lips were clamped tightly together, and there was a fierce determination in his eyes. And that, more than anything else, was what convinced Bastian that he was actually the
best in his class. Nobody with that look would ever settle for second best.
“Then you want to work at Terroir,” Bastian said, ladling on casual contempt thick and heavy. “But it seems that you didn’t think so when you sent your applications in. I don’t see one here with your name on it.”
Shame bloomed across Kian’s fair cheekbones. “Obviously, that was an unfortunate oversight . . .”
“Obviously,” Bastian interrupted.
“I would very much like to work for you,” Kian finally said, cheeks still flaming, but his chin held high, meeting Bastian’s cold eyes dead on.
Bastian had already made his decision, had played Kian like a fiddle to make sure he agreed with him, but it was the obvious pride that convinced him it was the right one. When Bastian inevitably yelled at him—likely in the first five minutes of his first shift, if not even earlier—Kian would take it, and with a stiff upper lip, fix whatever he’d fucked up.
He was that type and that type was the sort that Bastian liked to hire.
At least that was what he told himself as he and Kian shook hands, and he departed the academy. It had nothing to do with the fact that just touching him made his cold, dead heart race again in his chest. He’d just gotten excited about winning, something he loved almost as much as he loved his mother. That was all. In three weeks, when Kian officially started as his intern at Terroir, he would be just like any other chef under him. Under him professionally, but never personally, because Bastian didn’t do that. He’d only been tempted once before, and the way it had ended convinced him it couldn’t ever happen again.
Chapter Two
Chef Aquino showing up at Chef Charles’ office, right when Kian had been determined to talk to him about the Terroir internship, had been kismet. Even more amazingly, Chef Aquino acted determined to win him over, revealing some important facts that did make Kian uneasy, because clearly he didn’t know that Kian had already realized how stupid he’d been.
When the internship announcement had come out, Mark had been furious, and had threatened to tell everyone that the graduating student who’d won the internship had been the only student who hadn’t applied for it. It hadn’t been very hard to stop him. All Kian had to say was, “Do you really want to admit to everyone in the whole academy that you lost out on a prestigious position to someone who didn’t even apply for it?”
As it turned out, Mark didn’t want to advertise that particular fact, so he kept his usually noisy trap shut, and the other students, unsurprised that the top student in the class had won the top post-graduation position, moved on.
Chef Charles had pulled him aside the day before graduation, and in his office, showed him three letters from the European restaurants he’d applied to—two in Paris and one in London.
“They’re yours, if you want them,” Chef had said, but the kindness in his voice didn’t convince Kian at all.
“If I want them?”
Chef Charles pushed them closer to Kian. “I’m sure they’re acceptances.” Kian was moderately sure, too, but instead of replying, he merely grabbed the envelopes and stuffed them into his apron pocket. He had no intention of fulfilling Chef’s curiosity. Or anyone else’s, ever again.
Didn’t Chef remember what Chef Aquino had said when he was here? Didn’t Chef remember that all his encouragement to reach for the stars, and to apply at these international bastions of gastronomy, had all been based on a lie?
Maybe not a bald-faced lie, but a lie of omission, at least. Kian had no intention of slaving away in the dish room for a year at any of those restaurants. He didn’t intend to scrape plates until the head chef miraculously remembered his existence. His intention was to glean as much training and information as he could, and then move on, doing the same, until he was ready for his first executive chef position. In his notebook scrawled list of goals, he’d set the age at twenty-seven, but secretly, he felt he could accomplish everything even faster.
It was very simple: Chef Aquino wanted to teach, and Kian wanted to learn.
Then there was the attraction that Kian felt. But since he was utterly convinced it had to be one-sided, there was no point in even worrying about it. It wouldn’t interfere because the concept of Chef Aquino being interested in him was like the moon deciding to come down to the earth one starry night. It just wasn’t going to happen, and Kian told himself that was good, because it made something that could be very complicated, not very after all.
He’d open the envelopes later, when he was alone, Kian thought absently, and then promptly forgot about them completely because when he checked his email later that night, there was an email with his contract from Chef Aquino himself.
He’d start the day after graduation, and Kian could practically hear the sweet-sour tone of his voice as he read the email. “If that’s too soon, that’s too bad,” the email read. “And if you wanted to indulge in the sort of bacchanalian exploits that most students wish to after a graduation ceremony, that’s also too bad.”
Kian didn’t know what bacchanalian meant, but he did know that he wasn’t interested in it. What he was interested in was working. Specifically for Chef Aquino.
He showed up at the Terroir side door, as directed, fifteen minutes early—he’d read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, of course, and while there was a lot of crap that he couldn’t imagine being applicable to a three-Michelin-starred restaurant like Terroir, he’d taken to heart the emphasis Tony placed on not just being on time, but early. If Anthony Bourdain, the rock star rebel of the culinary world, could do it while he was on all the drugs he could get his hands on, then Kian could do it while he was clean and sober and well-rested.
A man wearing a bandana covered in chili peppers answered his hesitant knock. His face was bitter somehow, like Kian had just caught him sucking a slice of lemon, and he didn’t say anything, just stared right at Kian.
“Well?” he finally said impatiently. “Was there something you wanted? To stare?”
“I’m Kian Reynolds. I’m here to work for Chef Aquino.”
Kian felt, as the chili-bedecked man in front of him examined him from head to toe, carefully, like he was a dirt-crusted organic carrot or a particularly thorny hunk of ginger. “You’re the Bastard’s new intern?”
It wasn’t easy, but Kian kept the same pleasant expression plastered to his face. He knew everything always showed, and he’d been so determined that this wouldn’t happen today that he’d spent a lot of the night before practicing neutral expressions in his bathroom mirror.
But the man in front of him must be a lot more observant than Kian was capable of fooling because he laughed, suddenly and unexpectedly. It was a good laugh, a friendly laugh, even though it was tinged at the edges with the same bitterness that existed in the corners of his expression.
“Haven’t you ever heard him called the Bastard before?” he asked curiously.
“No,” Kian said stiffly, “and that’s really inappropriate, considering he’s the executive chef and your boss.”
The man leaned closer. “Let me let you in on a little secret before you walk in here. If you don’t find a way to keep a sense of humor about what an absolute asshole Bastian Aquino is, then you’re going to lose your soul.”
This seemed unnecessarily dramatic for a man who wore chili peppers on his head.
“Can you just please take me to Chef Aquino?” Kian begged. He knew the weird man in front of him had blown through all his carefully neutral expressions already and he didn’t have any extra in reserve.
He gave Kian another one of those penetrating looks, before suddenly nodding sharply. “Yeah, sure.”
Opening the door wider, he let Kian walk in, and as he stepped over the threshold, he had one of those full-body realizations that nothing was ever going to be the same again. He was a chef now and he was working for Bastian Aquino at Terroir. This was only the beginning and it was already awesome. He could go anywhere from here; only the sky was the limit.
The doo
r opened into an employee locker room, narrow metal lockers lining the space. “Yours is somewhere,” the man offhandedly tossed out. “Your whites will be in it. What did you say your name was again?”
“Kian,” he said, glancing up and down the row for his name written on the piece of blue tape haphazardly stuck to each metal door.
“Oh, you’re over here,” he said, pointing to one, near the end. “I’m Xander, by the way. Xander Bridges. I’m the saucier, and I work the line during service.”
“Oh,” Kian said, feeling very impressed. He’d heard great things about Terroir’s sauces, in particular, and this was the man who created them. Maybe it was okay that he liked to say rude things about Chef Aquino and wear weird headwraps, if he was that talented.
“I’ll take you to Aquino now,” Xander said. “Come with me.”
They walked through the kitchen, which was so vast, it was hard for Kian to conceptualize. The “line” itself was wide and while not exactly spacious, had clearly been designed to maximize a chef’s natural movements as he prepared dishes. The range was enormous, with at least twenty burners, several which were already occupied by huge pots, bubbling away even though it was not even eight in the morning.
“I also do the soup, sometimes,” Xander said, the pride in his voice betraying how prestigious being asked to make the daily soup was. “Which is why I’m here so early.”
They passed though the line, which was still quiet. There were several long stainless steel prep tables, right next to a whole line of commercial-grade walk-in fridges. “Veggies,” Xander said, pointing to a door. “Dairy. Meat. Seafood. There’s another larger one, on the other end of the building, for wine.”
Chef Aquino’s office was easily identifiable. It was glass-walled, and even though there were oatmeal-colored shades, they were all drawn up, leaving Chef to survey his entire domain at any time. Kian had a feeling he rarely drew the shades. There was a single desk, metal and glass, with a keyboard and an oversize computer monitor.