Confused, he turned and marched away. With so much at stake in his restaurant, including, it seemed, his reputation, his funny feelings for an employee were irrelevant. Nothing. Whatever trickled through his bloodstream, it had to be more annoyance than attraction. After all, recommendation from Nico or not, she’d sort of walked in and taken over his restaurant.
* * *
Dani stared after the chef as he left. She wasn’t expecting someone so young...or so gorgeous. At least six feet tall, with wavy brown hair so long he had it tied off his face and gray eyes, the guy could be a celebrity chef on television back home. Just looking at him had caused her breathing to stutter. She actually felt a rush of heat careen through her veins. He was that good-looking.
But it was also clear that he was in over his head without a maître d’. As she’d stood in the back of the long line to get into the restaurant, her good old-fashioned American common sense had kicked in, and she’d simply done what needed to be done: pushed her way to the front, grabbed some menus and seated customers. And he’d hired her.
Behind her someone said, “You’d better keep your hair behind your ears. He’ll yell about it being in your face and potentially in his food once he gets over being happy you’re here.”
She turned to see one of the waitresses. Dressed in black trousers and a white blouse, she looked slim and professional.
“That was happy?”
Her pretty black ponytail bobbed as she nodded. “Sì. That was happy.”
“Well, I’m going to hate seeing him upset.”
“Prepare yourself for it. Because he gets upset every day. Several times a day. That’s why Gino quit. I’m Allegra, by the way. The other two waitresses are Zola and Giovanna. And the chef is Chef Mancini. Everyone calls him Chef Rafe.”
“He said you have a system of how you want people seated?”
Allegra took Daniella’s seating chart and drew two lines dividing the tables into three sections. “Those are our stations. You seat one person in mine, one person in Zola’s and one person in Gio’s, then start all over again.”
Daniella smiled. “Easy-peasy.”
“Scusi?”
“That means ‘no problem.’”
“Ah. Sì.” Allegra smiled and walked away. Daniella took two more menus and seated another couple.
The lunchtime crowd that had assembled at the door of Mancini’s settled quickly. Dani easily found a rhythm of dividing the customers up between the three waitresses. Zola and Gio introduced themselves, and she actually had a good time being hostess of the restaurant that looked like an Old World farmhouse and smelled like pure heaven. The aromas of onions and garlic, sweet peppers and spicy meats rolled through the air, making her confident she could talk up the food and promise diners a wonderful meal, even without having tasted it.
During the lull after lunch, Zola and Gio went home. The dining room grew quiet. Not sure if she should stay or leave, since Allegra remained to be available for the occasional tourist who ambled in, Daniella stayed, too.
In between customers, she helped clear and reset tables, checked silverware to make sure it sparkled, arranged chairs so that everything in the dining room was picture-perfect.
But soon even the stragglers stopped. Daniella stood by the podium, her elbow leaning against it, her chin on her closed fist, wondering what Louisa was doing.
“Why are you still here?”
The sound of Rafe’s voice sent a surge of electricity through her.
She turned with a gasp. Her voice wobbled when she said, “I thought you’d need me for dinner.”
“You were supposed to go home for the break. Or are you sneakily trying to get paid for hours you really don’t work?”
Her eyes widened. Anger punched through her. What the hell was wrong with this guy? She’d done him a favor and he was questioning her motives?
Without thinking, she stormed over to him. Putting herself in his personal space, she looked up and caught his gaze. “And how was I supposed to know that, since you didn’t tell me?”
She expected him to back down. At the very least to realize his mistake. Instead, he scoffed. “It’s common sense.”
“Well, in America—”
He cut her off with a harsh laugh. “You Americans. Think you know everything. But you’re not in America now. You are in Italy.” He pointed a finger at her nose. “You will do what I say.”
“Well, I’ll be happy to do what you say as soon as you say something!”
Allegra stopped dropping silverware onto linen-covered tables. The empty, quiet restaurant grew stone-cold silent. Time seemed to crawl to a stop. The vein in Rafe’s temple pulsed.
Dani’s body tingled. Every employee in the world knew it wasn’t wise to yell at the boss, but, technically, she wasn’t yelling. She was standing up to him. As a foster child, she’d had to learn how to protect herself, when to stay quiet and when to demand her rights. If she let him push her around now, he’d push her around the entire month she worked for him.
He threw his hands in the air, pivoted away from her and headed to the kitchen. “Go the hell home and come back for dinner.”
Daniella blew out the breath she’d been holding. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt, but the tingling in her blood became a surge of power. He might not have said the words, but she’d won that little battle of wills.
Still, she felt odd that their communication had come down to a sort of yelling match and knew she had to get the heck out of there.
She grabbed her purse and headed for the old green car she and Louisa had found in the garage.
Ten minutes later, she was back in the kitchen of Palazzo di Comparino.
Though Louisa had sympathetically made her a cup of tea, she laughed when Daniella told her the story.
“It’s not funny,” Dani insisted, but her lips rose into a smile when she thought about how she must have looked standing up to the big bad chef everybody seemed to be afraid of. She wouldn’t tell her new friend that standing up to him had put fire in her blood and made her heart gallop like a prize stallion. She didn’t know what that was all about, but she did know part of it, at least, stemmed from how good-looking he was.
“Okay. It was a little funny. But I like this job. It would be great to keep it for the four weeks I’m here. But he didn’t tell me what time I was supposed to go back. So we’re probably going to get into another fight.”
“Or you could just go back at six. If he yells that you’re late, calmly remind him that he didn’t give you the time you were to return. Make it his fault.”
“It is his fault.”
Louisa beamed. “Exactly. If you don’t stand up to him now, you’ll either lose the job or spend the weeks you work for him under his thumb. You have to do this.”
Dani sighed. “That’s what I thought.”
Taking Louisa’s advice, she returned to the restaurant at six. A very small crowd had built by the maître d’ podium, and when she entered, she noticed that most of the tables weren’t filled. Rafe shoved a stack of menus at her and walked away.
She shook her head, but smiled at the next customers in line. He might have left without a word, but he hadn’t engaged her in a fight and it appeared she still had her job.
Maybe the answer to this was to just stay out of his way?
The