Too Darn Hot Read Free

exasperating friend. “Let’s leave ex-husbands out of this. Unless you’d like to talk about Gary?”
    In response, Joy stuck out her tongue.
    Lina grinned. “I don’t know how Gary could have accused you of being immature.”
    “Beats me.”
    The kitchen door swung open, and Lina found herself holding her breath. She let it out when the maitre d’, Cookie D’Angelo, emerged with two dessert-laden plates—respectable-looking bananas Foster—and delivered them to the next table.
    Lina wondered how an Amazon like this—six feet if she was an inch—had ended up with the name Cookie. Her hair was a short platinum cap, her clothes an eclectic blend of colors and styles that thumbed its nose at Madison Avenue but somehow worked admirably on Cookie D’Angelo.
    She stopped at their table. “Hi, Joy. How did you like the Middle Eastern class?”
    Joy attended so many of the biweekly cooking classes held at The Cookhouse that she’d become something of a regular.
    “I loved it. I’ve been practicing my falafel since Wednesday.”
    “I can attest to that,” Lina muttered. Three days of her roommate’s attempts at falafel made even this lousy restaurant look passable. When it came to the culinary arts, Joy had more enthusiasm than talent.
    “Why aren’t you eating your duck, Lina?” Cookie asked.
    Lina closed her eyes. Lord, give me strength.
    Cookie said, “The duck is one of the few things that’s good tonight.” She glanced furtively at the kitchen door and slid into a chair, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “This is hell night, pure and simple. Just when we think it can’t get worse—” from her mobile mouth came the sounds of a bomb whistling to earth and exploding “—another disaster.”
    Joy said, “We already know about the incinerated pork chops.”
    “Lamb chops, and you wouldn’t be smelling them if the range hood didn’t have PMS. On top of that, the dishwasher isn’t working.”
    “That would be Joe, right?” Lina said.
    “Well, that dishwasher isn’t working, either, but I meant the mechanical one. Chrissie’s a no-show, and Tommy and Deirdre had a fight and aren’t playing nice. They’re Eric’s assistants, a couple of local high school kids,” she explained to Lina. “Anyway, the bread is their responsibility.” As if to emphasize her point, Cookie plucked a roll from the linen-lined basket and thumped it soundly on the table. The thing was distressingly durable. “Great kids, but sometimes...” she growled, miming double strangulation.
    Joy shook her head in amazement. “What a night!”
    “It gets better.” Cookie’s body language signaled the coup de grace. “The storm yesterday knocked out our power for something like twenty hours, only we didn’t know it. The freezer... refrigerators...” She wrinkled her nose. “Everything spoiled. And our fish vendor—” she raised her palms in disbelief “—just plain doesn’t show.”
    “Maybe he eloped with Chrissie,” Lina ventured.
    “So we had to cancel all of the appetizers and most of the entrées on tonight’s menu. Then the new produce vendor brings us icky-poo veggies at the very last minute.” She grimaced at the sight of the two untouched salads. “Normally if that happened, Eric would just eighty-six the salads. But seeing as we didn’t have too much else to offer tonight...” She shrugged helplessly.
    Joy shot Lina a look that said, See? I told you there was a logical explanation , which Lina answered with a look that said, Any decent restaurant should be able to handle the occasional crisis without falling apart, though her heart wasn’t in it. She knew that a disasterfest of this magnitude would have brought even the best-run restaurant to its knees. She had to admire Eric for having the grit to roll up his sleeves and forge ahead. No wonder the man looked exhausted.
    She winced inwardly recalling her childish outburst.
    Cookie rose and collected the salad plates, her clunky