By now, the details of my latest failure would have made it into every manager’s office. Not only had I ruined a night’s worth of business at their top-rated restaurant, my fuck-up had made the gossip pages of the newspaper.

My hands began to sweat on the magazine.

The problem wasn’t my cooking, of course. I was a good chef. A natural, as one of my teachers had said. At twenty-two years old I’d finally found something I was good at. And I’d needed this job on my résumé, damn it.

“Audrey!” a voice barked.

Startled, I dropped the magazine and scrambled to stand. “G-g-good morning,” I stammered, shaking the hand that Bill Burton offered me.

“Come with me,” he said, leading the way into his plush office.

My mouth dry, I followed him. He waited for me to sit down in the chair facing his big desk, and then he shut the door with an ominous click.

Shit!

I sat up straight in my chair. I was going to go down fighting.

He sat in his chair and measured me with his eyes. There was a deep silence before he finally said, “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Right. Okay. That was a better opener than “Get the fuck out of our office building.” But where to start? “Well, sir…” I hesitated, hating the tentative sound of my voice. C’mon, Audrey! This is for all the marbles. “I’m an excellent chef, sir. Top of my class. But BPG keeps giving me assignments outside the kitchen.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Your job title is intern, sweetie. Nobody becomes a great chef without learning the business.”

Sweetie? I had to bite down on my tongue to keep myself from screaming. But now was not the time for a rant. Deep breaths, Audrey. “I do want to learn the business,” I said carefully. “But when you toss an intern into a job unprepared, you shouldn’t be astonished when things go badly.”

Flipping open a folder on his desk, he frowned down at its contents. “Six weeks ago your first assignment was tracking seafood deliveries at the fish market. You lasted one day.”

“True.” I’d reported for work at four-thirty in the morning, where a computer system I’d never seen before had greeted me.

“You were supposed to order two hundred lobsters for our flagship seafood restaurant. But you ordered two hundred gross. That’s more than twenty-eight thousand lobsters.”

I kept the cringe off my face, but just barely. “Nobody taught me the software,” I insisted.

Bill Burton sighed. “Fine, but software wasn’t the problem last night, was it?”

“Yes it was,” I insisted again. “Indirectly.”

He sat back in his chair. “Explain.”

“My latest position has been at l’Etre Suprême.” It was Boston’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, and I’d felt lucky just walking in there every night. Chef Jacques was one of my culinary heroes.

But they hadn’t put me in the kitchen where I could be useful. Or course not. They had me up front, working on the restaurant’s reservations.