The Vineyards Of Calanetti. Rebecca Winters

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 evening went smoothly. Again, the wonderful scents that filled the air prompted her to talk up the food, the waitstaff and the wine.

      After an hour or so, Rafe called her into the kitchen. Absolutely positive he had nothing to yell at her about, she straightened her shoulders and walked into the stainless-steel room and over to the stove where he stood.

      “You wanted to see me?”

      He presented a fork filled with pasta to her. “This is my signature ravioli. I hear you talking about my dishes, so I want you to taste so you can honestly tell customers it is the best food you have ever eaten.”

      She swallowed back a laugh at his confidence, but when her lips wrapped around the fork and the flavor of the sweet sauce exploded on her tongue, she pulled the ravioli off the fork and into her mouth with a groan. “Oh, my God.”

      “It is perfect, sì?”

      “You’re right. It is probably the best food I’ve ever eaten.”

      Emory, the short, bald sous-chef, scrambled over. “Try this.” He raised a fork full of meat to her lips.

      She took the bite and again, she groaned. “What is that?”

      “Beef brasato.”

      “Oh, my God, that’s good.”

      A younger chef suddenly appeared before her with a spoon of soup. “Minestrone,” he said, holding the spoon out to her.

      She drank the soup and closed her eyes to savor. “You guys are the best cooks in the world.”

      Everyone in the kitchen stopped. The room fell silent.

      But Emory laughed. “Chef Rafe is one of the best chefs in the world. These are his recipes.”

      She turned and smiled