Page 44 of Escape To Paradise
“Hey, Maverick. Nice seeing you again.”
Maverick’s expression changed; his smile disappeared. “Oh, you.”
“Yeah, don’t you remember? I promised to work on getting you a better food menu.”
“Yeah. I didn’t forget.” Maverick turned around and walked inside.
“You will not greet me?” I asked, following him inside. It was unusual for him to treat me this way. He usually greeted me with his charming smile and couldn’t wait to ask me about how my day went. But not today. He seemed to be in a different mood.
“Whatever, Harper.” He brushed me off and walked towards the bar.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked him.
“Do I look mad?” he asked.
He was right; he didn’t look mad. He was more like disinterested and apathetic, like he was trying to give me the cold shoulder.
“No, I guess not.”
“Just do what you have to do, Harper.”
“Okay.” I tried to switch into professional mode and focused on teaching Viktor.
Viktor led me to the kitchen. The kitchen was decent-sized, but it needed some organizing. We set aside the ingredients we had shopped for on the kitchen counter, and Viktor helped me do the prep work before we proceeded to cook.
Viktor was a quick study. We went over how to make the tacos first, and he got it right away. I showed him how to do it first, and then he replicated it. We then worked on cooking the chicken wings. We started by making barbecue and ranch sauce. I taught him about frying the chicken twice to make it extra crispy. I also taught him the proper way to bread the chicken. The last one on our menu was the sliders. We made pulled pork sliders and burger sliders.
When we finished cooking, we set everything on a plate. I let Viktor taste the food.
“What do you think? What’s your favorite?” I asked.
“I like both tacos.”
“You think that it’s simple enough to cook every night?” I wanted to know if my recipes were doable for him.
“It’s easy. Yes, I can do it.”
“Great! I may add more to the menu. But we’ll have to see how it goes. It’s better to just work on these for now. Is Maverick going to hire another cook?”
“Not yet. But soon, I hope.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
I created a sampler plate for Maverick to taste test. I knocked on his office with the sampler.
“Come in.” I heard him said, and I opened the door.
“Hey, Maverick, we finished cooking. I have something for you.”
Maverick’s office looked very simple. It was just a desk with a laptop, a desktop and a printer. An old-looking filing cabinet was on Maverick’s right side. He was typing and clicking on his laptop when I walked in.
“You can leave that plate here.” He pointed to the space on his desk.
“I mean, I want to talk to you.” I set the plate on his desk.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I had a very successful restaurant in Savannah.”
