When she returned to her seat beside Hayleigh, Erika’s neat ponytail was crooked, and she was missing two buttons on her blouse.
“I love you Littles, but I don’t love breaking up fights!” she said with a laugh.
“What happened?”
“I’m still not quite sure. Best I can tell, one of them spilled paint on the other one’s pumpkin and it just escalated from there. Hopefully, that’s the last major problem of the day!”
“Chef?” The door to Connor’s office opened and Julia poked her head in. “Ready to go over the menu for next week?”
“Sure.” He sent her a sheepish smile. “Maybe you can help keep me on track since I can’t seem to stay focused today.”
After closing the door behind her, she carried her binder to the desk and dropped it in front of him. “Next Saturday is the Halloween party, so I picked out some fun recipes here and there. I figure we don’t want to overwhelm people, but maybe just one item at each meal could be fun. For instance, we have those stuffed peppers with the eggs everyone loves and I found this recipe,” leaning over his shoulder, she flipped open one of the binders, “which is basically the same thing, but you make them look like eyeballs.”
“Perfect. We don’t want to do anything too scary, or we’ll have hysterical Littles on our hands, but this should be harmless enough.”
“Oh? Does Hayleigh not like Halloween?”
“It’s her favorite, actually. I was thinking more of the younger ones.”
“I see.”
Something in her tone caught his attention and he looked up at her, searching her face for a hint of what might be wrong. “Is there a problem, Julia?”
“No. Well, it’s kind of stuffy in here. Mind if I take off my jacket?”
“Go ahead.” Connor turned back to the binder, flipping through some of the ideas she’d put together. A few were a little too cheesy for his tastes, but most of them could be modified for the holiday while keeping the quality his restaurants were known for.
Glancing up to see if Julia was ready to get back to work, he froze when he spotted her. Instead of the plain white cotton tee he’d assumed she was wearing under her chef’s coat, she was wearing nothing but a scrap of lace and silk that barely covered her breasts.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Instead of looking chagrined or even feigning any kind of innocence, her lips curved up in a slow, sex-kitten smile. “Like what you see, Chef?”
“Julia. Put your jacket back on. This is inappropriate.”
“Chef. Connor,” she corrected, her voice dropping to a quiet purr as she took a step forward and leaned into him, her breasts swaying directly in front of his face. “Isn’t it time you took a real woman for a ride instead of some brat?”
Before he could respond, her lips were on his and he froze. But when she tried to straddle him, he finally snapped out of his shock and pushed her away.
“Go clear out your locker. You’re fired.”
“What? You can’t fire me!”
“I just did.”
A knock at the door cut off whatever response she’d been about to make. “Chef?” Mike called through the door. “There was, um, an incident in the event hall. Two of the Littles got into a fight, but I don’t know who. Thought you might like to know.”
“Thank you, Mike.” With one last glare for Julia, he marched to the door. “I expect to see your letter of resignation, effective immediately, on my desk when I get back, Ms. Simmons.”
He slammed the door shut behind him without giving her a chance to argue further. Everyone in the kitchen jumped out of his way as he stalked toward the event hall.
When he got there, two Little boys were standing in opposite corners of the room. He had a moment of relief that it wasn’t Hayleigh causing trouble before he noticed her sitting at a table at the far end with Erika, working on some complicated-looking flower arrangement. Guilt followed hot on the heels of relief. Here he was, worried she’d gotten into some mischief, when he’d just had another woman practically crawling all over him in his office.
Erika spotted him first, and her smile of greeting immediately faded when her eyes met his. She nudged Hayleigh’s arm and nodded in his direction. Regret stabbed at him like a knife in the gut when his little girl’s eyes went round with fear. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself from grabbing her arm and hauling her to her feet.
“Come with me.” The order came out harsher than he’d intended, but to her credit, Hayleigh didn’t argue. Not until they were out in the hallway, where she tried to dig in her heels.
“What’s going on? What did I do?”