“Of course, Chef.”
Regardless of what shifts were made, he’d need to hire new help for both kitchens, and highly trained chefs were not easy to find in Cincinnati. He was actually considering contacting a headhunter to search the top restaurants in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The only problem was that those people sometimes brought big-city bad habits and attitudes he didn’t want in his kitchens.
Ian started to turn toward his office and stopped on a thought. “And bring a bottle of that Argentina Malbec the distributor gave us. I’m not putting it on the menu until we’ve both vetted it.”
“Sounds like an excellent meeting, Chef,” Sean said before he called out instructions to the boucher.
Orders were starting to pour in for the next rush. The slow and steady morning prep was giving way to the briskness of lunch. The kitchen buzz wouldn’t die off until about two or three o’clock. More employees would stroll in; a second round of prep would begin as the dinner menu was brought out. It would all pick up again around five, and a controlled chaos would reign until almost ten.
But Ian didn’t need to worry about the day-to-day activities within the kitchen any longer. Sean was an amazing sous chef and had everything under control. He had a similar view of the kitchen: the employees were family, not a small country to be dominated.
For nearly a year now, his attention had been split between planning his wedding and planning the opening of his newest restaurant in Over-the-Rhine. It was completely different from Rialto, but it would still have the Ian Pierce flare. Correction, the Ian Banner flare. He was still getting used to his new last name.
One key difference was that he was doing this restaurant on his own. Well, mostly.
Billionaire and best friend, Lucas Vallois had been a major investor for Rialto, supplying nearly all the money to get the restaurant off the ground.
This time, Ian had gotten the loans on his own, though Lucas had still managed to weasel his way in as a minor shareholder of Ian’s new restaurant. Not that Ian could blame him. Lucas had made his investment back many times over on Rialto, and he was expecting to do the same with Ian’s new place.
With the wedding a blissful success and the honeymoon even more enjoyable, Ian and Hollis had settled comfortably into a busy married life. Ian’s main focus now was getting his new restaurant successfully launched in a few months.
Ian stopped on the way to his office, catching sight of his husband as he walked through the front door of Rialto. Even after four months, there was still a part of him that gave a less-than-dignified squeal at the thought that Hollis Banner was now his husband. They belonged together. Ian had felt it the first moment he spotted the former police detective standing in Lucas’s penthouse, grilling his friend over a supposed mugging. The poor man had been sick as a dog and should have been in bed, but Hollis wasn’t the type of person to let a little thing like a cold slow him down when he had his mind set on something.
As he strolled into the restaurant, Hollis winked at Carla and Anthony at the hostess stand, his grin wide and pointed directly at Ian. Hollis had a way of making Ian feel like he was the center of his entire world. Entire universe.
His man—his husband—was dressed in a pair of dark-blue jeans that were molded to his muscular thighs and were likely hugging his gorgeous ass just right. His black T-shirt was stretched over his wide chest and clung to his arms as he carried in a large box, balanced on his left shoulder. For early September, the weather was still more like summer than fall, with the temperature cresting each day at the mid-eighties, but the nights were becoming surprisingly brisk already.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Banner? Don’t you have a job you should be at?” Ian teased as Hollis reached him.
“Is it so wrong that I wanted to see my husband at work?” Hollis replied. He leaned down and grabbed Ian’s lips in a quick kiss.
Ian reluctantly let the kiss end and was already making plans to drag Hollis to his office, but he couldn’t completely pull his eyes from the box Hollis was carrying.
“What’s in the box?”
“I stopped by the house to pick up that paperwork we need notarized. Totally forgot it this morning,” Hollis muttered as he lowered the box from his shoulder to hold it in front of his waist. “And I found this waiting on our doorstep. I think it’s the extra copies of the magazine we ordered.”
“Yes!” Ian shouted, pumping one fist in the air. He winced, pressing his lips together when he realized he’d broken the hushed tone of his restaurant.