New Year Hearts

Chapter One:

From the first book in the collection, A Chocolate-Box New Year

In the intricate process of making fresh pasta, the dough has to be kneaded, rolled, and then sliced. Every morning Julie Elliot made the flour and egg base, portioned it, and stored it in her cooler. In this way, she could quickly create satisfying meals for her customers, which was of utmost importance in the restaurant business.

Consequently, it made sense that her linguine and fettuccini were the starring attractions of her Italian restaurant, The Pasta Junction. She liked that, being celebrated for her delectable pasta versus the parboil method other restaurants used.

As expected, many rival chefs told her she was foolish, because preparing pasta every day required a tremendous amount of effort. She realized that and was okay with it. She'd set her standards high and strove to serve her diners only the finest products.

On a typical busy Friday evening in mid-December, she stood by the commercial cooktop of her kitchen's workstation and stirred an enormous pot of minestrone soup. When she finished, she'd chat with patrons in the dining room. She loved people, loved interacting with them. Loved it so much, in fact, her older brother, Ben, often called her an extrovert. As a business owner, that was a good thing. Striking up conversations and conversing with her customers kept them coming back.

Because she didn't stay in the kitchen all night, she made sure she looked attractive and professional. Tonight, she'd pulled her heavy blond tresses into a tight bun, and wore her usual black slacks and a fitted collared blouse. As always, she'd tied a white apron around her slender waist.

She lowered the fire under the soup so it would simmer, then swung to the stainless steel counter to sort green beans. After a few minutes of discarding the beans that weren't fresh, she paused to scan the other workstations. In an adjacent corner a newbie created salads. Nearby, a grill cook prepared chicken dishes. He held his tongs and grill brushes high, flicking dashes of red pepper and sea salt onto the sizzling chicken.

Her gaze traveled to Antonio, the sous chef, who stood across from her. His bald head was covered by a pleated white toque hat—starched, round, and ten inches high—and a white coat. Antonio subscribed to a kitchen hierarchy and believed the head chef should wear the tallest hat, and he took his job very seriously. As she observed him, he flash-fried shrimp in garlic butter, tossing the mixture with a flamboyance rivaling any celebrity chef.

With a tolerant smile, she began snapping the stems off the beans.

Certainly homemade pasta, homemade anything, really, was twice the effort, and her employees often struggled to keep up with orders on fast-paced nights. But it was worth it.

With a sigh, she blew a wisp of hair off her forehead.

Or was it?

Earlier in the evening, a part-time employee had quit with no notice, and Julie had asked—okay, begged—a member of her prep team to put in a double shift. Not long afterward, a server spilled olive oil on a woman's silk dress, a cook burned his fingers on a steamer, and a waiter tripped over a loose wire in the foyer, dropping an armload of ceramic dishes that had crashed to the floor and shattered into hundreds of pieces.

A glance at her watch prompted her to wryly shake her head. Quite an eventful evening, considering it was only seven o'clock. Already exhausted with an impending headache, she scraped up an armful of beans, intending to rinse them in cold water to remove any dust and dirt.

The phone buzzed, and Julie frowned. No one in the front of the house called the back unless there was a problem.

She set down the beans, snapped off her sanitary gloves, and answered the phone. "Yes?"