Melting Ms Frost

Chapter Three

THREE

A glowering Annabel was the first thing staff encountered as they arrived for the lunch shift the following day. Positioned behind the reception desk, she made no secret of the fact that she was clocking everyone in.

Having fronted up in good time himself as it was Jon’s day off, Aidan was polishing glasses out of the washer when, at precisely eleven fifteen, she called a meeting of the front-of-house staff. There was a brittle edge to her ice-cold demeanour as she berated them collectively on the state of the near-perfect dining room. He noticed that no one argued with her as she set two waiters to work cleaning the inside of the already almost spotless plate glass windows, and two more on the equally immaculate mirrored panelling that ran the entire length of one wall above the banquette seating.

One of the kitchen hands was unfortunate enough to arrive at that point, eyes widening as he stepped through the door and saw the meeting underway.

‘Uh . . .’ he started, before freezing under the stare Annabel cast his way.

‘Don’t bother with an excuse. You’re late. You’re off this shift. Turn up on time to the next or you’ll lose that one too.’ He didn’t utter a word as he slunk straight back out of the door.

Before it had clicked shut, Annabel had moved onto the fingerprint smudges on the back of the wooden dining chairs setting the remaining serving staff to work polishing every chair in the place. For Aidan she picked the job of dusting the shelves behind the bar.

‘Already done,’ he said, feeling the air around him thin as every one of his colleagues sucked in a breath, presumably shocked by his audacity at having answered back. Annabel herself raised an eyebrow at him and walked slowly around to the back of the bar. As she inspected the shelves – which he and Jon had indeed started dusting last night, and that he had finished this morning – he fancied he caught a quickly concealed flash of annoyance when she failed to find anything amiss.

Plucking a glass from the half emptied washer, she held it up to the light. ‘The glasses need polishing.’

And as she’d been sitting right across the room from him there was no way she didn’t know that was what he’d been in the middle of doing when she called her staff meeting. ‘I’m just about thro—’

‘Mr Flynn,’ she interrupted him with a sigh of impatience. ‘That’s not a request nor is it up for discussion. It’s a direct order. I say the glasses need polishing. All of them.’ With a triumphant glint in her eye, she set the glass down on the bar with enough force to act as a punctuation mark before turning to stride off towards the kitchens.

The evening service was well underway by the time she decided he was due another dose of her authority.

‘Annabel,’ he acknowledged as she swept into his space.

She cast him a withering look before ignoring him in favour of carrying out a thorough inspection of the bar area, paying particular attention to the glasses.

‘I can assure you they’re all immaculately polished,’ he said, running his gaze just as thoroughly over her from head to toe. ‘Like you.’

That made her pause momentarily but she still didn’t engage with him.

He closed the distance between them so he could lower his voice. ‘What does it take to get that perfection all ruffled, I wonder? What makes you let that hair down?’

She narrowed her eyes on him. ‘That’s enough.’

He smiled, pleased to have her on the hook. He’d been right, it seemed that touching on the personal was the easiest way to bait her. ‘Are you always so defensive?’