Cooped Up for Christmas - Sabrina York Page 0,39

fire one more time—”

“No. No. But you better come.”

“All right. Where?” I came out of the bathroom and scowled at Coop. He flopped back and covered his face with a pillow.

“Noel’s room.”

“Okay. Be right there.” I dropped the radio and reached for my blouse. Thank God we hadn’t completely undressed. “Hey. I gotta go,” I said.

His response was muffled by the pillow.

I stepped over Mason—who was lolling on the floor, and, frankly, didn’t seem to care if I left or not—and headed out.

Noel was in his room, sitting on the chair. Kind of. Okay, parts of him were on the chair. Parts of him were also on the floor with the rest of him leaning that way. In short, he looked as though he had melted all over the furniture.

“’Allo, Victoria!” he said when he saw me. He attempted to raise a bottle in my honor. It appeared to be far too heavy.

“Noel, are you drunk?” I asked, though the answer was there, right under my nose.

He lurched toward me. “Drunk? Moi? Non. Non, mon chéri.” I grabbed hold of his chin when he got too close and all kissy.

Drunk Frenchman? Merci, mais non.

All righty then. First things first.

Rearrange the horny chef on his bed with a bottle of water and a nice big bowl within barfing distance.

Next, I turned to Olivia. “Did they say what kind of sweet they wanted?”

“No.”

“Awesome.” I’d seen some frozen desserts stocked in the freezer. It only took me a minute to find some microwavable frozen lava cakes and the caramel Noel marked as leftover from the wedding cake. And yeah. I made that.

Caramel chocolate lava cakes.

Served on crystal plates (with a caramel swoosh on the base), sterling silver utensils and a cloth napkin…and you had a thirty dollar dessert. Easy. I squirted a little whipped cream on the warm cakes and then shaved chocolate over them just to be sure they looked fancy.

Olivia helped me serve, while Wren poured coffee. They didn’t ask for it, but we made decaf because, clearly, these people needed their sleep.

And so, by the way, did we.

They loved the coffee and cakes and quickly succumbed to that lovely state I like to call satiation. They were simply happy. And so was I.

Until I remembered that my chef was blotto and there was a huge breakfast planned for tomorrow morning early. As in O-Dark-Thirty, as Dad used to say.

So, as soon as the guests went upstairs, I corralled Olivia and Wren into the kitchen, grabbed my radio, and called for backup. It didn’t take long for everyone to appear in Noel’s room, which was the only staff room in the guest lodge. It was near the kitchen, but it wasn’t much larger than ours, so it was a tight fit.

Especially since Coop and his team had answered the call as well.

“We have a problem,” I said, gesturing to Noel, there on his bed, drunk on brandy. Like, sloshed. And he was not a pretty drunk. He was crying and sniveling and cradling that empty bottle, there on the corner of his bed.

The cake was done, thank God—salted caramel so no one could taste his tears, which was a blessing—but the chef was a mess. There was no way he was going to be able to pull together a five-star wedding breakfast in ten hours.

Jed shook his head. “Dude. I don’t understand why he can get shitfaced and I can’t smoke a little pot.”

Ye Gods! “Jed. Listen to me.” I took him by the shoulders. “Noel is not supposed to be shitfaced. And he will very probably be fired. Do you see? Do you see why we have that rule? Now, there’s no one to do his job. Get it?”

“So, what do we do?” Olivia asked.

I crossed my arms. “We make breakfast.” Personally, I was thinking about just throwing a couple boxes of Pop Tarts in the microwave or whatever. And yeah. We were way too close to the end of this Visit for too much creativity. These people had sucked it all out of me.

“What do we know about five-star breakfasts?” Coop asked, encouraging everyone to chime in, God love him.

“And rich people?” Jed chimed in.

“They like caviar,” Olivia offered.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, they do.” Maybe not for breakfast but, great suggestion.

“And champagne!” Not surprisingly, this was Jed’s idea.

“Okay. Caviar and champagne. Good start.” Even I was impressed with them.

Wren raised her hand. “I make a pretty mean béarnaise. I could make Eggs Benedict—”

“Eggs Benedict takes Hollandaise,” I reminded her.

Her