Steamed: A Facile Restaurant Short Story

By Jacey Conrad and Gia Corona

Steamed is the sixth installment of the Facile Restaurant short story series by Jacey Conrad and Gia Corona. Each story focuses on a different couple.

Lee Broussard is just a nice guy doing a favor for a friend – delivering a gift to an anniversary dinner at Facile – and ends up seeing his girlfriend sucking chocolate mousse off some strange guy’s finger. Shocked speechless and on the verge of dismantling the classy dining room with his bare hands, Lee is distracted by lovely seating hostess Abby DuLane, who yanks him into the nearest closet.

Petite and sharp-tongued, Abby runs her hostess station like a tiny country, of which she is queen. And she is not about to let a perfect specimen like Lee suffer the indignity of a public cheating-fueled meltdown. Groping a customer in front of his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend falls within her job description, right?

Right?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeanette Battista
• Release date: Jan 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311227720

Jacey Conrad

Jacey Conrad is a sushi-loving, pop culture nerd living in semi-rural Kentucky with her high school sweetheart husband and two impressionable children. She delights in horribly made mutant shark movies and watching Sean Bean die in his various cinematic incarnations.

Book preview

STEAMED

A Facile Restaurant Short Story

Jacey Conrad and Gia Corona

Copyright © 2015 Jacey Conrad & Gia Corona

All rights reserved

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Table of Contents

Steamed

About the Authors

Steamed: A Facile Restaurant Short Story

Abby DuLane surveyed her tiny realm, an annexed territory in the kingdom of Facile, where the diminutive brunette ruled with an iron fist. The hostess station, the gateway to one of the most exclusive and celebrated restaurants in the great city of New Orleans, was Abby’s territory. And no matter how many cries of, But it’s a special occasion! or But I know Xavier Blackwell, personally, Abby heard, she would not violate the sacrosanctity of her reservation book. No reservation, no table, end of story.

Her coworkers had enough to deal with, frankly, with those who did have reservations. The Dick at table 17, who’d run the kitchen crazy substitutions because he seemed to have a phobia of fat-based calories. The Parker anniversary party at private table 21, half of which seemed determined to steal anything not nailed down to their table, while the other half groused at each other like they were being paid to wreck the celebrants’ evening. Honestly, people needed to pass some sort of licensing test before they were allowed out in the world.

Abby considered herself the first line of defense in keeping order at Facile, the armor that protected the cool, luxuriously appointed interior from the frenetic energy of Bourbon Street. The only person more committed to ensuring the patrons had a life-altering, damn-near-sexual culinary experience at the recently opened restaurant was the manager/owner, her boss, the aforementioned Xavier Blackwell. And he could be downright terrifying.

Abby adjusted the hem of her form-fitting black halter dress, ignoring a tourist’s attempt to slip a ten around the mahogany hostess stand. Unlike the bar and waitstaff, Xavier and his partners required no uniform for the seating staff. He only asked that Abby and her shift partner, Marianne, wearing something dark and elegantly provocative. According to Marianne, the dress, paired with her bare tanned shoulders and chicory-colored hair that she wore in a loose bun, made Abby look like a debauched ballerina. As long as the dress didn’t