Summer Desserts

of dough who calls himself a chef is jealous because I know more about vegetables than he does.”
    Summer bit down hard on her bottom lip. Damn it, it was funny, but the timing was all wrong. “Perhaps the rest of you might get back to work,” she began coolly, “before what clientele we have left in the dining room evacuates to the nearest golden arches for decent service. Now…” She turned back to the two opponents. Any moment, she decided, there’d be bared teeth and snarls. “This, I take it, is the casserole in question.”
    “The dish is a casserole,” Max tossed back. “What’s in it is garbage.” He tugged again.
    “Garbage!” The little cook squealed in outrage, then curled his lip. “Garbage is what you pass off as prime rib. The only thing edible on the plate is the tiny spring of parsley you part with.” He tugged back.
    “Gentlemen, might I ask a question?” Without waiting for an answer, she touched a finger to the dish. It was still warm, but cooling fast. “Has anyone tasted the casserole?”
    “I don’t taste poison.” Max gave the dish another yank. “I pour poison down the sink.”
    “I wouldn’t have this—this ox taste one spoonful of my spinach.” Charlie yanked right back. “He’d contaminate it.”
    “All right, children,” Summer said in sweet tones that had both men’s annoyance turning on her. “Why don’t I do the testing?”
    Both men eyed each other warily. “Tell him to let go of my spinach,” Charlie insisted.
    “Max—”
    “He lets go first. I’m his superior.”
    “Charlie—”
    “The only thing superior is his weight.” And the tug-of-war began again.
    Out of patience, Summer tossed up her hands. “All right, enough! ”
    It might have been the shock of having her raise her voice, something she’d never done in the kitchen—or it might have been that the dish itself was becoming slippery from so much handling. Either way, at her word, the dish fell out of both men’s hands with force. It struck the edge of the counter, shattering, so that glass flew even before the casserole and its contents hit the floor. In unison, Max and Charlie erupted with abuse and accusations.
    Summer, distracted by the pain in her right arm, glanced down and saw the blood begin to seep from a four-inch gash. Amazed, she stared at it for a full three seconds while her mind completely rejected the idea that blood, her blood, could pour out so quickly.
    “Excuse me,” she managed at length. “Do you think the two of you could finish this round after I stop bleeding to death?”
    Charlie looked over, a torrent of abuse trembling on his tongue. Instead, he stared wide-eyed at the wound, then broke into an excited ramble of Korean.
    “If you’d stop interfering,” Max began, even as he caught sight of the blood running down Summer’s arm. He blanched, then to everyone’s surprise, moved like lightning. Grabbing a clean cloth, he pressed it against the gash in Summer’s arm. “Sit,” he ordered and nudged her onto a kitchen stool. “You,” he bellowed at no one in particular, “clean up this mess.” Alreadyhe was fashioning a tourniquet. “Relax,” he said to Summer with unaccustomed gentleness. “I want to see how deep it is.”
    Giddy, she nodded and kept her eyes trained on the steam from a pot across the room. It didn’t really hurt so very much, she thought as her vision blurred then refocused. She’d probably imagined all that blood.
    “What the hell’s going on in here?” She heard Blake’s voice vaguely behind her. “You can hear the commotion in here clear out to the dining room.” He strode over, intending to give both Summer and Max the choice of unemployment or peaceful coexistence. The red-stained cloth stopped him cold. “Summer?”
    “An accident,” Max said hurriedly while Summer shook her head to clear it. “The cut’s deep—she’ll need stitches.”
    Blake was already grabbing the cloth from Max and pushing him aside. “Summer. How the hell did this happen?”
    She focused on his face and registered concern and perhaps temper in his eyes before everything started to swim again. Then she made the mistake of looking down at her arm. “Spinach casserole,” she said foolishly before she slid from the stool in a dead faint.
    The next thing she heard was an argument. Isn’t this where I came in? she thought vaguely. It only took her a moment to recognize Blake’s voice, but the other, female and dry, was a