The Chef's Choice

by Kristin Hardy

  “Do you not get the scope of this operation? The place isn’t an issue. You don’t like the kitchen? We redo it. Problems with the dining room? We bring in a designer. As long as we’re making money within six months, he won’t care. And we can do that if we’ve got you in place and branded.”

  Damon stared at Francesca’s smirk. Everything he ever wanted.

  Except Cady.

  “I need to think about it.”

  “Well, guess what? This fiasco with Francesca just took away that option. You’ve got to decide now. We’ve got two months, max, to get our own PR spin in place before her issue hits the newsstands.”

  “The best defense is a good offense?”

  “The best defense is making money. This is a big job, Damon. And you’re the right guy for it, no doubt. But the window’s closing. And if you’re in, I need you here tomorrow.”

  “I’m not going to take a job sight unseen, Jack.” Even if he had done just that with the Sextant, a sneaky voice in his head reminded him.

  “Fine,” Jack snapped. “Call it an interview, if you want. There’ll be a ticket waiting for you at the airport in Portland. Just get your butt on that plane.”

  Part of him couldn’t understand why he was hesitating. Part of him couldn’t understand how he could possibly go. The stakes were huge and there was no right choice. There was only the path of least regret.

  “Come on,” Jack urged, “isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for, the right opportunity? It doesn’t get any more right than this, buddy. Think about it, restaurants in Tokyo, Dubai, London. It’s what we always talked about, only bigger. We can do everything we’ve ever wanted to, everything we’ve ever thought of. So tell me, are you in or are you out?”

  Damon hesitated.

  “Are you in or out?”

  Grace Harbor…Vegas…Stephanopolous…the Compass Rose…the Sextant…an empire…Cady…

  The world.

  He swallowed. “I’m in,” he said.

  He caught up with her in the greenhouse. She looked tired, he saw when he leaned in to kiss her, as though she hadn’t slept well.

  “Hey,” he said and closed the door behind him. “Got a couple of minutes? I need to talk to you.”

  It would be okay, he told himself when she nodded. They could make this work. They would make this work.

  He took a breath. “You remember my buddy Jack Worth? The guy you met last week?”

  “The ex-partner, right?” She kept working, stacking plants together in carrier trays on a table by the door.

  “Yeah. The thing is, he wasn’t just stopping by. He came to talk to me about a job.”

  Her hands stilled.

  “There’s a casino in Las Vegas put up by Dimitri Stephanopolous, the biggest one in town. He’s dumped a bundle into it. They’re having problems with the restaurants, though, and they’ve brought Jack in to manage them.” Damon paused. There was no easy way to say it. “He wants me to be the executive chef.”

  It was like having all the breath punched out of her. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t that. “Las Vegas?” Cady echoed. “What did you tell him?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I agreed to come out,” he said finally. “I want to see the place, meet the people. After that, we’ll see.”

  He hadn’t even bothered to visit the Compass Rose before taking the job at the Sextant. Because he’d known all along that it didn’t matter—he was going to leave. Anger set her blood simmering. Without thinking about it, she started to pace.

  “Cady, it’s a great opportunity.”

  “Funny, I thought this was supposed to be the big opportunity. Whatever happened to the line you fed my parents about building something here? Of course, Grace Harbor can hardly compete with Vegas.” And she couldn’t compete with any of it.

  “You don’t understand. The Stephanopolous operation, it’s a lot more than just the casino. He’s one of the biggest developers in the world. We do this right, the sky is the limit.” He shook his head. “I can’t turn this down. I have to at least look.”

  Her jaw felt stiff. “You’re not looking. You’ve already decided.”

  Now it was his turn to get angry. “I’m just talking to them, that’s all. I just wanted to tell you. And your parents.”

  “Why, so they can have a day’s notice? Dammit, Damon, it’s not fair,” she burst out, whirling toward him. “They trusted you. They gave you a chance. They thought you meant it when you said you wanted to stay.”

  “I did mean it. I never expected this.”

  “Oh darn, tough times for you, huh? And you can walk out without looking back because you never even bothered to sign a contract.”

  “Your parents didn’t want one.”

  “That’s because they’re the kind of people who keep their word without paper.”

  “And I keep mine,” he shot back. “Look, I don’t know why we’re arguing. There’s a way to make this work. I’ve already talked to Jack about it. If I do take the Vegas job, I need to start as soon as possible but one week out of the month I’ll be out here. That means I can work with Roman until your parents find a new executive chef. And that means we can see each other.”

  She stared at him. “See each other?”

  “Cady, whatever else is going on, this thing between us is important to me. I don’t want to lose it. I want to find a way to make it work.”

  “Are you out of your mind? There is no us. You’re walking out on my parents. You’re walking out on me.”

  Temper flashed in his eyes. “I’m not walking out.”

  “You think for one minute that you’re going to be coming back once you get out there? You’re lying to yourself. Vegas, the casinos, the nonstop party people,” she flared. “It’s all right up your alley.” And it hurt, oh, it hurt.

  “So we’re back to this again, all the stories? Haven’t you seen anything while I’ve been here? Don’t you know me? That’s not my life anymore.”

  “And this is? Who are you trying to kid? This was never your thing. Grace Harbor was never your kind of thing. It was just a convenient fill-in so you could keep your chops sharp. And I suppose I was, too. I’m such an idiot.” Her voice rose. “I knew from the beginning what you were like, I knew it, and I still got suckered.” And it cut deep, slicing her to the bone. She’d let him in, she’d trusted, she’d given up that last bit of distance, that last bit of protection.

  And she’d given up her heart.

  “You were never a fill-in,” he shot back. “You matter. This matters.”

  She couldn’t let herself listen. “If it matters, then why are you leaving?”

  “Don’t you see, Cady? I’ve been waiting for this kind of thing my whole life. There’s no limit to where I can take it. I shouldn’t even be debating, but I am. Because I look at you and me and I don’t know if there’s a limit there, either.”

  “Stop it,” she flung at him. “It’s just lines, like everything else you’ve said. You’re standing here saying all the pretty things and you’ve already got both feet back in your old life.” Her throat ached. “God, Damon, look around. It’s all coming back, your groupies, your photo shoots, your ex-partner. Your ex-lover.”

  The words hung in the air.

  “Francesca.” Damon shook his head “I don’t know what you saw but there’s nothing going on there.”

  “She’s just your type, just like Vegas is just your life.”

  “It was one night, a long time ago.”

  “Dammit, Damon, I don’t care,” Cady returned passionately. “It doesn’t matter, don’t you see? She’s not the problem, she’s just a symptom. Who she is, what she represents, that’s your world, not mine. It’s not Grace Harbor, it’s not anything we can be. So just go, grab your brass ring. It’s what you’ve always wanted. Take it and be happy.” She turned away because she was very afraid she was going to weep.

  She heard him step up behind her. “You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” he said
quietly. “There’s really nothing I can say, nothing I can do except go and let you just have the rest of this conversation with yourself.” He lifted his hands. “That’s all you’re doing anyway.”

  “And what about you?” she whispered.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot. You know all about me. Except you don’t know me at all.” He hesitated. “Goodbye, Cady.”

  She heard the door close and heard his feet crunch on the gravel. And she slid down to the floor and curled into a ball.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cady hated crying, she always had. Even when she’d fallen off her bike as a child and skinned her knee, she’d always done everything she possibly could not to cry. It hurt. It made her feel weak, powerless. It made her feel as if she’d given in.

  And when it was over, she felt empty.

  This time, though, there was no choice. She couldn’t hold it back. Damon had told her once that the right relationship could change her world. It had. It had brought her pleasure, laughter and immense joy. It had brought her pain, betrayal, anguish and, finally, loss.

  And so she cried, letting the sobs rack her body until she emptied herself. Because even emptiness was better than heartache.

  It was later, she couldn’t have said how long, that the door opened again. This time, it was her mother’s voice that she heard.

  “Honey?”

  Cady got up hastily, swiping at her cheeks. “Don’t say it,” she warned. And don’t be nice. Oh, please, don’t be nice.

  Amanda shook her head gently. “I’m not going to say anything. I was just coming to see if you were all right.”

  “I’m fine.” She squared her shoulders. “You heard the news, I take it.”

  “I did.”

  “Is he gone?” she asked, even as she despised herself for it.

  “Yes, he’s gone.”

  The unbearable truth. “If you had a contract, you could sue him.” She paced away and turned. Easier to focus on the anger, to put up a wall against all the other emotions that crowded around. Easier that, than to feel.

  “We don’t want to sue him,” Amanda said. “I might want to skin him alive for messing with my daughter, but there’s no reason to sue him, even if we could. We took our chances, we got something out of it. Sure, we’d rather have had him for a year or two, but we still got the press.” She was quiet a moment. “But you know I’d have given all of that up to keep you from being hurt.”

  Cady’s throat ached again. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “All right, maybe I’m not. But I’ll get over it.”

  “If it’s any comfort, we told him to just go. He won’t be back.”

  He won’t be back.

  It wasn’t any comfort, Cady thought. It wasn’t any comfort at all.

  And blindly, she turned into her mother’s arms.

  He drank scotch and looked out the window of the plane to the solid mass of cloud cover below. It had always bothered him, flying over featureless white that gave no clue as to what lay beneath. He didn’t like not knowing where he was. It was disorienting.

  Then again, there was something pretty damned disorienting about knowing that his life had gone to hell in a handbasket even as he found himself flying out to accept the opportunity of a lifetime. He should have been happy.

  He shouldn’t have been feeling as though his guts had been kicked in.

  He didn’t know what was worse, having Cady tell him to take a hike or realizing that she hadn’t ever really known him at all. That she’d never trusted him. That the world he thought they’d built between them was nothing.

  In a way, she’d made his decision easier. Once she’d taken herself out of the picture, the choice was simple. There really was nothing to lose.

  The Sextant was strictly a short-term assignment, had been from the beginning. Certainly Ian McBain had shown little surprise at the news. “We had you longer than we expected, to be honest,” he’d said.

  There had been something in Amanda McBain’s eyes as she’d looked at him that made Damon suspect she knew about him and Cady. When she told him he didn’t need to worry about notice, he was certain of it.

  And Cady…It had been a hell of a way to say goodbye. But maybe there wasn’t any good way. And maybe she was right, maybe it had been an impossible situation from the start. But what was he supposed to do, throw a career away, jettison everything he’d worked for to stay in Grace Harbor, work at the Sextant, live on the small stage?

  It wasn’t possible and she should have known it. And it hadn’t had to be the end of them. They could have kept things going, with him flying out, her coming to Vegas. They could have found a way if she’d been willing to try. If she’d been willing to trust him. But she hadn’t.

  And that had hurt worst of all.

  And so he sat in business class drinking scotch, watching the clouds pass below. And wishing he knew where the hell he was.

  There was nothing like having your life turned upside down to make you focus on work, Cady discovered over the next week. She dug and raked, hauled and swept, tore out flower beds, rolled and reseeded lawns, anything to exhaust herself. She took on any project she could, manicured the Compass Rose to within an inch of its life. She welcomed the approach of the solstice as the days grew ever longer, giving her fewer and fewer hours to be trapped inside with nothing to do but think.

  Because thinking was the impossible part.

  So she kept her music player turned up to full volume, loud enough to distract herself. And as one day bled into the next, she avoided the greenhouse with its memories.

  She was aerating the back lawn of the Compass Rose when the phone in her pocket vibrated. She stopped and took off her headphones. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Cady, where are you?” Pete Tebeau bawled out of the receiver.

  “Hi, Pete. I’m working.”

  “I haven’t seen any of you guys in a week. What’s up?”

  “Damon’s not around. I haven’t had time to stop by.” And hadn’t been able to bear to.

  “Well, aren’t you going to come get your money?”

  “For what?”

  “The grass.”

  “Grass,” she repeated, before her thought processes kicked in. The microgreens, of course. The microgreens she hadn’t checked in almost a week.

  “Oh, hell, I completely forgot. Did they sell?”

  “Like hotcakes. And now I got a whole crowd of folks sloping around here waiting for more. I was hoping you were bringing some.”

  “I can’t do it today,” she told him, glancing at her watch. By the time she hit Portland, the market would be winding down, and anyway, she had no idea if she even had anything to sell. The microgreens from the week before were probably well on their way to being macrogreens. She’d need to plant more.

  “What do you want me to tell ’em?”

  “Tell them…” She thought for a minute. “Tell them to check back in two weeks. I’ll have more then and we can set up a regular supply if they want them.”

  “Regular, huh? If you’re going to do that, you better get yourself a booth.”

  She just couldn’t think about it for now. “Can’t I sell them through you, at least temporarily?”

  “You know where to find me,” he said. “Hey, when’s Damon gonna be back? I got some of them heirloom tomatoes he asked me to plant coming on.”

  “He’s not coming back,” she said, struggling to keep her voice toneless.

  “At all?”

  “No. He’s gone for good.” Gone for good.

  She didn’t think she could bear it.

  At the back of the property, the greenhouse glowed white. Since the day Damon had left, she’d stayed away. The last thing she wanted to do was step back inside and into the tangle of memories. But the reprieve, she’d known, was only temporary. Sooner or later, she was going to have to go tend to the plants inside.

  And that time, it appeared, was now.

  She’d k
nown all along it was going to end, she reminded herself. She knew that nobody changed down deep. She wasn’t going to remember the days he’d kissed her here. She wasn’t going to remember how he’d made her laugh. And she wasn’t going to remember the way he’d made her ache at the end.

  So she turned up her music player as loud as it would go, and listened to Lucinda Williams sing about changing the locks as she stepped through the door.

  It was all right, was her first relieved thought. She could handle it. Sure, memories of Damon lurked everywhere but she could put them aside and take care of business. Life would go on. She’d survive. And maybe someday the bad memories would fade enough to allow her to savor the good.

  For now, she was just happy to see that the plants looked okay. Perhaps a few out of reach of the full stream of the automatic sprayers were a bit droopy but it was nothing that a good watering wouldn’t cure.

  She turned on her hose and moved along the tables, spraying the plants that needed it. It wasn’t until she reached her workbench that she saw the microgreens.

  Or what remained of them.

  She’d forgotten, she thought as she stared, stricken. They’d been on her workbench, not on one of the tables with the sprayers. They hadn’t gotten water in a week. She remembered how they’d looked before, vibrant and green and cared for. Now, they looked as if they’d been put under one of the kitchen’s salamanders, withered to limp brown strings.

  They’d struggled to stay alive but they were delicate, more than she’d realized. They couldn’t survive neglect. They couldn’t take being abandoned. They couldn’t take being left behind.

  She felt her throat tighten, as it had done so many times over the past week. Left behind, just as she had been. He’d gone without a backward glance, just packed his clothes, locked his door and—

  His door. His house. Good Lord, she thought suddenly, his garden. A week had gone by, a week without rain or water for the delicate seedlings. Dozens of plants, all of them dependent on care. All of them needing attention to survive.

  She turned for the door. The two of them had worked together to put the garden in. And maybe Damon was gone and maybe what was between them had withered, but she couldn’t let living things suffer for it.