“Tell me everything that happened,” he said after a few moments.
“Everything? I hardly think you want to know everything.”
“But I do.” His gaze held an intensity that was likely to give her a heart attack if she didn’t settle down her unruly nerves.
She took a moment to focus on the Christmas decorations that had turned the street from a charming mountain town into a veritable Christmas village. “I’ve done a lot of thinking,” she said finally. “After I . . . became a Christian, I had to look differently at everything I thought I knew about my life. I had been searching for stability and meaning everywhere I wouldn’t find it. In work. In my house. Even in my anger and bitterness. I had lived with it for so long, told myself that I could only rely on myself, that I couldn’t let anybody in. I thought Sophie was a friend, but I never really let her be a friend. Bill and Nancy wanted to be my parents, but I wouldn’t let them.”
Gabe just walked alongside her, listening quietly, his presence a stabilizing force for the frantic zing of her emotions.
“Even worse, I let all my bad experiences color the way I looked at God. But no matter how much I denied Him, He was still there. He was still working behind the scenes. I don’t know if I realized how much. Maybe I’ll never realize how much.”
Like the fact she’d lost her house in Glendale four days ago, she had no clients lined up, and today she’d been offered a job. Here in Jasper Lake.
Was this really an example of God working, or was this a test that she was supposed to pass? A temptation she was supposed to overcome?
“That sounds like a full couple of months,” Gabe observed quietly.
“How about you? What have you been doing?”
“Missing you.”
Kendall halted on the sidewalk. “But . . . you never even called or texted. I thought . . . I just assumed . . .”
Gabe smiled helplessly. “I picked up the phone every day. And every day, God told me, ‘Not now.’”
“As in, a voice from heaven?”
“More like a vise around the chest or a kick to the head. For whatever reason, He didn’t want me contacting you, and I think I understand why.”
“That makes one of us,” Kendall mumbled, though she understood what he was saying. She had been working out deeper issues, and that would have been impossible to do if she was distracted by Gabe. “I thought you didn’t care. I thought you’d forgotten about me.”
Gabe abruptly turned toward her, pulling their hands out of his pocket and reaching for her other one. “Kendall, I didn’t stop thinking about you for a single day. It killed me to stay silent. Of course I tried to convince myself I would be fine without you, but I didn’t really believe it.”
Her heart was beating so hard that she could barely breathe. “What are you saying, Gabe?”
Gently he pulled her to him, one hand going to her waist, the other rising to brush a strand of hair away from her cheek. “I’m asking you to stay here. With me. I don’t know if this is real, true love, Kendall. Maybe it’s too soon to know that. But I’m asking you to give us a chance to find out.”
Then he was lowering his lips to hers, brushing them in a kiss that felt both familiar and new, questioning and assured. When she wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss in a wash of emotion that swept her away, she completely forgot they were standing on a public sidewalk. There was only the two of them and this moment, laced with hope and passion and uncertainty. Without guarantees.
But she had a guarantee. That if she took a leap, if she risked her heart, there was Someone there to catch her. Whatever decision she made, she didn’t have to make it from fear because she wasn’t alone.
When they parted, she looked up into Gabe’s face. Her heart pounded and her stomach danced nervously. She was taking a chance on him, leaving everything behind. And yet hadn’t her way been paved to this very moment?
She stretched up on her tiptoes and kissed him again, a gesture that was supposed to be affectionate and short but turned into something entirely different. She broke away laughing.
“Was that a yes? You’ll stay?” Gabe asked, his eyes sparkling.
“That was a yes.”
Gabe took her hand again, beaming, his expression reflecting the giddy feeling inside her. Only then did she notice the trickle of people walking toward the square where they were getting ready to flip the switch that would illuminate the giant spruce growing in the center of the park. As they joined the crowd, she saw a couple of amused glances thrown in their direction, making her wonder how many people had seen them kissing with abandon in the middle of Main Street.
The crowd started counting down, and Kendall stretched to whisper in Gabe’s ear, “Isn’t this supposed to be your thing?”
“I passed off the honor to Luke. I wanted to be standing here with you when they lit it.”
“Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”
The switch was thrown and the tree illuminated in a wash of sparkling white lights of all different sizes, looking so much like a column of swirling fireflies. Gabe bent down to kiss her again, making her completely lose her train of thought and sense of place, until applause and hoots of approval rang out around the square. She looked up, wondering what they’d missed, until she realized that they were aimed their direction.
Heat rose to her face and she buried it in Gabe’s jacket, but he only chuckled and nudged her so she could look back around at the smiling faces.
“Welcome home, Kendall Green.”
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but no matter how long a good story is, I’m never ready for it to end! That went double for Provenance: Gabe and Kendall are some of my favorite characters ever, and I wasn’t ready to let them go.
So for those of you who feel the same way, I’ve got good news: I’ve written an exclusive epilogue to keep the happily ever after going a little while longer! Find it at my website:
carlalaureano.com/provenance-epilogue
Thanks for accompanying me on this ride. You have a lot of books from which to choose for your pleasure reading time, and I’m so honored that you’ve chosen mine!
Brunch at Bittersweet Café
The Saturday Night Supper Club
The Solid Grounds Coffee Company
Available in stores and online
Chapter One
THREE HOURS into Saturday night dinner service and she was already running on fumes.
Rachel Bishop rubbed her forehead with the back of her sleeve and grabbed the newest round of tickets clattering through on the printer. Normally orders came in waves, enough time in between to take a deep breath, work the kinks out of her neck, and move on to the next pick. Tonight they had come fast and furious, one after another, tables filling as quickly as they were cleared. They were expecting two and a half turns of the dining room tonight, 205 covers.
It would be Paisley’s biggest night in the six months since opening in January, and one they desperately needed. As part-owner of the restaurant, Rachel knew all too well how far away they still were from profitability. There were as many casual fine dining places in Denver as there were foodies, with new ones opening and closing every day, and she was determined that Paisley would be one of the ones that made it.
But that meant turning out every plate as perfectly as the last, no matter how slammed they were. She placed the new tickets on the board on the dining room side of the pass-through. “Ordering. Four-top. Two lobster, one spring roll, one dumpling. Followed by one roulade, two sea bass, one steak m.r.”
“Yes, Chef,” the staff answered in unison, setting timers, firing dishes. Over at entremet, Johnny had not stopped moving all night, preparing sides as fast as they came through on the duplicate printer. It was a station best suited to a young and ambitious cook, and tonight he was proving his worth.
“Johnny, how are we coming on the chard for table four?”
“Two minutes, Chef.” No
rmally that could mean anything from one minute to five—it was an automatic response that meant I’m working on it, so leave me alone—but at exactly two minutes on the dot, he slid the pan of wilted and seasoned greens onto the pass in front of Rachel and got back to work in the same motion. She plated the last of table four’s entrées as quickly as she could, called for service, surveyed the board.
A muffled oath from her left drew her attention. She looked up as her sauté cook, Gabrielle, dumped burnt bass straight into the trash can.
“Doing okay, Gabs?”
“Yes, Chef. Four minutes out on the bass for nineteen.”
Rachel rubbed her forehead with the back of her sleeve again, rearranged some tickets, called for the grill to hold the steak. On slow nights, she liked to work the line while her sous-chef, Andrew, practiced his plating, but tonight it was all she could do to expedite the orders and keep things running smoothly.
“Rachel.”
She jerked her head up at the familiar male voice and found herself looking at Daniel Kearn, one of her two business partners. She wasn’t a short woman, but he towered above even her. Her gut twisted, a niggling warning of trouble that had never steered her wrong.
“Hey, Dan,” she said cautiously, her attention going straight back to her work. “What’s up?”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Now’s not a great time.” Dan might be the rarest of breeds these days—a restaurateur who wasn’t a chef—but considering he owned four other restaurants, he should be able to recognize when they were in the weeds. The energy level in the kitchen right now hovered somewhere between high tension and barely restrained panic.
“Carlton Espy is here.”
Rachel dropped her spoon and bit her lip to prevent any unflattering words from slipping out. “Here? Now? Where is he?” She turned and squinted into the dim expanse of the dining room, looking for the familiar comb-over and self-satisfied smirk of the city’s most hated food critic.
“No, he left. Stopped by my table before he went and told me to tell you, ‘You’re welcome.’ Does that make any sense to you?”
“Not unless he considers questioning both my cooking and my professional ethics a favor.” She looked back at the tickets and then called, “Picking up nine, fourteen!”
“You really need to issue a statement to the press.”
She’d already forgotten Dan was there. One by one, pans made their way to the pass beneath the heat lamps and she began swiftly plating the orders for the pair of four-tops. “I’m not going to dignify that troll with a response.”
“Rachel—”
“Can we talk about this later? I’m busy.”
She barely noticed when he slipped out of the kitchen, concentrating on getting table nine to one of the back waiters, then table fourteen. For a few blissful moments, the printer was quiet and all the current tickets were several minutes out. She took a deep breath, the only sounds around her the clatter of pans, the hiss of cooking food, the ever-present hum of the vent hoods. After five hours in the heart of the house, they vibrated in her bones, through her blood, the bass notes to the kitchen’s symphony.
Her peace was short-lived. Carlton Espy had been here, the troll. Of all the legitimate restaurant reviewers in Denver, a scale on which he could barely register, he was both the most controversial and the least likable. Most people called him the Howard Stern of food writing with his crass, but apparently entertaining, take on the food, the staff, and the diners. Rachel supposed she should be happy that he’d only questioned her James Beard Award rather than criticizing the looks and the sexual orientation of every member of her staff, as he’d done with another local restaurant last week.
The thing Dan didn’t seem to understand was that slights and backhanded compliments from critics came with the territory. Some seemed surprised that a pretty woman could actually cook; others criticized her for being unfriendly because she didn’t want to capitalize on her looks and her gender to promote her restaurant. She had never met a woman in this business who wanted to be identified as “the best female chef in the city.” Either your food was worthy of note or it wasn’t. The chromosomal makeup of the person putting it on the plate was irrelevant. End of story. Tell that to channel seven.
As the clock ticked past nine, the orders started to slow down and they finally dug themselves out of the hole they’d been in since seven o’clock. The post-theater crowds were coming in now, packing the bar on the far side of the room, a few groups on the main floor who ordered wine, appetizers, desserts. The last pick left the kitchen at a quarter past eleven, and Rachel let her head fall forward for a second before she looked out at her staff with a grin. “Good job, everyone. Shut it down.”
Ovens, grills, and burners were switched off. Leftover mise en place was transferred to the walk-ins for tomorrow morning. Each station got scrubbed and disinfected with the careless precision of people who had done this every night of their adult lives, the last chore standing between them and freedom. She had no illusions about where they were headed next, exactly where she would have been headed as a young cook—out to the bars to drain the adrenaline from their systems, then home to catch precious little sleep before they showed up early for brunch service tomorrow. By contrast, Rachel’s only plans were her soft bed, a cup of hot tea, and a rerun on Netflix until she fell into an exhausted stupor. At work, she might feel as energetic as she had as a nineteen-year-old line cook, but the minute she stumbled out of the restaurant, her years on the planet seemed to double.
Rachel changed out of her whites into jeans and a sweatshirt in her office, only to run into Gabrielle in the back corridor.
“Can I talk to you for a minute, Chef?”
Rachel’s radar immediately picked up the nervousness beneath the woman’s usual brusque demeanor. Changed out of her work clothes and into a soft blue T-shirt that made her red hair look even fierier, Gabby suddenly seemed very young and insecure, even though she was several years older than Rachel.
“Of course. Do you want to come in?” Rachel gestured to the open door of her office.
“No, um, that’s okay. I wanted to let you know . . . before someone figures it out and tells you.” Gabby took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’m pregnant.”
Rachel stared at the woman, sure her heart froze for a split second. “Pregnant?”
“Four months.” Gabby hurried on, “I won’t let it interfere with my work, I swear. But at some point . . .”
“You’re going to need to take maternity leave.” In an office setting, that was hard enough, but in a restaurant kitchen, where there were a limited number of cooks to fill in and new additions disrupted the flow they’d established, it was far more complicated.
Gabby nodded.
“We’ll figure it out,” Rachel said finally. “And congratulations. You’re going to make a wonderful mother. I bet Luke is thrilled.”
Gabby’s words rushed out in relief. “He is.”
“Now go get some sleep.” Rachel’s instincts said to give her a hug, congratulate her again, but that damaged the level of authority she needed to maintain, made it harder to demand the best from Gabby when she should probably be focusing more on her baby than her job. Instead, Rachel settled for a squeeze of her shoulder.
Andrew was the last to head for the back hallway, leaving Rachel alone in the kitchen to survey her domain. Once again, it gleamed with stainless-steel sterility, silent without the drone of vents and whoosh of burners. It should probably bother her more that she had no one to go home to, no one waiting on the other side of the door. But Rachel had known what she was giving up when she set off down this career path, knew the choice was even starker for female chefs who had to decide between running their own kitchens and having a family. Most days, it was more than a fair trade. She’d promised herself long ago she wouldn’t let any man stand between her and her dreams.
Camille, Paisley’s front-of-house manager, slipped into the kitchen
quietly, somehow looking as fresh and put together as she had at the beginning of the night. “Ana’s waiting for you at the bar. I’m going to go now unless you need me.”
“No, go ahead. Good work as always.”
“Thanks, Chef. See you tomorrow.”
Rachel pretended not to notice Camille slip out with Andrew, their arms going around each other the minute they hit the back door. The food service industry was incestuous, as it must be—civilians didn’t tend to put up with the long hours, late nights, and always-on mentality. There had been plenty of hookups in her kitchen among waitstaff and cooks in various and constantly changing combinations, but they never involved Rachel. On some points at least, she was still a traditionalist—one-night stands and casual affairs held no appeal. Besides, she was an owner and the chef, the big boss. Getting involved with anyone on her staff would be the quickest way to compromise her authority.
Rachel pushed around the post to the dining room and crossed the empty space to the bar. A pretty Filipina sat there, nursing a drink and chatting with the bartender, Luis.
“Ana! What are you doing here? Did Dan call you?”
Ana greeted Rachel with a one-armed hug. “I worked late and thought I’d drop by to say hi. Luis said it was a good night.”
“Very good night: 215.”
Ana’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s great, Rachel. Way to go. I’m not going to say I told you so, but . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, you told me so.” Rachel grinned at her longtime friend. Analyn Sanchez had been one of her staunchest supporters when she’d decided to open a restaurant with two Denver industry veterans, even though it meant leaving the lucrative, high-profile executive chef job that had won her a coveted James Beard Award. And she had to give part of the credit to the woman next to her, who had agreed to take on Paisley as a client of the publicity firm for which she worked, even though the restaurant was small potatoes compared to her usual clients.
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