The older woman had smiled then, wider than before, and lifted her glass in Hannah’s direction.Because I am, you see, and I am not impressed by anything.
It was only later, when she’d been cuddled up with Dominic and kissing his sweet head as he tried valiantly to fight off sleep, that it occurred to her that what Paloma had done was flatter her into acquiescence.
Not to mention a headache the following morning.
But now the day and the great man had arrived.
The whole hotel had been aflutter for two weeks.Il maestro, they had murmured, sometimes like prayers and sometimes like wild chants to the moon.Il maestro sta arrivando qui!
The master was coming here.
Hannah had no idea whothe masterwas.
But she had learned early on in her career in hospitality that if she defaulted to her knee-jerk, Midwestern politeness, people made all kinds of assumptions about her. Mostly that they could treat her badly. So she had quickly developed a sleek, cool exterior. She’d learned how to do her blond hair in an icy sort of twist that sat at the nape of her neck, because she’d understood that elegance was a weapon when wielded correctly.
The more understated, the better.
She’d learned that walking in extremely high heels that looked as if they would break anyone else’s ankles like twigs conveyed an air of authority that no flat shoe ever could, so she’d practiced in her tiny New York apartment until she could play basketball in her heels, if necessary.
And she’d learned that the people who responded best to all of this were the kind of overtly wealthy, wildly arrogant clientele used to getting their own way, who frequented five-star luxury hotels like this one.
She had also learned that while friendliness was never out of place, becomingtoofriendly with staff she might eventually have to fire hurt everyone, herself included. So Hannah did not sit down for any cozy chats with the rest of the staff aboutil maestro, whoever he was. Asking any of the staff who, exactly, this person was would be tantamount to admitting that she wasn’t in control of every last detail in this hotel.
Hannah worked extremely hard to make it clear to everyone and anyone that she was more than in control.
That she was, in fact, the fuel that kept the whole place running smoothly.
This morning she walked inside the way she always did, in shoes that made other women wobble on the street. She pretended not to notice the way everyone scurried about at the sight of her. Everyone stood straighter, fixed their uniforms, and schooled their expressions to a pleasing blandness. She even saw one of the women behind the desk try to surreptitiously straighten one of the floral arrangements when it was already a symphony of vertical blossoming that needed no encouragement.
Hannah bit back a smile, inclined her head at everyone who caught her eye, and marched herself straight into her office. Inside, she had pictures only of the hotel, the hills, the glorious landscape stretched out in all directions.
No pictures of the baby. No pictures to indicate that she had any kind of personal life at all.
She had learnedthatlesson entirely too well in New York.
A glance at the slim gold watch on her wrist assured her that she still had time before the meeting. She was twenty minutes early, which was close enough to late for her. Hannah settled into her desk chair and fired up her desktop computer, then set about putting out a few fires that had blazed to life overnight.
But New York was in her head again. Hannah didn’t like to think about New York. About how she trusted her friend, back when she’d had what passed for a social life in the hours she wasn’t working at that restaurant. She had trusted her friend, she’d been indiscreet in what she’d thought was a safe space, and then she’d found her comments all over the news.
Manager of New York’s favorite new hotspot doesn’t like the food, they had all crowed.
It had been like a nightmare, but Hannah had never managed to wake up. Her phone had been filled with messages from all of her friends at work, wondering what on earth had possessed her. And from the obnoxious head chef himself, who had called her names she didn’t like to think about, even all these years later.
She was surprised they hadn’t fired her on the spot, but had instead forced her to work the busy weekend ahead. And she had only realized afterward that it had been a kind of exercise in public shame. Because every single person who had walked in that door that weekend had asked her if she was the one who’d been quoted, and when she’d said yes—because she might have been a fool but she wasn’t a liar—had delivered a litany of hot takes on how wrong she was. Or had asked her to point out the parts of the extraordinarily expensive menu that were, in her own words,up themselves.
It would have been far preferable to have simply been fired on the spot.
Maybe she should have quit, but she’d held on to some slim thread of hope thatmaybe,if she showed that she was still the same hard worker she’d always been, they might rethinkoneindiscretion…
They had not.
And then on Sunday night, after her last shift—during which not one single person who worked at the restaurant would look her in the eye or speak to her directly—he had appeared.
By then she had accepted that she was getting fired. Because if she hadn’t been, she was sure that she wouldn’t have allowed the tall, almost brutally handsome man who’d watched her so intently from the bar to take her home.
She’d known that all the work she put into her life was about to be taken away from her. Worse, that it was her fault. She never should have trusted that she was in a safe space, not when the restaurant she worked at was the toast of New York.
It was the latest restaurant created by the billionaire restauranteur Antonluca. Once considered the greatest chef in the world, he had stopped cooking years ago and had turned his attention to a series of astonishingly good restaurants all over the world. He had even put together a series of television shows, none of which he appeared in, that had introduced an international audience not simply to his take on food but what many critics had dubbed theAntonluca dining experience.
