Her eyes flick, quick. “Live?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
“You’ll have them.”
“No later than 4:00,” she says. “I want them purged, iced, and hands off until I’m there.”
“Done.”
She does a slow lap of the line without touching anything. I watch the way she measures the room—even this room she already knows. It’s not nerves.
“This is your second audition,” I say.
“I figured,” she says.
“You pass tomorrow, you start Monday with breakfast at my place, 9:00.”
“Your penthouse,” she says. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“And the menu?”
“You send a weekly plan by Friday. I sign off by Sunday. You shop. You cook.”
She lifts a brow. “Someone else cleans?”
I suppress a smile. “Yes, someone else cleans.”
That gets a tiny lift at one corner of her mouth. She kills it quickly. “Tomorrow’s dinner,” she says, back to business. “You want plated or family-style?”
“Both,” I say. “Whatever you think suits the dishes best.”
She nods, already building it in her head.
“When can I start in the kitchen?”
She holds my eyes. The room has that early chill, and still my collar feels too warm. She leans into the counter, close enough that I catch the clean scent of her skin under. It’s distracting in a way I don’t allow at work. This is still work. I stand straighter.
“A driver will pick you up for a walk-through at 10:00,” I say. “You can prep whatever you need and come back at 4:00 for the rest. Do you need more time than that?”
“No. That’s fine,” she says.
“Anything else?” I ask.
“I need space to do what I need to do,” she says.
“You will get it at dinner. For the walk-through, there’s a chance that Elena, maybe Luca, will be there.”
She moves her shoulders uncomfortably at that.
I continue, “For dinner, you come through service, straight to the kitchen. No one will bother you unless you ask for them. I will check in on you at some point. It is an audition, after all.”
“Good,” she says. “Then we’re fine.”
We aren’t fine. We’re electric. It sits between us like a live wire, humming under the skin. She doesn’t acknowledge it. I don’t either.
