The room looks different when I return, though nothing has changed. The bed is unmade. My notebook is still on the desk. The tarragon stands in its glass by the window. My laptop waits exactly where I left it, clean and practical and accusing. I sit and open it.
For one second, I only stare at the screen. Then my mind betrays me. His hand at my jaw. His mouth against my neck. The weight of him in the dark. The way my body answered him before I could pretend to be reasonable.
I close my eyes.
No.
It wasonenight.
A reckless, beautiful, intensely inconvenient night with a man whose last name I don’t know and whose effect on my concentration is already unacceptable.
I open my eyes and place my hands on the keyboard.
This is silly.
I know better than to get wrapped up in a stranger because the wine was good, the afternoon was warm, and Paris is very skilled at making bad judgment look cinematic. I have work to do. A career built on separating appetite from assessment.
I’m very good at this.
I’m very good at keeping things where they belong.
Outside the window, Paris keeps moving. I start typing, as I try to catch up.
Chapter Twelve
Damien
By the time I walk back into Maison Holt, the city has already started lying about morning. Paris looks clean in this light. Pale stone, washed windows, bakery doors opening, cafés dragging chairs onto the pavement as if the day has not already been complicated beyond repair. The air still carries the last cool edge of night, but heat waits beneath it. Late June has a way of pretending mercy before noon.
I unlock the side entrance and step into the kitchen. The room is dark, silent, and exactly as I left it.
Good.
I need things where they belong this morning. I need knives locked in the drawer, boards stacked in order, the pass wiped clean, the walk-in humming at the correct temperature, the air smelling of steel and cold storage and nothing human yet. I need the kitchen before voices, before questions, before Julien looks at my face and decides he knows something.
Because he will. Julien has an inconvenient gift for reading what people try to keep out of the room.
I wash my hands longer than necessary. The water runs cold over my wrists. I brace both palms on the sink and look down at the drain until the image of Serena at her hotel window triesto return and I push it away before it has the decency to become useful.
Work first.
Always.
I change into my jacket, button it cleanly, and begin prep. There is fish to check, herbs to sort, a stock to correct, a sauce base to test before lunch service, and an opening-week kitchen that has no interest in the fact that I left a woman’s hotel room this morning with her taste still on my mouth and her voice still under my skin.
The kitchen does not care. That is why I trust it. I take the first container of stock from the lowboy, lift the lid, and smell. Clean. Deep enough. Not finished. I set it over low heat and skim what little rises. The movement is familiar enough to occupy my hands, not enough to occupy the rest of me.
That’s the problem. My hands know what to do. The rest of me is proving less disciplined. I pick up tarragon from the tray near garde-manger, and the memory comes without permission.
Her hand on the same bunch at the market. Not hesitant. Not decorative. She did not reach like someone choosing something pretty to take back to a rented apartment and forget in a glass of water. She reached like someone who knew what she wanted before she touched it, like someone who understood that quality has a feel before it has a name.
I noticed that first. Not her face. That came after, though it would be dishonest to pretend it didn't come hard. The blonde hair. Blue eyes sharp enough to make politeness feel dangerous. A mouth that looked made for judgment and, later, proved itself capable of other things I am not going to think about while holding a knife.
I set down the tarragon. Then I pick it up again because apparently I’m now a man who loses an argument to an herb. I chop it cleanly and fold it into the test butter.
At the wine bar, she did not perform fascination. That was the second thing. Women have looked at me across bars before. They have looked at the face, the body, the age, the reputation they thought they sensed even without knowing the details. They have softened their voices, widened their eyes, leaned into curiosity as if curiosity were a dress they had chosen for the evening.
Serena did none of that. She sat at the corner table with her notebook open and her glass near her hand, and when I sent the wine, she tasted it before deciding whether to acknowledge me. That should have irritated me. It did. It also made me cross the room.
