Her voice stays professional, but her eyes hold mine for one beat too long. I feel the line between us shift, then tighten. I look away first because we’re still in public, still inside a conflict, still pretending that rules can hold if we stand carefully enough.
On the drive back to Paris, she’s quieter. By the time I stop outside her hotel, the city is fully waking. A delivery man carries bread past the entrance, and the smell of it reaches us through the open window while Serena unfastens her seat belt and turns toward me with her notebook closed in her lap.
“Thank you for taking me,” she says.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
“The market helped,” she says.
“I know,” I say.
Her mouth curves. “Of course you do.”
Neither of us moves for a moment, and the silence inside the car becomes too aware of itself. I know she will keep the sourcing separate from the review because she has built her whole career on knowing where to draw lines. I also know that knowing this does not make watching her walk away any easier.
“I’ll keep the sourcing separate from the review,” she says.
“I know that too,” I say.
This time, she doesn’t argue. She only looks at me for one beat longer than the professional version of the conversation requires before she opens the door.
“Goodbye, Damien,” she says.
“Goodbye, Serena,” I say.
She gets out and walks into the hotel without looking back. I stay at the curb for three seconds longer than I should, then drive to Maison Holt with the taste of market coffee still on my tongue and a decision already forming behind the part of my mind pretending this is all professional.
By the time I change into my kitchen whites, I know exactly what I am going to do next. She forgot to take notes for forty-five minutes. I counted. She asked better questions than anyone has asked me in that market in twelve years, and she did not write them down because she was too interested in the answers.
I button my jacket and go to my station. On Sunday, when the restaurant is closed, I’m going to offer her the kitchen, and I’m going to tell myself it is a professional decision until the lie stops sounding ridiculous.
Chapter Eighteen
Damien
The restaurant is closed on Sundays, which means Maison Holt finally sounds like itself again.
No dining room voices, no glasses being polished behind the bar, no servers crossing the stone floor with the careful quiet of people trained to disappear. No tickets. No calls. No line cooks moving around one another with heat at their backs and knives in their hands. The kitchen sits dark when I enter through the side door, and for a few seconds, I let it stay that way.
A kitchen without service has a different honesty. It shows every choice. The long steel pass, the hanging copper, the cold stations, the ovens, the narrow corridor to storage, the faint smell of soap and metal from last night’s clean-down. There’s no performance in it this morning, no dining room to impress, no guest to feed, no critic to survive. Except that isn’t true—Serena’s coming.
I switch on the first row of lights. The steel brightens. The room wakes in clean lines. I place my jacket over the back of the office chair and roll my sleeves before I unlock the knives. This isn’t service, and I’m not going to dress the moment into something more formal than it is. I offered her the kitchenbecause if Serena Cole is going to write about how I cook, she should see the work before it becomes a room, a pairing, a folded napkin, a plate landing under candlelight.
That’s the professional explanation. It’s not the complete one.
I pull butter, eggs, herbs, fish, stock, citrus, and vegetables from the walk-in. Nothing excessive. Nothing theatrical. I’m not cooking to impress her, which is exactly the kind of sentence a man tells himself when he is arranging ingredients with unusual care. I set everything on the counter, then move one bunch of tarragon farther from the center because I am not a sentimental idiot and the herb has already done enough damage.
At 10:00 AM, the doorbell sounds at the side entrance. I wipe my hands on a towel and open the door. Serena stands outside in the narrow alley, wearing a black skirt, a pale sleeveless blouse, and low shoes practical enough for a kitchen. Her hair is pinned back. Her notebook is tucked beneath one arm, but her hands are empty. She looks rested, composed, and entirely too aware of the fact that this is not a normal professional visit.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Good morning,” I say.
Her eyes move past me into the kitchen.
“You’re really giving me the room.”
“I said I would.”
