The Strand bookstorehad been Tessa’s research sanctuary since culinary school.
Miles of books, the famous sign proclaimed. Most people came for the fiction bestsellers or the discount carts outside. Tessa came for the cookbooks tucked into the third-floor alcove where natural light filtered through tall windows and tourists rarely ventured.
Tuesday afternoon meant the store was quieter than on weekends. A few NYU students camped in the literature section with highlighters in hand. Someone flipped through art books near the windows. The hum of people moving through stacks was the soundtrack of her favorite hours.
Tessa climbed the narrow stairs to the third floor. She had two hours before her evening client call, enough time to hunt for vintage cookbooks that might yield inspiration for upcoming fall menus.
The cookbook section occupied a corner near the back. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were crammed with spines in every state of preservation. The books smelled like paper and old leather.
She pulled down a 1962 volume calledThe Gracious Hostess. It assumed you had servants and a cigarette holder. She turned the pages slowly. Crown roasts. Molded salads. A diagram showing how to fold napkins into swans. Her grandmother had owned a copy of this, and in the margin of the lasagna recipe Nana had marked through the canned-tomato instruction in red pen:NEVER. Use San Marzano.Some of Nana’s best advice had lived in the margins of other people’s books.
Tessa was smiling at the lasagna page when her phone buzzed.
Lucy: Where are you.
Tessa: The Strand.
Lucy: Stop hiding at The Strand and text me back about Thursday’s dessert order.
Tessa: I’m not hiding. I’m researching.
Lucy: You’ve been researching since last week. You showed up Monday for ten minutes and vanished.
Tessa: I’ve been busy.
Lucy: You’re avoiding me because you don’t want to talk about Gabriel Sterling.
Tessa pocketed her phone. Lucy was right.
“That one’s a classic.”
Tessa went still, fingers tightening on the cookbook spine.
No way.
She turned.
Gabriel Sterling stood three feet away, holding a hardcover business book, staring at her like she had materialized from thin air.
The aisle was narrow. Too narrow. Shelves pressed in from both sides. She could see the precise instant recognition tipped into laughter. It started in his eyes, spread to his mouth, and then he was laughing, shoulders shaking. Tessa’s control cracked. The laugh escaped before she could stop it. They stood in the cookbook section of The Strand on a Tuesday afternoon and laughed like people who had given up on sanity.
“Okay,” Tessa managed when she could breathe again. “What’s happening?”
“I have no idea.”
“The wedding was inevitable. Your friends. My work. They were bound to overlap, eventually.”
“Agreed.”
“The meeting. Professional.”
“Yes.”
“The coffee shop. The bakery. All explainable.”
“Right.”
“But this.” She gestured around them. “A bookstore. In a city of eight million people.”
