Knox extended his hand. “Nice to meet you. That lemon ricotta canape? That was you?”
“That was me.”
“My condolences to the rest of your career. Nothing else will ever quite measure up.”
Tessa shook his hand and let the corner of her mouth lift. “Then I should probably retire on the spot. Less embarrassing for everyone.”
Ronan offered a shorter handshake. “Pleasure.”
“Likewise.”
Tessa moved to the head of the table and opened her tablet. She walked them through the August dinner first. A tasting menu for fifty including line-caught tuna crudo with citrus and micro greens; a summer vegetable risotto with local corn and zucchini blossoms; duck breast with cherry gastrique and roasted fingerling potatoes. She projected each course on the screen with a brevity that made the food the star.
“For dessert,” she said, pulling up the final image, “a deconstructed lemon tart. Meyer lemon curd, Italian meringue, almond crumble, candied lemon peel.” She paused and looked directly at Gabriel, and one small smile broke through. “Better than Headmaster Gideon’s wife’s version. I promise.”
Devney burst into laughter. Knox leaned forward with the expression of a man who’d just been handed a gift.
“That’s right,” Knox said. “I heard you two went to school together.”
“A long time ago,” Tessa said.
“Different lifetime,” Gabriel added, knowing the second the word headmaster left her mouth that he was never living this down.
Knox steepled his fingers. “Tell me more about this headmaster.”
“Knox,” Gabriel said.
“I like context.”
“You like ammunition.”
“Same skill, applied differently.” Knox turned back to Tessa. “Were they good? The headmaster’s wife’s tarts?”
“They weren’t,” Tessa said. “Which I told her once, with disastrous honesty, when I was sixteen. I’ve been trying to make a better one ever since. Some redemption arcs take time.”
Gabriel laughed and looked between Ronan and Devney. “Shouldn’t you two be on a beach somewhere? Drinking out of coconuts?”
“We postponed the honeymoon,” Ronan said. “Devney wants to see the Northern Lights. We’ll be heading to Iceland in September.”
“Well, now I’m invested,” Knox said, not bothering to look away from Gabriel.
Tessa moved on. She walked them through the September investor event. Two hundred guests, three stations, a champagne tower she had designed herself for a Beauchamp anniversary the previous fall, and the dietary cards she’d pioneered because dietary needs deserved real attention, not an afterthought. She named venues. She listed contacts. She answered Ronan’s question about cost per head before he finished asking it.
She didn’t look at Gabriel again.
He watched her, and he couldn’t stop. The way she gestured with one hand while the other held the tablet steady. The way her chin lifted when she meant something exactly. She had become what she’d said she would become and watching her present it in his own conference room pressed a weight onto his chest that he couldn’t name and didn’t want to.
The meeting ran forty-five minutes. Devney closed her folder and stood. “This all sounds perfect. Send me the revised proposal, and we’ll move forward.”
“You’ll have it Wednesday morning.”
Tessa shook hands with Devney, then Ronan, then Knox. When she came to Gabriel, she met his eyes for the first time since the others had walked in. She didn’t soften. She didn’t look away. She raised her chin that same quarter inch and put her hand out.
“Gabriel.”
“Tessa.”
She took her hand back, picked up her tablet, and let Devney walk her to the elevator.
