"Elena"s menu. It"s Aspen. It"s a moneyed crowd. They"re choosy but willing to be adventurous. Use all that moxie and give me a menu that"s western or southwestern, but also definitely upscale and gourmet."
"What, like the Coyote Cafe?"
"Your call." He lifted his coffee cup. "I am more fond of Cafe Pasqual"s, though it"s not as high end. Both are very good."
"I haven"t been to Cafe Pasqual"s." She rarely visited New Mexico. It seemed shameful suddenly. She tried to take a bite of omelet, but it sat on her fork, taunting her. "And if it doesn"t work in a year?"
He shrugged. "I"ll let you go, and try something else."
Airlessness moved through her lungs. He said it so easily, the challenge, the promise and consequences. For him, it was a business gamble. For Elena, it was her career. Her life.
And yet, hadn"t she been working toward this for nearly two decades? "When would you need me?"
A slight lift of one shoulder. "As soon as possible. I"m moving my daughter to Aspen to get her out of LA for a while, and we"re planning to be there by August 1. I"d like to get started shortly after that, get the new menu in place and work out the bugs before the ski slopes open."
"Is there a firm date for the slopes, or does it depend on snow?"
"It"s December 9 in Aspen. So"-he narrowed his eyes, gazed in the distance-"we"ll aim for a soft opening by late October, early November, aim for a grand opening mid-December."
Dismayed, she said, "So, you"ll be on-site?"
"Yes. Does that bother you?"
Yes, she wanted to say. His presence would be distracting, in so many ways. That urbane intelligence. The still gaze. Those sensual curls. Aloud, she said, "Not if you don"t get in my way. If you tell me it"s my kitchen, I"ll take that pretty literally." she wanted to say. His presence would be distracting, in so many ways. That urbane intelligence. The still gaze. Those sensual curls. Aloud, she said, "Not if you don"t get in my way. If you tell me it"s my kitchen, I"ll take that pretty literally."
"Understood." He"d neatly finished his breakfast while they spoke, invisibly eating while Elena thought and talked. The server whisked away his empty plate. Elena noticed the girl had tucked in her blouse. She smiled. The girl smiled back.
Julian said, "There are a couple of conditions."
"I"m listening."
"I get final approval of the menu, and I want to hire someone to professionally write the descriptions."
"No problem."
"You"ll have control of the kitchen staff, naturally, but the current manager stays, and-uh-I"m pretty sure we need to keep the chef."
"The drunk?"
"Yeah."
"Interesting choice," she said, inclining her head. "Why do you want to keep him?"
"The steak pie. The fact that the place has made some money in spite of the fact that there are so many problems. He"s a James Beard award winner. Obviously a lot of talent there." He pursed his lips, peered at something in the distance, a vision of what might be, perhaps. "But, basically, it"s a gut feeling. Could be right, could be wrong."
Elena speared a vivid red strawberry, a fruit at its prime, and fell into admiring it. The smooth red flesh, quilted with the tiniest seeds. It tasted slightly grainy, imbued with the sunlight of a summer morning. "Mmm." She stabbed another and held it out to Julian. "Have a taste."
He bent in without hesitation and took it from her fork. She glimpsed his tongue. "Excellent."
She handed him another one, which he took with his fingers. "The chef in Aspen-he"s executive now, right?"
Julian nodded. He knew exactly what she was asking. The chef would be demoted-he"d hate her the minute she showed up.
"That might be a little volatile," she said.
"A challenge, I"m sure," he said, but there was no apology in it.
"What"s his name?"
"Ivan Santino."
She wrote it down and stuck it in her pocket. If she had to deal with him, she"d want to go in armed. Someone in the community would know something about him, surely.
Then for a moment, she said nothing, trying not to let antic.i.p.ation or fear rush her into anything. Without hurry, she ate some more of her omelet, savoring the sharpness of Swiss cheese, the smoothness of asparagus. She broke a corner of her toast and ate it.
Across the table, Julian was a column of still energy. She liked his face, his black eyes, that tumble of curls, but more than anything, she liked that he could sit there with his hands clasped unmoving around a coffee cup and wait for her to think.
She also liked that he would make a big move for the sake of a child. "May I ask about your daughter?"
He lifted a shoulder. "She"s fourteen-running with a crowd I think is too fast."
"And Aspen is slower than LA?"
"No. It"s a lot smaller, however, and I can keep an eye on her more easily."
"Good for you," Elena said, and meant it. Finished with her meal, she put her napkin aside and picked up her tea. "What will you pay me?"
He named a figure that was a third more than she currently earned. "And because accommodation is so difficult in Aspen, we"ll see to it that you have living s.p.a.ce. A condo, probably."
"I have a dog," Elena said. "I have to have some s.p.a.ce for him. Yard s.p.a.ce."
"Bring him. Everyone in Aspen has a dog."
She thought of her two-year-old rescue mutt, a fluffy chow-Lab mix with a head like a Saint Bernard. "Probably not like Alvin."
Julian grinned, showing teeth for the first time. The eye-teeth were a little crooked, and she liked him for not fixing them, even with all of his millions. "Alvin?"
"From Alvin and the Chipmunks, remember them?"
He laughed. "I"ll have to see this dog."
The sound of his laughter was weirdly familiar, a song she remembered from long ago. Scowling, Elena took a breath. "I"m very excited and flattered by your offer, Mr. Liswood. But my policy is to never say yes to anything without thinking about it on my own. I need to take a walk."
"Of course." He stood with her. "I do need an answer fairly quickly. We need to get moving, and if you are not interested, I"ll need to move on to my next choice."
Elena pushed away her nervousness. Told herself to take her time anyway. He wouldn"t run out and get another chef before the end of the day. "I understand," she said with as much cool professionalism as she could muster.
"This is my cell phone number." He gave her a business card and held out his hand. "Thank you for coming."
"My pleasure." As his long fingers clasped her hand, she caught the scent of his skin. Not the food preferences she sometimes picked up, but simply his skin, himself. It smelled of rain hitting the earth on a summer evening. "I"ll let you know by the end of the day."
"I"ll look forward to that."
Their hands were still linked. Palm to palm. Eye to eye. She liked him. She thought she could trust him.
And yet, there was some darkness about him, sad and lonely, lingering in the air around him. Now she caught another scent, still not food, but a waft of old-fashioned perfume. She didn"t move for a moment.
He didn"t move away. The air seemed to buzz.
d.a.m.n it.
Elena pulled away. "Thank you, Mr. Liswood. I"ll let you know as soon as I can."
"A pleasure meeting you, Ms. Alvarez." His eyes twinkled. "I look forward to hearing from you."
The rain had slowed to a soft drizzle, and Elena fetched her dog Alvin from the neighbor who kept him while she worked. They headed for the seawall. If she didn"t walk, all the broken bits of her-the shattered hip, the pinned left leg, her spine-stopped working.
So, every day, rain or shine, blizzards or gales, Elena headed out. Here in Vancouver, it was mainly to the seawall that looped around Stanley Park, always next to the water, a six-mile trek that kept her joints lubricated and head clear.
What a morning! The article and the Blue Turtle and getting fired and Julian Liswood and the possibility of a kitchen of her own. It was so much to think about.
And there at the center of it all was the fact that her home was gone. Again. Dmitri and the Blue Turtle. Her heart burned with sorrow and anger, like those flaming hearts on saints.
Not that it was a surprise. It had taken three months, three months of breaking up and getting back together in wet and heated make-up sessions; and more recently, three weeks of late night phone calls-both his and hers.
The usual. Civilized breakups probably happened, but not between a Russian man and a Latin woman.
But she also felt the end was solid now. This time, they would not get back together.
A slap of wind gusted over the water, and Elena winced against it. This was not how she had imagined her life would turn out, that she would be nearly forty and still husbandless, childless, rootless. As a girl, curled up in the corner of the kitchen in the roadhouse where her grandmother had tended bar, Elena had read every fairy tale known to man. All the pretty American Disney ones, with princesses who had flowing blonde locks and long white gloves. Cinderella, notably, with her lost shoe and the determined prince who knew he would find her, who would not give up until he did. She had liked Snow White, with her black eyes and black hair, and it seemed her world of seven dwarves was a comforting depth of family. There was Sleeping Beauty, locked away in her briar, and enchanted cats who turned into princes, and cursed orphans, and fairies who brought blessings spiderwebbed with curses.
There was simply no doubt in her mind that she would one day find her own prince. He would kiss her, and Elena would Know, and they would Live Happily Ever After.
Depressing that none of that had materialized. She loved her work, but honestly-how much longer could she do it? It was a challenging occupation for those with good health. Her pinned, patched body was not in that category.
Alvin, sensing Elena"s mood, nudged her hand with a wet, cold nose. The king of empaths, Alvin was high-strung and utterly devoted to Elena. He couldn"t bear it if she was shouting or weeping or distressed in any way. "It"s all right, baby," she told him, rubbing a hand on his silky red head.
Now fate had delivered a chance. It rose through her like a harp note. Executive chef. Executive chef.
It would be a make-or-break opportunity. Visible. Public. There would be reviewers from high places, and some of them would still judge her more harshly because she was a woman, and American, and trained in Santa Fe. Her long education had taken her many places after that, San Francisco and Paris and London and New York, but that was what the bios all said, "a woman chef trained in Santa Fe."
Colorado was awfully close to New Mexico. Her family was there still, and she sometimes visited, but only for brief stints. Watching the seabirds whirl and spin in the air above the rocks, she saw a map in her head, with one star each on Aspen and Santa Fe, and a red dot showing Espanola in the northern New Mexico mountains.
Alvin licked her hand, b.u.mped her knee. "I"m okay, honey. Promise." Rea.s.sured, he pranced along, tail swinging, head upright and eagerly alert. Elena had found him in an alley when she first arrived in Vancouver, an abandoned puppy of five weeks, a fluffy ball of red fur. He loved snow-Aspen would be his idea of heaven.
But-a binge-drinking chef who"d be p.i.s.sed that Elena was taking his kitchen? That should be lots of fun. It was also cold in Aspen. How would all the arthritic points in her body react to that?
"Get real, Elena," she said aloud, fiercely enough that Alvin licked her hand. There were no real objections. The opportunity was heaven-sent.
Well, except for Julian himself. Cloaked in that vampire stillness, so clean and tall and searingly intelligent. There was something real and solid about him, and yet-talk about trouble! A famous director with piles of money and a long stream of beautiful girlfriends and wives, who were a Who"s Who of one-bean-for-lunch actresses who kept the tabloids in business. But it was that flavor of sadness surrounding him that tempted her. He was hungry. Starving.
Luckily, he was so rich and so accomplished and so out of her league they might as well have been different species. His appet.i.tes would run to an entirely different sort of flavor than a chef from New Mexico.
When she finished the six-mile circle, Elena sat on a park bench in the sunshine, Alvin at her ankle lifting his nose to the air. A breeze rippled over his red-gold mane. She waited to see if her ghosts would have anything to say, but the air stayed still.
From her pocket, she took her cell phone, checked the world clock function to make sure it wasn"t the middle of the night in London, and pressed 5 to autodial her friend Mia.
"h.e.l.lo, baby," Mia answered in a voice as smooth and melodic as the Lady of the Lake. "I"m on my way to meet a juicy man. Can it wait?"
"No." Elena smiled, imagining Mia"s choppy black hair blowing around on a London wind. "You"re going to move to Aspen anyway, so forget about him."
"Aspen? Why am I moving there?"
"Because I have been offered a position as executive chef in a new Julian Liswood restaurant and I will only take it if you agree to be my pastry chef."
"Oh, my G.o.d! Liswood the director?"
"The same."
"This is fantastic." She paused. "Oooh, the timing is horrible! I might have to think about this, though, you know? The man is really good. I"ve been meaning to talk to you about him."
Elena heard something in her friend"s voice. "Who is it? You haven"t mentioned anyone."
"I just didn"t think it was going to be anything. He"s..." She laughed breathlessly. "I"m still afraid to talk about it very much."
"Oh, but I need you, Mia. This is what we"ve been planning for a million years."
"Is Dmitri coming?"
"No. He fired me this morning." She sighed. "It"s a long story. I"ll explain it all in person."
"So the breakup is on?"
"The breakup is finished, finally."
Mia took a breath. "Good. He was bad for you."
"Why didn"t you say that before?" Elena frowned. "Never mind. Not important today. Will you come?"
A beat of hesitation. "I have to think, sweetness. I"ll call you in a week or so, okay? I really have to go now. Call you soon."
"Okay, I-"
But there was the sound of a man"s laughter on the other end of the line and Mia was gone. Elena frowned and clapped the phone closed.
When she hung up, she called Patrick, the third member of their team, but only got voice mail. "h.e.l.lo, this is Patrick," he said precisely, and she thought of his c.o.xcomb of blond hair, his excruciatingly neat appearance. "Leave a message."