Laurie Tomlinson - With No Reservations

Who does Graham Cooper Jr. think he is?

She dialed the aperture down a few notches. Who was she kidding? She’d almost lost it in front of him.

With one tiny movement of the shading screen a camera equipment company had sent her to review, she flicked all thoughts of Graham Cooper out of her mind and returned to her position on the chair, one foot in a clean sock perched on the table for optimum angling.

Her computer interrupted the moment of perfection, beckoning her to the kitchen counter with the rhythmic ring of an incoming video chat.

Sloane scowled as she hurried to the kitchen. There was only one person who could be calling right now. “This better be important, Grace.” Sloane stuck her tongue out at her best friend to show she was joking when her freckled face appeared. Mostly joking. “I’m losing light.”

“Good morning to you, too, Meezy!” Grace lived in San Diego, two hours behind Sloane. She was still in her pajamas even though it was past nine there. She’d nicknamed Sloane Meezy based on the name of her blog, Mise en Place.

“I wanted to make sure you got my gift.” Her friend yawned, raking a hand through her fluffy red hair. “That’s a pretty valuable piece to be floating around in the possession of the postal service.”

The biggest kitchen catalog on the web, Good Cooks, had sent Grace a high-end enamel Dutch oven she already owned. So she’d taken pity on Sloane who had dropped her own brand-new one and shattered it during an unfortunate compound butter incident.

She shuddered at the memory of the slick beef short rib concoction that had covered every square foot of her kitchen. “I was going to text you after I finished my post for today. It’s gorgeous. I think the purple looks better in my kitchen anyway.”

“Good, good. Well let’s get right down to it.”

“What?”

“You and I both know I didn’t call to chat about cookware.”

Sloane sighed. Right. That. She should have known. “There’s nothing to tell, Grace. I’m working with their son to open his new restaurant. End of story.”

“Sloane, Sloane, Sloane. There’s always more to the story. How did he act? Was he decent to you? Did he have an entourage?”

“Okay, Hoda.” Sloane carried her laptop to the table and sank into the chair. She wanted to take a nap. “No, he didn’t have an entourage. He was alone. Doing his own repairs, for goodness’ sake.”

“Did he say why he’s been off the radar for so long?”

“He was in Paris. Going to culinary school.”

“From America’s party boy to chef who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. Interesting.” Grace typed something into her computer. “He doesn’t sound like the monster Levi was thinking he’d be.”

The web coding and design genius they’d befriended hadn’t held back when voicing his opinions about Cooper’s character, much less his stance on whether Sloane was fit enough to work with him in the first place.

“Well, we know Levi can be a little trigger-happy with his Google searching.” Sloane laughed.

“Yes, my friend. You’re absolutely right. So, was he as good-looking in person?”

Cooper’s warm, caramel-colored eyes and his strong profile that could have been chiseled from granite appeared in hi-def in Sloane’s mind.

Quick. Play dumb. “Who, Levi?”

Grace raised her eyebrows.

“I, uh—”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Triumph played in Grace’s eyes. Sloane was toast and she knew it. “Maybe I’ll get to find out for myself in a few weeks.”

Sloane sighed. “The conference.”

“You have no excuse this year. It’s practically in your backyard.”

“I know, but—”

“But don’t worry. I won’t let them devour you.”

This was why they got along so well. And why Sloane had finally agreed to attend their annual food blogging conference. It was true; she’d run out of excuses since the conference was in Dallas this year. But she couldn’t deny it would be good to finally meet Grace in person, even if her throat closed up a little when she imagined being in a room with thousands of bloggers and readers that were much less intimidating from their 2-D cyber distance.

“Well, I won’t keep you from your good light. Are we watching MasterChef tonight or what?” Grace was now typing furiously. Their conversation wasn’t long for this world.

“Sure. Eight my time?”

“Yep. I’ll tell Levi about it right now. And I’ll tell him to back off. I think one grand inquisition about the Coopers is enough.”

“Ha. Fat chance of that. Talk to you later.”

Grace closed the screen, foregoing a goodbye now that she’d moved on to the next thing.

After Sloane picked a new pair of socks, she returned to the chicken, rearranged everything according to the slight difference in lighting and snapped several shots from a bird’s-eye view.

Her meal might not be molecular gastronomy or whatever they taught at a fancy French culinary school. But she was going to teach some home cooks how to roast a chicken so bone-licking scrumptious that they’d never be satisfied with rotisserie from the deli ever again.

And she was going to buck up and prove she had a lot to bring to Graham Cooper’s table—rattled first impressions or not.

* * *

COOPER SAT AT his desk in his favorite corner of his home—besides the kitchen—head in one hand, the proofs for Simone’s promotional materials spread in front of him. They were clean, bright, cheerful—all the trappings of the J. Marian corporate signature. But all wrong for Simone.

He’d been staring at them for what felt like hours, absently rubbing circles into Maddie’s fur with his foot. He couldn’t put his finger on it or name exactly what changes he needed to make. Design had never been his forte. Not like sales and customer service were. But he knew the tone didn’t work at all. It fit what he was going for about as well as Maddie crammed into the nook under his desk, knobby legs sticking out in every direction. He sipped cold coffee, its acrid taste a far cry from what he would have been drinking a few years ago. It sure would make these proofs easier to swallow.

He sighed. Something had to give or history would repeat itself. He’d lose everything he owned if it meant he could stand the person he saw in the mirror each morning.

Cooper swallowed hard. Even the restaurant.

No. He sat up and turned the proofs over so all that was visible was the back of the page, frustration gnawing at his foundation like a termite. He’d been through too much to let his restaurant slip through his fingers.

And then he saw it. The scrap of J. Marian letterhead had slipped through a pile of papers. Sloane Bradley, it read in his father’s assistant’s slanted script. No email address or phone number. Not even the address for her website. Simply a name that opened the starting gate for a fresh round of loping thoughts.

He swiped a finger across the trackpad of his laptop and opened the browser. Sloane Bradley food blog, he typed into the search engine. The first result had a thumbnail of Sloane along with a short introduction to her website. Cooper cracked a half smile when he saw the title was French. Mise en Place.

“Dude, maybe you should get some glasses.”

Cooper shot up, and Maddie scrambled from beneath the desk, scattering a stack of papers with her tail in her excitement. “How about you warn a guy before you creep up on him like that?” He grinned to show he was joking. And to downplay the fact that his face had been inches from Sloane’s picture on his computer screen. “How long have you been here, man?”

“Just got home a few hours ago.” Jake Neighbors traveled all across America, helping surgeons install pacemakers and defibrillators all hours of the night in hospitals that didn’t have the technology. Cooper saw his roommate one or two nights a week—if he was lucky. Most of the time, Jake was catching up on sleep.