by Grace Palmer
Dad ambled down to where Brent was standing, leaned up against a dock piling, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good thing I have my master fisherman son here to lead us to victory over the Schmoes then.” He gave Brent a wink.
Brent sighed and smiled again. His dad was definitely laying it on thick this morning. No wonder Mom had finally insisted on booting him out of the house while she got everything cleaned up and ready for Holly and co. When Henry Benson got rolling, he was an unstoppable force of nature.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Dad,” Brent said. “Now, you gonna make me do all the work here, or can you lend a hand?”
“Lead the way, O Captain my Captain.” He chuckled. “Let’s go catch some fish.”
3
Sara
One Week Earlier
“Scooby, take the trash out. Yuri, scrub down the countertops and the knives. And Larissa, check on the mother mix for tomorrow’s baked goods service—it was acting funky earlier in the day. Might need you to feed it some more starch.”
“Yes, chef!” came the booming response from the kitchen staff gathered around Sara. She gave them a curt nod to signal that she was done with her orders, and they all dispersed to take care of their respective tasks.
It was the end of what had been an excruciatingly long dinner service at Lonesome Dove, the Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City’s Flatiron District where Sara Benson worked as the sous chef. After nearly eight hours of work, Sara’s eyes felt heavy in her skull, and her fingers were chapped and sore. But despite how drained she felt physically, her soul was on fire. Nothing brought her alive quite like cooking. And not just any cooking, but the kind of cooking they did at Lonesome Dove—fast-paced, bordering on reckless, with a sense of flair and spontaneity that made it her favorite kitchen she’d ever worked in.
The accolades that had come pouring in during the four short months they’d been open were nice, too, of course, but that was pretty much a given, seeing as how the restaurant’s owner was a well-established wonder boy in New York’s fine dining scene. Gavin Crawford, owner and operator of Lonesome Dove and a dozen other wildly successful restaurants in the northeast, had seemingly been born on a magazine cover. Lord knows he’d certainly graced enough of them during his climb to the top of the culinary world. It seemed like every other weekend, he was jetting off to collect another lifetime achievement award or “Best New _______” something or other.
Sara still wasn’t quite sure how she’d landed this gig. Sure, she knew she was talented, and she had the grades at the Culinary Institute of America to prove her chops. That helped, as did several glowing recommendations from her stints in some other famous establishments around the city. The icing on the cake, though, was almost certainly one hazily remembered night of tequila shots with Gavin’s assistant, Kelly. That had been enough to finagle her the interview six months ago when word got around town about Gavin’s new passion project.
Sara could still remember how nervous she was last fall when she’d walked into the empty guts of what would become Lonesome Dove. She had gone there for her one-on-one sit-down with Gavin. All around them hung plastic sheeting and wooden scaffolds. Workmen were hauling in stainless steel kitchen appliances and sheets of glass that would encase the kitchen like a fishbowl, so that diners could watch the art and magic of their food being prepared. Painters were painting, plumbers were plumbing, carpenters were … carpenting?
And there, seated in the middle of it all like a king on his throne, was the one and only Gavin Crawford.
She’d done her research—no one would ever accuse Sara Benson of being a slacker—and she could list his industry rap sheet like the words to her favorite song. America’s Best Restauranteur, 2017. Bon Appetit 40 Under 40, 2014. International Food Critics Association Golden Lion Prize for Outstanding Achievement. One after the other, with no end in sight. Sara wondered idly where he kept all his trophies.
He stood when she entered and gave her a smile that made her heart flip.
Sara knew right away that she was in trouble.
Gavin was six feet, two inches of pure man and looked like he was practically carved out of marble. His plaid shirtsleeves were rolled up above his elbow, exposing brawny forearms that rippled with veins. His grip was firm and warm, enveloping her fingers in a handshake that sent sparks racing up her arm and short-circuiting her brain.
And that smile. Oh jeez.
This was no good at all.
Even now, months later, she still wasn’t sure how she’d made it through that interview. It felt like her mouth was completely disconnected from her mind, like she was just floating around above herself like an out-of-body experience. It was hard enough to focus on the words coming out of Gavin’s lips, much less formulate a response of her own to each of his questions. But somehow, she managed to plow through without face-planting or otherwise unduly embarrassing herself.
When it was over, she’d levitated herself out of the work-in-progress restaurant and walked straight to a coffee shop to try and caffeinate some sense into her wonky brain. But it wasn’t even half an hour before her phone buzzed. Kelly was on the line, telling her that Gavin had loved her and the job was hers if she wanted it.
Sous chef, at a brand-new restaurant concept being launched by the infamous Gavin Crawford. What a day that had been.
Hard work had followed, of course. Sara had expected that—welcomed it, even. There was nowhere in the world that made her quite so happy as the kitchen. In there, everything was clean and orderly. Well, not quite “orderly” in the way that most people normally thought of the term. There was far too much heavy metal music blaring and chefs cursing in ten different languages to really be as neat and tidy as the word “orderly” implies. But there was an order to kitchens that was unique, like they operated on their own kind of physics. You set up your mise-en-place, and you yelled “Behind!” when walking behind someone, and when the head chef barked out an order, you knew with one hundred percent certainty that the entire kitchen staff would rise up and respond, “Yes, chef!” unanimously. It set her soul at ease to cook. It felt like home.
And, slowly but surely, success had followed their hard work, just like it always followed in Gavin’s footsteps. Critics trickled in, and when they trickled out, they invariably trailed rave reviews in their wake. Sumptuous. Delectable. An out-of-this-world home run. Sara would never admit this to any of her colleagues, but whenever her mom sent her another newspaper clipping of a Lonesome Dove review, Sara stashed it in a binder she kept under her bed. It felt pretty darn good to receive praise for the work she was pouring herself into.
It finally felt like she was earning it. For as long as she could remember, Sara had done things her way. She’d gotten her ears pierced at eleven and her nose done at fifteen. It had taken only that and a couple of small, innocuous tattoos to kick off a historically volatile Benson family argument between her and her mother, one that had ended with Sara spitefully smashing a white china plate that her mother dearly loved. That memory still made her cringe. She was twenty-nine years old now—no longer a child by any stretch of the imagination, but still young enough to remember the scene vividly and feel guilty about it. She didn’t like thinking about her mother crying on the kitchen floor, surrounded by shards of china.
“Sara?” came a voice from around the corner. She turned around. Benny, one of the food runners, had his head stuck through the doorway. He jerked his chin towards the back of the building when she saw him. “Gavin wants you,” he said.
Sara’s heart did a quick backflip. At this rate, it would be ready for the 2020 Olympics, because at no point in the past four months on this job had it stopped doing gymnastics anytime someone so much as mentioned Gavin’s name.
“Did he say what for?” she asked breathlessly. She realized she looked like a fool, so she straightened up and put on a more serious face.
“Nope.”
“Oh. All right. Thanks, Benny.”
He disappe
ared back around the corner, leaving Sara standing there with her heart pounding.
It was stupid, she knew, but she just wasn’t willing to admit that she was in love with her boss. Besides being unprofessional, not to mention offensively stereotypical—female chef falls in love with handsome restauranteur; give me a break—it was also just bad for her career. Everyone knew that Gavin had an on-again, off-again girlfriend, Melissa. And, although no one was quite sure about the exact nature of their relationship, it seemed like a fair bet that Melissa wouldn’t take kindly to one of Gavin’s employees crossing the boundaries of workplace conduct. That being said, the food scene rumor mill—one of the most active swamps of gossip that Sara had ever encountered in her entire life; savage enough to make high school look like a tea party—seemed confident that Gavin was a playboy to the extreme, despite the Melissa Question. Everyone said he was a “different girl for every night of the week” kind of guy. That didn’t bother Sara overly much. Gavin was a grown man, after all, and she was a grown woman. Who was she to judge if he didn’t want to settle down? And if this Melissa woman was trying to rein him in when he didn’t want to be, why should Sara automatically take her side?
Whether she genuinely believed those things or was just telling herself that to justify her attraction to her boss, Sara wasn’t sure. But either way, none of those thoughts were particularly helpful in calming her down as she strode along the dark hallway towards the small office that Gavin kept at the back of Lonesome Dove.
She took a second outside the door to steel herself. She smoothed down some flyaway hairs, licked her lips to get rid of the chap, and wiped her flour-covered hands on her apron. Only then did she count down backwards from three and knock on his door.
“Come in!” came the friendly reply. Gavin didn’t look up as she slunk through the door. “Close that behind you, will ya? Smells like fish out there. Sit, sit. Give me one sec. I’ll be right with you.”
Sara perched on the edge of the visitor’s chair and took in the sight. Gavin was leaning all the way back in his leather chair, boots on the desk, as he tapped frenetically on his phone. His strong brow was furrowed in concentration, and he had a habit of gnawing on his bottom lip when deep in thought. Sara found that little quirk to be irresistibly cute.
She looked around his office while he typed. It was mostly bare-bones—a rickety desk, a chair on either side, a small, cluttered bookshelf. Some framed awards on the walls. A few pictures, too: Gavin holding up a monstrous redfish and beaming wide. Cooking in his younger days, full chef’s regalia on, hands a blur as they chopped and sliced and julienned. In a tux, standing with Melissa.
Ugh. The smile fell right off Sara’s face at the sight of that last one.
Finally, Gavin made one final swipe of his thumb and Sara heard the whooshing sound that indicated a message being sent. She wondered who he was texting or emailing. A distant, stupid, silly part of her brain hoped that it was Melissa. We’re over. Sorry. She shook the dumb thought out of her head and gave him a smile.
“Sara! Sara, Sara, Sara,” Gavin said by way of greeting. He plunked his boots on the ground and leaned forward over his desk towards her. His sleeves were rolled up over his elbows, just like they always were. And, like she always did, Sara couldn’t help but notice the deep tan, the light dusting of auburn hair, and the veins that wound themselves up towards his bicep before disappearing beneath the folded cuff.
“Gavin,” she half-said, half-giggled.
“You’ve been killin’ it out there. I really mean that. Like, where’d you come from, and how can I get a dozen more of you?”
She giggled again and immediately admonished herself for sounding like a lovestruck high schooler. That wasn’t far from the truth, but still, it was unbecoming of someone trying to make it as a chef in the cutthroat NYC fine dining scene, much less as a woman trying to do that. Heck, it was unbecoming for anyone over the age of sixteen. And yet, she had the hardest time not laughing at every little joke and gesture that Gavin made.
“It’s easy when you’re having fun.”
“Therein lies the secret to success, I suppose,” he said sagely. “I wanted to ask you something: how are you liking everything?”
Sara straightened up in her seat. “Uh, great! Loving it. It’s my favorite job ever.”
“Good, good,” Gavin mused. He rubbed his cleft chin between thumb and forefinger, another deep-thinking habit of his. Her father did the same thing whenever he was reading one of his WWII history books by the fire during a long Nantucket winter. Sara wondered for a moment what her dad was up to right this second. It had been—what, two, maybe three weeks since she’d talked to her parents? She’d just been busy, and when she wasn’t working, she was sleeping, and she hadn’t wanted to call home because whenever she did, she and her mother ended up bickering … Then, just as suddenly as the thought had arrived, she shook her head and forced herself to focus back on the moment.
“Why? Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No, no! Not at all. It’s great to hear,” Gavin replied. “I was hoping you’d say that. Here’s the deal: I have a little thing next week, up in Boston. Sort of a banquet-type deal—they’re giving me something to commemorate I-forget-what, blah blah. Just boring industry stuff, you know?”
“Yeah, totally,” Sara said. She most certainly did not know, but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing to admit in this particular moment.
“Anyway, I need a—well, a date, I guess you could call it. Or rather, I have an extra ticket to this little shindig that’s got your name on it. Think you’d be interested?”
It took Sara several moments to catch her breath. Was it unbearably hot in here all of a sudden? The cooling system had been on the fritz lately, courtesy of a sweltering NYC summer heat wave. Sara would have to tell Louis, the head of maintenance at Lonesome Dove, to check it out.
“Uh, yeah! I mean, yes, sir. That’d be amazing.”
“Sir?” Gavin laughed. “Jeez, Sara, c’mon now. I’m not that old. It’s salt-and-pepper still, isn’t it?” Sara guiltily raised her eyes to look Gavin in the face as he ran a hand through his thick, auburn hair. They both knew that there wasn’t an ounce of salt or pepper in it. Just a rich, deep red, long-ish and curly, that she’d spent months dreaming of running her hands through.
She shouldn’t be having these thoughts at all. Gavin and Melissa had had lunch together at Lonesome Dove barely two weeks ago. They’d certainly seemed all lovey-dovey at the time—touching hands over the tablecloth, laughing intimately at whispered inside jokes. The Melissa Question Meter was pointing firmly at Yes. It had made Sara’s insides curdle at the time. But it seemed like a distant memory now. And here, in this office, with the scent of Gavin’s cologne wafting over her like a summer breeze, and those forearms crossed as he leaned over his desk again and considered her with his amber eyes … well, Melissa didn’t feel very real at all. She felt like a distant dream, half remembered and long forgotten. Certainly not threatening.
Besides, no one was saying that this was a real date. “Date,” the way Gavin had said it, was just a turn of phrase. “Partner” would work just as well, wouldn’t it? That felt much more innocuous to say. She’d be Gavin’s partner for this banquet affair. That wasn’t so bad at all.
“Earth to Sara? Do we have a problem? All systems go?”
She laughed again and brought herself back to reality. “No, no problems. It’d be amazing. I can’t wait.”
“Perfect,” Gavin said with a grin worthy of a toothpaste commercial. “I’ll have Kelly email you all the details. It’ll be fun, I promise.”
He winked.
Sara melted.
This trip might be dangerous indeed.
4
Eliza
Eliza Benson was having a panic attack.
Christ, how long had it been since she’d last had one of these? Not since college at UPenn, probably. If then. She thought she had this kind of thing handled. Locked down. No longe
r a problem. Just like everything else in her life—solved.
Stuff had been going well.
Really well.
So well.
Too well?
She had the job she wanted, in the city she loved, with a man she—admired, she guessed? “Loved him” was what she’d say if she, for some bizarre reason, ended up on a daytime talk show and the host asked her how she felt about her fiancé, Clay Reeves. But it might be a stretch. Still, she was a firm believer in the idea that love could flourish over time if watered and cared for, and if that wasn’t true, then maybe love wasn’t the end-all, be-all, great prerequisite to life happiness that everyone claimed it was. As a matter of fact, screw love. If what she had with Clay wasn’t love, then who needed it? What she had with Clay worked for her. It served her. It served them both.
They worked at the same investment bank, Goldman Sachs, in the Leveraged Finance Capital Markets group. They shared a fancy apartment with a ludicrous monthly rent and stocked it with ludicrously expensive furniture and art, courtesy of their ludicrous salaries. They worked the ludicrous hours to match, of course. That was a given. That was expected. But, like everything else in Eliza’s life, that was also fine.
They rose to the same alarm and drank the same coffee, ate the same breakfast and took the same black car service to their office building every morning, six or seven days a week most weeks. They worked on the same floor and kowtowed to the same clients and came home each as exhausted as the other. Sometimes—not too often—they had fast, punctual sex. Eliza couldn’t say for sure, but she figured that she and Clay probably thought about that the same way, too—they could take it or leave it.
It worked for her. It served her. It served them both.
Until today.
Clay had had a client meeting in Brooklyn, so he’d left the GS building early with a couple of their colleagues who were staffed on the same project. Eliza had stayed back to work on a slide deck that was due for review to Marty Fleishman, the firm’s managing director, by seven a.m. the following morning. She’d had her team with her—three recent college grads, two from Cornell and one from Harvard. All hardworking. All very smart. All insufferably annoying.
