Single-Minded

by Lisa Daily

  It’s clear she adores him. And who could blame her?

  “There will be no restaurant if there’s no cook in the kitchen,” announces Daniel’s grandmother, Miss Georgina. “Come now, chers, we’ve met Daniel’s young lady, we have work to do.” She hugs me tightly and disappears behind the kitchen door. Chef smiles at Daniel, and kisses him proudly on each cheek.

  “You must try the tropical-Cajun lobster,” he says to me. “It’s a revelation. My son is a great talent.”

  “All right, Chef’s had too much cooking wine again.” Gabriel laughs loudly; Daniel and his father join in.

  “Be still my heart, is that the sublime Miss Genevieve Boudreaux?” says Carter dramatically as he enters the bar area.

  “Carter, so glad to see you, cher!” says Genevieve, embracing him warmly. Chef and Gabriel encircle Carter, patting him on the back and greeting him like a beloved relative.

  “Meet Darcy, she’s my plus-one tonight,” announces Carter. “But don’t worry, y’all, I haven’t switched teams on you.” The Boudreauxs greet Darcy, and Carter makes introductions all around.

  “What do you think of Alex’s work? She and Daniel make a great team, no?” says Carter.

  “Boudreaux is a jewel,” says Chef. “In fact, Genevieve and I want to discuss a new restaurant project with Alex. We saw those red binders all over today, and the level of detail, right down to the flow of guests and server traffic, is truly impressive.”

  “What can we say?” jokes Gabriel. “Chef loves his seating charts.” He’s hilarious. I can see why he and Carter hit it off, and why Gabriel and Daniel are so close.

  “It’s seven, Chef, we’ll be opening in thirty minutes,” says Daniel.

  “Are you ready, son?” asks Chef. Daniel nods, and Chef hugs him tightly.

  “We’re so proud of you, cher,” says his mother. She holds him close and kisses him on each cheek. Chef and Genevieve hug me too, and then disappear behind the kitchen door. I marvel at how warm and supportive they are.

  “You’re taking the door,” says Daniel to Gabriel. “Brenna will shadow you tonight.”

  Gabriel nods. “Mother is supervising dessert prep and then she’ll join me up front.”

  Daniel hugs his brother wordlessly.

  “Don’t worry, cher,” says Gabriel. “If it’s a fiasco, we have enough liquor to keep us all tanked for a week.”

  “Comforting.” Daniel smiles.

  75

  Darcy and Carter return to our table, and after some last-minute instruction, Gabriel leaves to manage hosting duties. It’s fascinating to watch the Boudreaux family work together. Even on opening night, they all take charge of different areas, working together like an exquisite medley of flavors.

  We’re alone once more, Daniel and I.

  “Your family is amazing,” I say, and he grins. Their affection for each other is obvious.

  “There’s not much time left before the guests arrive,” he says. “But I really wanted to talk about what happened yesterday.”

  “Are you sure you want to discuss this right now?” I ask. “We can talk after the party if you want. I promise I’ll stay to listen. You sort of have a lot going on right now.”

  “I can’t bear to leave this unresolved,” he says. “I know what you must be thinking—”

  “Daniel, you’re needed up front,” says Gabriel, poking his head inside the doorway. “Press is here.”

  “Go,” I say. “It’s your big night. We can talk about it later.”

  He smiles. “It’s our big night.” He reaches out and squeezes my hand, and then follows his brother outside.

  76

  I head out to our table, where Carter and Darcy are enjoying their drinks and the thrill of good gossip.

  “I told Carter about the Daniel situation,” says Darcy. “We need his advice.” This was what I both love and hate about having such a close-knit group of friends. There are no secrets. Even when you want secrets.

  “Has Daniel told you his side of the story?” asks Carter.

  “No,” I say. “Why, do you know what it is?”

  “No,” he answers, downing the rest of his drink. I squeeze the lime into my Perrier and take a sip. I need ice.

  “He tried to tell me just now,” I say, “but then he got pulled away to do an interview.”

  “We think you should listen to him,” says Darcy matter-of-factly.

  “I’m sorry, aren’t you the one who told me to run screaming in the other direction?” I ask.

  “I’ve reevaluated,” she says. “Half my clients are guys who cheat on their wives and girlfriends, and I’ll be the first one to tell you that’s a losing proposition. But this doesn’t feel like that. If the screaming lady was important, she’d be here. And if she was anywhere to be found, you’d be hiding out in the powder room or in the back of a taxi headed for home. But she’s not here, is she?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” I say. “But if I disappear tonight, you should probably drag the bottom of the bay.”

  “Will do,” says Carter cheerfully.

  “He’s introduced you to his family, he put a clearly intimate picture of the two of you in a very public spot,” Darcy says. “I think there’s more to this story, and you need to find out what it is.”

  “I’ll listen to what he has to say, but I can’t think about this right now. If the Boudreaux opening tonight isn’t a complete and spectacular success, I’m cooked,” I say. “After last night, I might as well close up shop.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” asked Darcy.

  “Yes,” I say. “Why do you ask?”

  “One of my clients called me today because she wants to hire you for all her major fundraisers next cycle. It’s a bit funny because she had no idea we even knew each other. It could be big for you. Fantastic money, great exposure.”

  “Who?”

  “She’s a Democratic congresswoman from Miami,” says Darcy. “Young, smart, very savvy. She’s well funded and running for Senate next cycle. Anyway, she sits on the board for the Wildlife Foundation and she was at your little underwater shindig last night.”

  “Oh gawd,” I moan. “So much for that job. What a disaster.”

  “Well, my client told me that disaster raised almost one-point-two million dollars last night. That’s a forty percent bump over last year’s numbers. Do you know how huge that is in this economy? Plus, the flood at the Ritz made the front page of the newspaper, so you’ll probably get a few sympathy donations from that as well.”

  “Did it really?’ I ask. “That’s humiliating. Wait … forty percent? That’s astounding. We were aiming for twenty.”

  “Well, you overshot it. The flood story ran on the front page, below the fold, with a photo of you and the skinny socialite. Fabulous dress, by the way.”

  “Thanks. You mean Olivia Kensington Vanderbilt, the Wildlife Foundation chair?” I ask. Darcy nods.

  “She fired me last night. Publicly. She screamed, ‘You’re fired,’ across the grand ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton.”

  “Well,” snorts Darcy, “apparently she counted all that money and this morning she was singing your praises.”

  77

  There’s little Sarasota loves as much as a new restaurant opening. The steady stream of tourists, spectacular weather, and availability of fresh seafood from the Gulf draws a much higher caliber of restaurants than one would generally find in a town this size. Boudreaux has the added appeal of a waterfront location and a celebrity chef with movie-star looks.

  The first seating at seven-thirty is packed rail to rail. I make my rounds to watch the crowds, look for flaws in the traffic flow, and observe the diners’ experiences to make certain that Boudreaux is providing the unique culinary experience Daniel aspired to.

  Genevieve and Gabriel are the consummate hosts, welcoming every guest like an old friend. With Chef and Miss Georgina supervising the kitchen staff for the night, Daniel is free to ingratiate himself to his guests, ensuring their exp
erience is perfect. He’s tirelessly charming, and I watch him move about the restaurant for hours, making personal connections with every guest. It’s brilliant. These diners feel like friends, and they’ll return for years to come.

  I’ve tasted everything on Daniel’s menu, due to his charming habit of feeding me whenever I’d stop by the boat to work, and the fact that he and his new staff ran through the entire menu multiple times during our final week of preparation. As I watch the food come out to each table, I’m impressed with Chef and Miss Georgina’s execution of Daniel’s original recipes. They’re exactly as he envisioned. Prepared as though Daniel had plated each meal himself.

  As I make my rounds, Daniel and I keep finding each other’s gaze in the crowd, even from across the room. The connection between us is captivating, galvanic—as though we’re bound together by some powerful force perceptible only to us.

  Later, I’m standing near the wall, waiting for the crowd to pass so I can return to my table. Just a few steps away, Daniel charms some guests with a tall New Orleans tale. He reaches backward, unobserved, and lightly touches my hand, a simple gesture that sends shivers over my body as powerful as on the first night we danced.

  It will be hours before the last guest will leave. Daniel’s opening night is a resounding success. The patrons and the media are raving about the food, the view, the wine list, and especially, the chef.

  As the crowd finally begins to thin out around 1:00 A.M., and no new guests are arriving, Daniel appears at our table.

  “Do you have a minute?” he asks.

  “Do you?” I laugh. He takes my hand and I follow him through the kitchen, to his studio upstairs.

  78

  “Are you exhausted?” I ask.

  “I’m energized. This is the biggest night of my life so far, and all I could think of was spending it with you,” he says, still holding my hand in his. We stand in the dark, near the doorway of his studio, the only place on the boat where we can talk privately.

  I feel like a live wire, being alone with him.

  “I’m so sorry. I can only imagine what you must have thought, yesterday,” he says.

  “I thought that I trusted you, maybe too soon, and that trust had been betrayed,” I say. “Is that what happened?”

  “You haven’t known me long, but I’m loyal as the moon is to the sun,” he says.

  That’s sweet, sort of old-fashioned and poetic. But I’m not sure I’m buying it.

  “So who was she?” I ask.

  “Her name is Sasha,” says Daniel. My heart sinks. This isn’t off to a good start. I was praying for something along the lines of mistaken identity or Food Network groupie. He brings my hand to his cheek, and I take a deep breath. Just listen, I think to myself. Just listen.

  “She’s a restaurant critic at the Time-Picayune. We were involved for about two years; it was stormy, toxic, painful,” he says.

  “The thing is, I should have known better. My mother and Gabriel both warned me about dating her. I didn’t listen. She’s very intense, torrid, passionate, emotional, which truth be told, was what initially attracted me to her. She was beautiful, she could be incredibly charming. But she became enraged easily, she was highly jealous, and created huge scenes at Chevalier and Royale more than once. My family wasn’t having it; obviously, a screaming fit in the middle of the dining room during the dinner rush was unacceptable,” he says. I nod and listen, unsure of what to believe.

  “I’d break it off, she’d follow me—show up where I was working, call me over and over again all night long, scream at me for hours, appear at my apartment in the middle of the night whenever I tried to break it off. We’d get back together and sometimes it would be good for a while, and sometimes we’d just get sucked right back into this vortex of a constant, poisonous cycle of fighting and making up, fighting and making up.”

  “Why did you stay?” I ask.

  Daniel continues, “I don’t know. There were times when I stayed with her because I didn’t have the energy to leave her. Eventually, my father told me he was going to have to call the food editor at the Times-Picayune to let him know what happened at the restaurant the last time she exploded. He was obviously conflicted about it. I was angry at first, but I understood, of course. There was no way she wasn’t going to get fired. I can’t blame Chef—aside from the big scenes, and who knows what she would have written about our restaurants, or a new opening, if she was angry—she was really out of control by then.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  He speaks slowly now, “She cried and told me it was only because she loved me so much and she knew she was losing me. I didn’t want her to lose her job. There was part of me that felt responsible. I asked my father not to call her boss, to give her another chance, and told him I’d leave town and open a restaurant outside New Orleans.”

  “But you love New Orleans,” I say.

  “I love my family more,” he says. “And I’d never risk our family legacy.”

  “So you left?” I ask.

  “It was okay. We’d been wanting to expand, and it got my family out of an awkward position, and allowed me to end the relationship. I felt suffocated, I had to get away from her.”

  “What happened when you told her you were leaving?” I ask.

  “Nothing, at first,” he says. “I just left. I changed my number. I traveled for a bit, was a guest chef for a time at a couple of different places—the Boudreaux family name does open a lot of doors. I thought that if I came right out and told her I was ending the relationship that she’d retaliate against my family’s restaurants. But if I just left, I figured she’d eventually move on. That all that anger would dissipate, that maybe she wouldn’t hate me as much.”

  “So not exactly as planned,” I say.

  “And then when Archer called me about the boat, I knew it was time to open my own restaurant. And I knew Sarasota was the place I wanted to do it.”

  “Can you blame her for thinking the two of you were still together?” I ask, “I mean, since you never actually ended it.”

  “It’s been a year and a half since I left. I haven’t spoken with her. Before I came here, I hadn’t stayed any one place for more than six months. But maybe I should have said something. I still don’t know if it would have made things worse, or preclude what happened the other day. But if I could go back and change something to prevent yesterday morning from happening like that, I would.”

  “So what happened after I left?” I ask. I’m torn. I feel incredible sympathy for Daniel if what he’s saying is true. But I have no real way of knowing if it is. And that scares the hell out of me.

  “I told her that you and I were seeing each other, that I didn’t love her anymore, that I was serious about you, and that I’d do anything to convince you of that.” My heart skips a beat at that revelation.

  “What did she do?” I ask. I’m so confused. What would Sasha’s side of the story be? Did she really think after all that time, after everything that happened, that Daniel somehow belonged to her? If Sasha were a man, she’d probably be arrested for stalking. It was an uncommon act of kindness and generosity on Daniel’s part, to save her job and move away from the city he loved to protect his family’s restaurant legacy. But I’m unnerved by what seems like Sasha’s utter audacity, bursting right in, and I’m afraid there’s more to the story than he’s telling me. If I’m going to trust him at all, I have to trust him at his word, and that is terrifying and disconcertingly familiar. I’m not sure if I can do it.

  Or if I should.

  “She was upset,” he says. “But we talked for some time yesterday, and I think she understood. And even if she doesn’t, I’ve already moved forward.”

  We stand there in the darkness, and he silently holds my hand. My mind is awhirl with my doubts and fears. Is he telling the truth? Is it foolish to leave myself vulnerable to any man? Is my heart overruling my brain because it knows better, or because it doesn’t?

  “I’m so drawn to
you, Daniel,” I say. “But I don’t know that I can trust you. And I just can’t survive another betrayal. I just can’t.”

  He shakes his head, “Has it ever occurred to you that you’re so afraid of being hurt by love that you’re willing to sacrifice everything amazing that comes along with it?”

  I know he’s right. I just don’t know if I’m willing to risk it.

  “I know where your soft spots are, cher. I promise you can put your faith in me,” he says.

  Steadfast. That was the word Daniel’s mother had used to describe him. It’s an unusual word, one of another time. And yet my instincts are telling me that it suits Daniel perfectly.

  I think about how close Daniel is with his family, how clearly they adore and respect each other, how the black-and-white photo he mounted next to our table feels like a declaration, how with the exception of yesterday morning, I’ve never gotten a single inkling that Daniel is anything but the good man I believe him to be.

  “Alex, I’m in love with you,” he says softly. And suddenly, there’s nothing I believe to be truer.

  Maybe it’s the accent.

  79

  Things may not have worked out exactly how I planned, or even close to how I planned, but they still worked out pretty well, even without me being in charge of everything.

  I’m happy, actually happy. My business has taken off, after all the effort I poured into it over the last year. I’ve built something lasting that sustained me though my stormiest days. It feels good. If nothing else, I’ve learned that I can depend on myself even when I can’t depend on anyone else. Even disasters can become triumphs.

  I have my best friend back, and he’s finally happy being himself. And that’s all we really want for the people we love, isn’t it? Michael’s accident was scary as hell, but it brought all of us closer together. It made me realize how important Michael still is to me. And that even though things didn’t work out as I planned, they still worked out. It’s ironic that Michael was the one who ended up convincing me to take a chance on Daniel.

  After what happened with Michael, I’d felt like I was always the one putting myself out there, taking all the risks, and being crushed as a result. I’m already naturally cautious, and betrayal made me more so. But what I didn’t realize until now was that Daniel was taking big risks too. I wasn’t alone, out there all by myself. He put his family’s legacy on the line to try something completely different, he put his faith in me and my unusual little company to give form to his dream, and he let himself fall in love, an act of bravery considering the person he fell in love with was broken and unsure and distrustful.