On Lavender Lane (8 page)

“So you’ve said. Time and time again. And as I’ve tried to explain it to you, time and time again, as impressive as their personalizing the diners’ experience was, and as much as they undoubtedly enjoyed greeting their guests, their restaurant was much smaller. More intimate. And undoubtedly run at a slower pace.”

“Italians enjoy savoring their food without having to feel they’re being chased off so the chef can turn over tables faster.”

He sighed. Heavily. As only the French could do. How was she suddenly the one defending her position?

“Times are different now,” he insisted. “People who buy an Armani suit don’t expect Giorgio Armani to be toiling away in some backroom sweatshop, personally sewing all the seams. Diners today are seeking a star-power experience in a fabulous environment that they can brag about to all their friends. They don’t care who’s actually preparing the food.”

He was right about one thing: They’d had this conversation too many times to count. And it was more than obvious, even apart from his infidelity, that they’d never reach agreement.

He’d steamrolled over her, as he always did. By their second anniversary, which she’d spent alone, he’d opened restaurants in Miami, Washington, and Chicago.

Fortunately, there’d been the whales to keep the Durand restaurant empire afloat.

The little-known secret of the culinary world was that high-end restaurants such as Maxime’s—with its enormous fresh floral arrangements, heavy silver cutlery, and white tablecloths—had relied on the “whale” customer, regulars who thought nothing of ordering a thousand-dollar bottle of wine to go with their hundred-dollar dinner, and putting the tab on their overblown expense accounts.

Then, seemingly overnight, the stock market plunged; 401(k)s turned into 201(k)s; the rich became if not poor,
then a lot less rich; and the testosterone-driven whales, who for so long had seemed driven to outspend one another, stopped coming. In droves.

When television news cameras showed you getting called before Congress to explain your business practices, being seen eating at Chez Maxime’s on Columbus Circle wasn’t exactly in your best interest while you were trying to dodge indictment.

Nearly overnight, receipts at Maxime’s New York and D.C. restaurants plummeted fifty percent. Along with a thirty-percent dive in Chicago.

While many chefs were forced to close their doors and others slashed their prices or offered two-for-one specials, free wine, and even early-bird specials, Maxime insisted gourmands who appreciated and understood great food would continue to pay for quality.

“Being a four-star chef is like being a shark,” he said, adding Los Angeles, Dubai, and Miami to his empire. Since building the overpriced, money-devouring Maxime’s Las Vegas, their bank account had begun bleeding so much red ink, it looked as if someone had spilled a barrel of pinot noir on the monthly statement. “If you don’t keep moving forward, you die.”

“Now you’re moving on,” Madeline said flatly.

He did not deny it. “It’s for the best.”

Tears she’d refused to shed stung her eyes. Looking at this man she’d thought she’d spend the rest of her life with was like looking through the rain-blurred window.

“Do you love her?”

He lifted his shoulders in that Gallic shrug she’d once found so sexy. “We suit each other.”

“Meaning she’s buying herself a stud to service her in bed and to show off at her society parties, and you hit the jackpot.”

“We suit,” he repeated evenly. Madeline knew it was truly over when he didn’t rise to the bait. “She enjoys the
spotlight, which being married to that so-called author didn’t provide. Everyone longs for celebrity.”

“I don’t.”

“You’re an anomaly in the culinary world. Even your own network is turning more and more to reality programming.”

Which wasn’t her favorite topic of conversation, either. Even as much as they needed her income, she’d recently turned down a chance to host a reality program her producer had in development—
So You Think You Can Cook?

“Why else do you think I came to America?” he asked.

“To cook.”

“Darling, I could have cooked in France. Run a charming bistro somewhere in Provence like your parents’ quaint little trattoria. But would Barbara Walters and Oprah invite me to appear on their programs? Would I be asked to collaborate with the White House chef on a state dinner? Would I—”

“I get it.” Unfortunately, she did. Too late. “Without all those restaurants, you lose your celebrity status.”

“Which is why I must keep them alive. Whatever the sacrifice.”

“Wow. What you were doing with Katrin looked like one hell of a sacrifice.” She welcome the renewed burst of anger that scorched away a bit of the pain.

“I may have overstated that,” he admitted, looking slightly chagrined for the first time since she’d entered the apartment. “But do you have any idea how many young, talented chefs have put a target on my back? Also, Katrin’s closer to my age. She’s more experienced.” He paused. “More open to adventure.”

It took a minute for that innuendo to sink in. When it did, Madeline felt as if her head might explode.

“You’re not talking about rafting down the Amazon. Or bungee jumping off some bridge in New Zealand, are you?” Could this get any worse? “You’re talking about sex.”

Oh, God, didn’t New York get earthquakes? Couldn’t the earth open up beneath the apartment and put an end to this conversation?

“And I don’t?” she asked. “Satisfy you?”

Yes. It could get worse. Much worse.

He didn’t respond for a long second that seemed like a lifetime.

“I love you,
Mad-eh-Leen
,” he said finally. He’d gone all French on her again, but this time, she realized, trying too soothe rather than seduce. “Your youth, your enthusiasm for life, your love of cooking. But you and I”—another shrug—“we don’t suit. Not for the long run.”

“You don’t know anything about love.” Was that cold, flat tone coming out of her own mouth? Apparently it was, because it also matched the ice she could feel flowing over her broken heart. “And you never will.”

She shook her head. “I’m leaving. I’ll be back for my things later.” She had to escape while she still had a shred of dignity left.

“You stay. You’ve had a long and difficult day. I didn’t unpack. I’ll be the one to spend the night somewhere else.”

That somewhere else being Katrin Von Küenberg’s bed.

“I don’t give a damn where you spend the night. But here’s a little news flash for you, Maxime. I loathe this apartment.” Which had been—surprise, surprise—redecorated six months ago by the designer to the rich and Gotham-connected that Katrin had recommended. “You’ve no idea what a relief it’s going to be to never have to look at this furniture again.” Though she would, admittedly, miss the view.

Jet brows lifted. “You should have said something.”

“I did. When you let the designer bring in all this Fortress of Solitude glass and steel, I told you it lacked warmth. And was uncomfortable. But, just like everything else about our life together, you refused to listen.”

She stiffened her spine. Then her resolve. “Good-bye,
Maxime. My lawyer will contact you to work out the details.”

She didn’t have a lawyer—yet—but, fortunately, one of the things that made Pepper such a good agent was that she knew everyone.

“Fine. You should tell that lawyer I’m prepared to give you enough funds to start your own restaurant. As you’ve always dreamed of.”

She’d been walking away, intending a grand exit, when his words stopped her dead in her tracks. She turned and stared, incredulous.

“You’re offering to fund a restaurant for me?”

“It only seems reasonable.”

“Reasonable.”

Oddly, now that they were back to that, she felt herself deflating again, like a soufflé too long out of the oven. For a fleeting moment, she allowed herself a fantasy of opening up a restaurant right across the street from Chez Maxime’s on Columbus Circle. Then beating the black-checked chef pants off her bastard, cheating, soon-to-be-ex husband.

“I would rather be deep-fried in a vat of hydrogenated fat than take a single, solitary penny from you.” Her marriage might have dissolved before her eyes, but she still had her pride. “Especially since it would come from another woman. Thanks, but no, thanks.”

It admittedly wasn’t the best exit line. Nowhere near, “We’ll always have Paris,” or “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and maybe someday she’d wished she’d come up with something sharper. Wittier. But at this moment, at this horrible, very bad point in time, it was enough.

She walked out the door, head held high, and took the elevator back down to the lobby, where she had the spiffy-uniformed doorman call her a taxi.

“La Guardia,” she said when she climbed into the backseat of the yellow cab. “Departures.”

8

Stephanie Fletcher had always believed in fairy tales. In her fantasies, someday, if she only believed hard enough and made herself perfect and deserving enough, a prince in shining armor would come riding up on a white horse to her family’s small northern Arizona ranch, declare her the woman he’d been searching the entire world for, and carry her off to his castle, where white swans floated on mirrored blue lakes, bluebirds sang in flowering trees, unicorns walked in wildflower meadows beneath shimmering rainbows, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Even after she’d outgrown the unicorns, bluebirds, and rainbows, Stephanie never quite abandoned her dream.

She’d been waiting tables at the famed El Tovar Hotel on the south rim of the Grand Canyon between her sophomore and junior year of college to raise much-needed tuition money when Peter Fletcher sat down at her table. Heir to a Colorado oil-and-mining fortune, he’d seemed intelligent, witty, and devastatingly sophisticated.

And, if that wasn’t enough, he was, quite honestly, the most handsome man she’d ever seen who wasn’t up on a movie screen.

With the Arizona sunset turning his hair to molten gold, he’d personified a quote she’d torn from a magazine and pasted on her bulletin board back when she’d been in middle school: “Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale.”

He’d swept her off her feet—which hadn’t been all that difficult, since she’d been waiting for him for nearly her entire life—and into his bed. Unlike Cinderella, she didn’t run away at the stroke of midnight, but stayed the night.

The next morning, he’d complained when she’d gotten up with the sun because her current schedule had her working breakfast and dinner.

“What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” he asked, looking unbelievably hot as he lay naked amid the tangled sheets when she came out of the bathroom, dressed in the uniform she’d been wearing last night when she’d left the dining room with him.

His chest was darkly tanned and ripped and, amazingly, after all the times they’d made love, he was blatantly, breathtakingly aroused.

She’d done that! The idea was enough to make her head spin. Stephanie was nothing like the women she suspected he was normally attracted to. The type of tall, sophisticated blondes from wealthy families whose engagement photos always
showed up on the society pages of newspapers and glossy magazines. She was neither tall nor sophisticated. As for her family, like most ranchers, it was a constant struggle to stay afloat.

But instead of being tired of her that next morning, as she’d secretly feared, Peter was telling her he’d miss her and didn’t know how he’d get through the lonely hours while she was delivering hash browns and fried eggs to the lodge’s breakfast crowd.

“I want to stay,” she said. “But I really need the job.”

He waved the statement away with that beautiful, long-fingered hand that had created such havoc over every inch of her body. “You’re too smart to be waiting tables.”

Having been brought up to respect honest work and the people who did it, Stephanie had never felt embarrassed about her job. Until now.

“I need the money. For college.”

She’d thought a career in hotel or restaurant management would be fulfilling, which is why she’d first begun working at the National Park lodge during her summer vacations back in high school, starting out washing dishes and eventually working her way up to server.

“Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it,” he said without blinking an eye.

Her first thought was to wonder what it must be like to have so much money that you didn’t even have to think about throwing it away. Her second thought was that his offer wasn’t at all flattering.

She tossed up her chin. She might want to stay with him, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. But she was a rancher’s daughter and had a strong streak of pride.

“I’m not some hooker you can buy to have sex with.” She’d never been promiscuous. In fact, he was only her second lover, but she wasn’t about to share that with him.

“I never, ever, thought that.” He looked her straight in the eye. Which her father had always told her said a lot about a man’s character. “Something happened last night, Steph.”

His low, seductive tone was the one he’d used while they’d made love. Last night it had coaxed her into doing things she’d never done before. Now it had her going weak in the knees.

“It was something special. Something I’ve never felt before. Surely you felt it, too.”

“I did,” she admitted.

“I think…” He paused and raked his hands through the gilt strands of his hair that had felt like corn silk against her breasts. “I think I might have fallen in love with you.”

“It’s too soon.” Her voice wavered. She’d thought the same thing, but hadn’t dared hope that they might be on the same wavelength.

“Logic would say so.” Oh, God, she was drowning in his warm gaze. “But what I feel here”—he splayed his hand over his heart—“says otherwise.”