With No Reservations

“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.

Judging by the rumpled T-shirt and sweatpants, that’s exactly what he’d been doing. “Well, don’t let me intrude on your beauty sleep, Neighbors. Because you need a lot of it.”

Maddie snatched her ball and pushed it against Jake’s leg. She’d given up on Cooper ages ago.

“Who’s the girl?” Jake bent and scratched Maddie’s ears.

Cooper shrugged. “Someone my mom recommended to help promote the restaurant.”

“Yeah?” Jake leaned forward on the desk for a closer look. “How’s that been going?”

Cooper sighed and picked up one of the proofs, extending it toward his roommate. “It’s going, I guess.”

His roommate’s face was unreadable as he scanned the brochure. But Cooper was pretty sure he saw him wince. “Why don’t you see if this woman...” He waved a finger at the computer screen.

“Sloane.”

“Sloane. Why don’t you see if she can help? I mean, these are good and everything, but her style seems more up your alley, you know?”

Cooper nodded, trying to reconcile the hot mess of a girl he’d met at the restaurant—she’d wiped her silverware, for crying out loud!—with the spirited image she conveyed on her website.

Once Jake had left to run some errands, Cooper opened his browser and dug deeper.

So, her thing was mise en place. The recipe prep. Neat piles of ingredients staged so they were appealing to the eye. He got that about Sloane, in the way she’d rearranged things and seemed to have a particular order as she sampled his food at the restaurant.

She was an interesting girl—feisty, even. And she certainly wasn’t lacking in the looks department. The head shot on the website header affirmed that. Her shiny blond hair was pulled to one side, full lips parted like she was about to say something to the person taking the picture. The light pink of her sweater highlighted something younger, an almost playful vibe. Totally different than the guarded professional he’d met. A black apron with her Mise en Place logo accentuated her figure, petite and curvy. Trim, but healthy enough to show she wasn’t the kind of woman who only ate birdseed and water. He could appreciate a woman who didn’t refuse a fluffy, buttery roll or two when the bread basket was passed around. Life was too short for that.

Cooper rested his chin in his hand and scrolled to her most recent post, a recipe for pumpkin spice cake doughnuts prepared two ways. Some were sprinkled with a spiced sugar concoction and the others were drizzled with a multilayered vanilla bean glaze.

He did a double take and leaned close to the computer to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks when he saw that her post had over two hundred comments. And he could see why.

Sloane’s images were gorgeous. From the assembled ingredients to the close-up of the baked, spongy center. And the final product arranged in a doughnut pyramid, shot on a vintage sherbet-colored cake stand against a wood pallet backdrop.

Jake was right. This was what he wanted for Simone. Charming, rustic, cozy, mouth-watering. Just like he promised the real Simone it would be.

Maybe his mother’s instincts were spot-on and Sloane could do his restaurant promo justice.

There it was. A glimmer of hope where he’d had nothing a minute before. He had to talk to her. He scrolled through his inbox, scanning the names for one that might have her contact information. “There you are.” Finally. He tapped the numbers into his phone.

It wasn’t until it rang that something twinged in the pit of his stomach. The warning sign that perhaps he should have thought this through a little better.

She answered as he was clearing his throat.

“Sloane, it’s Cooper.” Silence. “From Simone?” It felt good to say that out loud.

“Right, right.” Her tone remained flat, all business. “What can I do for you?”

He cleared his throat again, replaying their last meeting. Did he do something to offend her? He couldn’t remember. But that didn’t matter. Even if she never wanted to work with him again, it was time to lay it all on the line.