Chapter Seventeen

THE FOURTH OF JULY dawned with the kind of blinding, blue-sky heat that came to Colorado in waves, settling in for a few weeks at a time, unrelenting and untempered by even the usual afternoon thunderstorms. Rachel spent the day in the shade of her front porch, where at least she could catch a breeze, making list after list for the supper club that would be commencing in only a few days. The kind of planning that went into this sort of event wasn’t unlike the kind she had to do in the restaurant. There was food to be purchased, with a certain overage for loss, mistakes, or extra guests. Some had to be precooked or parcooked and then reheated on site, which would make things much easier once she got there. Others would be prepared in Alex’s impressive kitchen, and she needed to make sure that she had the tools to do it properly. He had e-mailed her to say that she didn’t need to worry about decor or flatware, but she would need to bring her own plates if she had something specific in mind.

In short, this twelve-person supper club was almost as much work as preparing for a two-hundred-cover service, at least in terms of the items that needed to be checked off her to-do list.

And the whole time, her mind kept drifting back toward her closet.

She must have been possessed by some temporary insanity, but she had passed this perfect dress in a boutique’s front window and been unable to resist. It was utterly unlike anything she owned, which was perhaps part of its appeal.

It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder if Alex would like the way she looked in it. Of course not. Because that would be foolish.

Still, when the sun finally began to dip toward the horizon and Rachel wandered back to her bathroom to shower and primp and get ready for the party, she had to admit it wasn’t her friends she was hoping to impress.

It was still hot, the humidity unusually high considering Denver’s typically dry climate, so she braided her hair loosely and tossed the end over her shoulder, then put on the bare minimum of makeup: powder, bronzer, mascara, lip gloss. Nothing too elaborate, nothing that said she was hoping to be noticed. The crisp chambray of the loosely constructed shirtdress skimmed over her curves and floated above her skin, making it feel like the temperature had dropped ten degrees. She cinched the waist with the belt and then slid her feet into simple espadrilles that made her feel like she should be spending the evening on the beach. The effect was . . . not bad.

Let’s face it, it still wasn’t the most feminine example of a dress, though the cutout on the upper back was pretty dramatic. Her style was somewhere between utilitarian and tomboy, and there wasn’t much that was going to change that. Maybe she shouldn’t have made the effort after all. It was sad that even her attempts to look pretty ended in these sorts of results.

She opened her door to her friends and immediately said, “I know, I know, I’m going to change.”

Melody darted inside to grab her arm. “Wait, why?”

“Because I look silly.” Her friends highlighted how much she had to learn about “life on the outside,” as she’d begun calling her post-restaurant existence. Melody looked like a beautiful gypsy tonight, a full, multicolored gauze skirt swishing around her ankles, an armful of bangles jingling with every movement. Ana was appropriately cool and preppy, in tailored navy shorts, a striped short-sleeved blouse, and pretty gold sandals that showed off both her tanned skin and her brilliant-blue pedicure.

“You do not look silly,” Ana said firmly. “You look amazing. And Alex is not going to know what hit him.”

“That’s not why I dressed up.”

“Sure it isn’t,” Melody said soothingly. “Now grab your purse and whatever you’re bringing, and let’s go. I can’t wait to see this place of his. It has to be amazing if you were impressed.”

Rachel was bringing a simple side dish —a watermelon, feta, and basil salad —that should go with any summery food Alex might be serving, so she grabbed the bowl from the refrigerator, took her tote from the hook by the front door, and moved with her friends to Ana’s SUV parked out front. She felt nearly as jittery as she did at the start of a big night, a mix of anticipation and dread and determination to face whatever challenges dinner service would bring. Except tonight there was no reason to feel that way. Despite her love of solitude, she wasn’t awkward in crowds. She could chat with strangers without any problem. And two of her best friends would be there. She could simply relax and enjoy herself.

Except the nervousness intensified when she thought about spending the entire evening with Alex.

Melody and Ana were already oohing and aahing when they entered the marble-lined lobby, even more impressed when she hit the button for the penthouse level. When they stepped off the elevator onto his floor and knocked at his door, it was already a few minutes past eight.

Alex opened the door immediately amid a rush of cold conditioned air. “Come on in.”

He moved aside, favoring each of them with a warm smile. “Nice to see you again, Ana, Melody. Everyone is upstairs on the deck.”

Melody held up a bottle of sparkling lemonade. “Where should I put this?”

“There’s a big bucket of ice upstairs with all the drinks. You can drop it in there to chill and we’ll have it later. Plenty of food, too, so please help yourself. If you want to head up, I’ll find a spoon for Rachel’s salad and we’ll join you in a minute.”

Ana and Melody exchanged a look, obviously thinking that he wanted some time alone with her. They were wrong, of course. As soon as her friends headed for the spiral staircase, Alex went to a drawer in his kitchen and rummaged around for a serving spoon. Rachel pulled off the plastic wrap and stuck the spoon into the bowl. “Shall we?”

“After you.” He fell in behind her and then said, “Wow.”

“What?”

“The back of that dress is something else.”

She felt a flush rise up her neck. “Thanks, I think?”

“That was definitely meant to be a compliment.” When they reached the top, he gently placed a hand at the curve of her back and led her forward. She hadn’t even realized that she was holding back, examining the scene first.

Big amber lights crisscrossed the deck overhead, giving a soft glow in the dark night. A cloth-draped table held salads and chips and delicious-looking dips, while a muscular blond man worked a charcoal grill, cooking up burgers and hot dogs. There were perhaps a dozen people total, grouped in twos and threes, and Rachel immediately spotted Melody and Ana talking to a couple, already holding drinks.

“Let me introduce you to everyone.” Alex took Rachel’s bowl and set it with the other food, then slipped her arm through his as he brought her to the guy at the grill.

“Bryan, I want you to meet Rachel. She’s the chef I was telling you about.”

Bryan looked up from the grill, and his eyebrows lifted. Obviously she was not what he had expected. He held out a hand with a smile. “Nice to meet you, Rachel. What are you having? Hamburger or brat?”

“He grills a great burger,” Alex said in her ear. His breath stirred a stray tendril near her ear and tickled her neck.

She swallowed and tried to catch her breath enough to speak. “Burger it is.”

“One burger. What about you, bro?”

“I’ll have a burger too.” Alex tugged her away from the grill, saying, “I’ve known Bryan since I was a kid. He’s also my climbing instructor. So when he wants me to have one of his burgers, I say yes.”

“Smart move.”

Alex pulled her toward a couple about their age, standing at the railing. “This is my old CU buddy Marcus and his wife, Lena. Guys, this is Rachel Bishop.”

“Oh, right, the chef!” Lena’s eyes lit up and she shook Rachel’s hand enthusiastically. “Alex was telling us about your supper club.”

“They were begging for spots, actually,” Alex said with a grin. “I told him I wasn’t sure where we were on the guest list for the next one. Do we still have spaces?”

It was a generous gesture, shifting the ownership of the event to her, even though the next one was still largely theoretical. “I’d have to check. You can always e-mail me or Alex if you want on the guest list.”

“Do you have a business card?” Marcus asked.

She dug in her purse and brought one out, then handed it over. Fortunately she’d kept simple cards with her personal e-mail and phone number in addition to the restaurant’s cards. They made it easier for people to track her down even if she moved jobs.

Alex guided her away, and when they were briefly out of earshot of the others, she asked, “Is that why you brought me here? To fill up the other supper club dates? Or to make sure that I could do the meet-and-greet thing without embarrassing myself?”

“You give me too much credit, and you give yourself too little,” he said. “I wanted to see you and I didn’t want to wait until the weekend.”

She waited for the joking words that would soften the meaning, the little twist of a smile that said he was tweaking her. But as she looked up at him, his expression seemed completely sincere. His eyes, dead serious.

Her heart did a triple step and stopped completely before it picked up its normal rhythm again. After that it was impossible to not be aware of the pressure of his hand on her lower back, the way her arm brushed against his body and released that cotton and soap scent she’d already come to associate with him. Only then did she recognize his gentle guidance and introduction to his friends not as an entrée to them, but a subtle claim on her. It should annoy her, and it didn’t. Deep down, some part of her liked it.

That was what annoyed her.

Bryan brought them their burgers, and they went back to the table to dress them, then settled in two of the folding chairs that Alex had set up in a semicircle facing southwest. Rachel bit into her burger. Perfect. Alex’s friend had a touch with the grill. She leaned forward until she caught Bryan’s eye and gave him a thumbs-up. He held up his hands like he was basking in the applause of an audience.

She laughed. “Let me guess. The life of the party?”

Alex leaned forward to catch a glimpse and shook his head. “Something like that. He had plenty to choose from.”

“Popular kid?”

“Rich kid.” At her raised eyebrow, he hastily added, “That wasn’t an insult. Just that there was always some sort of big event going on. His family are good people, do a lot of charity fund-raisers. I spent a lot of time at their house, and they never had a problem putting an extra plate at the table for me. In fact, I spent most of my senior year living with them.”

“What happened?”

“My mother was offered a guest chair position at a university in Moscow, and it was the kind of offer you don’t turn down.” Alex shrugged, but from the way he didn’t quite meet her eye, Rachel wondered if there might be some resentment behind the casual statement. She should be able to recognize it —she knew it well.

“I guess you should count yourself lucky that you had a suitable replacement.” Now that had come out harsher than she’d expected it.

“You had a less-than-ideal childhood too?”

“I dropped out of high school at fifteen and crashed in the owner’s apartment above the restaurant. You tell me.”

Alex raised his bottle. “To early independence. It sucks.”

“Yes, it does.” She clinked her glass to his bottle. In the far distance, she saw a colorful flash of light. “Were those fireworks?”

“Those were from the Aurora Reservoir, I think. The advantage to being so high, we can see everything in the city.”

She leaned forward in her seat, straining to see the faint bursts of color in the distance. Then a firework went up nearby, the boom so loud that it shook her bones and made her jump halfway out of the chair. She snapped her head around to where the first flurry of fireworks went up to the north.

“That’s the display at Mile High Stadium,” he said, leaning over so she could hear him below the pops and the cracks. He pointed to another one farther out west. “And that’s the one over Red Rocks Amphitheatre.”

Rachel smiled and sat back again, propping her feet against the railing of the balcony. The cool breeze that came from the deepening night ruffled her hair and caressed her skin. She let out a contented sigh.

“So you really haven’t seen a fireworks display since you were a kid?”

“Now that you mention it, I caught part of one a few years ago at Civic Center Park. The Fourth fell on a Monday, so the restaurant was closed.”

“But . . .”

“I was so tired I fell asleep and missed most of it.”

He laughed. “If you could sleep through fireworks, I’d say you needed the sleep more than the show. That’s probably the only advantage to the current situation.”

She nibbled her thumbnail. “Truth?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t like to sleep.”

He quirked a look at her. “You’ve got insomnia?”

“Oh no, I sleep like a log, when I do sleep. I just don’t like to. I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open, and then I sleep hard. It was easy when I worked in New York. We didn’t close until midnight, and then there would be cleanup, and then the bars . . . I’d stumble home and catch a couple of hours and then get up and do the whole thing again the next day. It wasn’t the healthiest lifestyle, I fully admit.”

Alex was studying her with that searching look, the one that made her think she had given too much away. “Is that why you don’t drink anymore?”

“No,” she said carefully. “I don’t drink anymore because it was so easy to drink too much. And I got too good at it.”

“Hmm.”

“See, you do that, and then I’m left here wondering what you’re thinking. Was that hmm a shrink version of ‘that’s interesting’? Or is it that you’re sorry you asked the question?”

He glanced at her, the pops of color and light alternately shading and illuminating his face. “I realized I was prying. And you don’t like that.”

“No, I don’t.” She heaved a sigh. “But I guess it’s no big secret. My life has been various shades of stress, and it was too easy to look for escape in a bottle. I wasn’t an alcoholic, but I could feel myself traveling down that road, and I’d already seen what was at the end of it.”

“So you, what? Decided to stop drinking one day? What did you replace it with?”

Rachel went back to working her thumbnail with her teeth. “You promise you won’t laugh?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Bible study.”

He laughed.

“I told you not to laugh!”

“I know, but I expected you to say yoga or meditation or chewing gum. I didn’t expect Bible study!”

Rachel cracked a reluctant smile. “I know. Neither did I. So, this one dinner service was a total disaster. We were in the weeds from the time we opened —that means we couldn’t keep up with the orders —and I had way too much to drink to unwind afterwards. I dragged myself out of bed early, still a little drunk, promising myself that I could grab a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich from the diner down the street, pull myself together before I showed up at the restaurant. I was already the chef de cuisine, so I was in charge, you know? I couldn’t wander in looking like a hungover line cook.

“But when I got to the diner, it was packed. Not a single table open. I was taking my food to go, feeling pretty depressed about the whole thing since eating on the subway is not exactly my idea of a relaxing breakfast, when these ladies flagged me down. They offered me a spare seat.”

“Ladies’ Bible study?” he guessed.

“Exactly. Which in itself was crazy —a group of Baptist ladies holding a Bible study at 7 a.m. in a diner in Harlem. But it was a seat, and they seemed nice, and to be honest, they seemed to be having such a good time that I wanted to soak that up for a few minutes. So I sat down.”

“Was this your ‘Saul on the road to Damascus’ moment?”

The question, though he meant it to be light, struck an inexplicable feeling of longing in her. “Not quite. I was actually raised in the church. For a long time, it felt safe. After my mom got remarried, we switched churches, and then it was all about being on my best behavior and making sure I kept up appearances. When I left home, I guess I left that behind too. It’s not like I ever had the opportunity to go once I started working weekends. But when I sat down with those women, it felt kind of like I remembered, back when it was only my mom and me.”

She smiled at the recollection. “I sat there and listened, and they invited me back the next week. I didn’t think they meant it, but when I went in the following Wednesday, they were so excited to see me. After that, I dug up my old Bible from the bottom of a box and did the readings so I could join the discussion. It became a regular thing. I saw a few of them around the neighborhood from time to time and they asked me how it was going and how I was feeling, and I didn’t want to admit I was hungover, so I quit drinking. And went to Bible study instead.”

“That is the best story I’ve heard in a long time,” Alex said. “I’d venture to say that more people need a Harlem Ladies’ Bible Study in their life.”

“Your turn. You sound like you had a church upbringing if you’re throwing a Pauline conversion at me.”

“Russian Orthodox.” He craned his neck. “You can probably see our church from here if you look hard enough.”

“Like, services in Russian, Russian Orthodox?”

“Da.”

“Everyone knows ‘da.’”

“Da, ya govoryu po-russki. Is that better?”

“I have no idea what you said, but yes. So, church. Russian Orthodox. Do you still go?”

“I still go to church, but not there. I’ve been going with Bryan’s family since I lived with them. It’s in English and everything.”

“That’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it? Leaving an Orthodox church? Don’t you get excommunicated or something?”

“You can only excommunicate someone who is still a member. Being around Bryan’s parents, I realized I was going through the motions, doing what was expected of me without really developing a faith of my own. Mitchell —Bryan’s dad —made me see that if what you believe doesn’t impact the way you live and the way you treat other people for the better, then maybe your faith isn’t genuine. For me, that meant leaving the Orthodox church. I didn’t mean it to be an indictment on everyone I left behind, but my parents took it that way. It tops their list of ways I’ve disappointed them.”

Alex smiled, but she could hear the twinge of hurt in his voice, the sense of betrayal that his family hadn’t understood his crisis of conscience. Rachel smiled back, pushing down an uncomfortable quiver inside her. It was the first time she’d opened up about matters of faith to anyone but Ana and Melody, mostly because she could barely articulate where she stood to herself, let alone to someone else. And yet she suspected Alex of all people might understand her ambivalence, were she to tell him the whole story.

But she barely knew him, so instead she turned forward to face the fireworks and pushed darker memories aside, if only for tonight. She watched the bursts of color with their staccato pops of sound, sipped her ginger ale, and allowed the pleasure of an unscheduled evening to wash over her. Only then did she realize she’d been talking with Alex for some time without any thought to her friends. She twisted and looked for their familiar silhouettes, momentarily wondering if they’d abandoned her. But no, there was Melody laughing with a group near the food. And Ana looked to be in an animated discussion with Bryan, who was hanging on her every word. Interesting.

“So what’s his story?” Rachel asked, inclining her head toward Bryan.

Alex glanced at his friend. There was something guarded in his expression when he looked back at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what does he do? Besides make excellent burgers.”

“He’s a professional rock climber.”

Rachel started to laugh. “Way to go breaking type, Ana.”

“Not into athletes?”

“Not unless you count making money as a sport. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not what she’s after. She just doesn’t like having to deal with guys’ insecurity about not making as much as she does.”

Alex relaxed visibly. “Well, Bryan could be a partner in the family business, but he doesn’t care all that much for that sort of thing.”

Rachel propped her feet against the railing, puzzled by Alex’s flash mood swings. Was he that protective over his friend’s reputation?

Then it dawned on her that he’d thought she was interested in Bryan herself. The idea that Alex might be jealous brought an irrational rush of pleasure. She stole a look at his profile, letting herself imagine for a moment that it was her right to lean over, run a hand through that artfully mussed hair and brush her lips against his. The mere thought made her catch her breath.

Alex heard it and turned toward her. “Problem?”

“No. No problem.” Not as long as she kept her mind on the fireworks beyond this balcony and not the ones going off inside her. Best she keep her focus where it belonged: getting her career back on track and finding an investor for a new restaurant. This was a rare, brief reprieve from her real life, not a new start. Within six months, she would be as focused on her work as she had always been, and the steam and clatter of dinner service would replace warm nights on a rooftop deck.

Probably better not to get used to it.