Chapter Seven

RACHEL TOOK HER FRIENDS AT THEIR WORD. She allowed herself one more day to wallow —though she finally turned off the cooking channels and instead binge-watched sitcoms on Netflix —staying in the same sweatpants and T-shirt she had worn for the last two days. Then she pried herself up off the sofa, where she was beginning to leave a permanent imprint, shoved herself in the shower, and went about making herself look halfway presentable.

There wasn’t much to be done about her ghostly pallor, given the fact she had lived her life in the kitchen under fluorescent lights, but she applied enough makeup and bronzer to make a fair approximation of a day-dweller. For the first time in years, she blew her long, dark hair dry around a fat roller brush, making it look bouncy and shiny, curling over her shoulders like a Miss America contestant’s. When she was done applying mascara and lip gloss, she stepped back and blinked at herself, almost unable to recognize the woman staring back in her mirror.

This girl looked like she knew how to go out and have fun. This girl wouldn’t spend her days locked in her condo feeling sorry for herself.

Well, like people always said —fake it ’til you make it. From the way she felt, she was going to be doing a lot of faking.

She dug in her drawer for a clean T-shirt and tugged it over her head, then pulled on a pair of faded jeans as the knock came at her front door. She pulled it open and blinked at her friends standing in the hallway. “I thought we were going to dinner.”

“We are,” Ana said. She was dressed in a flowing black jumpsuit and platform heels that added a couple of inches to her petite frame, while Melody was wearing a bohemian-looking sundress that could have been brand new or a vintage find from one of her thrift stores.

“Your hair and makeup look great, Rachel.” Melody linked her arm with Rachel’s amid the clink of bangle bracelets. “Let’s go pick out your clothes.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

Melody cast an exasperated look over her shoulder at Ana and dragged Rachel into the bedroom, then made a beeline straight to her closet. She slid hangers aside. “You have practically nothing in here.”

“You mean for the one day a week I’m not in uniform?”

Melody grimaced. “Right. Oh, hey! You have flares? These are great!” She pulled out a pair of dark denim jeans and waved them triumphantly.

“You bought them and then decided they looked better on me, remember?”

“Rachel, these still have the tags on them!”

Melody looked slightly hurt, so Rachel sighed and held out her hand. Melody brightened and tossed them to her, then shuffled more hangers. “This is cute.” She pulled out a dark-blue, layered tank top, also still bearing its original tags. “What did you buy this for?”

Rachel shrugged. “I liked it. Just haven’t had a chance to wear it.”

“There’s hope for you yet. Get dressed.”

Rachel stripped off her clothes and shimmied into the jeans and the flowing tank top while Melody selected accessories. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to dress herself or look pretty; she was simply in such a habit of downplaying her looks that she rarely had occasion to put those skills into practice. Why they were insisting on getting her dolled up on a Wednesday night, she couldn’t begin to fathom. Unless . . .

“You didn’t set me up on a date, did you?”

“No, nothing like that.” Melody held up a copper pendant necklace that someone had given Rachel for Christmas. “Wear this one and those brown motorcycle boots and you’ll be perfect.”

Rachel did as she directed. Of the three of them, Melody possessed the creative eye, great taste, and an instinctive read on people. She always joked that if the baking career didn’t work out, she could make a living as a personal stylist or interior designer. The only reason Rachel’s apartment had any style at all was completely due to Melody’s touch. She draped the necklace around her neck, thanking the flowing top for hiding the softness around her middle that came from the constant tasting of rich food, gave her hair a shake, and grabbed a real handbag. At Melody’s prompting, she did a slow spin.

“Perfect. Now we’re going to go out and have a good time and remember that we’re three independent women with fantastic lives.”

“Think you might be trying a bit too hard there, Melody?”

“I’ve got a job interview tomorrow. This might be my last night of freedom.”

Before Rachel could ask about the job, Melody was off again to join Ana, who let out a low whistle when Rachel entered the room. “You clean up nice, Chef.”

Rachel rolled her eyes, but her friends’ enthusiasm did warm her a bit. “Come on, before I decide to go back to wallowing.”

“Point taken.” Ana led them out the condo and down the steps to where her black Mercedes SUV sat at the curb. Rachel climbed into the shotgun seat while Melody slid into the back. As Ana navigated her way into evening traffic, Rachel tried to push down the nagging feeling she was supposed to be somewhere else. They passed restaurants that were just beginning to fill with corporate workers ending their days, and she knew that in the back of the house, the kitchen staff were beginning the greater part of theirs.

“This is killing you, isn’t it?” Ana asked.

“A fifteen-year habit is hard to break. Telling me to go out and have fun on a work night is like telling you to stop giving tough love advice or Melody to stop being so cheerful.”

“I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted,” Melody said from the back.

“Flattered,” Ana said. “Definitely.”

“Where are we going anyway?”

“Come on, you have to ask me that? Where else do we take you when you need cheering up?”

Rachel gasped. “Rhino Crash?”

“Yep.” Ana laughed at her ecstatic expression.

Now Rachel’s spirits lifted. It was ridiculous, she knew. Rhino Crash —the name a play on its RiNo location —was an outdoor cantina with a food truck pod, featuring several regulars and a couple of rotating slots that changed at consistent intervals. But not just any food trucks —some of the best food one could find outside of Denver’s hottest restaurants, including that of several friends. Her hours were such that she never had a chance to see them, let alone sample their cooking.

When Ana found parking down the street, Rachel could see crowds already forming inside. She was the first out of the car, waiting impatiently on the curb for her friends. They moved up the street, drawn by the heavy beat of the music playing inside the patio enclosure.

The vibe was as funky as the River North neighborhood in which it was located, the brick-enclosed bar blurring the line between indoors and outdoors. A few rare suited corporate types mingled with hipsters and college students, clustered together on folding chairs at metal tables beyond the garishly painted fences. The overall mood was relaxed and jovial, one reason Rachel loved it. They were all there for the food, the drink, and the ambience, even as everyone devoured plates as disparate as Korean bibimbap and French vichyssoise.

“I’m going over there.” Ana pointed to a midnight-blue food truck that was known for having the best bao, steamed Vietnamese buns, in Denver. Which, given the popularity of the southeast Asian cuisine in the city lately, was more of an accomplishment than it might have seemed.

“What about you?” Rachel asked Melody.

“I’m having what you’re having. You never steer me wrong.”

“Then A Parisian in Denver is the way to go. Come on. I want to say hello to Lilia.”

They found their way to the end of the line in front of a food truck painted in red, blue, and white, and Rachel craned her neck to get a better look at the chalkboard that proclaimed the day’s specials. There was French street food like crepes and merguez sausages alongside trendy favorites like duck confit pommes frites. When Lilia had started the mobile business, she’d been afraid Denver wouldn’t embrace her blend of French and American, but it had been so popular, it had earned a permanent spot at Rhino Crash and a faithful following throughout the city.

When Rachel and Melody finally got up to the window to order, the petite blonde with an order pad let out a squeal. “Rachel! You’re here!” She dropped everything and raced to the front of the truck, then tumbled down the steps toward Rachel. She gave her the expected air-kiss on both cheeks and then threw her arms around her. Whoever said that the French were reserved and aloof had never met Lilia.

“What are you doing here?”

“I suddenly have a lot of time on my hands,” Rachel said with a wry twist of her mouth.

“No! Because of all this —” she waved a hand looking for the proper English term, then gave up —“désordre?”

“This mess, yes. That’s a good way to put it. But I’ve been craving your pommes frites for months, so it’s not all bad.”

“Pommes frites right away.” Lilia grabbed both Rachel’s hands and squeezed. “We must catch up. When I have a lull.”

“Of course,” Rachel said, even though she knew Lilia would be absorbed with customers until they ran out of food, sometime toward ten o’clock tonight. And she wasn’t sure what she was going to say anyway. Lilia would understand, be sympathetic —after all, she’d ditched her line cook job to open a food truck —but this sort of thing was like the flu. Everyone sent their regrets from a distance, afraid that her misfortune might be catching.

“And what would you like, Melody?” Lilia asked, displaying her impressive memory, considering that the two women had only been introduced once, and that years ago.

“Whatever Rachel’s having,” she said.

“Excellent.” She inclined her head toward the growing line of customers, most of them looking a little impatient at the interruption. “It’s on me.”

“Lilia —”

“Your money is no good here, Rachel. Now I need to get back.”

“We understand. Your adoring public awaits.”

Lilia flashed an apologetic smile and scampered back into her truck, where she continued to charm her customers with her French accent and adorably chic ways and then dazzle them with her food. If there were anyone made to be the spokesperson for a business, it was her. If only the spotlight came so easily to Rachel.

Ana sidled up beside them, her food already in hand, a trio of folded steamed buns brimming with different fillings. “Should I get a table for us?”

Melody surreptitiously checked her watch. “We’ll be right there.”

There was definitely something going on. If they hadn’t already dragged her out of her apartment, Rachel would think they’d staged an intervention. Except Melody and Ana were the only ones who really cared what happened to her. She might think of her kitchen staff as her family, but they were more like countrymen —a shared citizenship, outsiders among the larger mainstream community, bonded by their weird hours and neuroses and gallows humor. They were probably sad to see her go, but they wouldn’t think of her much beyond what her departure meant to them during work hours.

Melody nudged her. “You okay?”

Rachel sucked it up, straightened her shoulders, and pushed away the beginnings of self-pity. “I’m fine. Just hungry.”

Their food came up next —enormous helpings of thick-cut fries topped with shredded duck, piled incongruously in red-and-white-checked paper boats. They took their food and wound their way back through the ever-increasing crowd to where Ana had managed to snag one half of a table in the back corner. Melody slid in beside Ana, and Rachel squeezed into the small space between the fence and the table.

“I’ve been craving these for weeks.” Rachel took a fry from her basket and bit into it with a sigh. They were perfect —crisp on the outside with a creamy interior, at once both salty and sweet from a double bath in boiling duck fat. Not exactly the healthiest of choices, but oh, was it worth it.

“So . . .”

Ana’s tone immediately pegged Rachel’s intervention meter. Rachel put her entire attention on her food. “So what?”

“What are you going to do now?”

Rachel put down her French fry before she could even finish it. No sense letting the conversation sour her enjoyment of such deliciousness. “Do I really have to have a plan?”

“You know I understand the need to mourn. But I also know that you’re going to go crazy if you’re not working. You need something to occupy your time.”

“Why not something like this?” Melody gestured toward the coaches. “You’ve got enough seed money to buy a truck and outfit it.”

Rachel shook her head.

“Why not?”

How did she explain without seeming like a snob? It wasn’t that she believed a food truck was beneath her. She thought it was a great opportunity for chefs to express themselves without the constraints of P&L and overhead and worrying about turns of the dining room. It was almost complete culinary freedom, and the public themselves determined who succeeded or failed, not the accountants. And yet . . .

“Food is only one part of what I do,” Rachel said finally. “It’s all about the experience. Hospitality. When I had my own place, it was like inviting people into my home. I trained the front of the house to a certain standard, to make sure that every person who walked in felt like a welcomed guest, not just a customer. Here —” she waved a hand —“there is no house. Not in the same sense. The only element I’m in charge of is the food, and that feels incomplete.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a control freak?” Ana asked with a little smile.

Melody snorted. “That’s hilarious, coming from you.”

“Hey!” Ana said.

“I don’t know what I want to do yet,” Rachel said. “It feels like you’re telling me to start dating before the ink is even dry on the divorce papers.”

“We really need to get you a boyfriend,” Ana said.

“I’m not interested in a boyfriend.” She avoided their knowing gazes, scanning the patio behind them, and felt her muscles freeze.

She might not want a boyfriend, but that didn’t mean she was immune to the specimen of pure male beauty walking toward them. She’d had plenty of experience with Tall, Dark, and Handsome, especially in the manscaped streets of Manhattan, but the guy walking toward them could have stepped straight out of a Colorado outdoors magazine. Tall but not too tall with mussed brown hair, light eyes that looked either green or blue from this distance, and a chiseled jaw shaded with just the right amount of stubble. He wore jeans and a light canvas jacket over a T-shirt tight enough to hint at toned muscle beneath.

And he was looking right at her.

She was suddenly finding it hard to breathe, and the unaccustomed bloom of heat in her cheeks meant nothing good. “Holy . . . ,” she murmured beneath her breath.

“What?” Melody asked.

“Don’t look!” she hissed, but it was too late. Both Melody and Ana were swiveling toward the guy, who hadn’t wavered from his trajectory toward their table.

“You know, I think we need to go get drinks.” Melody rose abruptly. Too abruptly. “Do you want anything?”

“Other than to sink into the concrete? Fine. Something nonalcoholic. Surprise me.”

They were off faster than she’d ever seen them move, a few seconds before the man arrived at her table. She steeled herself against her inevitable, involuntary reaction and still felt a little tremor. Hazel. His eyes were hazel, and a dimple flirted at the corner of his uncertain smile.

Uncertain?

She composed herself and looked up at him again, waiting for the introduction. Or more likely, an inquiry about the time because his girlfriend was late. A man like that had to have a girlfriend. Or a wife.

Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets and asked, “Rachel Bishop?”

A bucket of cold water doused the lovely glow she was feeling. “Who are you? Press? I have nothing to say.” She began to gather their meals together, until he thrust a hand out.

“Wait. I’m not press. Not really. My name is Alex Kanin.”

Kanin. She stared at him for a moment, wondering why that sounded familiar, sure that she would have remembered him if she’d met him before. No matter how busy, she wouldn’t have forgotten that face. Then it dawned on her. The article in the New Yorker. Alexander Kanin. She straightened and sent her best glare his direction, the one that made her cooks cower in apprehension. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Please.” He seemed to be gathering himself, his expression pained. “You don’t have to say anything. Just listen.” When she still didn’t relent, he pleaded, “I’ll only take a couple of minutes. I promise.”

Rachel looked for her friends in the crowd, but they were still standing at the outdoor bar, waiting for their drinks. The crowds had piled in even thicker now, and if she gave up their table, there was no telling when they might nab another one. She clenched her jaw while she considered. “Fine.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket, set the timer, and plunked it on the table between them. “You have exactly two minutes. Go.”

Alex looked startled, but he lowered himself onto the bench opposite and leaned forward over his folded hands. “I owe you an apology. I never thought when I wrote the article that anyone would make the connection to you, least of all that it would turn into this. You have to believe me. . . . Denver isn’t exactly New York. Who would have thought anyone would take such an interest in a review written by a third-tier journalist like Espy?”

Rachel stared at him. He had sought her out to apologize, but that didn’t change what he had done, what his actions had set in motion. Never mind the fact that he was even better-looking up close, that she got a delicious waft of a clean-smelling cologne when the breeze briefly changed directions.

“I think the way that everyone has taken after you is unfair and uncalled for, and a five-year-old could tell that you were set up on that interview. I feel completely responsible for this, even if I had no idea it would turn out this way.”

Why did he have to seem so sincere? It was much easier to hate him when he was a callous, anonymous opportunist only interested in the advancement of his own career. She pressed her lips together to keep from responding. This was his two minutes. She’d promised to hear him out.

“I’m here to ask for your forgiveness and let you know this was never my intent. If there’s anything I can do, I’ll do it. Just tell me what it is.”

“You may be sorry, but that doesn’t change the fact that my career as a chef may well be over now. I’ve had to close all my social media accounts to stop the harassment. I don’t want anything from you —”

The timer beeped, and she reached to turn it off. But he swooped it out of her grasp, his thumbs flying across the virtual keyboard. Then he set it back down between them.

“In case you change your mind.” He rose from the table as Ana and Melody returned, holding three tall glasses between them, then gave them each a nod. He paused before he turned away. “For what it’s worth, Rachel, I’m really sorry. If I could go back and do it differently, I would.”

Her friends took their seats again, even though they craned their necks to watch him walk away. “What did he say?” Melody asked, sliding a glass of soda across the table.

“He —wait. Shouldn’t you be asking who that was?” Rachel narrowed her eyes. “Unless you already knew . . . You did. You set this up!”

Melody looked sheepish. “He came into the restaurant looking for you, and he looked so pathetic I told him we’d be here tonight. He apologized, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he apologized, but somehow I don’t think him looking pathetic was what swayed you.” Despite herself, she scanned the crowd to catch a parting look. Then she shook herself sternly. “It’s not like he can do anything about what happened.”

“But he writes for the New Yorker and, from what I can tell, a bunch of other places too. He probably has connections.”

“And you think I should play on his guilt? That’s not how I work.”

“Why not?” Ana asked. “It’s the least he could do.”

Rachel shoved her phone toward them. “He put his number in my phone.”

Ana and Melody exchanged a look.

“What? He said if there’s anything he could do, he’d do it.”

“That sounds like volunteering his connections to me,” Melody said.

“To do what? I’m two days past losing my restaurant. Even if I knew what I wanted to do next, who’s going to invest in a project with me after all this?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned working in publicity,” Ana said, “it’s that everything blows over eventually. Especially when it comes to something like this. We need to work some damage control, repair your reputation. You know very well most of your guests don’t care about this stuff. It’s the industry and the pundits and the social media trolls. And they’ll lose interest in you as soon as someone else does something stupid.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“The problem is, I have no idea how I would win over anyone. What am I going to do, invite every influential person in Denver over for dinner and show them that I’m really not a terrible person?”

Melody and Ana exchanged that look again, the one that made her feel like she’d been the subject of conversation. “What?”

Ana pulled out her tablet from her oversize bag and tapped in a few letters on the keyboard. Then she swiveled it around. “Read this.”

It was an article from some magazine talking about the rise of nontraditional venues and vehicles for gourmet food. Seriously, how did Ana have time to keep up with this stuff? The woman was a walking encyclopedia of pop culture. Rachel flicked the screen with her finger, skimming the text. Food trucks, which she’d already ruled out. Upscale food courts, a trend that Denver had already embraced and presented the same problem for Rachel as the coaches —lack of control of the overall guest experience. Then she came to the last paragraph and stopped.

“Pop-up restaurants?”

Ana took the tablet back, practically vibrating with excitement. “Once a month, even once a week. Fixed menu, unusual locations. Heavy emphasis on experience and hospitality.”

“I know what they are.” They’d been popular in Europe for many years now. Some of them were spectacular productions closer to a circus, like Gingerline in London. Others were immersive experiences in the same place using rotating themes. A few farm-to-table chefs in Colorado already hosted pop-ups at their farms for a select guest list. Tickets were as coveted in the food world as white truffles and twice as hard to acquire.

“Think about it.” Melody’s voice held the same sort of anticipation. “You would have complete control of every aspect, from menu to location to decor. It would be an opportunity to really show what you can do to a handpicked group of influencers.”

“Like a supper club,” Rachel murmured to herself. “An alternative to the usual weekend dining experience.”

“Good food, good conversation. And exclusivity would pretty much guarantee that it was the most talked-about event in town, especially since you’re notorious at the moment.”

Rachel cracked a bare smile. She would have never thought she would do anything to make herself notorious, but maybe it could be put to good use. And so far Denver had very few options of this sort. Given the right spin, it could be wildly successful.

It came to her in a flash. “The Saturday Night Supper Club.” They stared at each other, a hush falling over the table, a cocoon of silence amid the pounding beat of music and the laughter of other diners. “We’ve got something, haven’t we?”

Melody nodded slowly, and even Ana looked a little stunned. “Oh yeah, we’ve got something.”

Rachel looked between her two friends and for the first time in days, a feeling that was not terror or grief built in her. “So. Where do we begin?”