Chapter 2 #2
"Interesting how?" I smile, leaning against the counter. I love wine. Being half French and a chef, it would be blasphemy not to. But Margot is next level. She speaks wine the way some people speak poetry.
"It's unexpected. People see halibut, they reach for crisp white, citrus notes. The Chablis makes them pause." She says it almost dreamily, like she can already taste it. "But it's your menu. Your call."
"The Chablis," I say. "Let's make them think."
Margot grins. "I was hoping you'd say that."
We keep going like that, working through the rest of the courses, and I lose track of time the way I only do when I'm talking about food with someone who loves it as much as I do.
Margot asks questions I hadn't considered and suggests pairings I wouldn't have thought of.
We're debating the merits of an off-dry Riesling versus a Grüner Veltliner when I glance up at the clock.
The fish supplier is now almost an hour late.
I told him on the phone that timing was essential.
He swore up and down that he understood, that punctuality was his specialty, that he'd worked with fine dining establishments before.
He also asked twice to speak to "the chef in charge," apparently finding it difficult to believe that the woman he was speaking to was in fact the chef, which should have been my first red flag.
Tardiness is a dealbreaker for me, and always has been.
Time is respect. If you can't show up when you say you will, you're telling me my time doesn't matter.
And if this guy doesn't show up in the next five minutes, I'm going to find another supplier and blacklist him from every kitchen I run for the rest of my career.
"Maybe even a rosé for the intermezzo," Margot says, tapping her pen against the folio, oblivious to my internal plotting. "A pale, bone-dry Provence style instead of the white I originally had down. We have both here, so the swap would be easy."
I pull myself back to the conversation, forcing my attention away from the clock.
"Actually, yes. I love that. There's so much green on the property with all the vines and the gardens, and pale pink against that would photograph beautifully.
Pink and green are complementary on the color wheel, so visually it would be striking. "
"A woman after my own heart." Margot's eyes light up.
"The visual component of wine service is so underrated.
People eat with their eyes first, and the way a glass of rosé catches the light at golden hour on that terrace.
.." She stops mid-sentence, her gaze shifting to something over my shoulder. "Is that your fish delivery?"
I turn.
A man is walking through the kitchen doorway like he owns the place.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with tousled brown hair that looks like he just rolled out of some cologne ad.
He's wearing jeans and a navy t-shirt that fits him in a way that suggests he either works out or has exceptional genetics or both, and for a moment he looks less like a fish supplier and more like some action star who wandered through the wrong door on his way to a photo shoot.
I remember that my fish supplier was described by the vineyard manager as "a tall guy just a few years older than you," so this must be him. But attractive or not, the man is almost an hour late without so much as a text message, and that is absolutely unacceptable.
"One moment," I say to Margot, already feeling my blood pressure rising. "I need to go deal with this."
"Go ahead. I have some calls to make anyway." She gathers her folio and heads toward the back office, leaving me alone with the tardy fishmonger.
I stride over to him, pulling myself up to my full height, which at five-six isn't particularly impressive, but I've learned to make it work through sheer force of personality.
He breaks into a smile when he sees me coming, warm and completely inappropriate for someone who just wasted an hour of my time.
And he didn't even bring the fish inside with him. No cooler, no samples, no documentation.
"Oh, hey," he says, his smile widening like we're old friends. "You must be Isabelle. Pleasure to meet you, I'm Ale—"
"You're late is what you are," I cut him off. "I want to be clear right away that I expect professionalism if we're going to be working together on this project. And showing up an hour late without so much as a text is not a great start."
He opens his mouth to respond, but I'm not finished.
"Samples go directly into cold storage the second they arrive," I continue, gesturing toward the walk-in.
"And I need documentation on every single item you bring me.
Origin, catch date, handling temps, chain of custody.
Nothing goes on my menu that I can't trace back to the specific body of water it came from. Understood?"
"That sounds really organized and very thorough, but—"
"And I need to understand why an hour went by without a phone call," I say, drawing myself up.
He towers over me by a good eight inches at least, but what I lack in the vertical department I more than make up for in attitude.
"Delays happen. I understand that. Traffic, weather, equipment failures, I've heard every excuse.
But you pick up the phone. That's the bare minimum of professional courtesy. Got it, fish guy?"
To my absolute irritation, his smile only grows wider as I rail into him. His eyes are bright with what I can only describe as amusement, and there's a dimple appearing in his left cheek that I refuse to find attractive on principle.
What a little fucker. He's actually enjoying this.
"Do you find something about this amusing?" I ask, using my best head-chef voice.
"Oh, I find this extremely amusing," he replies, eyes practically dancing, and the dimple gets deeper.
"Well, I have to say," I cross my arms over my chest, "I find this wildly unprofessional for someone who came so highly recommended by the vineyard manager.
And when we spoke on the phone yesterday, I thought I made it abundantly clear how important timing was going to be for this project.
We're running a Michelin-level operation here, not a fried seafood shack on the beach. "
He laughs, throwing his head back, and the sound of it fills my entire kitchen. It's a good laugh, I'll give him that—warm and unselfconscious, the kind of laugh that would be charming under circumstances where I wasn’t trying to establish dominance.
"Yeah, that would be super annoying," he says, still smiling. "If I was your fish guy, which I'm not." He tilts his head, considering. "Though I have to say, 'fish guy' is one of the kinder nicknames I've been given over the years."
I stare at him, and a horrible, sinking feeling begins to form in my stomach. The kind of feeling you get right before you realize you've made a catastrophic error in judgment.
"Pardon?" My voice comes out smaller than I'd like.
"Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about with the whole fish delivery thing." He pulls a hand from his pocket and extends it toward me, still smiling. "Alex Midnight. I'm the guy your dad sent to help with the pop-up."
I shake his hand robotically, my brain scrambling to place him, to make this make sense. Alex Midnight. The name means absolutely nothing to me, and I have been planning this residency with obsessive detail. "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are," I say.
His cocky smile dims slightly, replaced by confusion. "Your father brought me on to help out. He said you knew about the arrangement..."
The missed calls this morning. Him trying to track me down through Margot for something urgent. The voicemail I ignored.
Merde.
"I missed some calls from him this morning," I say, working hard to keep my voice steady despite the fact that I am actively dying of embarrassment and would very much like the floor to open up and swallow me whole. "But no, I'm sorry, I don't know anything about this. About you being here."
"From this morning?" He looks surprised, running his hand through his hair in a way that makes it even more tousled. "He talked to me about this a couple weeks ago, so I just assumed you'd known for a while now. Well. This is awkward."
"Yes, it is," I agree, feeling distinctly out of the loop. God, I hope he's not a critic. I can see the headline now: Beaumont Heiress Screams at Legendary Food Critic. My career would be over before the pop-up even starts. I swallow hard. "What exactly are you here for?"
"I'm from Washington State. A town called Dark River, a couple hours from Seattle. I run a restaurant there called Harbor & Ash with my brother, and your father is considering funding a new place in Seattle."
Harbor & Ash. The name is actually familiar, tugging at something in the back of my mind. I think I read a piece on it last year, something in Food & Wine about rising West Coast spots worth the drive. If I remember correctly, they got absolutely glowing reviews.
"Anyway," he continues. "Before he commits to my place, he wants to get to know me better, and he also wants me here to sort of keep an eye on you.
Before you take over his New York place, or something like that.
Since I have experience running events like this and you…
well… don't.” He pauses, then adds quickly, “His words, not mine. "
As if that's going to cushion the blow. The mortification I was feeling about my misplaced fish lecture evaporates instantly, replaced by hot fury toward my father.
He brought in a babysitter. A babysitter for his twenty-six-year-old daughter who has organized this entire residency from scratch, secured the venue, built the menu, and sold out six weeks of reservations, and he didn't even have the courtesy to tell me first.
What. The. Hell.
"Sorry, what did you just say?" I'm aiming for professional, but it comes out closer to murderous. "He sent you to keep tabs on me?"
He runs a hand through his hair. "Well, he mentioned that this is your first solo operation, and I've been running a restaurant for about ten years now, so he wants me around for the operational side of things.
And to keep an eye on, uh..." He trails off.
"Listen, I really thought he would have told you all this by now. "
"Putain!" I hiss. "So you're like what, his little spy? His plant? Sent here to watch over me because I'm some helpless child who can't be trusted to run her own kitchen? Is that it? I'm a grown fucking woman!"
"I have zero interest in stepping on your toes here," he says, holding up both hands in a gesture that's probably meant to be placating, but just makes me angrier.
"Believe me, this is not my idea of a good time either.
But it's part of the agreement I made with your father for my restaurant.
He funds Seattle, I help out here first. That's the deal. "
"Oh, so you're doing this for yourself," I spit out. "You're using my pop-up as some kind of audition for my father's money. Is that supposed to make me feel better about this situation?"
"I'm not trying to make you feel anything. I'm just trying to explain the situation."
I roll my eyes and dig my phone out of my pocket.
"Well, don't get too comfortable, because you're not staying.
This is my pop-up. I have worked my ass off to do this, and he has no right to send some random guy to hover over me like I can't tie my own shoes.
And honestly, you're scum for agreeing to it. "
He laughs again, which makes me want to throw my phone at his head.
"What is funny about this?" I snap.
He shakes his head, still grinning. "Look, if my brothers tried to pull this shit on me I'd tell them exactly where they could shove it.
This whole thing with your dad is patronizing and sexist as hell.
But these are your issues with your father, not mine.
" He points a finger at me, and there's something almost playful in the gesture that makes me want to scream.
"So I'm just here to do my end of the deal and then get back to Seattle and my actual life. Okay, Princess?"
Princess.
He did not just call me princess.
"Whatever," I mutter, already turning away before I say something I'll regret, or possibly commit assault. "Don't unpack yet, jackass!"
I flip him off and stride toward the terrace with my phone, dialing furiously as I push through the glass doors. The terrace stretches toward the vineyard and I walk to the far railing, as far from the doors as the terrace allows, and dial.
He picks up on the second ring. "Isabelle! Ma chérie, I have been trying to get ahold—"
"Papa. Explain. Right now."