Chapter 16
The Grind was packed when Jonah cruised in after Broussard’s class. The campus coffee shop occupied most of the student center’s second floor, filled with mismatched tables and chairs, a chalkboard menu, and the siren call to students—permanently burned espresso.
He had just enough time for caffeine and a review of his notes for his lab, which he hoped would be an open cook day. That way, he might be able to practice the recipe he’d been tweaking for the Driftwood kitchen test.
If not, he’d book time in the next few days.
After he ordered, he waited by the pick-up, his gaze trailing over the crowded tables in the café hoping for one that…whoa. Whoa.
In a sea of mostly young faces, earbuds in, phones out…there was a brunette with freckles sitting near a window, long legs stretched out and perched on the empty chair across from her, her attention riveted on something outside.
Well, hello, Pepper Broussard.
“Jonah?” The woman’s voice was tinged with impatience, and he turned to see the barista holding a cup out to him. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” he muttered, taking the drink and turning back to the beauty in black.
She wore leggings that stopped just under her knees and some kind of leotard or a bodysuit or whatever women called the stretchy garment that did extremely favorable things to every line of her body.
Her dark hair was piled in a knot on top of her head, a few damp-looking strands loose at her temples, and there was a light sheen on her skin that said she’d just been doing something physical.
Speaking of siren calls.
And, oh, he should ignore this one. He should take his coffee, notes, and complicated-enough life and find a table on the other side of the café.
He should disregard the allure of that raspy voice and easy laugh and quick wit, and remember she was his professor’s daughter and, therefore, filed under Do Not Touch.
But for Jonah Lawson, “should” had a way of becoming a personal challenge to do the exact opposite. So, of course, he walked directly to her table, already smiling.
“Hey, I know you.”
She turned from the window, startled, then her whole face lit with a smile.
“It’s Paprika, right?” he asked. “Parsley?”
She rewarded the joke with a throaty laugh and swung her legs off the other chair, giving it a kick out in a silent invitation.
How could he say no?
“Very funny, Student Chef Lawson.”
Encouraged, he hesitated next to the chair. “You sure you’re not deep in thought?”
“Just watching those wrens dance. Sit and enjoy the show.” She pointed to a tree where, he assumed, birds fluttered.
He slid into the seat and looked outside, catching sight of two very small brown birds flitting around an oak tree branch. “I think that’s called flying.”
“Oh, no, no,” she insisted. “That’s called an adagio in the branches. Watch—one leads, one follows, and then they switch. That little hop is a relevé and that swoop? Grand jeté. Oh! Did you see that?”
He saw…birds. Definitely flying.
“That’s called a pas de deux with perfect counter-timing. See how they mirror each other? One goes high, the other goes low. They’re quick, light, never touching but always aware of each other’s line.” She sighed as though enthralled. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Yes, she was.
“Um…I take it you’re a dancer.”
She finally tore her gaze from the birds to pin it on him, and the effect was electrifying. Her eyes were deep golden brown with flecks of fire and insanely long lashes.
“Was, am, and always will be,” she replied, taking him in with what felt like the same scrutiny he was giving her. “And how is Atlas’s daddy?”
“Good. How’s Atlas’s favorite person?”
She laughed. “Has he been talking about me again?”
“Non-stop,” he volleyed back. “Why, just this morning while he was chilling in his bassinet and I got ready for school, he said, ‘Hey, Dad, have you seen the girl with the food name again? I liked her.’”
She bit her lip as though trying not to guffaw. “And you said…”
“I liked her, too.” Dang. There it was: full confession in under a minute flat.
She didn’t seem to mind, merely smiled a little more and looked down at her coffee for a second.
“Been at the gym?” he asked to get the conversation off who liked whom and back on track.
“Dance studio.”
“What kind of dance do you do?” He realized he knew a grand total of nothing about dancing except his mother made him do the Macarena at Aunt Crista’s wedding. It had been…painful.
She reached into the bag beside her chair and pulled out a pale pink ballet slipper, worn soft at the toe, and dangled it as though presenting evidence to a judge. “This kind.”
“Ooh. A ballerina?”
“To my last strand of DNA.” She tucked the slipper back in the bag. “I’ve been in tights since I was two, en pointe since twelve. Won state competitions all through high school, went to a dance academy in Houston, did a stint in New York, and ended up in New Orleans, which is where I stayed.”
“New York? I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t the big time. It wasn’t even a good time. Mostly it was a reality check that some dreams can survive on life support, but they do, eventually, expire.” She said it without bitterness, just the clear-eyed honesty of someone who’d made peace with a dead dream.
“So you went…home, I assume, to New Orleans?” he asked.
“Only because of…” She crossed her eyes playfully. “A guy.”
“Ahh. And?”
He waited, hoping she’d say said guy was history.
“And I found my calling in dance after all.” She leaned closer.
“Little girls with big dreams and high hopes. I ended up teaching ballet—and jazz, contemporary, and tap—at a studio in Metairie, and it turned out to be a billion times more fun than trying to claw my way to the front of someone else’s program. ”
“Five-year-olds in tutus are fun?” he asked, mesmerized by her story and the easy telling of it.
“Fun? They are magic! They fall down, they get up, they spin until they’re dizzy, they are pink and sweet and delightful.
It’s the purest form of dance that exists.
” Her face lit up in a way that made his chest do that same kind of dance.
“There really is nothing more beautiful than a three-year-old and her chubby-legged plié.”
She made teaching children to dance sound enchanting.
“And are you going back to that studio in Metairie?” He hoped his voice didn’t sound strained—like he cared that much about her next move.
“Nope.” She lifted her cup to her lips, sipping what he suspected was very cold coffee.
The simple, one-syllable answer threw him after all her openness.
“Then…are you staying here to teach two-year-olds in tutus?”
“If I can find a studio,” she said. “For now, I’m filing my father’s paperwork and…”
“And…” he prompted.
“Guess.”
He drew back at the suggestion, thrown like a gauntlet. “And…trying to get fulfillment but not actually finding it?”
She smiled. “Trying to forget that my poor little heart got stomped on. Can we talk about you now?”
The verbal flip threw him, as much as her confession.
“Sure,” he said, remembering he had coffee and that he was in The Grind and probably late for lab and he really didn’t care. “I’m a thirty-year-old single father culinary student hoping to get an internship.”
“Yes, Driftwood. Dad and I ate there the other night, and Isobel mentioned that she’d interviewed you.”
He blinked, not sure how he felt about her dining there with her chef father, on a first-name basis with the woman who held his fate in her hands, discussing him like he was the special of the day.
“She liked you,” she added, lifting her brows. “Said you were either going to be brilliant or a disaster, and she couldn’t wait to find out which. Coming from Isobel, that’s basically a love letter.”
He hated that the comment gave him hope, but it did.
“What else did you talk about with…Isobel?”
“Your baby.”
He jerked back, not sure how to take that or the unmitigated candor of this woman. “Dinner convo must have been dry.”
She laughed. “Not in the least. They were talking about what a challenge it is to be a single parent in the restaurant industry. Dad and Isobel are both veterans of that war.”
“You were raised by a single father?”
“Split my time,” she said. “Mom and Dad divorced when I was seven. He fought hard for shared custody and the result was…a challenge for him, too. So…”
“So, in other words, it’s never going to end until I find a childcare solution,” he said. “No wonder he’s told me five different ways to do just that.”
“Any progress?” she asked.
“Honestly? No.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I tried daycare. That was a disaster—he screamed for two straight hours, and they called me to come get him. I tried bringing him to class, and you know how that went down.”
“Are your parents around? Or Atlas’s mother’s parents?”
He made a face. “They’re in California and we’ve come to an agreement that I can keep him here with me, mostly because I’m living in…” He tried to think how to describe the Summer House and failed. “An unusual situation,” he said.
She cocked a brow with interest.
“I’m surrounded by family and friends who might as well be family, all of whom insist they would love to take care of Atlas. My dad, his girlfriend, her daughter, my aunt, my sister, a bunch of other randos who come and go and eat whatever I make.”
“Sounds divine,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “And like the perfect solution.”
“But not permanent or fair. Everyone has lives except my grandmother and her best gal pal, but they’re seventy-eight and think all baby problems can be solved with a little whiskey. For Atlas.”
She nearly spit out her drink. “Sounds like…quite a household.”