electricity scattered up her arm. Forget the hot ramekin. His touch might as well have been the lit end of a July Fourth sparkler.
Cooper unrolled a cloth napkin and placed a fork and a spoon on a saucer, reaching across the table to hand it to her. The silverware clattered against the porcelain in her shaky grip when she took it, as if the restaurant were positioned along an unsteady fault line.
He glanced from Sloane’s hands to her eyes, a line creasing in his forehead as she reached into her bag and scrubbed the cutlery with a wipe before dipping her spoon in the soup.
“So, tell me a little about J. Marian Restaurants’ vision for this place.” She blew on the spoonful of broth, crouton and cheese, willing the soup to keep from dribbling back into the bowl since her hand still wasn’t cooperating. “It’s not like the corporation’s other restaurants, is it?”
One bite of the soup threw Sloane back with an explosive blast of flavor.
Cooper smirked at her reaction. “Does that taste like it came from my father’s other restaurants?”
“It’s fantastic,” she answered around another mouthful, already assembling her third bite. “Where did the chef come from?”
He sat up straighter in his seat and crossed his arms, his expressionless face the final brick in the wall he’d put up between them. “I’m the chef.”
Sloane nearly choked on her soup. Certainly, her ears had failed her. Graham Cooper Jr., a chef?
“I trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and worked in kitchens that made Gordon Ramsay’s seem like Girl Scout camp.”
Wow. His speech had the scratch of a broken record, as if he was used to giving it to naysayers. What did the heir to the Cooper dynasty have to prove anyway?
Sloane cleared her throat and pulled a pad of paper from her bag so she didn’t have to respond, making notes as she sampled the rest of the food in silence. There was an apple and brie panini, a chocolate croissant, a hybrid between a French dip and a croque monsieur, a salted brown butter and berry tart. The food was divine—all of it. She had to stop herself from clearing the entire tray. If she was in business mode, this food was putting up an involuntary out-of-office reply for her. The only thing that kept her in check was the mental tally of calories she’d have to plug into the app on her phone later.
“It was all very good.” Sloane squeezed another dollop of hand sanitizer into her hands as her own white flag of surrender to the food. “You’ve obviously done a lot of work with these flavor profiles.”
The corner of Cooper’s mouth curved into a crooked smile. “No offense, but what does a blogger know about flavor profiles?”
Sloane’s pulse pounded in her ears as she stared at the amused individual across from her in shock.
His grin faded to wide-eyed panic. “Wait. I’m sorry.” He leaned his head on his hands, realized he was still wearing his work goggles and set them on the table. “I think that came out the wrong way.”
“Whatever. It’s fine.” Sloane stared at the goggles. What else could he have meant? He was surely trying to placate her because he didn’t want to be inconvenienced by hurt feelings. She pulled her shoulder blades together. “Can we get back to work now? I’m sure you also have better things you could be doing right now.”
Two could play at that game.
“Go ahead.”
“So, Mr. Cooper. I asked you about the vision for this place. I take it you spearheaded the development yourself?”
Cooper laced his fingers behind his head, studying Sloane through heavy-lidded eyes. “Yes, ma’am. I wanted an answer to my father’s way of doing things, which works for him, I guess, but in a different way.”
Sloane scribbled the keywords that would help her remember their conversation later. “So you basically set out to create a restaurant that will cause a stir with how your father usually does things.”
Cooper frowned and shifted in his seat, scanning her pad of paper. “I wanted to create an atmosphere that said Stay awhile and a cost-effective, sustainable menu that said Savor. You can read into that whatever you want.”
“That’s very European. And the name? Where does Simone come from?” Some bimbo he’d met while enjoying the Parisian nightlife?
Cooper’s expression clouded. “Someone who was very special to me in France.”
For how long? A week?
“She taught me how to appreciate food and enjoy cooking it. More important than anything I learned at Le Cordon Bleu.” His words became more flavored with French as he spoke, as if saturated by the remnant of this woman in his mind.
“And, let me guess, she was a little reluctant to leave the motherland?”
Cooper looked up, his forehead creased. “No. She died right before I moved back.”
Died. The word snapped against Sloane like a whip. “Oh. Wow. Well, she must have been...something...to, you know, name your restaurant after her and everything.”
She focused so her breath didn’t release in shredded gasps as Cooper launched into a story about Simone. Something about standing next to her over her stove top.
But Sloane’s mind could only focus on one thing.
Aaron.
She’d unintentionally wandered into an area of Cooper’s life she didn’t have security clearance for. And the intrusion only served to land her square in the middle of the place she kept under lock and key in her own life. Every instinct told her to take cover from the impending explosion.
“Can I use your restroom?” She stood so abruptly that her chair clattered to the floor.
“The water’s not connected—”
“That’s okay. Just tell me where it is.”
Cooper furrowed his eyebrows and pointed to a hallway on the far side of the kitchen.
The door to the restroom closed with a thunderous crash when Sloane heaved her hip against it. She pulled the jade-green sleeves of her cardigan over her hands and clutched the pedestal sink, leaning into it. Deep breaths.
She willed her racing heart to slow, trying to abate the pressure of backed-up tears.
Refold short stack of hand towels.
Angle off-center soap dispenser.
Normally she could handle talk of death just fine. It happened every day. But sometimes the jolting blow of emptiness sneaked up on her when she least expected it, even more than a decade after her best friend’s death. The days and weeks surrounding his birthday were always terrible—agonizing at best and unmanageable at worst. Well, she’d have to learn how to manage it better if she wanted to keep her job. Even if it was clear Cooper wasn’t a fan of the arrangement either.
With a few more deep breaths, the pressure softened a little, leaving a dull ache in its place.
Sloane
