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He holds up an egg to shush me. “Don’t say anything now, just wait until I’ve shown you what I can do, and then I’ll explain everything.”
An hour later, I’m fed, watered, and marginally less likely to jump off a cliff at the nearest opportunity.
Eggs benedict with a twist. I wasn’t planning to do breakfast in the restaurant, but if I were, Simon’s spicy eggs benedict would be on the menu. He scrapes his white-blond hair out of his eyes where it has fallen forward from its usual swept back neatness. He’s examining my spreadsheets. My budgets. Gran’s recipe book. Everything.It’s all spread out on the coffee table between us.
Finally, he places the handwritten books down and looks me dead in the eyes. “I want in.”
“And the hotel? Pete?” I grimace just thinking about poaching The Castle’s head chef. Not to mention the price tag I’d have to beat to do it. The chefs I’ve been looking into have all been young. Fresh out of culinary school. Heaps of potential, but green enough to come cheap until we start turning profit.
“Kenzi. I adore working for Pete at the Castle, but it’s a high-end hotel menu. Dictated by the powers that be. Star plates the same in every hotel. Star plates rarely designed by me.”
I gnaw on my bottom lip and lift the menu ideas he’s been jotting down while we’ve been talking through my plan for the restaurant. They’re nothing short of spectacular. And exactly up my street. Fresh local produce. Mediterranean-Cluan fusion. Seriously, it’s like he climbed in my head and took notes. “Honestly, Simon? I don’t know that I can afford you. Even with the grant from the bank.”
His ice blue eyes fix on mine, and he grabs hold of my hand. “Money is just the means to an end, darling. The freedom to create is priceless.”
My cell picks that exact moment to ping and whatever semblance of normal vanishes in a poof of hangover fear and shame. I eye where it’s sitting innocently on the table by the half-drunk Bloody Mary Simon made me when it became clear this wasn’t just any hangover. It might be Mylo. It might not be. I have no intention of finding out until I feel less dead.
Simon glances at the phone too. “Trouble in paradise?”
“You’ve no idea.” I rub my eyes. “I did a thing last night I can’t undo.”
“Santi?” Simon presses his lips together like he’s suppressing a grin.
“Pete the drunk birdie?” I screw up my face and flop back onto the sofa. “Is nothing sacred?”
Simon laughs. “I can neither confirm nor deny, oh, who am I kidding? Yes. Drunk birdy Pete spilled all. PDA’ing in the Beach Hut carpark? What a welcome to Clua.”
I cover my face and groan loudly. “Stop. Please. It went no further.”
“Kissing is allowed, baby. Nothing to be ashamed of. Santi is a beautiful specimen.”
“I know,” I groan from behind my hands. “The shameful part is the drunk dialing I did when I got home.”
“It can’t be as bad as drunk calling your still in-the-closet boyfriend’s radically homophobic father.”
I slide my hands down my face, peek at him over my fingertips. “You did that?”
“Many moons ago.”
“Okay, you win. It’s notthatbad. Tell me what happened.”
Hours later, I’m still in my pajamas, but I’m feeling marginally better than I did when I woke up—even if I haven’t figured out how I’m going to face Mylo when he eventually appears. I think that with Simon on my side the restaurant really has a chance of being everything I’ve dreamed it will be.
I should have known. Things just aren’t that easy.
An email pings into my inbox halting my perusal of handmade tables from a woodwork place in Tenting.
Bank of Clua.
I stare at the notification until it vanishes from the corner of my screen.
Heart in my throat, I swallow tightly and click onto my email.
I scan the opening, the congratulations for being selected out of many other candidates, the mumbo jumbo of conditions, and skip right to the amount given.
I bite my top lip so hard it’s a miracle I don’t taste blood, the hangover I thought had receded comes back bolder than ever.
This can’t be right.
