Maybe I should have been checking in more with Laurent. Maybe I've been too focused on Napa, too caught up in the vineyards and the sourcing trips and the rhythm of building something from scratch. Maybe my father is right and I shouldhave stayed focused on New York instead of pushing for this pop-up.
Maybe I've been fooling myself.
I roll over in my bed and glance at the clock. After midnight, and I still can't sleep. Between the phone call with my father and the pressure of opening night tomorrow, my mind won't stop turning over every detail: the critics arriving, my father flying in from Paris with a colleague in tow, the handful of celebrities and athletes Margot casually mentioned were on the reservation list like that was a normal thing to say out loud.
All of it pressing down on me, but the two things that keep circling back are the food writers who could tear me apart with a paragraph, and my father with his perpetually impossible standards.
He'll be watching every plate that leaves that kitchen tomorrow. He'll smile proudly for the guests and then pull me aside in the kitchen to discuss what I could have done better, because that is what love looks like in the Beaumont household.
Conditional. Contingent. Always just slightly out of reach. Not to mention the call with Lacy in the morning, which I'm already dreading.
Nothing can go wrong, or I will never hear the end of it. I need to be better than everyone expects me to be. I start running through a mental checklist, even though I went through everything hours ago when I left the kitchen. The beurre blanc base is prepped and resting, the stocks are reduced and portioned, the dessert components are set, and the?—
The fig compote for the amuse-bouche. Did I strain it? I definitely strained it. I rack my brain, flipping through the afternoon like pages in a book. Or did I justthinkaboutstraining it and then get pulled away when Sofia had a question about the cold line?
"Ugh!" I flip the sheets off in frustration, sitting up in the darkness of my cottage. I'll never be able to sleep unless I check.
I pull a sweater on over my pajama set, a long silk one with little pancakes printed all over it that I bought as a joke but now wear religiously because it's the most comfortable thing I own. I shove my feet into my slip-ons and head out the door, making my way along the path toward the main building through the vineyard.
It's chilly tonight, so different from the scorching afternoons. The vineyard stretches out on either side of me as I walk along the path, quiet and empty and somehow ominous in the dark.
I don't consider myself someone who gets spooked easily. Still, the daytime vineyards are a completely different thing than what's out here now. The dark, twisted vines stretching in every direction are not particularly comforting at midnight. In fact, they look downright sinister.
I scurry along the path faster, keeping my eyes fixed on the warm glow of the kitchen windows ahead and trying not to think about every horror movie I've ever seen that started with someone walking through a field at night.
My brain, ever helpful, decides to replay the scene fromSignswhere the alien's leg moves through the cornfield. Last month's horror movie marathon was clearly a mistake. I fight the urge to whip around frantically, suddenly regretting not bringing anything but my phone with its crappy flashlight.
Relief washes over me when I reach the door, and I let myself in, immediately hit by the warm, buttery smell of something baked with figs. At the island counter in the center is?—
"Oh!" I jump, my hand flying to my chest, my heart slamming against my ribs. Alex is standing at the center island with flouron his forearms and various pantry ingredients scattered around him like he's been working for a while.
He jumps too, whipping around to face me, his eyes wide. "You scared the hell out of me."
"You scaredme," I say, trying to catch my breath, my hand still pressed to my chest where my heart is racing. "I was literally out there convinced I was going to get abducted by aliens in the vineyard, and then I walk in and there's a figure in the kitchen at midnight. I nearly had a heart attack."
His shoulders shake with laughter. "I thought the exact same thing on the walk over. Something about the rows at night just makes me think of cornfields. I felt like I was inSigns."
I stare at him in disbelief. "That is literallyexactlywhat popped into my head!"
"Well, it's a famous movie, and great minds think alike," he says, grinning. "And hey, at least if the aliens come for us, we'll both be here to get probed together."
"Oh, wonderful. Very comforting." I can't help but smile back at him.
He laughs, shaking his head. "So what are you doing out here past midnight?"
"Couldn't sleep," I confirm, walking farther into the kitchen and plopping onto one of the counter stools across from him, tucking my pancake-pajama-clad legs up under me. "I started thinking about whether I actually strained the fig compote or just thought about straining it, and once that thought got in my head it was over."
He smiles. "I've done that a million times. And you did strain it, by the way. I saw it in the walk-in when I was grabbing butter earlier. Labeled and dated and everything."
I exhale, my shoulders dropping.
"Okay. Crisis averted. What about you?" I say, sniffing the air theatrically, which makes him smile wider. "What are you doing in here?"
"Baking with those figs from this morning," he says, leaning back against the counter behind him. "I figured the kitchen would be empty at this time of night." He looks pointedly at me, amused. "I'm just about to pull it out of the oven actually."
I sniff again, more aggressively this time, leaning forward and trying to place the scent. It smells so familiar, buttery and jammy and sweet with a hint of something floral underneath, but I can't quite place it. "What is it?"
He grins, that cocky expression I'm starting to recognize and find simultaneously irritating and charming. "It's a surprise, Princess. You'll have to wait."