I pull out my phone with trembling fingers. Alex is alreadyback in Napa, probably in the kitchen by now, and my flight doesn't get in until this afternoon. I need to warn him that I just destroyed his Seattle deal, that my father is probably already on the phone with his lawyers figuring out how to pull out of the investment. I need to tell him I'm sorry, that I didn't mean to blow everything up, that I just couldn't hold it in anymore.
I dial his number. It rings once, twice, three times, and goes to voicemail.
"Dammit, Alex!" I say to the empty room, and then I flop back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling like I just detonated a bomb and I'm still waiting to see how much damage the blast caused.
CHAPTER 26
Alex
I'm in the Solstice kitchen doing prep work, my hands moving on autopilot through the familiar motions of breaking down vegetables. Isabelle gets in tonight, her flight landing just two hours before service starts, which is cutting it close.
So I'm here making sure nothing goes wrong, that every station is set up perfectly, that we're ready to go the second she walks through the door.
The kitchen is humming, the kind of energy that happens before a big service. Lucy is at the fish station, portioning halibut, and Tomas is working through a mountain of microgreens at garde manger. The afternoon light streams through the kitchen windows, catching the stainless steel surfaces and making everything gleam.
I'm about to check on the sauce station when Lucy glances up at me. "Hey, your phone buzzed again."
I wipe my hands on my apron and make my way over to where I left my phone charging near the pass. The screen lights up and my stomach drops. Three missed calls from Isabelle andthree texts, all variations of the same message:Call me as soon as possible. Urgent. Please.
Something happened. My mind immediately goes to the worst places—what if she got hurt, was in a car accident, what if something happened with her father and she's stranded in Seattle, what if she's sick or in trouble? I'm reaching to dial her back when Jean-Pierre's name flashes across my screen, an incoming call.
He must be calling about Isabelle. Something must have happened to her. My heart kicks into overdrive. I push through the kitchen door into the garden, answering as I go, fear tightening my chest at the thought that the most important person in the world to me might be hurt.
"Sir, is everything alright?" I say immediately, not bothering with pleasantries, my voice tight with worry. "Is Isabelle okay? Did something happen?"
"You'redone," he says, and his voice is ice-cold. I stop walking, confusion replacing the fear.
"Excuse me?" I say.
"I know you slept with my daughter," he bites out, and now the anger is bleeding through, sharp and vicious. "She told me this morning that you've been sleeping with her. And if you think you can ever open a restaurant in this country after what you've done, you're delusional."
I stand there in the garden, completely stunned. My mind is racing, trying to catch up to what's happening. She told him. Isabelle told him about us.
"Listen," I start. "I'm in love with her, and she?—"
"Don't you dare," he cuts me off, his voice rising now. "Don't you fucking dare try to tell me this is about love. You saw an opportunity. A young, naive woman with a famous father and deep pockets, and you took it. You think I don't know men like you? You think I haven't seen this play a thousand times? You're a small-town chef with big dreams and no way to fund them."
"That's not?—"
"The deal is off," he continues, steamrolling over my attempt to speak. "Seattle is gone. The investment, the property, all of it. Consider our agreement terminated effective immediately. But more than that, Alex, any plans you ever had for your own restaurant, anywhere in this country, are finished. You think I don't have reach? You think I can't make sure every investor, every landlord, every supplier worth working with in this industry knows exactly what kind of man you are? What you did to my daughter?"
"I didn'tdoanything to her," I say, anger starting to burn through the shock.
"She'smydaughter," he snarls. "And you took advantage of her. You manipulated her, isolated her from me, turned her against her own family for your own gain. Well, congratulations, Alex. You just destroyed your entire future for a month-long fling."
The call ends abruptly, leaving me standing alone in the garden, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to dead air.
I slowly lower the phone, staring at the screen like it might offer some explanation for what just happened. The garden is beautiful around me with its perfectly manicured hedges, late-blooming roses, the vineyard stretching out in neat rows toward the golden hills in the distance. The kind of place people save up for years to visit, to get married at, to celebrate the best moments of their lives. And I'm standing here watching mine fall apart.
I lean against the cold stone wall of the building, trying to think, but my mind keeps circling back to the same thought: Seattle is gone. The restaurant I've been dreaming about for years, the one I could finally see clearly, the space I'd already started designing in my head—gone.
And not just Seattle. Jean-Pierre wasn't bluffing about his reach. If he wants me blacklisted, I'm blacklisted. One phonecall to the right people and suddenly no one will touch me with a ten-foot pole. I've spent a decade building my reputation, working my ass off to be taken seriously, to be known as someone who does good work, who treats people right, who earns the opportunities that come his way. And Jean-Pierre can undo all of that in an afternoon.
I pull up Isabelle's contact, my finger hovering over the call button.What the hell happened in Seattle? What did she say to him? Why now?
I press dial and wait, but the call goes straight to voicemail without even ringing. She's on her flight right now and should have wifi, so I send her a quicktext telling her I spoke with her father and to call me when she can.
I stay outside, sliding down the stone wall until I'm sitting on the ground, my back against the building, staring out at the vineyards. I think about calling Theo, but what would I even say?