“It was accurate,” he says.
“Unfortunately.”
He exhales through his nose, almost a laugh, but the seriousness returns quickly.
“I placed you during the cheese course. Serena Cole. Palate. The Unvarnished Table.”
The sound of my professional name in his mouth lands differently now. Not like the hotel room. Not like the market. This is sharper. It belongs to the part of me he did not know he had touched.
“You read…me?” I ask.
“Everyone in my industry reads you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He holds my gaze. “Yes. I read you.”
I should feel some professional satisfaction from that. Instead, I feel the clean, unwanted intimacy of being known in another direction.
“Then you know I don’t trade in favors,” I say.
“I know,” he says.
“I also know people tell themselves many things when the conflict becomes personal.”
My spine straightens. “You think I’m going to soften the review because we slept together?”
“I’m asking whether what happened before the reservation affects what you’re going to write.”
“No,” I say.
He studies me. “No?”
“No,” I repeat. “The food was extraordinary before I recognized you. The room held before I recognized you. The service was precise before I recognized you. I wrote that Maison Holt was the best restaurant I’d visited on this assignment before I knew the chef was the man from my hotel room.”
His eyes stay on mine, but something flickers there, quick and unguarded.
I lean closer, keeping my voice low.
“The tarragon course is different. I separated it. It doesn’t factor into the rating. It can’t.”
“It was never meant to buy anything,” he says.
“I know that too.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” I say. “It was too honest to be a bribe.”
The words quiet him. For a second, we are not critic and chef. We are back in the market with herbs between us and the day still clean enough to pretend it cannot become complicated.
He looks at the pastry plate, then at me.
“Good.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“No,” he says. “That’s all I should say about that.”