He Gave Her My Kitchen. I Took Everything Chapter 06

He Gave Her My Kitchen. I Took Everything Chapter 06

What I’ve done to you,” I repeated.

“The health department’shut me down.” His voice cracked on the word shut. “Tuesday. They posted the notice on the front door, Nora. On the door. Where people can see it.”

“Because of a failed cold chain.”

“Because of your cold chain! You set up that system! You’re the one who –

“I’m the one who wrote a twelve-page protocol and handed it to your new executive chef in a binder you told

me you threw in the recycling.” I stood up and walked into the surf, ankle-deep, phone to my ear. “Say that part

again for me, Grant. Say the part where you threw it away.”

He didn’t.

“You knew,” he said instead, low and vicious. “You knew that compressor was going, and you left anyway.

That’s sabotage.”

“I flagged that compressor in writing in March. You told me to wait until Q4 because you were putting the money into the second location.” I smiled at the horizon. “Would you like me to forward the email? I still have it. I have all of them, actually. I have five years of them.”

Silence. A long one. I could hear him breathing.

Then, unbelievably, he laughed – a thin, cracked sound.

“You’ve been planning this.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been planning this for months.”

“Eight of them,” I said. “Ever since you sat me down at our kitchen table and explained why my work was

worth nothing.”

“Nora – “His voice broke completely, and here it came, right on schedule, the pivot I’d been waiting for. “Nor. Baby. Come on. It’s me. We met when we were twenty-two. You made me breakfast on a two-burner hot plate in that apartment with the broken window. Fifteen years. Does that mean nothing to you?”

I closed my eyes.

Because it did. That’s the ugly part. Some traitorous animal part of me still remembered his hands and his laugh and the way we used to split one plate of pasta at 2 a.m. after service, too tired to talk.
And then I remembered a microphone, and news vans, and a man in a beautiful jacket saying my executive

chef.

Fifteen years meant everything to me,” I said. “That’s why I stayed while you cut my salary. That’s why I never asked why you smelled like someone else’s perfume. That’s how much it meant.”

“That’s not Sienna is not –

“Grant. I don’t care.”

And the strange thing was, I meant it.

“Listen to me.” He was talking fast now, deal-making, the voice he used on investors. “The gala’s Saturday. Six hundred covers. If I cancel, the deposit goes back and the penalty clause takes the second location down with it. But if I deliver – if I deliver – I’ve got press, I’ve got the mayor, I’ve got a save. Come back for four days. Four days, Nora. Twenty percent equity. Your name on the building. Whatever number you want, just say the

number.”

There it was. Fifteen years of asking for a desk with a window, and all it cost me was walking out the door.

“No,” I said.

“WHY?”

“Because I don’t want it anymore,” I said. “That’s what you never understood. You thought I stayed because I couldn’t leave.”

“Then what do you want? What do you actually want? Tell me and it’s yours!”

I looked at the water. It was going gold at the edges.

“I want to be on this beach on Saturday,” I said. “I want to sleep in. And then I want to start my new job.”

“New” He stopped. “What new job?”

I hadn’t meant to say it. But I found I didn’t mind.

“Kane Hospitality,” I said. “Waterfront flagship. Executive chef, creative control, equity in year one. Their CEO drove to the airport to meet me. He carried my bag.”

The sound Grant made wasn’t a word.

“Sue me if you disagree with any of it,” I said pleasantly. “Goodbye, Grant.”

I blocked the number, put the phone in my beach bag, and had the best dinner of my entire life – grilled

snapper, someone else’s hands, no notes.

At 11:20 that night, my phone rang again.

The screen said: CHARLESTON COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE.