Romance Impossible(8)

Until I'd looked it up to plan my route, I hadn't remembered where this restaurant was located. No wonder I hadn't recognized the address - it was in Beacon Hill, the most affluent neighborhood in the city, and one I'd had very few occasions to visit. Walking down the narrow cobblestone streets, past the old brick buildings that would be here long after I was gone, I felt like I'd travelled through time.

The restaurant itself maintained the old-world aesthetic on the outside, but inside it was much more cool and modern.

And empty. Very, very empty.

Suddenly, the front door swung open. I jerked my head up, just in time to see a man in a black pea-coat hurry past me, without even glancing in my direction.

"Excuse me," I said, loudly. He froze, then glanced over his shoulder at me.

"Ah," he said, turning all the way around. "Miss Brown."

His face was completely unreadable. It hadn't changed much in the last few years - he still had those stormy eyes and those rough-and-tumble good looks that the camera loved so much. I cleared my throat and stood, accepting his hand for a shake. It was warm and dry, despite the damp chill of early autumn beginning to permeate the air.

"Did I have the time wrong?" I asked politely, knowing that I didn't.

"No," he said. Then, seeming to sense that I was fishing for something else, he added: "Don't worry, this won't affect the length of the interview."

"Well, thank goodness for that." I sat down in the chair he pulled out for me, acutely aware that I had to present myself as about one-thousand-percent more confident than I felt, in this moment. Any sign of weakness, and I'd be done for.

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, smoothing it out on the table in front of him. It took me a second, reading it upside-down, to recognize it as my résumé. How had he gotten a copy?

"So," he said, holding the paper flat with his fingertips. His hand was splayed wide on the tabletop, and I found I couldn't stop staring at it. With an effort, I shook myself out of my trance and looked up at him. He didn't seem to notice. His eyes were darting across the words in front of him.

"So," I replied. "Should I tell you about myself?"

"No need," he said, still looking at the paper. "Everything I could want to know is right here."

I swallowed. "Then, with all due respect..."

"Why am I interviewing you?" He looked up at me suddenly. His eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that made my heart skip a beat. "Well, there are all sorts of things you can tell about a person from meeting them face to face. But it's very rarely the things they say. Most of all, I was curious to see if you'd come."#p#分页标题#e#

My mouth went dry. This was it - he was about to bring up our first meeting. Had he really scheduled this interview just to assert his dominance over me, to prove I'd still jump if he snapped his fingers? A sick feeling roiled in my stomach.

"Don't look so distressed," he said, mildly. He was still standing at the other side of the table, his coat unbuttoned, but hanging on his shoulders like he was on the verge of walking out the door. "I wouldn't have called you here if I didn't want to hire you. But there's plenty of people out there who would refuse to work for me, on principle."

"Principle?" I echoed. This was going very, very badly. If he was trying to set me off-balance on purpose, it was working tremendously well. And I was coming off as a tremendous ass.

"Or because they think I'd be a nightmare to work for," he said, finally shrugging out of his coat and taking it over to the rack. "But you've come this far, so obviously you're willing."

Or desperate.

"I always try to keep an open mind to new opportunities," I said, evenly.

He grinned. I'd never actually seen him smile before. I realized it in that moment, briefly seeing his face transform into something completely different. He looked...human.

With a sudden gesture, he jerked a chair out from under the table and sat down, leaning forward to look at me searchingly.

"This will probably surprise you," he said. "But on the scale of head chefs, I'm actually not that hard to work for. If you're eager, if you're passionate, and above all, if you listen to fucking directions -" Here, he briefly grinned again. "- we'll get along just fine. And you come highly recommended."

Taking a deep breath, I finally addressed the question that had been gnawing at the back of my mind all morning. "Can I ask who recommended me?"

"My friend Chef Shaw, over at the Ritz. He was really very regretful that he didn't have any room for you on his staff, so he passed your résumé on to me. He knows I've been having a hard time staffing this place. I'm a bit picky, you understand."