LITMIR.BIZ

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prolonging a conversation neither of them seemed to want to have.

      “Still angling for that taco meatloaf, are we?” she asked.

      “I like pizza, too.”

      She flinched, but said nothing.

      “And chicken pot pie,” he threw in for good measure.

      She expelled another one of those impatient sighs. “Fine. I can alter my menus. Some,” she added meaningfully.

      Hogan smiled. Upper hand. He had it. He wondered how long he could keep it.

      “But yes, all of what I cook is French.” She looked like she would add more to the comment, but she didn’t.

      So he tried a new tack. “Are you a native New Yorker?” Then he remembered she couldn’t be a native New Yorker. She didn’t know what a mook was.

      “I was born and raised in New Albany, Indiana,” she told him. Then, because she must have realized he was going to press her for more, she added, with clear reluctance, “I was raised by my grandmother because my parents...um...weren’t able to raise me themselves. Mémée came here as a war bride after World War Two—her parents owned a bistro in Cherbourg—and she was the one who taught me to cook. I got my degree in Culinary Arts from Sullivan University in Louisville, which is a cool city, but the restaurant scene there is hugely competitive, and I wanted to open my own place.”

      “So you came to New York, where there’s no competition for that kind of thing at all, huh?” He smiled, but Chloe didn’t smile back.

      He waited for her to explain how she had ended up in New York cooking for the One Percent instead of opening her own restaurant, but she must have thought she had come to the end of her story, because she didn’t say anything else. For Hogan, though, her conclusion only jump-started a bunch of new questions in his brain. “So you wanted to open your own place, but you’ve been cooking for one person at a time for...how long?”

      She met his gaze levelly. “For five years,” she said.

      He wondered if that was why she charged so much for her services and insisted on living on-site. Because she was saving up to open her own restaurant.

      “Why no restaurant of your own by now?” he asked.

      She hesitated for a short, but telling, moment. “I changed my mind.” She stood and picked up his plate. “I need to see to your dessert.”

      He wanted to ask her more about herself, but her posture made clear she was finished sharing. So instead, he asked, “What am I having?”

      “Glissade.”

      “Which is? To me?” he added before she could.

      “Chocolate pudding.”

      And then she was gone. He turned in his chair to watch her leave and saw her crossing the gallery to the kitchen, her red plastic shoes whispering over the marble floor. He waited to see if she would look back, or even to one side. But she kept her gaze trained on the kitchen door, her step never slowing or faltering.

      She was a focused one, Chloe Merlin. He wondered why. And he found himself wondering, too, if there was anything else—or anyone else—in her life besides cooking.

Two

      The day after she began working for Hogan Dempsey, Chloe returned from her early-afternoon grocery shopping to find him in the gallery between the kitchen and dining room. He was dressed in a different pair of battered jeans from the day before, and a different sweater, this one the color of a ripe avocado. He must not have heard her as she topped the last stair because he was gazing intently at one photograph in particular. It was possible that if she continued to not make a sound, he wouldn’t see her as she slipped into the kitchen. Because she’d really appreciate it if Hogan didn’t see her as she slipped into the kitchen.

      In fact, she’d really appreciate it if Hogan never noticed her again.

      She still didn’t know what had possessed her to reveal so much about herself last night. She never told anyone about being raised by a grandmother instead of by parents, and she certainly never talked about the desire she’d once had to open a restaurant. That was a dream she abandoned a long time ago, and she would never revisit it again. Never. Yet within hours of meeting Hogan, she was telling him those things and more. It was completely unprofessional, and Chloe was, if nothing else, utterly devoted to her profession.

      She gripped the tote bags in her hands more fiercely and stole a few more steps toward the kitchen. She was confident she didn’t make a sound, but Hogan must have sensed her presence anyway and called out to her. Maybe she could pretend she didn’t hear him. It couldn’t be more than five or six more steps to the kitchen door. She might be able to make it.

      “Chloe?” he said again.

      Damn. Missed it by that much.

      She turned to face him. “Yes, Mr. Dempsey?”

      “Hogan,” he told her again. “I don’t like being called ‘Mr. Dempsey.’ It makes me uncomfortable. It’s Hogan, okay?”

      “All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “What is it you need?”

      When he’d called out to her, he’d sounded like he genuinely had something to ask her. Now, though, he only gazed at her in silence, looking much the way he had yesterday when he’d seemed so lost. And just as she had yesterday, Chloe had to battle the urge to go to him, to touch him, and to tell him not to worry, that everything would be all right. Not that she would ever tell him that. There were some things that could never be all right again. No one knew that better than Chloe did.

      Thankfully, he quickly regrouped, pointing at the photo he’d been studying. “It’s my mother,” he said. “My biological mother,” he quickly added. “I think I resemble her a little. What do you think?”

      What Chloe thought was that she needed to start cooking. Immediately. Instead, she set her bags on the floor and made her way across the gallery toward him and the photo.

      His mother didn’t resemble him a little, she saw. His mother resembled him a lot. In fact, looking at her was like looking at a female Hogan Dempsey.

      “Her name was Susan Amherst,” he said. “She was barely sixteen when she had me.”

      Even though Chloe truly didn’t engage in gossip, she hadn’t been able to avoid hearing the story of Susan Amherst over the last several weeks. It was all the Park Avenue crowd had talked about since the particulars of Philip Amherst’s estate were made public, from the tearooms where society matriarchs congregated to the kitchens where their staff toiled. How Susan Amherst, a prominent young society deb in the early ’80s, suddenly decided not to attend Wellesley after her graduation from high school a year early, and instead took a year off to “volunteer overseas.” There had been talk at the time that she was pregnant and that her ultra-conservative, extremely image-conscious parents wanted to hide her condition. Rumors swirled that they sent her to live with relatives upstate and had the baby adopted immediately after its birth. But the talk about young Susan died down as soon as another scandal came along, and life went on. Even for the Amhersts. Susan returned to her rightful place in her parents’ home the following spring and started college the next year. For all anyone knew, she really had spent months “volunteering overseas.”

      Until Hogan showed up three decades later and stirred up the talk again.

      “You and she resemble each other very much,” Chloe said. And because Susan’s parents were in the photograph, as well, she added, “You resemble your grandfather, too.” She stopped herself before adding that Philip Amherst had been a very handsome man.

      “My grandfather’s attorney gave me a letter my grandfather wrote when he changed his will to leave his estate to me.” Hogan’s voice revealed nothing of what he might be feeling, even though there must be a tsunami of feeling in a statement

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