Read on for a sneak preview of Anne Calhoun’s next book

TURN ME LOOSE

Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

“Okay, team, huddle up.”

The evening birdsong trilled through the screen door as servers, chefs, sous chefs, and the night’s hostess gathered around Riva. She leaned against the prep table and scanned their faces, checking in with each kid, all of them involved in the East Side Community Center’s after-school and weekend programs. The servers wore identical uniforms of black pants with black shirts tucked in, and a knee-length white apron. Kiara, the night’s hostess, came in last, pen and paper poised to write down the night’s menu before transferring it to the chalkboard intended for the front porch.

“Run it down for me, Chef Isaiah,” Riva said.

Aware of his lead role in the kitchen, Isaiah straightened. “We have three mains today, the usual rib eye and chicken, and the special, salmon seared in a sauce of shallots and grapefruit, accompanied by asparagus and potatoes roasted in garlic, rosemary, and olive oil. Appetizers are bruschetta, mussels, and we have Brussels sprouts roasted in olive oil with bacon and onions.”

Riva nodded approvingly. He’d come a long way from the kid who couldn’t tell a Brussels sprout from a stalk of asparagus. “Anyone have any questions about preparation? All of the greens are from the early plantings at the farm, so they’re nice and tender.”

Her dream was to eventually quadruple her greenhouse space, but her mantra was to take it slow, grow organically, and most importantly, without drawing any attention to herself.

“Where’s the salmon from?” Amber asked.

“Alaska. Flown in yesterday,” Isaiah said without prompting. Amber made a note on her server’s pad. “It’s as fresh as you’re gonna get in landlocked Lancaster.”

“What do you recommend?” Kiara asked.

“It’s all good,” Isaiah said, “but if anyone asks, go with the salmon.”

“What are we gonna eighty-six first?”

“The salmon,” Isaiah said. He extended his hand over the large, cast-iron pan heating on the eight-burner stove, the movement automatic, practiced.

“Thanks, Isaiah,” Riva said. “I’ll come around one last time to check your stations. I’m working the front tonight, so you guys are on your own.”

Subtle signs of tension rippled through the group. “You’ve got this. It’s a Tuesday night, so we won’t be very busy, but even if we were, even if we got slammed by Maud Ward and her entire entourage, you’d still have this,” Riva said. “Work your station, and work together.”

Kimmy-Jean, a newer addition to the program, worried at her lower lip. “What if no one comes?”

In the spring Oasis operated on a pop-up basis, opening on selected evenings and promoted through social media only. “They’ll come,” Isaiah said. “You just worry about getting your mise done, yo.”

She walked through the kitchen, swiping up a bit of spilled parmesan, adding extra bowls to Carlos’s station, making sure the busboy/dishwasher, Blake, had his trays lined up and ready to go. Out front, the tables were all neatly set, silverware wrapped in linen, bud vases with a single bloom and small votive candles centered between the settings. “Let’s not light the candles just yet,” she said to Kiara.

The front was designed to look like a large, screened-in porch, the glass windows folded back to open the room to the breezes drifting in from the eastern fields, carrying a scent of warm earth and tender, growing things. The walls were covered in weathered barn boards, the tables made from smaller pieces reclaimed when she tore down the outbuildings that were ruined beyond repair. The server’s station was just outside the kitchen, making it easy for the staff to grab a pitcher of water or a damp rag as they passed through.

Looking around, Riva couldn’t believe she’d made this herself: supervised the renovation, done most of the interior work and decorating herself, scavenged and bargain shopped, painted walls and built tables. She’d come a long way in the last eight years, and the farm and restaurant were only stage one of her business plan.

Their first customers were a couple who chose the twilit section. Riva lit their candle and offered them the menu. “Do you want the windows shut?” the man asked his date. He was obviously anxious, taking out his phone and silencing the ringer, setting it on the table, then putting it in a pocket.

“I’m good,” she said, giving him a pleased smile. “The air’s still pretty warm. Maybe later.”

“I’ll be back in a minute with your drinks,” Riva said, then looked up as the door opened again.

The evening progressed smoothly, just as Riva predicted. The program was a simple one, developed in conjunction with the East Side Community Center run by Pastor Webber. Get kids who’d grown up in impoverished, blighted neighborhoods so common to food deserts access to fresh air, sunshine, and the earth. Teach them to grow their own food, and cook it, which enabled Riva to teach them about healthy eating. It also meant Riva could give back, pay for the mistakes she’d made, and help other kids avoid the same mistakes.

Working in the front let things develop organically, for better or worse, in the kitchen. She liked waiting tables. Most of the recipes were her own, and getting feedback directly from customers enabled her to fine-tune accordingly. It meant she was close if the kids really needed her, but not watching like one of the hawks circling over a field, ready to pounce on every single mistake like a field mouse.

She automatically looked up when the front door opened and saw a single man standing there, his face hidden by the shadows. Tall and lean, he was nothing but a silhouette of a male figure in a suit, nothing that should have made her heart thunk hard against her chest and adrenaline dump into her nervous system. All her muscles screamed at her to drop the box of matches and bolt.

Don’t be ridiculous, her brain told her body.

Then he took another step forward, far enough into the light for Riva to see his face. She knew she should have trusted her body, but by then it was too late.

Officer Hawthorn stood in her restaurant.

Kiara wore her most practiced smile as she approached him, menu in hand. Riva couldn’t hear their conversation over her blood thrumming in her ears, but she could decipher it well enough based on the way he looked around, then the way Kiara extended her arm.

She’d seated him in Riva’s section. A two-top, in the corner. He always sat with his back to the wall. Riva remembered that well enough from six years earlier. The table gave him a view of all entrances and doors, and the parking lot.

“Blaze on table fourteen,” Kiara said to Riva, using the kitchen’s slang for a hot customer.

Riva stifled a hysterical laugh. Ian Hawthorn was a blaze in every sense of the word, hot, and so dangerous she should turn and run. She could ask someone else to take the table. It wasn’t a practice she encouraged, as it led to confusion in the restaurant, and there was no advantage to it for the kids. All tips were pooled and split among the kitchen staff and servers at the end of the night. They worked for each other, not just for themselves.

Worse, if she asked another server to take the table, the kids would wonder why. In milliseconds, they’d peg Hawthorn for a cop and start asking questions that would lead them to her past, to the mistakes she’d made, to the girl she’d left behind. Right now her goal was to serve him and get him out of the restaurant before anything happened to jeopardize the life she’d built.

Besides, it had to happen sometime, meeting him again. She’d been dreading this for the last six years. Might as well get it over with, so she could move on. He was her past; the Oasis was her future.

Shoulders squared, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then plucked her notebook from her apron as she walked to the table. “Welcome to the Oasis. My name’s Riva and I’ll be taking care of you tonight.”

The look on his face when she started talking was priceless, almost worth what it cost her to walk across the floor and talk to him. Eight years earlier, Officer Ian Hawthorn had been all cop, lacking a sense of humor or a personality. His robotlike personality scared her, the implacability of it, the way he assessed situations, events, people, summed them up, then discarded them or used them, however best suited him. But when he paused in the act of lifting open the flap on his laptop bag and looked at her face, his jaw literally dropped open.

Priceless.

Then his gaze skimmed her from her ponytail to the tips of her clogs. She knew how it looked, wearing the same uniform as the other servers, black pants and blouse buttoned to her collarbone, her makeup subdued to the point of pale and nondescript. In every way she was conscious of setting an example for the kids from the ESCC. His reaction time, always quick, hadn’t dulled. A split second to look her over, the sharp flick of his gaze striking sparks she felt from her earlobes to her nipples to deep in her belly. That’s what it had been like, his gaze flint against the tinder of her young, impetuous desire.

Then he shut his mouth, and the laptop bag. “Hi, Riva.”

She ignored that. “Can I get you something to drink while you look at the menu? We have craft beers from several of the local breweries.”

He looked at the menu, then back at her. “Water. Thanks.”

Her skin crawled as she spun on her heel and walked away. The look in his eyes before he adopted the all-too-familiar expressionless demeanor had been shock, then pity. When she’d met him she’d been a college student. Now, to his eyes, she was a waitress. She felt nineteen years old again, running through every single thing she said to Ian, every look, every shift of her body, frantically trying to reassure herself she hadn’t given anything away.

I’ll be taking care of you today. It sounded like an innuendo. God knew she’d thrown enough of them at him, desperate, angry, humiliated, pushing back the only way she could. He’d held all the cards, and she’d hated him for it.

“It was your fault,” she muttered as she poured ice water into a glass. “You were the stupid one. He just did his job.”

She snagged a warm bread basket from the kitchen. “We still have the salmon?”

“Got plenty,” Isaiah called from the stove.

When she came back out, Hawthorn was staring at his laptop screen. She set the bread basket on the table. “Are you waiting for someone?” He had to be waiting for someone.

“No. Just me.”

Her heart did a traitorous little skip in her chest. He was alone. Why was he alone? She gathered the silverware and bread plate from the spot across from him. “Do you have any questions about the menu? We’re a farm to table restaurant,” she started. “The origins for the ingredients are noted on the menu. With the exception of the salmon, they’re all from Rolling Hill Farm, or other farms around Lancaster. The rib eye comes from a ranch up the road. We harvested the asparagus this afternoon, and the Brussels sprouts this morning.”

His gaze was no less piercing, six years later. “What do you recommend, Riva?”

He used her first name like he always had, like he had a right. The only reason she knew his first name was Ian was because she’d heard other cops call him that.

Assuming his tastes hadn’t changed in the last seven years, she knew what he liked well enough to answer that question. Nights sitting next to him in an unmarked police car often included a run through a drive-through window, so she knew he preferred grilled chicken to burgers, salads to fries. She’d spent enough time with cops to know their diets were frequently atrocious; the Eastern precinct smelled of sweat, gun oil, coffee, and fast food grease. “The steak is our specialty, and very good but tonight I’d recommend the salmon. Chef Isaiah developed the sauce. It’s a grapefruit and shallot sauce, very light, and it’s delicious.”

“Does it come with the asparagus?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have that.”

“Wine with the meal? Beer?”

He scanned the wines listed on the back. “A glass of the Shale white,” he said.

Dismissed. She hurried to the kitchen and put in the order, then poured a glass of wine. She left the glass with him, touched base with her other tables, and brought more bread and a second beer to the first-date couple, who had both set aside their phones and were leaning over the table, actively engaged in conversation. She watched them from the safety of the server’s station. It was an experience she hadn’t allowed herself in seven years, and the reason why was sitting at table fourteen. Any relationship more serious than a casual hookup would require her to either tell the truth about who she’d been, or found a relationship on lies. She couldn’t bring herself to do either.

With no appetizer, his meal should be ready in under twelve minutes. At the ten-minute mark she ducked into the kitchen. Isaiah meticulously wiped a dab of sauce from the edge of the plate, then presented it to her with a flourish. She gave the kitchen staff a thumbs up, took the plate from him, and carried it through the door.

On the way to the table she ran through the ways she could tell him he was wrong about her, that she wasn’t just a waitress—except there was nothing wrong with being a waitress—that she owned this building, the farm it sat on, and the tiny house hidden in the folds of the valley, too, that she’d been able to get loans, pay them back on time, help others. But in the end, she couldn’t change the past, and she knew perfectly well that of all people, Officer Ian Hawthorn had no reason to give her the benefit of the doubt.

She set the plate in front of him without comment. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No. Thanks.” He picked up his knife and fork.

“I’ll be back to check on you in a few minutes.”

The first-date couple ordered two bowls of ice cream drizzled with hot, dark chocolate and topped with raspberries. Head held high, she walked to the first-date couple’s table and set out their desserts. “Enjoy,” she said with a smile.

A couple of short yelps from the kitchen, an Oh fuck! audible throughout the dining room. The swinging door to the kitchen slammed against the wall. Her nose knew first, the stench of acrid smoke already filtering into the room. Three strides and Riva was through the door. A grease fire roared on the stove, spattering everyone in the vicinity with burning oil. Isaiah was on his knees in front of the big stainless stove. Beside him, Jake swatted at the fire with his dish towel, the surest way to injure himself.

“Stop!” Riva barked.

Jake stopped.

“It’s a grease fire,” she said. A small one, at that, but fire was fire. Her voice was calm, only slightly louder than normal, but it got the attention of every kid in the room. “Work the plan. Step one.”

Galvanized, Jake scrabbled at the knob controlling the gas heat and first turned it up. “Shit,” he said when the flames spurted for the range hood. He twisted the knob the other direction and the gas died.

Kimmy-Jean had a big water pitcher filled. Arm extended, Riva stepped in front of her. “Step two.”

“I’m on it.” Isaiah came up with the lid matching the cast-iron pan and slammed it down on the pan, effectively throttling the flames. Oily black smoke hung around the now-silenced stove.

“It was a small fire, so what else would have worked?” Riva said.

“Baking soda. Lots of it,” Jake said.

“Right. Remember that only works for small fires. What don’t you do?”

“Pick up the pot,” three of the kids responded. She had them now, back in their brains and bodies, connected to themselves, each other, her. “You’ll burn yourself,” Kiara added.

“Good. What else don’t you do?”

“Throw water on it.”

“Why?”

“Because water won’t put it out, and the splatter can spread the flames or burn someone.”

“Sorry,” Kimmy-Jean whispered, her pale face flaming almost as brightly as the fire had. “I didn’t know.”

“Now you do,” Riva said gently. “This one didn’t spread. What if it had?”

“Fire extinguisher,” Kiara said.

As one, everyone in the kitchen turned to look at the brand-new extinguisher, hanging on the wall beside the door to the dining room.

Where Ian Hawthorn stood, just inside the door, his laptop clasped loosely in his hand.

All the air sucked back out of the room, like he was the still center of a black hole. “Po-po in the house,” someone murmured.