“I’m offering you two whole weeks’ vacation, Claire. Why won’t you take them?” The furrows in Papa’s forehead deepened. He was shifting from foot to foot, a clear sign he was keeping something from her. “You need a break.” His expression turned hopeful. “Or maybe you could use the time to look for a new position at one of your fancy restaurants?”
“Are you trying to get me out of the way for some reason?” Claire narrowed her eyes. Her father’s startled reaction showed she’d hit a chord. “You are, aren’t you? Come, Papa. What is it? Don’t you think I can be civilized toward the new owner? Do you think I’ll make trouble for him?”
Papa opened his mouth, shut it again, and shook his head, looking helpless. Surely she wasn’t so formidable that he was scared to tell her something important? What could be as earth-shattering as the news that he was selling the brasserie out from under her?
No. Not selling it out from under her. He was setting her free. Why couldn’t she remember that?
If Vo-Vo were here, she’d tell Claire the truth straight out, but she’d left for Nice to close on the purchase of her new villa. In fact, the thought of heading down to Nice for some warmth and sun once her father and aunt were settled was very appealing. But Claire couldn’t go now. She wanted to ensure the handover to the new owner went smoothly. Not only that, she wanted to make sure the new owner didn’t intend to sweep away all the hard work her family had put into Le Chat over the past six decades.
It didn’t seem as if her father would ever get to the point, so Claire said to him, “Come, Papa. This dough won’t knead itself.” She’d been using the lull before the evening rush to make a batch of dinner rolls now that the dough had had time to prove.
She dumped the risen bread dough out on the counter in front of her father. Patently grateful for the change of subject, he washed, dried, and floured his hands, then set to with a will.
Side by side, they worked together in companionable silence, kneading and shaping rolls. Her father’s hands were still big and strong beneath the dusting of flour. When the rolls were shaped and ready for the oven, Papa slid in the trays, and with that final action, a wave of sadness came over Claire. Their time working together like this would soon be over for good.
Claire had joined in with the staff who had begun prepping for dinner, when her father said, “Claire, I need to talk to you.”
She paused in the act of showing an apprentice the correct way to julienne carrots. “Yes?”
“I don’t quite know how to say this.” Papa hesitated. “It’s about the new owner.”
“Why?” asked Claire, her brow furrowing as she continued to chop the carrots into perfect, slim straws. “What’s wrong?”
“Claire, will you put down the knife, please?”
The faint note of panic in his voice made her stop work and carefully place the knife on the counter. “Papa?” She was filled with foreboding. Come to think of it, wasn’t it odd that they had never mentioned the new owner’s name to her? “Tell me.”
“He’s someone you know,” said Papa, licking his lips.
“Really?” Claire did not like the sound of this. Difficult though it was to give up the brasserie to a stranger, wouldn’t it be worse if she had to watch an acquaintance, or even perhaps a rival, take over the place?
“He offered us a generous price, and he agreed to keep you on here for as long as you wanted,” said Papa. He spread his hands pleadingly. “Give him a chance, Claire.”
“Who is it, Papa? Tell me!”
Suddenly the flurry of activity in the kitchen halted. Apprentices and chefs put down their implements and stared past her at the doorway.
Claire turned to see what they were looking at. Her jaw dropped open. She couldn’t seem to draw in any air.
A large form hulked in the doorway, almost filling it. His shaggy hair untamed, his five-o’clock shadow standing out starkly against his lantern jaw, he clearly hadn’t cared about the impression he made on the staff. Or maybe he knew his unkempt appearance made him more intimidating.
Hervé Gabin. The bane of her existence.
His eyes were a startling, clear blue, and heavily lashed, the one refined thing in that mountain range of a face, with its beaky nose and prominent cheekbones and its strong jaw roughened by stubble. He stood easily six-foot-two and had to stoop over the stove in most kitchens, but he never tried to hide his height elsewhere.
Claire froze, remaining silent as her father introduced Hervé around. He was giving her time to absorb this ridiculous, heinous news.
She had worked as an apprentice under Hervé at the Meurice—the best and worst time of her life. That man hadn’t let a day go by without finding fault with her. Time after time, she’d nearly given up because of him. And now he was going to be her boss in her own family’s restaurant? It was too much.
The chefs were all bowing and scraping to the new owner in a way they had never done to her. Hervé gestured for them all to go back to work. Finally he glanced at Claire, gave a self-deprecating shrug.
Papa turned to her. “And here is my daughter, Claire, whom you know already. Claire, a bottle of our best wine, I think, and three glasses, to celebrate. Shall we go into the office?” He gestured in that direction.
Claire gaped at her father. After turning her world upside down, he expected her to bring them wine? Claire ripped off her apron, scrunched it, and threw it in the corner. She stormed out the service door into the alley. She needed to walk and fume and be alone for a while with her raging thoughts.
To be fair, Papa didn’t know the truth: that she had harbored a secret admiration for Hervé for all of the years she’d been his apprentice. Her crush had been a natural combination of hero-worship of Hervé’s advanced skills in the kitchen and the sight of his well-muscled forearms as he’d worked the grill station. She hadn’t actually minded how tough he’d been with her. He was no more exacting than most chefs, after all. It was the fact that he’d never once thought of her as a woman that had grated on her. Everyone else had noticed her crush, however, and when the other apprentices had teased her about it, she’d realized that Hervé must have known about it, too, and that had been mortifying.
She’d reacted by behaving in such an obnoxious and insubordinate manner to Hervé that even the sous-chef had noticed, and fired her.
“Face it,” Claire told herself. “You can’t blame someone for not liking you back.” But did she really have to put up with him running her family’s brasserie?
And what had happened to Hervé’s grand ambitions? Why would he settle for owning a brasserie rather than becoming chef de cuisine at a first-class restaurant?
Now that this thought had occurred to her, curiosity burned even more brightly than her anger. After a few more strides, she turned around and headed back to Le Chat. It had been childish to flounce out of there, particularly when she knew how hard all of this was for Papa. Surely she’d grown out of such schoolgirl tendencies long ago. And besides, she had no time for romance if she wanted to get to the top, so Hervé had done her a favor all those years ago.
She’d just have to find a new job sooner than she’d planned, that was all. There was no way she was going to work for Hervé again.
When she arrived back at the kitchen, she found things humming along without her, so she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin and marched straight to the office, where her father and Hervé were enjoying a glass of wine together.
“Am I interrupting?” She was pleased to find that her voice sounded calm.
“Ah, my dear,” said Papa. “Come, join us.” He poured her a liberal glass of wine and brought it to her. “Take a seat.”
The two men occupied the only chairs in the room. She could take the sofa, but it was low to the ground and set against a wall, a little apart from the desk. Sitting there, she would feel at a disadvantage.
Instead, she perched on the edge of her father’s desk, the way she used to do when she was a child. Only now, she felt Hervé’s gaze graze the line of her legs as she crossed them before he transferred his attention to the dark dregs of his glass. She was wearing a comfortable pair of cigarette pants, so there wasn’t a lot to see, but somehow she felt a little better that she’d caught him looking.
Papa leaned forward to refill Hervé’s glass. The wine was excellent and should have been decanted and left to breathe but her father had never been a patient man. It was an aged burgundy as smooth as velvet, but heavy. One sip and it went straight to Claire’s head, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten all day.
Claire set her glass down on the desk and eyed the bottle, which was more than half empty already, and hoped Papa would not overdo it and grow maudlin. “So has the sale gone through, then?” she asked Hervé. “You are the new owner of Le Chat?”
“Some final details to clear up, but yes,” said Hervé. “I start next week.” He hesitated. “Your father tells me you’re taking some leave.”
“Did he?” Her anger might be in abeyance but with the wine, a certain recklessness was taking over. “He was mistaken. My vacation is not due until the spring.”
She would take leave when she wanted to, not to make it easier for this man to usurp her authority and bulldoze his own changes through. “I suppose you’d prefer it if I were out of the way,” she added with the suspicion of a sneer.
He shrugged. “If you’re determined to make things harder for yourself, who am I to stop you?”
Claire glanced at her father, who ordinarily might have intervened to make peace between them, but Papa wasn’t listening. Somehow he had refilled his glass without her noticing and now a brooding look fell like a pall over his face.
She slid off the desk and jerked her head at Hervé. “Can I speak with you alone?”
She’d only wanted to keep Hervé from seeing her father at his most vulnerable. Once they emerged from the office, she wasn’t sure what to say or do. Hervé was so large, and . . . and unwieldy, she thought resentfully.
“Do you want me to show you the ropes?” she asked after a long, uncomfortable pause, which was all the more awkward for her because he seemed completely at ease. That was something she remembered about him. He was comfortable with silence.
He shrugged. “Not much to it, is there? I’ll figure it out.”
“You need to watch Basil,” she warned in an undertone. “He makes trouble if you don’t keep an eye on him. Skimming from the supplies, taking bribes from tradesmen. I have nearly fired him countless times, but . . .”
“He has a light hand with pastry, and his mille-feuille is like an angel’s wing,” said Hervé, nodding, a gleam in his eyes that was almost a smile. “Your papa told me.”
She hated the idea that Papa had been meeting with Hervé behind her back. Anger flared again. “Why did you do it?” she blurted out. The question had been playing on her mind. “Why this brasserie? Why Le Chat?”
His eyes did that not-quite-smiling thing again. He rubbed his shadowed jaw. “Someone told me it was the best brasserie in Paris.”
She rolled her eyes at the well-worn joke. “But you were going to be the next Escoffier,” she said. “Why settle for this place?”
“I don’t know,” said Hervé with a short grunt that might have been a laugh. “I’ve been asking myself that question every single day.”
Far from accepting her father’s offer of vacation time, Claire worked harder than ever during the transition in ownership from Papa and Vo-Vo to Hervé. The long hours helped to plug up the moments where her guilt and regret seeped through.
It was the end of an era. Somehow she’d thought her papa would go on forever, that she could leave Le Chat safe in the knowledge that it would continue without her. Grandpère was in his eighties before he relinquished his grip on the place. She’d expected Papa to be the same. He probably would have carried on happily, had Maman not died. And had it not been for Vo-Vo’s constant grumbling.
Well, Vo-Vo had finally got her way and Claire had to hope, for their sake, that it was all for the best.
Uncharacteristically Hervé insisted on throwing the pair a private farewell dinner, to which all of the staff were invited. Gina came as well, and murmured to Claire, “I can’t help but feel someone is missing.”
Margot. She had always been a favorite with Claire’s family—with Vo-Vo in particular. It was such a shame not to have her there.
Yes, they needed to do something about Margot. Busy as she’d been with the brasserie, Claire hadn’t given up hope of persuading Margot to come and live with them at Madame Vaughn’s.
Vo-Vo, who had dyed her hair pale pink once more, made Claire promise to visit them on the Riviera soon. “You’ll be working your fingers to the bone for some demanding prima donna of a chef soon enough. Take a vacation, refresh yourself, before you begin. Bring Gina, too.”
Claire looked around at the waitstaff and the handful of regulars, some of whom had been eating at Le Chat for longer than she’d been alive. “Where has Papa got to?”
She found him in the kitchen, an apron around his waist, hopping from stove to oven and back again with all of his old vigor. Hervé was busy flambéing steaks as if he were just the grill chef. She smiled and refrained from scolding. Then she grabbed her apron from its hook and stepped in to help. It was the final time they would work together and she intended to make the most of it.
As the meals sailed out to the tables in the hands of the waiters, all of the chefs and apprentices put down their tools and followed. Claire dragged her father out and they went together, arms about each other’s waist. On the threshold of the dining room, they paused. Everyone was seated, chattering and passing bread and pouring wine, their faces lit by candles and the mysterious, shifting, colored lights from the stained-glass windows.
“Fifty years,” said her father, shaking his head and smiling, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “This place has been my whole life.”
The noisy, vibrant restaurant radiated the joy of celebration and frivolity, but as the staff and patrons caught sight of Papa, the room fell silent.
Claire hugged him and reached up to kiss his cheek. “Come, Papa,” she said. “They’re waiting for you.”
As she watched him take his place at the table and raise a glass for a toast, Claire’s eyes misted over. It was the end of a long family tradition. What would become of Le Chat under Hervé? How on earth could she bear to leave the brasserie in his hands?