With No Reservations. Laurie Tomlinson
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to the eye. He got that about Sloane, in the way she’d rearranged things and seemed to have a particular order as she sampled his food at the restaurant.
She was an interesting girl—feisty, even. And she certainly wasn’t lacking in the looks department. The head shot on the website header affirmed that. Her shiny blond hair was pulled to one side, full lips parted like she was about to say something to the person taking the picture. The light pink of her sweater highlighted something younger, an almost playful vibe. Totally different than the guarded professional he’d met. A black apron with her Mise en Place logo accentuated her figure, petite and curvy. Trim, but healthy enough to show she wasn’t the kind of woman who only ate birdseed and water. He could appreciate a woman who didn’t refuse a fluffy, buttery roll or two when the bread basket was passed around. Life was too short for that.
Cooper rested his chin in his hand and scrolled to her most recent post, a recipe for pumpkin spice cake doughnuts prepared two ways. Some were sprinkled with a spiced sugar concoction and the others were drizzled with a multilayered vanilla bean glaze.
He did a double take and leaned close to the computer to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks when he saw that her post had over two hundred comments. And he could see why.
Sloane’s images were gorgeous. From the assembled ingredients to the close-up of the baked, spongy center. And the final product arranged in a doughnut pyramid, shot on a vintage sherbet-colored cake stand against a wood pallet backdrop.
Jake was right. This was what he wanted for Simone. Charming, rustic, cozy, mouth-watering. Just like he promised the real Simone it would be.
Maybe his mother’s instincts were spot-on and Sloane could do his restaurant promo justice.
There it was. A glimmer of hope where he’d had nothing a minute before. He had to talk to her. He scrolled through his inbox, scanning the names for one that might have her contact information. “There you are.” Finally. He tapped the numbers into his phone.
It wasn’t until it rang that something twinged in the pit of his stomach. The warning sign that perhaps he should have thought this through a little better.
She answered as he was clearing his throat.
“Sloane, it’s Cooper.” Silence. “From Simone?” It felt good to say that out loud.
“Right, right.” Her tone remained flat, all business. “What can I do for you?”
He cleared his throat again, replaying their last meeting. Did he do something to offend her? He couldn’t remember. But that didn’t matter. Even if she never wanted to work with him again, it was time to lay it all on the line.
“I need you.”
* * *
“THANK YOU SO much for coming on such short notice.” It was the third time Cooper had said it, but he didn’t care.
He picked up the last box from the trunk of the black Lincoln Town Car that had brought Sloane to the restaurant.
“Careful with that one,” she warned him, looping one forearm through the handle of a reusable bag and bunching the brown cotton of her skirt in the other to protect it from the wild winds. “Thanks, Henry,” she called to the uniformed driver.
What was up with the car service? Maybe hers was in the shop or something. But that wasn’t important right now. The fact that she was there to save his bacon was all that mattered.
Cooper set the last box on the stainless steel prep area of the kitchen with the rest of Sloane’s impressive assortment as she began opening containers and lifting a menagerie of items from them—plates, stands, serving dishes, ceramic spoons of inviting colors and textures.
“Where do you find all of this stuff?”
At first, Sloane ignored him, her eyes sweeping back and forth between the props. She shook her head, and the focus returned to her eyes. “eBay, mostly. Online shops. May I see the food you prepared for this shoot?” Quick. Impersonal. Proper.
“Um, yeah.” He ran a hand through his short curls. “It’s right over here.”
Cooper watched as Sloane inspected the dishes he’d made for her to photograph. Her expression didn’t look promising—somewhere between fierce concentration and measured grimace.
“Okay. I can work with this,” she finally pronounced. Without a word of explanation, she picked up three of the plates and whisked them from the kitchen to the café.
Cooper followed suit with the rest of the plates but stopped when he saw Sloane moving from table to table, inspecting each surface. What was she looking for? Crumbs or something?
“The lighting is best right here.” Sloane framed a patch of light on one of the front tables with cupped hands. “But we don’t have much time.”
“Just tell me what you need me to do.”
Sloane looked up at him. For a moment, he saw a flicker of warmth in her blue-gray eyes that jolted him enough to raise the hair on his arms. And then it was gone.
He stood at a distance, nibbling the thumbnail of one hand. Watching as Sloane moved in silence, transferring food to her dishes, expertly molding and reshaping with silverware, dabbing crumbs and smudges from immaculate surfaces. Adjusting her camera and snapping photographs from every angle imaginable.
Food styling had never been Cooper’s thing in culinary school. But this took it to a whole new level. Precise. Methodical. What Sloane was doing was an exact science she could write the book on.
She didn’t acknowledge him again until the very last shot when she looked up and, after a fleeting blink of confusion, seemed to remember that he was there.
“You don’t happen to have milk here, do you? Or cream? And a tall glass?”
Cooper saw where she was going with this and jogged to the kitchen. The milk may have been a day or two expired, but its only purpose in life was to look good next to a molten chocolate cake.
That, it could do.
Right as Sloane had the shot lined up, something occurred to Cooper. “Wait. Just a minute.”
He hurried into the kitchen, opening drawers and slamming them, upending packing materials and dishes until he found a plastic bag and tore it apart with his teeth on his way back into the dining room. He placed the teal-striped straw he’d gotten from a vendor in the glass of milk and stood behind Sloane to survey it from her vantage point.
She whipped around, a glimmer of life in the wide blue-gray eyes he now noticed were rimmed with brown. “You’re a genius!”
“I’m glad my sole contribution pleases you.”
After snapping the last photo of the molten chocolate cake, Sloane heaved a sigh and plopped into the chair. “You don’t mind if I eat this, do you?”
Cooper shook his head, mind blown. “Go ahead.” He laughed. “But the milk is at your own risk.”
She rubbed on hand sanitizer and polished her spoon with a wipe before digging into the cake. “Mmm. This is so good.” The cake’s liquid chocolate center pooled at the corners of her mouth, and Cooper tore his eyes away. “They’re going to be lining up for this cake alone—mark my words.”
“We’ll see about that. It’s about the only thing I like to bake. I’ll take a knife and a skillet any day.”
Sloane’s head snapped up from the cake. “What’s so bad about baking? It’s pretty much the best thing ever.”
“There’s no...improvisation in it.” Cooper pulled out a chair from Sloane’s table and sat on it backward. “It was my least favorite thing about culinary school. Everything has to be so measured and set in stone or else it turns out awful.”
She took another bite and chewed it delicately, staring at the rich, gooey cake in front of her. “Set in stone