It wouldn’t be, if her difficult boss would just pull her head out of her ass and look in-house for the new executive pastry chef at Glut.
Oh, but, no , Coco Duquette, Glut’s chef de cuisine, remained fixed in her belief that there was someone better out there to take Michel’s place after he retired. Someone better than Sam.
Coco had had it in for her since Sam’s first day at Glut, back when Coco was only second-in-command in the kitchen and not yet in charge of hiring.
Sam was too young, too green, and she hadn’t studied under the right chefs, Coco had complained, sneering down her nose, always finding some aspect of Sam’s technique to critique.
Most humiliating, Coco had loved to force Sam to repeat herself two, three, even four times before acting as if comprehension had finally dawned on her.
It’s not my fault you sound like you just crawled out of a swamp.
Even Sam, who hated conflict with a passion and preferred to let rudeness roll off her like water off a duck’s back, had a breaking point. Si vous ne comprenez pas mon anglais, préférez-vous que je parle francais, Chef? she’d replied, happy to speak in a language Coco could understand.
As it turned out, despite the haughty way she liked to drop her r ’s and link her words, Coco Duquette—assuming that was even her name—had only the most basic grasp of the French language, unlike Sam, who’d been studying it since kindergarten.
After that, it didn’t matter how talented Sam was or how hard she worked, or that she arrived early and stayed late. It didn’t matter that the dish she’d conceived had earned Glut its first Michelin star. With a single sentence uttered in French, Sam had made an enemy of Coco.
A grudge like that wasn’t easily overcome.
The harder she tried to make nice, the worse Coco saw fit to punish her, spite unfortunately making fools of them both each time Coco tried to sabotage her with critical ingredients mysteriously missing from the pantry, orders never delivered to the kitchen, the blame landing squarely on Sam’s shoulders.
Coco wanted her gone, and she wasn’t going to rest until Sam was out the door.
Still, like an idiot, she clung to the hope that Coco would get over herself. That she’d wake up one day and realize that sabotaging Sam wasn’t serving anyone. That she’d stop being petty, bury the hatchet, and offer her the promotion.
Maybe Hannah was right. Maybe Sam was delusional.
After an eternity of nauseating stop-starts that had Sam wishing she’d braved the stairs, the elevator reached the ninth floor and Mrs. Nelson patted Sam on the arm.
“You, missy, are coming over on your next day off. No excuses.” She wagged a finger, and wisely, Sam kept her mouth shut. “Bring Hannah if you’d like. But you are going to take it easy, even if it takes forcing you to do it in front of me.”
The doors closed, sparing Sam from making a false promise, a small favor on a night that hadn’t offered her any semblance of mercy.
She didn’t have the heart or the guts to tell Mrs. Nelson she’d be out of the building inside of a week.
That she didn’t know where she’d be. Couch surfing, if she was lucky.
On a bus back to Iberville Parish if she wasn’t.
Alone inside the elevator, the brave face she’d pasted on crumbled, the tears she’d held back stinging her tired eyes, escaping to run hot and salty down her wind-chapped cheeks, Hannah’s words playing over and over in an excruciating loop in her head.
You had so much potential, and I’m not going to wait around a second longer and watch you continue to squander it.
Hannah had opened Sam’s eyes to a whole world of possibility that, for a middle-class girl from bumfuck nowhere, Louisiana, had simply never been on her radar.
All she’d ever wanted was to get a world-class culinary education and have a quiet, content life managing a bakery, her own sweet little slice of patisserie heaven.
If she was lucky, marry someone nice , someone who loved her as much as she loved them.
She’d never dreamed of more, never imagined more could exist, but then Hannah …
God, sometimes it felt like Hannah just happened to her.
It was like Hannah had a gravitational pull unto herself, drawing Sam in like a bee to honey, her words sweet, the way she made Sam feel even sweeter.
It had been dizzying at first, dating someone who had so much faith in her, more than she had ever had in herself, believing Sam was destined for something greater than the life she’d dreamed of.
You’re thinking too small , Hannah had told her one night in a pique of frustration that had resulted in the destruction of no fewer than three of Sam’s dishes.
Good dishes. You could be great, but you’re too damn nice.
No one is going to fight for you but you, Sam.
And now here she was, feeling sorry for herself, proving Hannah right with every tragic, mopey, poor little ole me thought.
Sam sniffled and scrubbed at her cheeks, staunching her tears with a good, hard blink. What if she didn’t just sit around and—How had Hannah phrased it? Squander all of her supposed potential? What if she seized it instead?
One week wasn’t much, but if she could show Hannah that she had the initiative Hannah wanted in a partner? Maybe Hannah would give her a second chance. A chance was all she needed.
She just wished—
“Hell of a night, huh?”
“ Ohmygod. ” Sam plastered herself against the wall of the elevator with enough force to rattle the mirror at her back. “You scared the shit out of me.”
The you in question was a petite blonde who stood smirking in the corner of the elevator.
“Sorry.” The soft rasp of her voice was a surprise, deeper than Sam would have expected from someone so small. “You looked like you were nodding off and I didn’t want you to miss your floor.”
“No, I appreciate it.” Beneath her palm, her heart hurled itself against her breastbone like a battering ram, refusing to calm. “You weren’t … I guess I just didn’t …”
See you standing there.
She trailed off, cheeks burning, feeling immeasurably silly.
While Sam would bet cold, hard cash on her ability to perfectly eyeball a tablespoon, wet or dry, guessing someone’s height was a crapshoot the same way knowing her east from her west was—just like how she could sort of figure out directions based on where the sun rose and set, height was a wonky figure calibrated by her own stature.
With a gun to her head, Sam would say this stranger was five one? Maybe?
Point was, what she lacked in height, she more than made up for in presence.
Here Sam was, bundled up, swaddled in a wool peacoat and thick scarf, her—Okay, these loafers had seen better days.
Slush had seeped through the peeling rubber of her right sole, her fleece-lined tights now water-logged and her toes frozen.
Shitty shoes aside, she, at least, had aimed to dress appropriately for the weather.
Sam cocked her head, brows drawing together. The weather and the decade.
Unlike the pint-size puzzle standing across from her.
Crinoline poofed out the swing skirt of her bubblegum-pink dress, its sweetheart neckline cut daringly low.
Sam had a sudden flash of some decades-old cartoon, an anthropomorphized rabbit or skunk with its jaw dropped, a foghorn-like awooga accompanying the lolling of its cartoonishly long tongue.
Sam was rapt, certain she was having an out-of-body experience, suffering from a stroke, or under some kind of a spell, unable to blink as the woman lifted her hand, fingers dancing across the swell of her cleavage, tracing the soft jut of her collarbone before she swept her long, buttery-blond hair over her shoulder.
She was impossible to miss and yet somehow Sam had missed her.
“I’m sorry?” Sam apologized awkwardly, trying covertly to swipe beneath her chin, checking for drool and feeling like the world’s schlubbiest schlub for struggling to tear her eyes from this stranger when the love of her life had dumped her an hour earlier. “It’s been a day.”
The woman hummed softly, lower lip protruding, expression a little too close to pity for Sam’s liking. “After the night you’ve had, no one could blame you for being out of it.”
Sam froze, heart dropping into her stomach. “The night I’ve had? What do you mean?”
Okay, sure, she looked a little worse for wear, she’d admit, rough around the edges, skin splotchy and her mascara smudged, lashes all clumped together like they were covered in concrete, but she didn’t look that bad.
Hell, this was New York City; if you couldn’t shed an anonymous tear or two in public here, where could you?
“There’s no use pretending, Samantha,” she chided, crinoline crinkling, her hem rising to mid-calf as she leaned against the wall, ankles crossed. “That proposal of yours?” She whistled. “ Totally went tits up.”