“Do you want to tell me what happened with Edward?” he asks softly, almost mumbling as if he’s hoping I don’t hear him.
I shake my head. “Absolutely not.”
He chuckles. “Trust me. I won’t fight you on that.”
We smile at each other and refrain from speaking for a while as we let Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra do the talking for us. Every once in a while, Ethan will chime in to tell me how much he loves a certain song. Even more seldomly, I will sing along to one of the few songs I recognize. Eventually, the traffic clears up and we find ourselves moving at a brisk-for-I-95 forty miles per hour.
“Do you think we’ll still make it?” Ethan asks, glancing at the phone clutched in my hand.
I check Google Maps and it now says we will arrive at Hank’s eight minutes after they close. “It’s going to be close. You might want to speed up.”
He motions to the cars in front of us.
“Right,” I say, acknowledging the mildly congested flow of traffic. “Sor—” I stop myself before I once again apologize unnecessarily.
He doesn’t look at me, but the sneaky smile on his face tells me he knows exactly what I was about to say. And he knows he’s the reason I stopped myself.
He may claim he doesn’t want to tell me what to do, but that’s only because he doesn’t have to. The man clearly has a way of getting women to do things his way without saying a single word.
We arrive at Henry’s Restaurant Supply seventeen minutes after closing, and the parking lot is completely empty. Hank didn’t bother hanging around in case I showed up. Not that I blame him. This dreary warehouse district in Poughkeepsie is not exactly a picturesque place to relax and unwind while you wait around for a person you barely know.
I knew this would happen when Hank didn’t answer the call I made to him a few minutes before closing. He probably knew I was going to tell him I was running late, and he didn’t want to have wait for us.
Perhaps, if I were closer with Hank, he would have held that cabinet for me until tomorrow. Now, we’re stuck a ninety-minute-drive away from Manhattan—easily a couple hours if we have to head back now during weekender traffic—and we have nothing to show for it. My desire to apologize for not convincing Hank to hold the cabinet for us is strong, but I suppress the urge.
“I guess we’ll have to come back tomorrow,” I say, walking away from the locked entrance doors of Henry’s Restaurant Supply as I make my way toward the truck.
Ethan is still standing in front of the store as he appears to be considering something. Then, he turns to me, tilting his head as he says, “Fancy a coffee? Or a dram of whiskey?”
“A dram of whiskey?” I reply. “You carry whiskey everywhere you go?”
“Actually, I keep a case of Scotch in the boot of my car, to give to clients. And I noticed the bottle I gave Tino is in the back seat of the truck, unopened. What do you say?”
The more I get to know him, the more differences I see between Ethan and Edward.
I smile as I reach for the passenger door handle. “I should probably eat first.”
“Of course. I’m starving,” he says with far too much enthusiasm for the kind of food we will probably find in Poughkeepsie. “What’s your favorite dessert?” he asks as he turns on the engine.
I laugh at this. “Are we only getting dessert? I thought you were starving?”
“I find the best indicator of a good restaurant is the quality of the dessert and the cocktails. Most restaurants think they can skimp on those if their food is good enough. Only the best chefs will insist that the dessert and cocktails match the quality of the food. So, tell me, what’s your favorite dessert?”
I can’t help but be taken aback by his logic in choosing a restaurant. Not because it’s convoluted. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s exactly the kind of reasoning I would use to choose a place to eat.
“It used to be opera cake,” I reply, thinking of how Judy mentioned this yesterday, and how Ethan may have read that in her binder notes. “Now, it’s Napoleon framboise.”
“Framboise,” he says, drawing out the second syllable and leaning toward me as he breathes in deeply through his nose, almost as if he’s trying to inhale me.
“What? Does my French stink that bad?”
He flashes me a delectable smile. “It’s quite good, actually.”
Despite his compliment, I can’t help but be reminded that I’ll need to improve my French if I’m going to accept the internship at Le Cordon Bleu. I haven’t lived in Paris since culinary school. I’m definitely more than a bit rusty.
Despite the fear of losing my promotion, I find myself wanting to tell Ethan about the internship. But I can’t.
“What do you think about me…teaching cooking?”
He scrunches up his eyebrows and shakes his head as if I’ve asked a silly question. “I think those who can’t do teach, and that does not apply to you.”
“That’s awfully judgmental,” I shoot back. “Besides, how do you know I can cook? You haven’t seen me in the kitchen.”
Then, I look away awkwardly as I remember Edward has probably told him about me.
“We should probably just get some fast-food, so we can head back soon,” I say, reaching over my shoulder for the seat belt.
“Head back?” he says with some confusion. “I’m not going back to Manhattan only to make that horrendous drive back tomorrow morning.”
My jaw drops. “I’m not spending the night with you.”
He laughs at this. “I saw a hotel close to where we exited the parkway. We can get separate rooms.”
I stare at him as the fury I felt a moment ago melts into a very subtle—okay, maybe not so subtle—disappointment. “Good.”
He watches me with a smile as I struggle to get the seat belt buckled due to my shaky hands. “Relax, Alice. I shall be on my best behavior. I promise not to arrive at your hotel room door with a bottle of whiskey tonight.”
I roll my eyes on the outside, but on the inside my heart is mamboing to the beat of Perry Como.
Chapter 8
ETHAN
“I’m very sorry, sir, but we’re hosting a large self-improvement seminar this weekend. We are totally booked. We only have one room available, and that’s only because someone just canceled a few minutes ago. Would you like me to reserve the room for you?”
I glance at Alice then back to the young gentleman behind the Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel reception desk. “Are there any other hotels nearby with rooms available?”
The man looks at me as if I’m a stupid English tourist who has no idea how hotel booking systems work. “I don’t know, sir. You’d have to contact them and ask. But I suspect other hotels will be nearly or fully booked, as well. The annual Tony Aarons ‘Destiny Known’ seminar is a pretty big event in Poughkeepsie.”
Alice rolls her eyes and steps forward, resting her arms on the chest-high granite countertop. “We’ll take the room,” she declares, then turns to me. “We’ll sleep in separate beds. You don’t snore, do you?”