Judy finally notices the anguish in my eyes. “Oh, my,” she murmurs. “I… Bette called me this morning to tell me and I was so excited. I thought… I assumed you would have told… I’m so sorry, Alice. I really didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” I assure her, then I turn to Ethan. “I should have said something sooner.”
He shakes his head as he stares at the shiny surface of the stainless steel worktable between us. “Come with me.”
I follow behind him, feeling very much like a defiant student being called to the principal’s office. I know I’ve messed up, but I’m not the only one who has some explaining to do. Ethan kept secrets from me, too.
I close the door when we’re both in the office, pausing for a moment before I turn to face my doom. But when I turn around, Ethan is not right behind me the way he usually is when we sneak away to his office together. He’s standing a few feet away from me, but it may as well be a mile.
“You’re leaving to Paris?” he asks, his voice taut with tension. “When were you going to tell me?”
“I didn’t tell you about the internship because I wasn’t sure if I was going to accept it.”
“But now you’re sure?”
“No! I told the director at Le Cordon Bleu I couldn’t take the internship because it didn’t pay enough to justify—”
“Oh, so if the price was right, you would have gladly left?”
“No, this isn’t coming out right.”
“You could say that again,” he remarks with such disdain that, in the moment, he reminds me so much of Edward.
“Were you using me to make Forked successful?” I ask, hardly able to force the words out through the thickness in my throat.
“What are you talking about?”
I stare into his eyes for a moment, searching for any indication he’s lying to me. But the hard truth is that I obviously don’t know him well enough to recognize when he’s hiding something.
“I ran into Edward,” I begin, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. “He showed me the pictures of your ex…Priya. That’s her name, right?”
He takes a step back and bumps into a file cabinet, as if I’ve brandished a deadly weapon. “What do you mean? He showed you what pictures?”
“Please don’t do that, Ethan. Please don’t play dumb. Not with me.”
His shoulders slump as he seems to realize there’s no denying this. “I was with her over a decade ago.”
I sigh heavily. “You know this has nothing to do with time. She looks exactly like me.” I pause to let the words sink in. “So, did you use me because I looked like her or did you use my father and me because you wanted Forked to succeed? Just tell me which one of those two scenarios is true, and I’ll leave you alone.”
He lets out an unamused chuckle as he shakes his head as he steps toward me. “If you think putting my faith in you is the same as using you, then yes. I used you, because you’re the best bloody chef I know. But apparently you have so much faith in me, you thought it necessary to apply for an internship behind my back. Were you planning to leave me high and dry like you did my brother?”
“You think I was going to count on your stupid promotion? And your brother left himself high and dry when he disrespected me.” I reach for the door handle, my entire body itching with a desperate need to get out of this room. “I’ll do us both a favor and quit before you make the same mistake he did.”
Chapter 19
ETHAN
The lobby in Greenwood Capital is the same as the last time I was here, but it looks completely different to me now. The glass walls look less open-concept and more like a means to spy on employees. The modern, white furnishings feel cold and sterile, like they’re trying too hard to impress all the tech startups they work with. Knowing less than twenty percent of Greenwood Capital’s funding goes to hospitality ventures makes me feel even more out of place here.
“Cristian will see you now,” the young receptionist says with a flirty smile.
I nod as I rise from the sofa and make my way to the glass-walled office about fifty feet behind the reception desk. When I enter, Cristian is using an Apple Pencil to tap the screen of a large iPad.
“How’s it going?” I say, taking a seat in the chair across from Alice’s father. “Are we finally all set to close this deal?”
Cristian doesn’t look up from the tablet as he continues tapping away. “Almost. I’m waiting on one document from the underwriting department. But you can sign the rest of the docs while we wait.” He finally looks up, his eyes laser-focused on mine. “How are you doing?”
The intensity of his tone as he asks this benign question catches me off-guard. “I’m doing well. Thanks.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Really? ’Cause you look like shit.”
I laugh at his blunt delivery. “Well, I may be a tad hungover,” I admit, not adding how I’ve been “a tad hungover” for about three weeks straight. “I’ve been better, no doubt. But you don’t have to worry. The bonus structure for the final funding phase is still in play.”
Cristian seems to take this as an affront to his character. “You think I care about a damn bonus?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I just don’t want you to think I’d pull the bonus over…over what happened.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re that stupid.”
I try not to figure out if he really emphasized the word “that” or if I only imagined it. But whether Cristian thinks I’m stupid doesn’t change what I think. And I was definitely stupid not to understand what happened when Edward visited my parents’ house in Battersea last Christmas.
It took a lot of prodding and threatening to get him to admit he’d found some pictures of Priya in a box in my parents’ guest room. He had never met her when Priya and I were together.
Edward refused to admit to orchestrating a cock-up by bringing the Forked acquisition to my attention and recommending I hire Alice.. But I imagine that, as soon as he saw how much Priya resembled Alice, a plan formed in his head to use this to hurt Alice and me.
I wish I could say I’ve completely written him off, but my days of holding grudges are over. I’m too bloody tired to care about Edward’s immature scheming. Honestly, these days I can’t be bothered to care about anything. Well, anything except Alice.
“So, what are your plans after the funding goes through?” Cristian asks as he slides the tablet toward me and points at a few places where I need to sign and initial.
“I’ll probably go back to London once I find an executive chef to replace me.”
He leans back in his chair as I continue scrolling through the pages, initialing here and signing there. “You’re giving up?”
“I don’t think the American restaurant business is for me,” I say, glad I can keep my face pointed at the tablet so he can’t see the utter defeat I’m feeling inside. “I probably got in a bit over my head for a bloke who dropped out of uni. I reckon I need to go home, study up on American corporate law before I give it another go.”