Page 86 of Love on the Vine
People grumbled around me as the train slowly inched into the station. If I wanted to be on time, I’d have to run for it. As soon as the doors slid open, I elbowed my way outside, racing up the stairs like my feet were on fire.
I should have been in too much of a hurry to notice the fall issue ofVateldisplayed at the news kiosk, but the front cover immediately caught my eye. I skidded to a halt on the sidewalk and nearly got run over by the man behind me who glared at me as his telephone went flying.
Before I could apologize, he huffed out in English, “Watch where you go!”
Pretty rich coming from someone who ran into me because his eyes had been glued to his iPhone. Resisting the urge to respond, I turned my attention to the magazine cover that had nearly sent me flying to the pavement: a photo of Jake sitting in the Aston Martin with Reynaud’s vineyard in the background.
The first thing that struck me of course was how painfully beautiful the photo was. I played back images from that day a thousand times in my head, but seeing it in glossy print took me right back to the hot breeze in the vines, the heady anticipation I’d felt waiting for Jake to touch me.
And then I read the title of the article: “Les nouveaux dieux du vin” (The New Gods of Wine). I cringed. Jake must hate this cover. I could imagine him seeing it for the first time and tossing it away with a disgusted huff. My fingers itched to dial his number, but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t reach out to him first.
Hand shaking, I picked up a copy and took out my coin purse to pay the vendor. Then, shoving the magazine into my bag with my toque and my notebook, I dashed off toward Ferrandi.
Somehow, I managed to arrive at school with two minutes to change. I was just heading into the locker room when the door to the admissions office opened and the secretary came out brandishing a check in her hand. “Mademoiselle!”
Merde.I stopped in front of the kitchen window where I could see my classmates standing around the stainless steel table. “Oui, madame?”
She handed me the check, the one I’d given her yesterday to pay the rest of my tuition for this trimester. “I don’t understand . . .”
“We don’t need this. Your tuition has already been paid in full.”
“What? How?” I had carefully saved up money over the last year. It would only pay a part of the tuition, but I had planned on taking out a small loan to pay for the rest. Everything had been carefully budgeted, so to find myself with an excess of money didn’t make any sense.
“Your full tuition has been paid,” the woman repeated, leaving me standing in the hallway gaping at the check.
This had to be a mistake, but I couldn’t make sense of it now. I had to get to class.
I raced into the changing room, pulled on my chef’s whites and made sure my hair was still smoothed into a high ponytail before cracking open the door to the kitchen. All eyes turned to me. So much for trying to sneak into the room unnoticed.
“I’m glad you have graced us with your presence today, mademoiselle,” said Chef Daniel Bernard, a fifty-something Lyonnais with a nose that was just made to look down from.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to squeak out before he got back to explaining that morning’s recipe. I tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but my mind was too distracted by the magazine in my purse.
* * *
The rest of the day everything was off. I mixed up the sugar and the salt and ended up with flat croissants saltier than the Dead Sea. The afternoon sauce class was no better; instead of a creamy saucebéarnaise, I created a yellow goop with clumpy bits of cooked egg and unsifted flour congealed at the top. Amateur mistakes, all of them.
As I was leaving, Chef Bernard called me back to his table. Meekly, I walked over to him, catching sympathetic glances from my classmates as they filed out, and pretended not to notice the disapproving expression on his face.
“Mademoiselle Peterson, where was your ’ead today?” he demanded softly, crossing his formidable arms and glaring at me as if I’d just punted a terrine offoie grasinto the Seine.
“My head?” I tried to play dumb.
“Yes, this ’ead right ’ere on your shoulders. It was not in my kitchen. It wasailleurs! Unacceptable. If you do not plan oncooking with all your ’ead and your ’eart, do not come to class. Is this clear?”
“Perfectly.” I gulped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t . . .”
He held up a stubby fingered hand. “Eh, eh, eh! I do not care for your excuses. When you are in my kitchen, they are outside the door. Yes?”
I nodded and slunk away. Back out on the bustling sidewalk with my too-heavy bag slung over my shoulder, I took a deep breath and headed for the small café across the street; there was no way I was going to make it all the way back to the apartment without breaking the magazine out of my bag.
I sat down at a table in the corner as far away from other people as possible and ordered abière blanche, waiting until the server had placed the cold glass in front of me before pulling out the magazine. I placed it on the table, my fingers running over the letters of Jake’s name.
The cover photo was even more breath-taking on closer inspection, and once again every memory from that day came flooding back—the way Jake had filled out that expensive shirt, how his muscular chest was revealed as he slipped it off, the sound of his belt sliding off. I was back on the kitchen table at the villa, panting with lust for him.
I hoped my face was not as flushed as it felt as I flipped through the glossy pages and pretended interest in the interviews with other food industry professionals—like the food critic and sommelier from Jake’s birthday dinner—before jumping straight to the interview with Jake. There were half a dozen photos of the house—from reserve bottles glinting in the cellar to close-ups of the lavender I’d planted in the garden. There was even a photo of the cat basking in the sun. The familiarity of it all made my heart ache.
My French still wasn’t good enough to understand everything in the interview, but I did get the gist of it and evenI could see Anne-Sophie’s obnoxious flirting coming straight off the page. A note at the bottom of the article caught my attention, and, while I understood it grammatically, it didn’t make sense practically: “At the date of publication, VosCo Wines has joined the Sungate family.”
