Page 75 of Change of Plans

As soon as she walked into the place, the proprietor, a tall woman named Collette Elias, came out to greet her, a huge smile on her face.

“We are overjoyed to have you at Cascade as guest saucier this week,” she said in a French accent. “Pierre recommends you highly, and I cannot wait to taste what you present to us. Come. I will show you the kitchen.”

Bryce followed the woman clad in her elegant red sheath dress through the dining area. The woman’s heels made a subdued click on the gleaming hardwood floors as they passed white, linen-covered tables with banquette seating done in sumptuous turquoise velvet and set with snowy white china and real silver that sparkled like candlelight. The tables all faced the vista—the tumbling waters of the American Falls with the Horseshoe Falls on the distant Canadian shore.

But it wasn’t until they passed through the swinging doors into the kitchen that Bryce’s heart thumped at the view. Rows of gleaming stainless-steel workstations, cutting boards stacked clean and ready for use next to silver bowls arranged by size. Ringing the perimeter were Vulcan stoves, most off but some in use, their yellow-orange flames burning merrily under copper-bottomed pans. Chefs and cooks, clad in spotless white coats, worked chopping, cooking, or prepping in readiness for tonight’s dinner. As they entered, Collette clapped her hands.

“One of our most esteemed colleagues is here, Chef Bryce Weatherford.”

As if they’d rehearsed it, every person in the kitchen called out at once. “Hello, Chef.”

Bryce bobbed her head in greeting.

Then Collette threw out her hand, as if offering the kitchen to her. “Please. Feel free to walk around and explore. The storeroom is in the back, the wine cellar is through that door.” She pointed to an old wooden door at the far end of the kitchen. “You may help Chef Nassur tonight, or you may merely observe as a way of orientation.”

Bryce lit up. “Are you kidding? Who would waste an opportunity to work with Chef Nassur?”

A throaty voice behind her spoke.

“Ah, it’s the saucier from Tampa.” At the sound of the male voice, she turned to see the robust form of Chef Nassur—the man who’d brought two different restaurants their first Michelin Star, and the retiring head chef for Cascade—standing behind her. His ruddy cheeks and white eyebrows buckled in disapproval. “The same one whose toasted orzo soup was hailed the best in the East.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear.” Bryce grinned at the older man. “It’s the best in the entire United States.”

Chef Nassur’s lips twitched, almost toward a smile. The man, all scowls and serious, reminded her of a much older, grizzled version of Ryker, and, as she’d done in Wellsville, she searched for a way to crack that hard, prickly exterior.

“Chef, do you know, my parents once took me to Lacy Elaine’s for my sweet sixteenth? I ordered your eggs Benedict.” Bentley had been there, and she remembered feeling so special, all dressed up at a fancy restaurant, able to order whatever she wanted. Her voice softened in memory as she continued. “Your hollandaise sauce was like tasting happiness. I’ve never been able to duplicate it. Would you believe me if I told you I took the offer to work at Cascade this week in hopes of watching you make an eggs Benedict?”

Chef Nassur waved his hand in dismissal, yet his eyes sparkled. “Nonsense. Now, will you cook tonight, or will you…spectate?” The last word was spat out as if it were a curse.

“I’d be delighted to cook, Chef.”

She was shown to a workstation and given the menu. Bryce breathed in the smell of fresh herbs and produce—the sweet scent of thyme, the solid punch of garlic, the unmistakable tang of chopped onions—all of it danced along her nose and in her mouth, and she exhaled.

Finally. A place she understood.

A place where she belonged.

She put worries about her nieces, finances, and about her relationship with Ryker out of her mind. Instead, she picked a bowl of potatoes and selected a knife.

Busy is the enemy of sadness.

So thinking, she got to work.

Chapter 21

We need more diced shallots,” Bryce called out to the cooks around her in the small lull between breakfast rush and lunch crunch on Thursday.

“Yes, Chef!” The resounding answer echoed off the tile walls, swirled in the metal prep bowls, and rose like the scent of something decadent and caramelized above the kitchen’s din.

“Very few chefs match your work ethic and talent,” Chef Nassur had told her this morning when she’d asked to come in early to watch him prepare the day’s hollandaise sauce. “You have a job here, should you want it.”

Bryce had spent the past four days cooking for crowds of food lovers. That was four days of waking to her alarm, versus Addie leaping into bed, rousing her with a recounting of last night’s dream of Neverland. She’d had four mornings when she had to bathe only herself, no wrestling matches with Cecily, and she could eat a bowl of granola for breakfast instead of crafting the ultimate French toast to entice June to eat. Her white chef’s coats remained immaculate, no spatters, dirty hand smudges, or accidental glitter smears from Addie’s wings.

In fact, she’d rocked this gig. On her debut night at Cascade, she’d wowed a Toronto food critic, who’d called her toasted orzo chicken soup “enough to make you weep over the years you wasted eating subpar creations.”

Today, she stood before the Vulcan range in her spotless attire, supervising three soups she’d started for dinner, two that were ready for the lunch crowd, and one front burner with hollandaise sauce—the creation of which she’d done with the express supervision of Chef Nassur himself.

She’d charmed the prickly chef into allowing her to watch him create his signature eggs Benedict; he had shown her exactly how he’d made the velvety hollandaise, the taste of which brought back that same contented feeling of happiness she’d had at her sweet sixteen brunch years ago.

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