"Yes, but you also need skill, or you're likely to lose your head, and I'd spent most of my life in the kitchens. Even as a youth, I shunned practice in the yard with the men to trail the cook around," he said solemnly. "However, I found that I was a natural in battle. And I turned out to be a whiz at planning for successful attacks and defenses, which turned out to be not much different to planning a large feast."
"What?" she said with disbelief, and he nodded solemnly.
"It's all in the details," he assured her with a grin, and Drina burst out laughing. He watched her with a smile, and then said, "Actually, my knowledge of castle kitchens came in handy during sieges. I knew what they were likely to have on hand and how long it would last and so on." He shrugged. "I did well for myself. Well enough that I made the money I needed to start my own pub. And that did well enough that I was able to start a second and so on, and then I moved on to restaurants, and then hotels."
"How did you end up moving from restaurants to hotels?" she asked with surprise.
"Well, I had opened one of my restaurants on the main floor of a hotel in Paris. The restaurant earned a reputation and did a booming business, but at the same time the hotel was beginning to flounder. I was considering moving the restaurant elsewhere before the hotel folded altogether, but I was becoming a bit bored. I had lost my interest in food after a couple of centuries, and it took a lot of the joy from cooking. The moment I had noticed that happening, I'd hired the best chefs I could find to take over the actual cooking in my establishments, but it left me basically a pencil pusher. I needed a challenge, so rather than move the restaurant, I decided to buy the hotel and see if I couldn't make it a successful concern again.
"I renovated it floor by floor, and the restaurant handled the room service. We built a reputation, and the hotel started to flourish as well. So I opened another, and then another.
"Everything rolled along nicely, but I soon grew bored again, and then in . . . I think it was the 1920s," he murmured, then shrugged it away as unimportant and continued, "I read an article about a brand-new technique for preserving food."
"Frozen food," Drina said with amusement.
Harper nodded. "I got in on the ground floor. We started with vegetables, and then branched out to entrees, and, as I said, we recently added wine to what we do." He smiled wryly. "See, I told you that my history wasn't nearly as exciting as yours."
Drina shook her head. "I don't know. It sounds exciting enough. Truth be told, my life wasn't nearly as exciting as it sounds in the recounting. I mean titles like gladiator, pirate, and madam sound exciting I suppose, but in reality they were just another day in the life. Being a gladiator was hot, sweaty, bloody labor, hacking away at other gladiators. Being a pirate wasn't much different than being a sailor. It was night after night of hauling rope, raising sails, and steering into a storm with the occasional battle to get the blood going. And as a madam, I mostly greeted the men at the door like a Wal-Mart greeter, reading their minds as they entered the establishment to be sure they had no nefarious plans. Then I sat about, reading or playing cards until the evening ended, and the men left. The only excitement that occurred there was when the occasional fellow got too rough, or tried to make one of the girls do something she didn't want to. And then that was a momentary adrenaline rush as I saw them off the premises."
She shrugged wryly. "If I've learned anything in all my years, it's that nothing is as exciting or glamorous as it sounds. I suspect if you read the minds of movie stars and rock stars, you'd probably find their lives were a daily grind with the occasional fan frenzy to scare the crap out of them and get the blood going."
Harper smiled. "You're surprisingly sensible for one who has been so rebellious most of her life."
Drina shrugged. "We all live and learn."
Harper nodded, and glanced around as the car slowed. "We're here."
Drina leaned forward, stretching her upper body in front of his to peer curiously out the window at the very uninteresting building they were stopping in front of.
"Nondescript like our clubs in Europe," she commented, placing her hand on his shoulder as if to keep her balance.
"Yes," Harper agreed, sounding a tad husky.
She turned her head and smiled at him, close enough to kiss, as she said, "I suppose it's to avoid attracting mortals."
"Yes," he repeated, this time in barely more than a whisper. His head began to move forward, and Drina moved her own head closer, and then they both froze as the front door slammed shut. Harper glanced past her to the now-vacant driver's seat, then out the side window, and sighed. "Right, we're here."
Drina straightened as the driver opened the door on Harper's side. She then followed him out of the car and into the cold night. Harper paused long enough to give instructions to his driver before hustling her to the door of the Night Club.
A wave of heat and sound hit them as they entered and Drina peered around curiously, not at all surprised to find it looked like any club in any city. They were in a large room with shadowed booths around the edge of a lit dance floor. Loud music blared from all corners. Harper started to lead her to one of the few empty booths, but she caught his arm and leaned up to ask, "Is there a lounge area? Somewhere quieter, where we can talk when not dancing?"
Nodding, he changed direction at once and led her to a set of swinging doors. They pushed through into another room, this one wholly made up of tables and booths and much quieter once the doors swung shut behind them. They chose a booth along the wall.
Sliding into one side, Drina smiled as she shrugged out of her coat. "We can always go in there to dance as we like, but it will be easier to talk in here when we want a break."
"Smart thinking," Harper said, hanging his own coat from a hook at the end of the booth. He then took her coat to hang it beside his.
He slid in across from her, murmuring an apology as his feet nudged hers, then glanced around as a waitress appeared. He smiled at her, but then glanced to Drina, and asked, "Do you know what you want? Or would you like to check the menu?"
For answer, she picked up a narrow menu in a holder at the end of the table and opened it, saying, "It's probably better to see what they have in case the selection isn't the same as in Spain or the names are different."
Harper nodded and turned to the waitress, but she was already slipping away, saying, "I'll give you a minute."
Drina laid the menu on the table and turned it sideways so they could both see it. They each leaned forward, head to head to look it over, but then a beeping came from Harper's coat. Frowning, he straightened and reached in the pocket to retrieve his phone.
Drina politely pretended she couldn't hear what he was saying, not that there was much to hear. He said, "Hello," listened briefly, and then sighed, and said, "I did wonder about that. All right. Well, there's nothing we can do about it." Another silence followed, and then he said, "I'm not sure. I'll have to call you back on that."
Drina glanced at him in question as he hung up, and Harper grimaced.