back out of her face, she punched the button. “Hello, Dmitri.”
“Elena!” His thickly accented Russian voice poured through the line.
She waited. It was a good trick with men who expected women to carry the conversation, one she’d learned from a cook early in her career. Let them talk, she said. You’ll learn a lot more.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m well, thanks.”
A string of featureless seconds built between them. He cleared his throat. “I am calling to apologize, Elena. I was rash when I fired you.”
Aha. “It was time, Dmitri. We knew we shouldn’t get involved, that it would mean one or the other of us would have to leave the restaurant when we split. It’s fine.”
“We are professionals, surely. The Blue Turtle belongs to you as much as to me.”
“Which is something you only say when you’ve been an asshole.”
“Perhaps that is true. I am an asshole. It is the nature of the job.” He paused. The sweet, sweet flavor of triumph filled her mouth as she anticipated the next words. “I need you here.”
“I found another position, Dmitri.”
“What? Where? I have not heard that! Are you working for that pig Gaston Mitter?”
Gaston was a giant of a chef, known for tantrums and spectacular food. “No,” Elena answered with a snort, and let their breath fill the line. “I’m working for Julian Liswood. In Aspen.”
A three-second pause. “Aspen. He has a restaurant in Aspen?”
She smiled. “Not yet.”
“Who is the chef?”
“Dmitri,” she said quietly. Chiding. “Who do you suppose it is?”
“You?” His shock was insulting. Surprisingly stinging.
“Yes,” she said. “Me. He offered me the job five minutes after you fired me. I’m sitting here in my new apartment in Aspen, and I’ll be meeting with my staff tomorrow.”
He cursed bloodily, filthily.
“You fired me,” she said.
“But you knew I would come back to you.”
Her anger billowed into a fire. “You are not God, Dmitri, and I am not one of your subjects, to come crawling back every time you decide to forgive me for whatever imagined sin I’ve committed.”
“Elena, you are the only one who understands me. You’ve always been the only one.”
“No,” she said wearily, closing her eyes. That was how he seduced her, every time, making her feel as if there were not another woman in the world who understood him. Only Elena. A soul mate. The lining at the top of her stomach burned. “I’m done, Dmitri. Please don’t call me again.” She hung up.
And yet, in the silence, she felt stung and lost. For a moment, her head was filled with the memory of his mouth, of his thick, skilled tongue and elegant fingers, splaying her like a succulent fish. The man was a lover, lusty, focused, sensual. He could make sex last two hours. Three. For a time, he had been her home.
She took a long breath. Let it go.
He had been her home. And now, he was not.
At two o’clock the following afternoon, Elena met with her staff for the first time. Patrick, newly arrived and smelling of aromatic soap, walked in with her, his hand at the small of her back.
Her pinned and riddled and broken-down back.
It had been a grim morning. Maybe, she thought, it was hunching too much from turning her back on Dmitri. Maybe it was the hard work and the long drive and the stress of the past week. Maybe it was Dmitri’s call and her own expectations. Or maybe it was all of it.
Whatever. Before she awakened, she’d been dreaming of Chimayo chiles, ground to a sweet and powerful powder the color of the red earth of New Mexico, dreaming that she held a small mountain of it in the palm of her hand, and pressed one finger into it, and tasted it, and there was gold like sunlight, in her throat—
And the alarm went off. She slammed into her body, a crab-self, curled and cracked, feet and hands like claws, frozen hips, stiff spine, body heavy and misshapen. Agony to move.
Lying on her side, with her eyes closed, she said aloud, “Fuck.”
Over the years, she ordinarily hid at such times, crawling into a tub of hot water, or to a bottle of tequila. Shame burned her when anyone else saw her drawn up like this, like a very old woman, stooped and stiff.
This morning, she was at least alone to struggle with all the batteredness. Spine, hips, shoulders—all protested every slight movement, as if rust had settled into each tiny bone of her back, clogged the hips and rotator