Chapter 40
Alex's POV
The waitress wrote it down and disappeared into the kitchen. I heard low voices, the sound of pans moving, then silence.
I pulled out my phone, pretended to check emails, and tried very hard not to look at the kitchen door.
The food arrived twelve minutes later.
She set the plate down carefully, like it mattered, then stepped back without hovering. I picked up my fork and took a bite.
David hadn't been exaggerating.
The pasta was perfectly al dente, the sauce rich and silky without being heavy, the guanciale crisp at the edges and tender in the center. It tasted like something that required both technique and instinct, the kind of cooking you couldn't fake with expensive ingredients or kitchen gadgets. It tasted like someone who actually gave a damn.
I finished the plate faster than I meant to.
When she came back to clear it, I asked if Marco was around.
"He's in the kitchen. Want me to grab him?"
"Please."
She returned a minute later with a man in his early forties, stocky build, forearms dusted with flour, wearing an apron that had seen serious use. He had the look of someone who'd worked kitchens long enough to stop caring about impressing people—no chef's whites, no tall hat, just a guy who made food and didn't apologize for it.
"You wanted to talk?" he asked, wiping his hands on a towel.
I stood up and offered my hand. "Alex Monroe. That was the best carbonara I've had in years."
He shook my hand once, firm and brief. "Thanks."
I got straight to it. "I run a restaurant across town. The Echelon House. I'm looking for a head chef, and based on what I just ate, I think you'd be perfect for it."
Marco didn't even hesitate. "Not interested."
"I haven't told you the salary yet."
"Don't need to hear it." He tucked the towel into his apron string. "I've got a place. I'm not leaving it."
I should've expected that. People who cooked like this weren't looking for better offers—they were looking for autonomy. But I'd come here with a problem, and I wasn't leaving without at least trying to solve it.
"If you change your mind—"
"I won't."
He turned back toward the kitchen, then stopped and glanced at the waitress. "Emily. You free tomorrow afternoon?"
She was stacking plates behind the counter, moving with the same economical precision I'd noticed earlier. "Depends. Why?"
"Got a friend who needs help with his quarterly taxes. Thought you might be able to sort him out."
I blinked. "Wait—you're a waitress and an accountant?"
Emily smiled, the kind of smile that said she'd heard that reaction before and found it mildly amusing. "I'm a freshman at Claremont State. I work here part-time. I helped Marco file his business taxes last week, and apparently word got around."
I stared at her.
A freshman. A freshman who could handle tax filing for a restaurant operation. I'd assumed she was just working service to pay tuition, the same way half the college students in this town did. But if she'd managed Luciano's Italian Kitchen books—and he was asking her to do it again—that meant she wasn't just competent. She was better than competent.
Two talented people in one tiny restaurant that nobody had heard of. What were the odds?
And suddenly the evening made a different kind of sense. I'd walked in here noticing her because she was beautiful—because of course I had, I wasn't blind—but now I was looking at her and seeing something else entirely. A college freshman who worked nights, showed up on time, moved through a room like she'd memorized every angle, and apparently did business tax filing on the side like it was no big deal.
I could ask for her number. Just straight-up say I thought she was gorgeous and see if she wanted to grab coffee sometime. That was the normal move. The easy move.
But I knew girls like this—the ones who dressed simply, who worked part-time jobs to cover tuition, who were smart enough to juggle classes and shifts and still have energy left over to help their boss with quarterly taxes. They didn't want to be hit on by some guy in a suit who walked into their workplace and noticed their face first. They wanted to be seen for what they could do, not what they looked like.
And the truth was, even if my motives weren't exactly pure, she was exactly the kind of person I needed. Sharp, resourceful, already proving she could handle real responsibility while most freshmen were still figuring out how to do laundry. If I could get her to intern at the Echelon House, she'd be an asset. A real one.
So maybe I was being selfish. Maybe I was giving myself plausible deniability. But I was also being smart.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out two business cards, set one on the counter in front of Marco. "In case you reconsider. The offer's open."
He didn't pick it up.
I set the second card in front of Emily, and when I spoke, I made sure my tone stayed professional—interested, but not too interested. "And if you're looking for a summer internship, we've got finance positions. Paid. Full-time if you want it."
She picked up the card, read it, then looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read. Not skeptical. Not impressed. Just... considering.
"I'll think about it," she said.
Marco had already gone back to the kitchen.
I left cash on the table—enough to cover the meal and a tip that would make it clear I'd meant what I said about the food—and walked out into the cold night air. The streetlights flickered overhead, casting uneven shadows across the sidewalk. My car was parked two blocks down, and I walked slowly, turning the evening over in my head.
I'd come here looking for one solution and found two problems I hadn't expected: a chef who didn't want to be bought, and a college kid who might be better at numbers than half the finance department I'd inherited. And who also happened to have the kind of face that made you forget why you'd walked into a room in the first place.
The Echelon House had eleven months to prove itself.
Maybe I'd just found the start of an answer.
I unlocked my car, slid into the driver's seat, and pulled out my phone. Through the window, I noticed a phone number written on a small sign next to the chalkboard out front—probably for takeout orders.
No website. No email. Just ten digits and a hand-painted sign.
I added it to my contacts anyway.