“I didn’t poison anyone last night,” she felt she had to point out. “It wasn’t my idea, Chef. I’d have been happy with helper.”
“Lonzo,” he corrected. “You’re not our tournant anymore, Trick.”
Rowan was surprised at the welling of affection she felt toward the older man. “Don’t give up the search for a new sous-chef. I’m not going to be around much longer.” And suddenly her night with Sean didn’t seem quite as wonderful and amazing as it had a few minutes ago.
When she left New York, she’d have to leave him, too. “You know what you can do here?” Lonzo was asking her. “The name you can make for yourself?”
“Yeah, I know. But this”—she gestured around them—“this was never meant for me. Maybe in my next life.”
“Dansant ain’t gonna like it,” he warned.
And there was her other problem. “He knew I’d be moving on someday. Someday’s just got here sooner than later.”
“Listen, you want to come and bunk at my place for a couple weeks, we got a spare room,” Lonzo said awkwardly. “You know. If things get tight or Dansant gives you the business.”
She could have kissed him, and nearly did. “I just heard from a friend of mine,” she confided. “He’s going to help me out. But I appreciate the offer.” She winked. “Chef.”
It was a little harder for her to be so lighthearted when Dansant arrived at the restaurant that night. He was very late; coming in just as they’d plated the first orders, he came directly to her station to check her prep. She was working skate sautéed in clarified butter, arranging it like a fan with ribbon-shaped scrolls of wilted, sesame-seed-studded spinach and her own fruit-vegetable salsa.
“Another interesting variation,” he said, looking over her shoulder. “Vigato at the Apicius in Paris uses green apples and bell peppers in his recipe.”
“Vigato uses ketchup and soaks his spinach in vinaigrette.” She wiped the edge of the plate with her hand towel to remove some drippings from the transfer of the skate from the pan. “I’m not doing his sherry vinegar reduction, either. Cider vinegar works better, and even when it’s reduced it doesn’t stomp the taste of the skate.”
“It doesn’t, Chef,” Lonzo said as he passed them carrying a pan of chopped, quivering golden aspic.
Rowan handed the plates she’d finished to the expediter and turned to him. “Can I have a minute with you in your office?”
Dansant checked the line, nodded, and followed her back. As soon as they were alone, she looked at him squarely.
“I am having my chef’s table tomorrow night,” Dansant said before she could open her mouth. “I would like you to share the cooking and the meal with me and my friends.”
He was not going to make this easy at all. “I don’t think the line can spare me.” Rowan tucked her thumbs in her pockets. “I need to tell you something. I spent last night with Sean. The guy who lives upstairs,” she added, since they hadn’t met.
His face lost all expression. “Did you.”
“It just happened.” She forced a smile, which didn’t last longer than a few seconds. “Anyway, I’m involved with him now. After what happened between us in the kitchen, I thought I should tell you.”
“You could uninvolve yourself,” he suggested.
“No point. I heard from a friend who owes me some money,” she lied. “He’s going to lend me enough to cover what I owe you, and then I’m leaving. I don’t know when, exactly, but I’ll give you as much notice as I can.”
He studied her face. “It does not matter.”
“Dansant.” She felt frustrated. “I’m sorry. After last night, I know you had some, ah, expectations. It’s just you and me . . . we would never work out. This guy, Sean, he’s more my type. Don’t be pissed, okay?”
He smiled then, a warm and beautiful smile. “I am not angry, Rowan. I am happy for you.” He took her hand in his. “You deserve to be loved. If not by me, then by someone who can care for you as I would have.”
“Sean’s a good guy,” she agreed, feeling a little uneasy, “but it’s just for now. You know, no big thing. You, on the other hand, are going meet a great girl someday.” Suddenly she knew what to do, and encircled his wrist with her fingers.
The dreamveil always changed her into the woman most loved by the person she touched. But occasionally she used it on men who hadn’t met that woman yet, and when her body shifted she took on the form of the woman they would love most in the future. It freaked her out a little, and made her question just how random love really was, but at least if Dansant hadn’t fallen in love before now, she could give him a preview of who was waiting for him in the future.
She pulled from him, and that was when things went bizarre. She not only got nothing; her body wouldn’t change.
“I have met her.” He brushed his fingers against her cheek and left.
Rowan’s legs buckled, and she groped until she found the edge of the desk and clung to it. Her ability hadn’t failed her since the night it had first manifested. She’d been able to shift into any woman who had been most loved by the person she touched. The dreamveil had never failed her once. Now, in the space of a single day, it had failed her twice.
How does someone like me know if any guy really cares? She’d asked Drew that just before they’d said good- bye, that last night in Savannah.
He’d grinned. That’s easy. When he holds your hand, you won’t change into Angelina Jolie.
She hadn’t changed into Angelina when she’d touched Sean Meriden last night. She hadn’t changed into anyone. She hadn’t because she discovered that she was the great love of Meriden’s life.
Just as she now knew she was Jean-Marc Dansant’s.
Chapter 17
Rowan got through the rest of her shift. Somehow. She spent a lot of time silently arguing with the knowledge that not one but two men were in love with her. Theoretically it was possible; plenty of people fell in love more than once in their lives. What was to prevent two men from taking the fall for her?
Maybe it’s stopped working, she thought, and felt a kind of panic she’d never expected. Her ability had caused all kinds of damage to her ego, but it had always been useful, especially in some hairy situations. Finally she threw down her towel, called to Enrique, and pulled him out the back door of the kitchen.
“Sí, Mees Trick? I mean, Chef?”
“Stand right there.” She positioned him so that his back was to the kitchen and her dim reflection showed in one of the windows. “Give me your hand.”
Enrique did, and she pulled on him, and her body began to shift. A few moments later a dusky, gorgeous African-American girl stared back at her from the surface of the window. And lo and behold, she was suddenly the proud owner of a rack that would make a strong man weep.
“Takeisha?” Enrique murmured, his eyes wide.
“You really like me?” she asked him in a low, musical voice. “You should tell me, amigo.”
“Sí, I should.” He looked dazed.
Rowan stopped pulling on him, and her body resumed its normal dimensions. As she shifted back, his expression cleared, along with the memory from his mind of what she had just done—another odd but routine aftereffect of the dreamveil.
“Chef?” He frowned. “You need me haul trash?”
“No, Enrique.” She patted his shoulder. “I thought I saw a dead rat out here. It’s gone. Go back inside.”
She was about to follow him in when she heard a shuffling sound behind her. She turned and saw the homeless kid stepping into the light.
“I know what you are,” she said. “I saw what you did.”
Rowan swore under her breath. “It’s just a magic trick.”
The girl shook her head, and then held out her arm, yanking back her sleeve and stepping further into the pool of light. She had an old tattoo of a blue ram on her arm, one that had a faint iridescent glow to it.
“Where did you get that?” she asked the girl.
“I don’t know.” The sleeve went back down. “I’ve always had it. There’s one on my other arm just like it.” She jerked her chin toward Rowan’s sleeve. “Like yours.”
There was something maddeningly familiar about her voice, Rowan thought, but she was far too young to be Takyn. The only other one of their kind who was younger than Rowan was Judith, and she was twenty. “You can’t be a . . .”
“What? What am I?” the girl demanded. “Who made me like this? Why can’t I stop it?”
Her anger bewildered Rowan. “Stop what? What’s happening to you?”
“Nothing.” Two wet streaks cleared a path on either side of her dirty face. “Why can’t I be like you are?”
“Do you remember what happened to make you like this?” Eager now, Rowan took hold of her arm. “Where were you raised? Was it a lab? Did you run away? Do you know where it was?”
The girl wrenched away. “There was no lab. I’m not a freak.” Disgust filled her expression. “You don’t know anything about me.” She spun and took off.
Shit, she’d spooked her.
This time Rowan had no intention of letting the kid vanish. She ran after her, moving as silently as she could, avoiding the obstacle-course-style escape route the girl followed. The kid was fast, but she was upset, and she never looked back. That allowed Rowan to follow her up to an abandoned hotel, where the girl went to the boarded-up front door, moving two boards to open a hole. After she climbed in, the boards creaked back into place.
She started to go across the street, and then stopped in her tracks. The old hotel was probably where the girl hid out and slept, and if she went in after her the runaway would no longer consider it safe to stay. If she ran from here, she’d never come back.