Page 162 of Boss of the Year

Daniel. I hadn’t thought about him for days now, to my surprise. My mind had been so filled with Lucas that I hadn’t even stopped to think about what his actions had done to Daniel.

God, I was a horrible person.

“I don’t think I’m right for either of them,” I said finally.

Louis nodded. “Maybe your money man is not good for the rest of your life, but maybe good for, you know, an apartment, new clothes, good food.” He gestured at our croissants as if to solidify the point.“Pour la joie de vivre, we don’tneedmoney, but it helps, you know?” He lifted a shoulder in a purely Gallic gesture that acknowledged the cynicism of his statement but cheerfully accepted its truth at the same time.

Was that what Lucas was doing? I fingered the note, then quashed the nausea that filled me when I looked down at the croissant. For once, the scent of butter and flour didn’t make me want to scarf the whole thing down. In fact, I felt rather ill.

“You can have them,” I said, tossing back the rest of my coffee before I stood up. “Take them to school with you. I don’t want them here.”

“Not even one?” Louis looked genuinely surprised as I moved back to my little corner.

“I can’t eat croissant bribes,” I said, doing my best to chase away the nausea with anger. Just who did Lucas Lyons think hewas? “I’m going to get ready and go out for the day. My CVs are finished. It’s time to find a job and get off your couch.”

“Bonne chance!” Louis called as I headed for the bathroom, right before he turned to his croissant and took a big, happy bite.

“We are not hiring,and you need a visa,” said the seventh head chef that day with barely a glance at my CV. “Try Le Cocteau. She has hired an American before.”

It was the same conversation I’d been having all morning. At every restaurant I’d visited, I’d met either the head chef or sous chef, most of whom were some variation of an older white man stinking of cigarette smoke and with a penchant for snarling.

This one also seemed to have a love of port, judging by the scent clinging to his coat and the redness in his nose.

I sighed. “I went to Le Cocteau. The chef told me to come here.”

The corners of the chef’s mouth curled, as if he were digesting a joke I wasn’t privy to. “Ah, well. Then no one is hiring you.”

“Look, even if you had space for me tostagefor a few weeks, just to build some experience, learn from you?—”

“Désolé, mademoiselle, but we don’t have the space.”

He sounded polite, but addressing me by “mademoiselle” instead of my rightful title, “chef,” was basically calling me a fraud.

I bit my lip as tears threatened. God, I had been crying so much lately.

So, this was what rejection felt like, really and truly. For a moment, I was reminded of why it took me ten years to put myself out there at all. I didn’t want to care so much about whatan oily, condescending stranger thought of me, but now that I was here, I found I did. I really did.

“Well, thank you,” I said. “If anything changes?—”

“It won’t.”

I nodded but set my CV on a table anyway. “If it does, please give me a call. Thanks again.”

The last thing I heard before the door closed was the sound of paper being crumpled into a ball.

“They don’t deserve you.”

I whirled around to find Lucas sitting at a table outside the café next to the restaurant, a newspaper in hand, while he sipped coffee like he had all the time in the world. Once again, he looked a far cry from the reserved CEO I’d always known, clad instead in jeans again and this time, a blue button-down. That said, he still looked as if he could have walked off aGQcover.

He raised his cup in a small salute. “Hello, Marie.”

I marched over to him. “Are you stalking me?”

“I prefer to call it waiting.” He tilted his head, studying my face with those storm-gray eyes. “I can actually be a very patient man when I want to be.”

“Could have fooled me.” I glanced down the street, which wound up toward the towering Église de Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, and beyond that, the enormous shadow of the Panthéon. Passersby barely gave us a glance as they moved on their way to lunch, home, or wherever else they meandered on this otherwise pleasant September afternoon.

“How are the interviews going?” Lucas gestured to the empty chair across from him.