Page 22 of Fifth Avenue Flirt

She smiles, shaking her head, and takes another forkful of pasta.

“Was this your dad’s recipe?” she asks.

It’s so weird hearing her talk about my dad so casually. I deliberately avoid talking about him—even to my brother, Bray, or my mom. But Avril acts like mentioning him is no big deal.

“Yeah,” I say. “It was a family favorite.” It was a long time after his death before I could make this recipe. I was at university in a shared house and it was my turn to cook. I was so sick of soup and oven chips that I made this linguine, because I could get all the ingredients at the corner shop at the end of our street.

It was a smash hit, and it broke some kind of barrier between me and cooking. It stopped being something I avoided doing because it reminded me of my dad so much, and I started cooking again because it reminded me of my dad so much.

“So how come you didn’t become a chef?” she asks.

I shake my head. There was no way I was going to do that.

“You seem very certain. Why? You seem to really enjoy it.”

“It’s not a great life. The hours are appalling, and then, if you’re lucky enough to get your own restaurant…” I pull in a breath. It had been my dad’s dream to get his own place. I remember us all celebrating when Dad signed the lease. We had to take torches because the electricity hadn’t been switched on, but Mum, Dad, Bray, and I had all shared in Dad’s excitement. Dad said we were going to grow up in the restaurant, and as soon as we were old enough, we could help him.

The buzz in that kitchen had been electric. Everyone was like one big family.

It just didn’t last long.

“Your dad had his own place?” she asks.

“Yeah, for a couple of years.”

“You must have been so proud.”

“Yeah. We all were. But…financially, it didn’t make sense. Numbers weren’t Dad’s thing. The rent was high…it was just…it didn’t work out.”

“That’s a bummer,” she says. “So you didn’t want to repeat history.”

“Right,” I say.

“I’m still not quite sure what you do do. But your name came up when I was chatting with my brother the other day.”

And now we’re getting down to business. I’ve got a feeling Avril’s about to tell me why she’s actually here.

“Oh yeah? In what context?”

“Did I mention that we want to open a new hotel?”

I shrug. “I don’t think so.” I know she didn’t. I wasn’t technically working on Saturday night, but I don’t miss things. My brain is so used to picking out important bits of information and filing them away that I know if Avril had told me she and Worth were looking at buying a new hotel, I’d remember.

“Well, we are. We’ve been looking quite carefully in Boston. The competition is a lot less fierce there than in New York. And the room rates are higher as a result. We think it would be a good second location. But it’s been difficult to find a site because Worth wants to buy the building of any place we open.”

I don’t know much about the hotel business. From what I understand, the ownership of the building is often separated from the lease to run the hotel. So hotel chains don’t own real estate, they lease it, pay the cost of the refurb to make it look like their hotel, and then take the profits after paying rent to the building owner.

“And Boston’s a small city, right?”

She nods. “Right. I thought we found a place, but we just got word that the seller has changed his mind about selling. He’s taken it off the market.”

Things are slotting into place. “Ahhh,” I say. This kind of problem is one hundred percent in my wheelhouse.

“I don’t know why, but Worth seemed to think that you would be able to help with this kind of thing.”

“He did, huh?”

She shrugs. I know Avril well enough to know that she’s not going to find it easy to ask me for help. But that’s exactly why she’s here.