But she had a role to play. Simone was no actress, not like Lucy, but she sensed that if something stronger than Kaitlyn’s pride didn’t move her, she would never admit how she felt about Landon. That was why Simone reached within for the ability that—though rusty from disuse—had propelled her to the top of the modeling world five years ago. Even Landon looked momentarily off guard to see the adoration shining out of her eyes when she turned to him.
“Should we let them get back to work?” Simone placed a slim hand on Landon’s arm in an intimate gesture Kait couldn’t miss. “You promised Martha we’d be home for dinner.”
Yes, she thought apologetically when Kaitlyn stiffened. I’m going home with him. I know his mother—or at least, I will. Your worst suspicions are confirmed.
Taking her lead, Landon said a quick goodbye to the others and lead her out.
“So?” Simone asked when they were out of earshot.
“You were right,” Landon admitted. “She’s jealous. But what’s next?”
Simone rolled her eyes and slid into the passenger seat. “We do this for a little longer, and then you break up with me. Tell her it’s because you couldn’t stop thinking about her. Then—” She made a crude gesture. “Do I need to spell it out for you?”
Landon laughed in spite of himself. “No, I think I’ve got the basics down, thanks.”
Satisfied, Simone put on her sunglasses. “Now to meet Martha.”
“She’s worked with all the top photographers,” Marjorie said enthusiastically as she and Kait drove back to the apartment that night. “I mean, I’m not interested in fashion photography, but some of these people are real artists. The things they can do with a camera—it’s honestly unreal. I knew she looked familiar. She was on the cover of the Haute coffee table book, the one all the top people in the industry did for charity. I have it at home. I wonder if she’d sign it if I got someone to send it to me.”
“Probably,” Kaitlyn said stiffly. “She seems nice.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Marjorie laughed. “Would you rather her have been a real bitch?”
“Yes,” Kaitlyn said after a moment of reflection. “That would have been better.”
People who looked like that shouldn’t be nice, in her opinion. Or they could be blandly nice, that was fine. But their personalities shouldn’t sparkle as brightly as their perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth.
Marjorie’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you jealous, by any chance?”
“Did you see her hair?” Kaitlyn asked, deflecting. “Of course I’m jealous.”
“You have beautiful hair, and you know it. Are you sure it’s not something else?”
“She looks pretty damn good for someone who claims to live on croque monsieurs.”
“I’ve never heard you complain about your metabolism.” Marjorie pinched her slim upper arm.
“Hey,” Kait smacked at her. “That hurts.”
“So does the truth, apparently,” Marjorie said, settling back in her seat. “The way you feel about Simone has nothing to do with her hair or her body. It’s about that handsome man who came in with her. Can’t you just admit it?”
Could she admit it? Kaitlyn considered it. Could she actually say out loud what every fiber in her being rebelled against? “Maybe,” she said reluctantly. “But I’m not ready to.”
They pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex, but neither made a move to get out of the car. “It doesn’t matter now anyway,” Kaitlyn said. “Not with Simone around.”
Marjorie opened her mouth as if to say something, then shut it abruptly. “You never know,” she said finally. “What’s that saying? No matter how hot she is, someone out there is sick of her shit.”
“Is that a saying?” Kait laughed.
Marjorie shrugged. “It might be. The point is, just because two people are breathtakingly gorgeous doesn’t mean they’re right for each other. Beautiful people get dumped every day.”
Kait looked unconvinced, but she shook her head firmly as though to clear it. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter. For reasons that have nothing to do with Simone,” she said when Marjorie started to protest. “Even if she weren’t in the picture, he’d still be Landon James and I’d still be a LeClark.”
“Very Hatfield and McCoy of you,” Marjorie joked. “Make sure you include skinned raccoon on the menu.”
Having Landon and Simone around nonstop wasn’t the only challenge work presented for Kait. Hiring the back-of-the-house staff was also proving to be a bitch. In New York, it would have been different. They would have been inundated with institute-trained talent, but the pickings in New Canton were slimmer and would likely require more guidance. Kaitlyn was delighted to see some familiar names in the pile, but Gray was more cautious.
“We don’t want to be too closely associated with the past,” he said. “We want to invoke the sense of tradition, but not the—”
“Scandal,” Kaitlyn finished grimly. “I know.”
In the end though, they called most of them in. Once these men had been like family. More than the decor, having Gilles at the front and Jackson on prep would make the restaurant feel like LeClarks. They also managed to find someone who had worked in a few New York City kitchens that Kaitlyn recognized and snapped him up.
Hiring the front-of-the-house staff wasn’t easy either. They found Gilles and lured him away from the hotel restaurant he was working at, but the majority of their wait staff applicants were high schoolers. A few were part of the work-release program from the low security prison in the next town over.
“These are our choices,” Kaitlyn said, depressed. “Prisoners or teenagers?”
“Some are both,” Gray said, looking more closely at one of
