The gale-force squall striking the Atlantic facade of Le Petit Phare sounded less like wind and more like a heavy iron door slamming repeatedly against a stone wall. Sea spray smashed against the small, leaded windowpanes, forcing salt water through the wooden sill in thin, bubbling trickles. Yet inside the stone kitchen, the air was a thick, roaring furnace of four-hundred-and-fifty-degree cast iron, bubbling chicory, stone-ground flour, and dark, caramelized beet sugar. The room didn’t function like a commercial business; it operated like the boiler room of a battleship running at full throttle.Trixie Vance was standing behind the oak counter, her hair completely unbound and wild, forming a chaotic copper halo around her sweat-slicked face. Her striped sailor sweater was pulled up past her biceps, exposing the corded muscle of her forearms—forged through weeks of lifting forty-pound iron double-molds over open flames."Jean-Luc!" she screamed over the thunder of the hearth and the