WORTHLESS SON-IN-LAW IS THE KING OF DYNASTY

Chapter 5

The morning briefing with the department heads went the way Lucas had hoped: honestly. He had learned, somewhere in three years of being treated as peripheral, that people will tell you almost everything if they believe you are genuinely listening rather than simply waiting for an opportunity to speak.

The head of housekeeping — a composed woman named Brigitte who had been at the hotel for eleven years — told him about the three floors that had been locked off due to a water damage issue that had not been properly remediated. The food and beverage manager told him about the kitchen equipment that had been on a request list for two years. The front of house manager, the youngest of them and the most nervous, said very quietly that the online review scores had been declining because guests kept describing the hotel as 'fine,' which was, in his estimation, the worst thing a hotel could be.

"Fine means forgettable," Lucas agreed. "So we make it unforgettable. Not by adding things — by finding what's already here and letting it be itself." He looked at the room. "This building was built in 1934. The bar on the second floor has the original boiserie panelling. The terrace looks over a courtyard that nobody uses because it's been turned into a car park for management. These are decisions. We can unmake them."

He gave each of them a clear, specific task and a deadline. He thanked them. He told them he would be back in a week and expected detailed proposals, not summaries.

He was halfway out the door when Théodore caught up with him. "Monsieur Moreau. There are already a number of vendors and — well, and society people, I suppose, who have heard you're in Paris. Requests for meetings. Luncheons. One very persistent representative from a luxury concierge group who has called twice this morning."

"Tell them I'll be available once the hotel is worth visiting," Lucas said. "Until then, I have nothing to show them."

Théodore stared at him.

"I don't do impressive," Lucas said pleasantly. "I do results. Those are different things."

* * * *

He was crossing the lobby toward the exit when he nearly walked directly into a large flat box being carried by a woman going in the opposite direction.

"Pardon — " they said, in near-unison, and then he looked up and she looked up, and there was a beat of mutual recognition that resolved almost immediately into mutual uncertainty, because neither of them could immediately place where they had seen the other.

She was carrying a bakery box — the kind with a blue ribbon — and wearing a work apron under an open coat, which suggested she had come directly from somewhere professional. Dark hair, pulled back. Eyes that seemed to be in the process of deciding whether to be amused or impatient.

"You're the new hotel person," she said. Not a question. Not particularly impressed by it.

"I'm something like that," he agreed. "And you're — "

"Delivering the dessert order that was requested for this evening's management dinner, which someone told me was at six, but which I am now being informed by the person at reception has been moved to seven-thirty, meaning I have arrived an hour and a half early with two charlotte royales that will not benefit from sitting in a warm lobby."

"I cancelled the management dinner," he said.

She looked at him.

"I didn't know about the dessert order," he added.

"Right." She looked at the box. Looked back at him. "So what would you like me to do with two charlotte royales?"

He thought for a moment. "Is it good?"

She gave him a look of such precise incredulity that he almost laughed. "I'm a pâtissière. Yes, it's good."

"Then leave it with the kitchen and charge it to the account. We'll serve it at breakfast tomorrow. And I apologise — what's your name?"

"Isabelle Fontaine. I have a boulangerie in the Marais." She handed him a card with the air of someone who is providing information without offering anything more than information. "If you're going to be working with this hotel, there'll need to be a new agreement for pastry and bread supply. Your current supplier is, respectfully, mediocre."

"How do you know who our current supplier is?"

"Because I can taste it in the breakfast basket they put in the lobby." She gave him one more appraising look. "Think about it."

She handed the box to the concierge and left.

Lucas stood in the lobby for a moment, the business card in his hand, and felt something he hadn't felt in quite some time: the mild, clarifying surprise of having met someone entirely unconcerned with what he had become.

* * * *

He went to the boulangerie the next morning. It was on a side street in the Marais, small, with a hand-lettered sign above the door and the kind of queue outside it that forms not by marketing but by reputation. He waited in the queue. He ordered a croissant and a café au lait. He sat at one of the three small tables outside and ate it.

Isabelle appeared from the back at some point, saw him, and came to lean in the doorway with her arms folded and the expression of someone who has expected this and hasn't decided yet how to feel about it.

"Well?" she said.

"The croissant is the best I've had in Paris," he said. "And I've had a lot of croissants."

"It's the butter," she said. "People underestimate butter."

"About the supply agreement — "

"I have three other hotel accounts and a full production capacity," she said. "If I take on yours it means either turning someone else down or expanding, and I don't expand for the sake of revenue. I expand when the partnership is worth it."

"What would make it worth it?"

She considered him. "Come back at closing time. I want to see how you handle disappointment."

"You're going to say no?"

"I'm going to evaluate the question properly, which means not deciding in a doorway at eight in the morning." She pushed off the doorframe. "Closing time is five-thirty. Don't be late."

He was there at five-twenty-nine. She noticed, said nothing about it, and let him in.