Chapter 2

I woke up the next—hmm, let’s say afternoon, so I’m not a liar—with my face covered in lime pulp and stuck to my leatherette easy chair. I checked

the clock. Nice—I’d managed almost four hours of tequila-assisted sleep. A good night, when I usually only averaged about three hours a night. Suffering from intermittent insomnia since grade school, I’d adapted to less sleep than your average chicken.

I stumbled to the kitchen, reached blindly for the coffee, refusing to think about being fired. For B U T T- —oh, forget it. Yawning as the coffee percolated, I scrambled eggs with some tomatoes, garlic, spinach, and a touch of crème fraîche. I grated a little pecorino over the finished product, snatched a piece of perfectly toasted challah bread from the toaster, then grabbed my coffee and went back to the leatherette.

As I munched, a tabloid magazine on the table caught my eye. My guilty pleasure. I propped them up on a recipe stand while I was cooking sometimes. As I deboned a roasting chicken, I’d catch up on who was boning who in Tinseltown. But this morning, I realized I knew the person on the cover. She was a client. And I’d like to think maybe a friend?

I first heard of Grace Sheridan when the entire world was focusing on her other half, Jack Hamilton. An incredibly good-looking young British actor, he’d been the darling of the media world for a few years now, and just as his star was beginning to really rise, the press was constantly speculating on who the hot new movie star might be dating. As the world discovered that this unidentified redhead was actually Grace Sheridan, an actress as well, the media flurry became a storm, especially when she announced to the world they were a couple by taking him by the hand and publicly claiming him as hers on a red carpet. I knew all of this from what I’d read online. But

when she called me one day to ask me to cook for her while getting ready for a new season on her hit TV series, I began to know the woman behind the magazine covers.

She was funny. She was sweet. And she loved food. And—I was cooking for her later today. Crap! I’d completely forgotten about my actual existing client, one who was expecting me for dinner tonight. I took five minutes to scrub my face, pits, and bits, threw on some clean clothes, grabbed my knives, and raced to the market.

I’d cooked for Grace on and off for the past year. She was a big foodie and loved to cook, so she only used me when her schedule got too demanding. Two actors in one house, both working crazy hours when they weren’t on location—having a private chef was a perk to some people and a lifesaver for others.

Grace had been very outspoken in the press about her up-and-down weight, and she took her figure very seriously. Jack? Took it even more seriously . . .

The first time I met Jack Hamilton he’d been stealing as many kisses from his fiancée as he was carrots from the salad bowl I’d been working on. I was a bit giddy, being so close to such a big movie star, but giddy and a paring knife don’t work so well together, so I sucked it down and cooked an amazing meal. So amazing that I became their occasional private chef.

I power shopped through the market, grabbing things I knew she’d like. Arugula. Frisée. Shallots. Lemons. Hanger steak. Jerusalem artichokes. Prosciutto. Bosc pears. A lovely slice of English cheddar. Because, bless my buttons, Jack and Grace liked dessert. In a town that frowned on dessert. So into the cart also went flour, sugar, eggs, and gorgeous, wonderful butter.

An hour later found me in the sunny kitchen of two of Hollywood’s brightest stars, spooning pound cake batter into two loaf pans and shooshing Grace over to her side of the island.

“It doesn’t make sense for you to pay me money to cook if you’re doing half the work.”

“I’m like your sous chef,” Grace protested as I pulled out a kitchen stool and pointed at it.

“Sit down, relax, stay on your side of the kitchen, and I’ll let you lick this.” I held up a beater.

“It’s a good thing Jack’s not home yet; he’d never let a line like that go by,”

she said with a chuckle. “But I do want to lick that, so I’ll stay over here.”

I smiled as I thought about how I held sway over one of television’s biggest stars with just a battery beater. Why couldn’t all my clients have been like her? It was silent for a few minutes while she read through a script and I worked on my lemon cakes. But she couldn’t keep quiet for too long . . .

“So they all just canceled on you? Just like that?” she asked, looking up from her papers.

I kept my eye on my loaf pans. “I shouldn’t have told you. That was incredibly unprofessional.”

“It was also incredibly unprofessional when Jack offered you a threesome for another serving of spotted dick. Unprofessional is how we roll.”

I snorted in spite of myself. I’d made a traditional English pudding one night, and Jack the Brit was beside himself. So beside himself that he really had offered his body in return for future proper English sweets.

I really shouldn’t have unloaded everything on Grace, as nice and as welcoming as she was. But somewhere between the grocery unpacking and the artichoke pruning, she’d guessed that something was bothering me. And before I knew it, the entire story had poured out.

“So your mom wants to go on The Amazing Race, huh?” “Ugh, yes. Ridiculous idea.”

“I don’t know, I’ve seen the show a few times. Always looks fun.”

“Oh, it’s not that it doesn’t look fun. It’s just . . . hmm . . . how to explain my mother.” I paused, rapping the loaf pans against the counter to coax any air bubbles out before placing them in the oven. “She’s an eighties hippie. She got caught up in that whole second-wave thing.”

She nodded. “I remember that. Buy your peace sign earrings at Contempo Casuals.”

“Exactly.” I handed over the promised beaters and she began to lick. “But it stuck with her. She’ll tell you she’s a free spirit. I have another word for it.”

“Flakey?” she asked.

“Yep. Irresponsible. She means well, but when you’re all about the moon being in the seventh house, it’s hard to remember things like paying the electric company to keep the lights on in the actual house. Luckily, she had me. Not to mention the countless ‘uncles’ who were constantly around.”

“Ah,” she said, switching to the other beater.

“They were all nice guys; she just hated being alone. So she made sure she never was. She fell in love with any man who bothered to look twice at her.” My mother was convinced that every single man she met was The One. Or at least The Next One. And I’d seen the aftermath countless times when the guys eventually bailed, the carnage that was left behind. The crying, the yelling, the sugar bingeing, the Van Morrison playing endlessly on the record player. And then the inevitable mooning over the next guy who wandered into her hippie love snare.

“So she’s a romantic?” Grace asked.

“You say romantic, I say codependent.” I rinsed the pears in the sink. “You say romantic, I say afraid to be alone. You say romantic, I say why in the world would someone put themselves through the hassle and the heartache?”

This is exactly why I liked my relationships simple, full of sex and free of love. My trouble sleeping was a great reason to ensure men never spent the night, since it was hard enough for me to fall asleep when I was alone. Compound insomnia with another snoring human in the bed, and I’d literally never sleep. Plus, I saw no reason to stare at a man awkwardly all night after the exercise portion of the evening had concluded, so I sent them on their way. They didn’t seem to mind, and I avoided all the bullshit.

Grace looked thoughtful for a moment, and I could see her mind working. “Okay, so you don’t approach things the same way . . .”

I shook my head. “Besides my mother’s search for love everlasting, the only constant in our lives was the diner. I need a better handle on my life than that.”

“Your family’s diner?”

“Yes, my grandpa opened Callahan’s a thousand years ago. I started washing dishes there when I was ten, maybe? Gotta love that child labor. When my grandpa died, it went to my mom. It’s nothing special, just kind of a meeting place in a small town.”

“Sounds great.”

“It totally is—that’s where I realized I wanted to make cooking my career. But I never wanted to run it, not even for a short period of time. Do you have any idea how much goes into running a barely successful family restaurant? Forget vacations. Forget freedom. Forget a peaceful evening. And even if you’re home, you’re fielding calls about a broken-down mixer or

a walk-in fridge that’s leaking, or a waitress whose nail broke off in the salad bowl and should we close the place down until we find it?” I sighed, exhaling the tension that always set up shop when I thought about our charming slice of Americana.

“Plus forget about having any kind of privacy—in a town like Bailey Falls, everyone knows everything about everybody. You are who you are, and they don’t let you forget it. I spent my entire childhood living in my mother’s flakey shadow, waiting to be eighteen and move away from home just to get the chance to be a kid. So for my mom to think I’d just drop everything and run home . . . oh, it just pisses me off.”

“I can tell. You’ve peeled that pear down to the core,” she said gently, and I looked down. I had indeed.

“Oh for the love of—” All the peel was piled up in the sink, along with all the pear. “I’m so sorry, this is terrible. Let’s talk about you—what’s going on with you?” I swished all the peel down the drain and started on a fresh pear.

She gave me a look that told me we weren’t done with this, but she’d play along. She told me all about the new season of the show, then told me a few secrets from the set of the new Time movie Jack had just finished, a successful film franchise based on a series of erotic short stories. A time- traveling scientist schtupping women across time . . . not a bad way to spend an evening at the movies. By the time dinner was almost ready, I’d almost managed to forget that other than this wonderful client, I was now a private chef without a private kitchen.

I was just taking the steak out of the pan and setting it to the side to rest when headlights shone through the back window as a car swung into the driveway. I turned to see Grace beaming as bright as the headlights, even blushing a little. “Jack’s home.” She seemed so genuinely happy that I had to smile too, even if she did remind me of my perpetually lovesick mother for a moment.

I looked around the kitchen, with its warm honey wood and giant marble island. Pictures of the couple and their friends hung on the walls, not fancy artwork. Flowers spilled casually out of mason jars and Bakelite pitchers— no enormous florist arrangements in this house. Because it wasn’t just a house, it was a home. Unlike any of the other houses I’d cooked in. Grace and Jack were that impossibility in this plastic town: real people. I missed real people.

But I didn’t need to be the third wheel for the remainder of their real- people evening. So as Jack banged in through the back door, I gathered up my tools.

He immediately called to his fiancée, “C’mere, Crazy, I’ve been waiting to get my hands on you all—oh! Hey, Roxie.” Jack smiled lazily over the top of Grace’s red curls as he tucked her in for a hug. “I forgot you were here tonight. Smells great, what is it?”

“Sliced hanger steak marinated in a little coriander and soy sauce, sliced on a bed of baby arugula and frisée, with roasted Jerusalem artichokes tossed lightly with lemon juice and pecorino cheese,” I said, taking their plates to the table. “Jack, you’re also getting prosciutto-wrapped bosc pears and a big slice of your favorite English cheddar. Grace, you just get pears.”

“How come she doesn’t get fancy pears too?” he asked, sitting in his chair and trying to pull Grace onto his lap.

“I don’t get fancy pears because I have a sex scene to shoot in two weeks,” she said lightly, planting a kiss on his cheek and barely escaping his grabby hands.

“And since I’m skipping the fancy pears, I get to have cake later on,” she said, digging into her salad. “And I might have licked the beaters.”

“Wish I’d been here to see that,” Jack said under his breath.

I shook my head and quietly finished cleaning up the kitchen as they ate their dinner. Which they loved.

After I poured lemon honey glaze over the still-warm pound cakes and prepared to go, Jack and Grace began imploring me to stay.

“You should have some cake with us,” Jack said, moving easily around the kitchen.

Jack Hamilton with an armful of Tupperware: I could sell that picture to a magazine and never have to work again.

“Can’t, but thanks for the offer. I’ve gotta get home and figure out some stuff,” I said, sliding my last knife into its sheath just as my phone rang. Unreal timing, my mother. I’d deal with her later.

“Everything okay?” he asked, concern in his warm eyes.

Unbelievably, I felt my eyes burning a bit. I swallowed hard around the sudden lump in my throat.

“She’s good. I’m going to walk her out,” Grace said, looping an arm through mine and heading toward the back door.

“Brilliant dinner, Roxie, really excellent. Thanks again,” Jack answered, whistling as he turned his attention back to rearranging the inside of the fridge.

I breathed in a huge, watery sigh as I headed out into the night air. “I’m so sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me just now.” I sniffled a bit, dabbing my eyes as we walked out toward my car.

“You’ve had a shitty day—it happens. Talk to your mom.”

“She’s just going to talk me into doing this for her,” I said, setting my things in the back of my car.

“I hate to say this, because it’d mean your pound cakes are leaving—but maybe you need a break. Maybe this would be a good idea. Get out of town for a while, clear your head.”

“If I leave, I’m leaving everything.”

“You already lost most of your clients, Rox,” she said. “Except for us, of course, your favorites.”

“Of course.” I sighed. “You know why I love cooking for you?” “Because you get to stare at Jack?”

“Obviously. But other than that, I miss cooking real food. Homey food.

Calories be damned.”

“Real food in the real world. I hear that.” Grace laughed. “Call your mother, talk it out, and decide what you want to do. Even if you leave, you can always come back.”

“Oh, I’d come back. It took me eighteen years to get out of that tiny town

—there’s no way I’d stay there for good,” I said, shaking my head. Population two thousand and thirty-crap?

“Great! If you come back—sorry, when you come back—I’ll put the word out. We know tons of people who could use a great chef, none of them plastic. It’ll all work out.”

“Go eat your cake. I presliced some for you, exactly three ounces. No more,” I said, climbing up into my Wagoneer.

“We’ll see,” she said with a wink.

A few minutes later, I was halfway down the canyon. As soon as I had reception, I called my mother.

I listened to what she said.

Then I went home and looked at my stack of bills, and compared that to my now nonexistent income.

I called my mother back. “Roxie, it’s after midnight.”

“I’m coming home, Mother. I’ll run the diner. You’ll pay me your salary. For exactly as long as it takes for you to run around the world on your quest with Aunt Cheryl. And then I’m done. No more favors. Ever. Clear?”

“Oh yes! Thank you, you fantastic daughter of mine, thank you! When will you be here? Can you be here by—”

“I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll work all that out, okay? You won, Mother—enjoy it.” I sighed, hanging up and lying back onto my bed.

Shit. I was going home.

A week later, I had sublet my apartment, packed up the Wagoneer, told my boy toy that I’d be gone for the summer and sadly without his company, and pointed the car right.

I mean, east.