Miss E. chuckled. “Manny Torres said he knows when he’s been outbaked. Everything is good with him.” She put the album away and sat back down in her recliner. “I’m glad you’ve found someone to relax with. Swing dancing is going to be good for you. Food is good for the body, but dancing is good for the soul.” She picked up her book with a sudden yawn. “It’s late. Go to bed.”
Donovan kissed her on the cheek and let himself out of the RV. As he closed the door, he heard Miss E.’s cell phone ring. She picked it up and said, “Hello, Jasper. When are you coming back to Reno? I miss you.”
Donovan closed the door. For all her comments about men in her life, she had one. He needed to talk to Hunter, Scott and Kenzie. Did they know Miss E. had a boyfriend? Boy was a bit of a misnomer, though. Male friend sounded better.
He headed into the hotel, his thoughts moving furiously.
Chapter 8
Hendrix stood with one hand on the industrial mixer and the other holding a bowl of flour she was gently spooning into the mixing bowl. She was having a hard time concentrating. Sunday was the busiest time of the week for the restaurant and the one day her desserts usually sold out.
Her mind was not on her baking, but on her date with Donovan. She’d already burned one batch of brownies after setting the oven too high. She couldn’t afford to burn a second batch. She set the mixer to run at the right speed and turned to the oven to pull cupcakes out of it. She set them on the worktable to cool before putting them in the refrigerator. She’d planned on a cream cheese icing. The blocks of cream cheese warmed on the counter waiting until the cupcakes were cool enough.
She changed the temperature on the oven for the brownies and went back to the mixer. After pouring the mix into pans and setting them to bake, she sat down for a moment.
Thank heavens she always had extras of everything in the refrigerator. Today looked to be one of those days when she would need them.
The door opened and a tall, unusually slim woman entered. She was beautiful with the kind of razor-sharp cheekbones that surely made men turn to look at her when she walked by. Her skin was smooth and the color of blended mocha. She wore a black designer dress with a contrasting design in cream that probably cost more than Hendrix’s monthly salary.
“Hello,” she said, her voice laced with a thick British accent. “I’m looking for Donovan Russell.”
Hendrix’s voice failed her for a second, so stunned was she by the woman’s beauty. “Customers aren’t allowed in the kitchens.”
“I’m not a customer. I’m Erica, his wife.” She smiled revealing startling white, perfectly straight teeth.
Hendrix jumped to her feet and tried not to stare. Erica was taller than Hendrix who stood five foot ten in her bare feet. “I thought Donovan was divorced.”
“Yes, we are. So technically I’m really not his wife anymore.” She glanced around the kitchen, a look of approval on her face. “And you are?”
Does that mean she wants to be his wife again? Hendrix felt out of her element. This classically beautiful woman was so different than the Erica from Hendrix’s imagination.
She wiped her hand on her apron and held it out. “I’m Hendrix Beausolie. I’m the pastry chef.”
“I can see that and you’re about to burn whatever is in the oven.”
Hendrix gave a little squeak. She’d forgotten to set the timer again. She ran to the oven and opened it. She rescued her brownies just in time. She set the pans on the worktable to cool. “Donovan’s not here yet. He went to the farmer’s market this morning.” He went there every Sunday morning and talked to the local farmers about supplying produce for the upcoming week. Donovan would craft specials around what was available for the week.
“He still likes to pick out his own beets,” Erica said with a sigh. She wandered around the kitchen glaring at the cooling brownies and cupcakes.
“Is that a bad thing?” Hendrix asked. Every chef she knew liked to choose their own veggies, citing the freshness of locally grown produce.
“Doesn’t he employ people to do that for him?” Erica sniffed at the brownies, a tiny frown furrowing her brow. “These brownies smell heavenly. What is in them?”
“This and that,” Hendrix said. “You know, brownie stuff.”
With one eyebrow raised, Erica gave Hendrix a hard, searching look. “You’re one of those chefs.”
“I beg your pardon?” Hendrix was not one to feel slighted, but this woman had a way of making every word sound like an insult.
“Keeping everything a secret.” Erica opened the refrigerator and stood with the door open as she studied the pies, cakes and other goodies Hendrix had cooling.
Hendrix felt herself beginning to relax. She didn’t owe this woman any sort of explanation for anything. She didn’t work for Erica. She immediately didn’t like Erica and wondered what Donovan had seen in her.
“You have a broken temperature gauge,” Erica said as she closed the door.
Hendrix sighed. She opened a drawer and pulled out a replacement. What was it about this woman that set her hackles up? Usually Hendrix was easygoing and liked everyone. Well, maybe she was a little jealous, she considered. Erica was so beautiful, so poised, so put together. Everything Hendrix wasn’t.
Donovan entered and stopped short at the sight of his ex-wife. He looked stunned.
Erica pranced over to him, air-kissed him on both sides of his face. “Marcel sends his best,” she said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I just thought I’d visit and see how people live on this side of the pond. I’ve never been to the Wild West.”
Donovan studied her for a moment. “Have you met Hendrix?”
“We were just getting to know each other,” Hendrix said. “She wants to know what’s in my brownies.”
“You’ll have to guess,” Donovan said with a half grin, “and you might even be right. At least for today.”
Erica tossed a surprised glance at Hendrix. “He doesn’t lean over you, checking to make sure every tiny ingredient is correctly measured?”
“No. He trusts me.” Hendrix couldn’t resist a tiny sense of smugness at the tight expression on Erica’s face.
“How sweet of him to let you work without his supervision. He must trust you a great deal.”
“I haven’t burned his kitchen down yet,” Hendrix said, then resisted the urge to clap her hand over her mouth before something really insulting ejected from it.
“Erica,” Donovan said, dragging his ex-wife’s attention away from Hendrix, “have you had breakfast?”
From her tiny waist, Hendrix doubted she’d eaten in the past three weeks.
“I could go for a cup of coffee,” Erica said with an airy wave of one graceful hand.
Donovan opened the door and ushered her out without a backward glance at Hendrix. Hendrix tried not to pout. Like any man, he’d abandoned her at the first sight of a beautiful, glamorous woman. She wanted to scream. Instead, she cut out a brownie for herself and ate it.
Hunter stepped into the kitchen. “Came for our brownie fix. Lydia is craving chocolate this morning and Maya insists on brownies for herself and her school friends.” He stopped when he saw her standing stock-still in the center of the room. “What’s wrong, Hendrix?”
“I just met Donovan’s ex-wife.” Even in her own ears, she sounded sour and annoyed. She pulled a plate out of a cabinet and started to carve the brownies into neat even squares.
“Erica,” Hunter said in surprise, “the she-beast. She’s here? In Reno?”
Hendrix could tell that Erica wasn’t one of his favorite people. “What did Donovan see in her?” The words slipped out and Hendrix slapped her hand over her mouth. Really, it wasn’t any of her business. She and Donovan were just friends.
“To this day, we ha
ve no idea,” Hunter said. He leaned against the worktable and sniffed at the cooling brownies. “He just up and married her. We had three days’ notice to get to Paris for the wedding and we left the day after. They were married about a year and were divorced just as quickly.”
Hendrix pondered over what Hunter had just said. She knew without really knowing for sure that Erica had done something to make Donovan marry her. Erica was a touch too slick, too smooth. And Donovan had most likely acted with some noble intention. She would have to ask him at the appropriate time.
Any sense of feeling inferior to Erica dissipated. She opened packages of cream cheese and dropped the cheese into a mixing bowl. She found it easier to think when her hands were busy.
“Why do you think she’s here?” Hendrix asked.
“Who knows? She may just need some paperwork signed. Though Scott would say she’s the harbinger of the apocalypse.”
Hendrix bit down on her lip in an attempt to not laugh. Harbinger of the Apocalypse sounded like a strong possibility. But that brought her back to the questions of why Donovan had married Erica in the first place. She ran a dozen different scenarios through her mind and nothing quite fit.
Hunter pulled a plate out of a cabinet and started arranging brownies on it.
“How many brownies are you planning to take?” Hendrix watched him curiously.
“Five for Maya. One for me. One for Lydia. One for me. One for Miss E. One for me. One for Scott. One for me. One for Nina.” He paused. “Wait. Nina is trying on wedding dresses today, so I’ll eat hers. And then, one for me.” He finished piling the brownies on the plate and carefully wrapped them in a piece of foil she handed him.
Hendrix shook her head. She’d just make another batch. If the restaurant ran out of brownies, they would have a riot on their hands. She opened the drawer where she stored her flour and went to the sink for her measuring cups.
“Don’t worry about Erica. Whatever she wants, Donovan is not about to give to her.”
“It’s not personal,” she said.
Hunter gave her a sharp look. “Oh. Okay. It’s not personal. I understand.” He started toward the door, stopped and turned back to take one more brownie.
“Who is that brownie for?” Hendrix asked.
“For the baby.”
“The baby hasn’t been born yet.”
“Then I’ll eat it.” He waved at her as he left the kitchen.
Hendrix leaned against the worktable shaking her head. Those Russells were professional eaters. She liked that about them.
* * *
Donovan got a room for Erica. He sat in a chair watching her unpack. Erica was as beautiful as ever. “You’re looking good.”
“For going on thirty-five.” She raised an eyebrow.
“I can see you had some work done to your face.”
“That’s not a very gentlemanly thing to say. I will never confirm or deny it.” She tilted her head flirtatiously in a way that had once charmed him.
He studied her. “You still look good.” A little lift there and a little tuck there, the differences were subtle and someone who knew her only casually wouldn’t have noticed. But he’d known her for a long time. “You said you always liked my honesty.”
She stopped in the middle of hanging up a dress and looked at him. “Only until you got to be a little too honest.”
“What’s the difference between being honest and too honest?”
“Honest is telling me I’m beautiful. Too honest is telling me I’m vain.” She hung up the dress and went back to her open suitcase.
But she was vain. “The V word never left my mouth.”
“But it was in your eyes.” She opened the dresser and set a pile of T-shirts inside.
“How long are you staying?” he asked, eyeing the pile of underwear she’d just carefully refolded.
She gave him a wide-eyed look. The kind of look that used to make him cave in to her demands. He was surprised he didn’t feel anything. Absence had not made his heart grow fonder.
“I’m staying for as long as it takes.”
Fear coursed through him like a hot knife. “As long as what takes?”
She turned, facing him, hands on her hips. “To talk you into coming back home.”
Hell, no, he thought. “You wasted a trip. I’m not going back to Paris. Reno is my home and my grandmother is depending on me to get the food and the restaurants here into shape.”
“Your grandmother can hire anybody,” she scoffed with a wave of her hands.
“You could also have hired anybody,” he said. “This is about family.”
“We used to be family,” she tossed at him.
“Not anymore.”
A hurt look spread across her face. “Donovan...” she pleaded.
“You tricked me into marrying you when you said you were pregnant and knew you weren’t. I did what I thought was honorable.” Family was important to him. Even though the stigma of being illegitimate wasn’t the same as it had been even thirty years ago, he didn’t want a child of his to grow up with that label. He’d done what he’d thought was the honorable thing.
She looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry, Donovan. I wanted normal. A normal life, a normal marriage, a normal...everything.”
“You didn’t need to marry me to have ‘normal.’”
She sat down on the bed with a look of exhaustion. “Since you left, the restaurant has gone downhill.”
“And I told you to hire Marie Odile Arceneau. But you didn’t.” He knew why. Erica didn’t want another woman around who was as beautiful as she was. Marie Odile was competition. “I’m not going back to Paris, Erica. You need to choose between your ego and the restaurant. You can’t have both.”
She covered her face with her long, elegant hands. “But our restaurant is your baby.”
“The baby grew up and I had no new challenges. And you didn’t want me to open a second location.” He loved the challenge of setting up something new and maybe different, but Erica’s insecurities had kept him from pursuing it. She wanted their life together to be all about her and he couldn’t play that part anymore. “Maybe it’s time you grew up, too.”
During the first few months of their marriage, they’d worked together to get the restaurant off the ground. And then she’d had a pretend miscarriage and something went off inside him. The idea of being a father had really appealed to and excited him. He’d fostered images of teaching his son or daughter to cook, to love food as much as he did. But with the baby no longer a reality, the disappointment of the fake pregnancy ate away at their marriage until he had realized they weren’t compatible and never would be. Deep down, Erica had known it, too. They’d continued to run the restaurant together, because despite what she’d done, Erica loved it as much as he did. He hadn’t thought she’d be so insecure about taking over completely.
“I don’t think I can run the restaurant on my own,” Erica said quietly.
“Yes you can.” She was so good at dealing with customers, waitstaff, vendors, even government officials, but only as long as everything went right. The moment she hit bumps in the road, she turned into a helpless female waiting for someone else to solve the problem. “I left instructions for you, Erica. I wrote down everything I thought would help you. I know you’re nervous, but you can do it.”
She pouted. Once he’d thought her little pouts were cute, but not any longer. “Donovan...”
“Who’s running the restaurant while you’re gone?”
She looked away from him. “Claude.”
“So you left Claude to run the restaurant so you could come to Reno and get me.” Claude was a good at managing the kitchen but not so much with customers. “You need to go back. You’ve always managed the dining area well enough. Claude can take care of the kitchen. Ge
t Marie Odile as general manager and you’re good to go.”
Her shoulders slumped. “But I miss you.”
He put his arm around her and gave her hug. “You’re fine, Erica. Please, don’t cry. You have a lot more backbone than you give yourself credit for.”
His cell phone rang, the ID read Hendrix. “Donovan,” he answered.
“Boss,” she said breathlessly, “a fire in the kitchen.”
A second later the fire alarms went off. Donovan raced for the elevator.
* * *
Hendrix herded people out of the restaurant. “Stay calm. Head for the nearest exit.” Smoke billowed out of the kitchen, coating the ceiling with black oily clouds. A little girl started crying and Hendrix scooped her up and handed her to her mother.
She kept everyone as orderly as she could, shepherding them to safety before heading back into the restaurant. Donovan raced through the empty restaurant to the kitchen, Hendrix trailed him. Two waiters and the sous chef held fire extinguishers, spraying foam over the stoves. The fire crackled. More black smoke billowed upward toward the ventilation ducts.
Donovan grabbed a fire extinguisher and joined Hendrix as she battled the flames around the oven. A few seconds later a fireman appeared. “Everyone out,” he shouted.
Hendrix grabbed Donovan and pulled him out of the way as the fireman, his own fire extinguisher shooting trails of foam, took over the fight.
Hendrix led Donovan to the parking lot. Guests streamed out the exit doors. The fire department set up a perimeter and directed people past the barriers.
Hendrix held on to Donovan.
“What happened?” he asked as he watched firemen enter the lobby.
“I’m not sure. I was taking my last batch of brownies out of the oven when I heard someone shout ‘fire.’ I checked the kitchen, saw the fire, called you and began to evacuate.”
Bet on My Heart Page 9