Dining with Joy

by Rachel Hauck

  “You should’ve talked to me.” Joy shook her head, squinting beyond the window at the pale blue horizon.

  “Look, I know this doesn’t seem fair.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Joy swept up the napkins from the table and wadded them onto the tray, slightly aware that the volume of her voice drew stares from around McDonald’s dining room. “Not even close to fair.” She jerked to her feet, tray in hand, and started for the trash bins.

  “Joy, listen.” Duncan’s grasp on her arm stopped her in the middle of the room, between tables. “You’re still in business. Still host of the show. Your contract remained intact. Allison is very talented and creative. I don’t know which network she pitched the show to, but you can bet your audience will double or triple this season. We’d gone as far as we could on the Premier Channel.”

  “I hosted the show because you were desperate.” Joy freed her arm from his hold and leaned toward him. “Because Daddy asked me to help you as he lay in a hospital bed, dying.”

  “And we’ve done well. But I can’t believe in three years this show hasn’t woven into your DNA, become a part of you. You don’t get a little bit of a thrill by hosting your own television show? Being a celebrity?” His grin mocked her.

  “You think I enjoy lying to the viewers? That I get a kick out of pretending to be something I’m not? Do you think I like falling off stages and joking my way out of cooking questions?” The trembling in her middle intensified. “But I did it for you and because my dying father asked.”

  “Seems that new Dodge Ram out there was a nice pill for your pain.”

  “Duncan, I’m a cooking show host who can’t cook. It’s a miracle we’ve pulled off the charade this long. Now you want me to continue with a new producer, a woman I don’t even know? Did you even tell her?”

  “She knows what she needs to know. That you took over the show after your father died suddenly of a heart attack. She knows you did it to help me save my financial investment. She knows we changed the name from Dining with Charles to Dining with Joy. She knows you’re funny, clever, and very popular with male viewers and the under-thirty crowd. She knows you’re gorgeous and absolutely dynamite in front of the camera.”

  “You look like a caught teenager, Duncan. Why didn’t you tell her?”

  The man inhaled, his lips forming an answer, then he hesitated. “Because I wanted the sale, and frankly, I don’t think she needs to know.”

  “Then I’ll tell her.” Joy spun toward the trash bins by the door. The dining room was beginning to fill up, and she wanted to leave before the teen behind the counter pointed her out. She was too tired, too on edge to play cooking show host tonight.

  “Don’t bite off your nose to spite your face, Joy. There’s no reason for Allison to know. My guess is she’ll oversee this first season with you, then back off to develop other projects. Ryan will move from director to producer. You’ll take on more of a producer role, and this time next year Allison will never be the wiser. Until then, the crew will back you up. Sharon will continue to do all the recipe development, prep work, and cooking. I’ve filmed dozens of cooking shows with all kinds of folks and trust me, the prep chef can make a monkey look like Emeril Lagasse.”

  “Are you equating me with a monkey, Duncan?” Joy slapped the emptied tray on top of the bin, tugged her Bama cap down over her forehead, and pushed out the door. “I’m telling her.”

  “Then what, Joy?” Duncan’s footsteps scraped along the pavement behind her. “Hmm? Try for a coaching job? Maybe take your liberal arts degree and what . . . write freelance articles? Wasn’t this the year you planned on buying your own place?”

  As a matter of fact, a pre–Civil War home on the corner of Federal and Pinckney. “It doesn’t feel right, Duncan.” Joy jerked open the driver’s side door, climbed behind the wheel, thinking. “As much as I love the show, and yes, the money, and the fans and the travel, it’s hard to pretend I’m a cook when I’m not. It’s like finding out Mr. Rogers hated kids.”

  “Tell you what.” Duncan moved close to peer into her eyes. “Give Allison a chance. If you don’t like her, tell her the truth, break your contract, and walk. But I’ve been producing for a long time and you’re a rare talent, Joy. No, you can’t cook.” His low laugh was laden with the familiarity of an inside joke. “But you’re an entertainer. The camera loves you. Your fans love you. My guess is Allison will take you to the moon.”

  “And once I’m there? Then what?”

  Duncan lightly kissed her cheek, a fatherly gesture. “Then on to the stars.”

  Three

  Luke lowered the heat under the saucepan and tasted his saffron sauce. Beautiful. Just the way he liked it—rich and smooth. He’d been off his game a bit since losing Ami’s and leaving Manhattan for the lowcountry.

  “Luke, shug, are you going to serve that gravy or propose to it?” Mercy Bea peered between the heat lamps, the ends of her piled-high hair barely missing the bulbs. “I got hungry customers.”

  “Sauce, Bea, it’s saffron sauce. Not gravy.” Luke ladled a bit into a dipping bowl. “And it’s good enough to take home to Mama.”

  “And my mama would also call it gravy. In the South, anything you slather over meat or fish is gravy.”

  “I’ll have you thinking my way by the time Andy returns from his back surgery.” Luke tipped his head toward her as he backed away from the service window.

  “And I’ll have you thinking mine.” With an exaggerated tip of her head, Mercy Bea glared at Luke, picked up her gravy, and turned for the dining room.

  Luke laughed. After six months he was starting to feel like a part of the Frogmore Café family. A strapping Emmitt Smith-like chef, Andy Castleton owned the place with Mercy Bea, a single mom of two.

  Luke liked the routine of working nights, getting lost in the comfort of cooking, forgetting about the past year of bankruptcy, failure, and defeat.

  When his cousin, Heath McCord, suggested time in the southern sun and surf as a way to recoup and get his bearings, Luke packed a bag and drove down the next day.

  He found a job at the café working part-time until Andy announced he was going out for back surgery. He clapped his broad hand on Luke’s shoulder and asked him to oversee the back of the house.

  Luke glanced around the kitchen, at home among the old walls and creaking rafters. But he couldn’t hide out here—or board in Miss Jeanne’s third-floor apartment—forever. He was thirty-six years old.

  Sooner or later, he’d have to face his peers, return to New York, and redeem his tarnished restaurateur reputation.

  Across the room, Russell, the prep chef and dishwasher, stacked trays of clean Mason jars under the counter.

  Luke collected the saucepan and emptied the contents into a warmer. Yeah, when Andy returned to the café, Luke would give his notice.

  Until then, he’d enjoy the café, the lowcountry, and life by the ocean. Beaufort was a great little town.

  Grabbing a towel, Luke wiped down the prep table, then checked the lowboy for supplies. A church book club came in every Monday night around eight looking for comfort food—pies, cake, or chocolate.

  Wandering into the dining room, he took a jar from the tray under the lunch counter, scooped it with ice, then filled it with sweet tea.

  The dining room was quiet, peaceful, ethereal with end-of-day light slipping through the windows. The golden glow of a hurricane lamp gleamed off each of Andy’s polished tables.

  Sipping his tea, Luke leaned against the back of the counter and watched Mercy Bea cackle over a story being told by a couple of older gentlemen at table three. Paris drew a broom over the slick, smooth hardwood by the front door.

  If he ever opened another restaurant, he wanted servers like Mercy Bea and Paris, characters who brought the café’s essence to life. Luke raised his tea jar up to the light. And he’d have strong sweet tea on the menu.

  The café’s front bells rang out, clattering against the glass as the door opened. Luke gla
nced up just as she walked in. Athletic, confident, beautiful. In full stride, she made her way to the counter, perched on the middle stool, focused on her phone. He jerked his back straight and set his tea aside, checking the room for Paris. Mercy Bea was still engaged with her customers.

  Luke, man, wait on the customer. “Welcome to the Frogmore Café.” Grabbing a menu, a napkin roll, and a paper place mat, Luke set up Joy’s place. “What can I get you?”

  “I’ll have a piece of apple pie and a Diet Coke.” She tapped the phone’s screen, her posture resolute.

  “Diet Coke and apple pie coming up.” Luke lifted a drink jar from the tray. Filling the jar with soda, he watched her, almost willing her to lift up her head. “Must have been a heck of a day.” Ah!

  Soda spilled over the rim of the glass and covered his hand. With his free hand, he reached to the second shelf for the dish towel.

  “To put it lightly.” She turned her phone sideways and started typing. “It was supposed to be my first day of vacation, but instead my producer—”

  She stopped when he set the Mason jar in front of her, his blue gaze meshed with hers. “I’m sorry, I’m sure you don’t care about . . . Luke, right? Heath’s cousin.”

  “One and the same.” He handed her a straw. “And you are Joy Ballard, cooking host, friend of Heath’s wife.”

  “Elle, yes, I’m impressed.” She peeled the paper from her straw, then stirred her ice and soda. “You remembered me.”

  “Sure, why not?” How could he forget? They’d met in Heath’s backyard under a twilight sky with the tangy scent of barbecue perfuming the breeze. “Apple pie, right?”

  “I need it like I need a hole in the head, but yeah, apple pie.” She regarded him for a moment as if she wanted to say something more, but she returned her attention to her phone.

  He scrambled for something suave and witty to keep the conversation going, but the steely blue of her eyes stymied his thoughts. As Joy bent back to her phone, a silky sheen of burnished hair drawing a curtain over her face, Luke stepped toward the kitchen doors.

  “Apple pie coming up.”

  Joy peeked up at him. “Make it a small piece, please.”

  Luke plated a warm, crusty slice of pie, dusting the crumbling crust with a cinnamon and brown sugar mix. Joy Ballard could sit at his counter anytime.

  He’d heard his New York foodie friends talk about the hot cooking show host, Joy Ballard, but at the time, he’d been consumed with keeping his restaurant alive and well.

  Then during his first month in Beaufort he attended a barbecue at Heath and Elle’s. He’d just pulled an icy root beer from the cooler when a vision emerged through a gauzy veil of sunlight. Elle introduced him to her friend, Joy Ballard, and in his suave, debonair manner, Luke offered her the root beer in his right hand while tipping up his left for a nice cool drink of . . . air.

  The rest of the night he watched her from afar, fascinated and curious, an odd sensation twisting in his chest. When she walked in tonight, the same fascination and odd sensation gripped him.

  In the kitchen, Mercy Bea peeked around his arm as he trimmed the blue apple-pie plate with caramel and chocolate.

  “What are you—Oh, great day in the morning.” Mercy Bea fell against the prep table and shoved his arm so he had to look at her. “Right here, in my eyes . . . Luke, looky. Sakes alive, she got to you that fast? Vroom, gone in sixty seconds.”

  “She who?”

  “She who? The redheaded bombshell out there. That’s who.” Mercy sighed with a faraway look in her eyes. “I should’ve been a redhead.”

  “Got to me? I’m serving a slice of pie.” He wiped the edge of the plate with a damp towel. Presentation was as important as taste.

  “Bubba, we don’t swirl caramel on our plates ’round here. What’d you charge, ten, fifteen bucks for something like that in New York? That’s two-fifty on the menu.”

  “You can read minds now? You know what I’m thinking and feeling? I’m a chef, Mercy. I make specialty items for our customers.” He held up the cinnamon-salted plate and started for the door. “Besides, she’s the first customer all night who doesn’t smell like coconut oil or fish bait.”

  Luke set Joy’s plate on the counter, scooting it close to her hands as she tapped on the phone. He reached for her coke glass, but she’d barely sipped past the rim.

  With one glance, Joy reared back. “Wow, fancy.” She turned the plate, examining it from different sides. “Does Andy know you’re doing this to his dishes?”

  Luke’s soul bristled. “I thought you’d appreciate a finer presentation.”

  “I guess you did.” Joy picked at the cinnamon-topped crust, smiling, then sipped her soda and returned her focus to her phone.

  Luke waited.

  Joy shoved the plate aside as she tapped out a message.

  Luke inched the plate back in place. “Can I get you anything else?”

  With a weighted sigh, she glanced up at him. “How about the last few hours of my day? Got any of that kind of magic back in the kitchen?”

  “Time travel? Nope. All out.” Luke scooted her pie plate closer.

  Eat, Joy.

  “Joy, hon, welcome home. Ain’t seen you around in a while.” Mercy Bea set a tub of dirty dishes on the counter, propped her elbow on the edge, and leaned toward Joy. “But I heard about Omaha.”

  “Did you, now?” Joy set her phone aside and unrolled her napkin from her silverware, her confidence burdened by something subtle and intangible.

  “Falling off the stage?” Mercy swatted gently at Joy’s arm. “You could’ve broken your neck.”

  “You sound like my producer.” Joy speared the tip of her pie, cutting off a small bite.

  “Well, shoot, girl, I sound like anyone with a sound mind.” Mercy wrung a towel she pulled from a tub of clean water and started wiping down the counter. “I see you’ve met Luke. He’s filling in for Andy until his back heals. Used to own a restaurant up in Manhattan. Ami’s, right?”

  “Yeah, Ami’s.” Luke split his gaze between Joy and Mercy Bea, holding his breath, bracing to act if Mercy brought up their kitchen conversation. Vroom, gone in sixty seconds.

  “What happened?” Joy set her fork down, the bite of pie still on the prongs, and drew a short drink from her soda glass.

  “A little bother called bills and debt.” He nodded to Joy’s plate. “I can make that pie à la mode if you want. The crust is extra fluffy tonight.”

  “À la mode? And ruin your caramel and chocolate swirl?” She surveyed the plate, tucking her hair behind her ears. Her phone pinged and she shoved the pie forward again, lost in the world of tiny e-mails.

  “Okay, I’m off to run these through the dishwasher.” Mercy Bea picked up the tub of dirty dishes. “The book club gals will be in soon. Don’t you know they’re more sugar than a quarter can buy?”

  Joy laughed, shaking her head, tapping her phone’s screen. “Any business is good business, Mercy.”

  “Says the girl who fell off the stage.” Mercy disappeared through the kitchen doors.

  Joy still smiled, snickering softly. Luke liked the melody of her voice. It made him wonder how long it’d been since he laughed. A good belly laugh. Turns out the bankruptcy, losing Ami’s and the life he’d chosen for himself, was a real killjoy.

  But lately, he’d been waking up whispering prayers, hope in his thoughts, the weight of despair off his chest.

  And right now, if he had any idea what Mercy Bea was talking about, he’d laugh along with Joy.

  “Not worth the effort.”

  Luke bent to see Joy’s face. “Excuse me?”

  “More sugar than a quarter can buy. It means it’s not worth the effort.”

  Luke smiled. “Ah, good to know. The book club ladies can be demanding.”

  “You need a dictionary to understand Mercy Bea’s sayings.”

  “Just when I thought I was catching on too.” Luke shoved Joy’s pie plate forward, under her hands, as she held
her phone. “I can warm up the pie for you if you want.”

  “I’ve known Mercy my whole life and still get caught off guard.”

  Joy shoved the pie out of the way. “The pie’s warm enough.”

  Luke wondered if she even liked pie. For a second he watched her, then shuffled around the counter, checking the napkin rolls and stack of clean glass trays, thinking it rude to stare at a customer. No matter how beautiful she was. After another minute he backed away, brushing his hands down his apron. “Well, I—”

  The café bells chimed and clattered, weighting the air with a brass ting. Luke expected to see the book club ladies filing in, mingling, chatting about the evening’s selection of what they wanted off the Frogmore’s menu.

  But it wasn’t the book club making a beeline for their spot in the back corner booth. It was Helen Woodward, a recent and annoying acquaintance of Luke’s, striding for the counter.

  “Luke, there you are, shug.” Helen dropped down hard on the stool next to Joy, her apple-round cheeks flushed, her dark hair frizzing about her forehead. “This is my lucky night.” Helen pulled aside Joy’s hair. “Don’t think you can hide behind your gorgeous red sheen, Joy Ballard. You never returned my calls.”

  Joy raised her chin to Helen. “I’m not emceeing the Water Festival Cook-Off, Helen.”

  “Heavens to Betsy, not this again. I get it. A thousand times over. You do not want to compete. I have your rider right here in my folder.” Helen waved a black attaché above her head. “Well, you can talk like nobody’s business, and since you’re one of our most famous citizens, you are the emcee of this cook-off.” Helen jerked some papers from her attaché and slapped them down on the counter. “So stop your bellyaching. Luke Redmond here is going to cook against Wenda Divine. So you can lower your hackles and stop baring your teeth. These are the release forms. One for Luke, one for you, Joy. Luke, be a sweetie and pack a jar with ice cubes and drown them in sweet tea.”

  “Release form?” Joy held her form up to the light as if examining for some secret code.