The Perfect Ingredient (Dare Valley)

by Ava Miles

  “As we said, your early sales figures are looking good, Chef T,” Harwick said, returning to their usual informality. “The product line is rolling out nicely, but I don’t have to tell you that the new TV show will give you a huge jump in sales. We’ve estimated an additional thirty percent conservatively.”

  Conservatively. Every bank’s motto.

  “I think we can count on more,” Terrance said. “I certainly plan to do my part to push the products.”

  Harwick steepled his hands on his shiny mahogany desk. Not a sheet of paper was out of place, and Terrance found himself wondering how much time the guy spent nitpicking over it.

  “My father wasn’t going to mention it, but your recent trending on Twitter gave you a lot of publicity—although it might not be the kind of publicity you had in mind.”

  Leave it to Harwick Junior to mention it. Either that, or Harwick Senior had agreed Junior should be the one to broach the topic.

  Terrance shrugged. “We live in a digital age. These things happen.”

  “It’s a good thing your new girlfriend was comfortable with tweeting about your relationship. It seems to have turned the negative press around.”

  There was an edge to the guy’s voice, and Terrance’s back went ramrod straight. Was this guy insulting Elizabeth? If so, he wouldn’t take it. Harwick had a reputation with the ladies even though he was married, a fact that had never bothered Terrance until now.

  “Elizabeth is wonderful,” he said in a flat tone. “I’m lucky to have her. Speaking of which, I promised to take her to Tiffany’s, so I need to head out soon. Is there anything else you wanted to discuss? It sounds like everything is exceeding our projections.”

  He wasn’t on a schedule, but he didn’t like the turn of this conversation. The man was his banker. Not his friend.

  “Are you two picking out an engagement ring?” the man asked, his mouth a tight line now.

  Rings? Whoa! He hadn’t thought that far down the line, but he realized the relationship might go there in the future. He loved her and wanted to spend his life with her. Marriage had never held an allure, but with her, he liked the idea of it. They could make that leap whenever they wanted.

  “I’ll decline to comment since you never know how things get tweeted,” he joked and rose.

  “And now I really do need to go. Thanks again for meeting with me.”

  “Are you two free for dinner tonight? My wife and I would be happy to host you. The scheduler only consulted my father’s schedule when you called for a meeting. Not mine. She was new, and we didn’t retain her after her mistake.”

  No one could mistake the jealousy in his tone. He’d fired someone for mixing up dinner plans with Daddy?

  “Unfortunately we’ve made other arrangements tonight with an old friend. Perhaps the next time we come back to New York.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  They shook hands and Terrance walked to the door.

  As he was opening it, Harwick called, “Please give Liz my best.”

  Terrance turned around for a moment and forced himself to smile back pleasantly. “I will.” He hated people who shortened other people’s names, trying to be more familiar with them.

  As he walked down the hall, he tried to shrug it off. Harwick had been more of a dick than usual. They’d never talked about women before, so perhaps that had been the difference. Terrance wouldn’t allow him to bring up Elizabeth in the future. Now that he thought of it, he didn’t like the idea of ever bringing her to dinner with Harwick, especially if he was as lascivious as his reputation implied.

  A woman was waiting at the executive assistant’s desk as he was leaving. She had on at least a hundred thousand dollars worth of jewelry and looked like the jet set type.

  “Can you tell Vince I’m here?” the woman breathed out.

  Vince. He hoped the nickname pissed that degree-flaunting jackass off.

  Calling her Liz like that.

  As the elevator dropped down from the one hundred and eleventh floor to the lobby, so did his stomach.

  Harvard.

  Vince.

  Liz.

  Elizabeth’s name had been Liz when she was at Harvard. That much she’d told him. Had Harwick known her? Was that why he’d asked all those personal questions today—something he’d never done before?

  When the doors opened, he strode across the lobby to the street. His gut was burning now, searing from the inside out. The Vince who’d stalked Liz at Harvard came from a powerful family. Few families were as powerful as Harwick’s.

  The image of her strained and pale face this morning rose up in his mind.

  His head exploded. Jesus.

  Was Vincent Harwick the Vince who’d stalked her?

  He stopped in the center of the street, oblivious to the people bumping into him and swearing under their breath. His fingers dug out his phone.

  “Hey,” she answered, and there it was, that thready edge in her voice he’d been trying to soothe for days. Since his first mention of the meeting with Harwick, to be exact.

  “Is Vincent Harwick the man who stalked you?” he asked her straight out. He could apologize later if he was wrong.

  Her sharp intake was all the confirmation he needed. His other hand balled into a fist. He wanted to smash something.

  “Tell me, goddammit.” He needed to hear her say it.

  “Terrance, please listen—”

  “I want an answer,” he growled as car horns sounded on the street.

  “Did he say something?” she asked, her voice hoarse now.

  “I want to hear you say it!”

  “Yes! But please don’t do anything. I don’t want everything you’ve worked for to—”

  He silenced the phone. Silenced her.

  She’d lied.

  She’d knowingly let him walk into that meeting with the man who’d stalked her.

  A chauffeur bumped into him as he came around the long sleek black limousine he’d just parked by the curb. The hair on the back of Terrance’s neck bristled, and he turned around. Harwick was walking toward him, the blond from the reception area hanging onto his arm like he was her sugar daddy.

  “Terrance,” he called out as the couple waded around the ever-present stream of people on the street.

  “You son of a bitch,” Terrance ground out, every muscle locked in place.

  The man’s head jerked back. The blond moved away, her eyes wide.

  “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

  Terrance got into Harwick’s face, just like he used to do to the guys who got on his bad side in his old neighborhood. He could see the whites of the man’s eyes now, like a frightened horse who knew he was about to be broken.

  “You stalked my girlfriend.”

  “Sir,” the chauffeur said, appearing beside them. “Do you want me to call security?”

  “No,” Harwick—Vince—said, tugging on his tie now. “We’re fine. Aren’t we, Chef T?”

  “You called her Liz.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said, throwing a tight smile at the blond he was with, who was watching the scene with keen interest.

  He told himself to keep his cool even as he grabbed Harwick by the lapels of his ten-thousand dollar suit. “Don’t fucking lie to me. I know what you did to her.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Harwick said in a violent whisper, shoving Terrance’s hands away. “Liz was a slut back then and a liar, and she’s clearly no better now. I told her we’d dump your contract if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. And now she’ll find out how much I meant it.”

  Camera flashes were blinding him now that he’d drawn attention to himself.

  Slut.

  Liar.

  His control snapped. No one was allowed to call Elizabeth those names. The street kid broke through and punched Harwick squarely in the belly.

  People gasped.

  Adrenaline racing, he fought with his old instincts. It took a
moment, but Terrance was able to pull back from giving the man the full, thorough beating he deserved.

  Harwick was bent over, his breath heaving out, clutching his belly. It would have to be enough.

  More flashes blinded Terrance’s eyes. Strong arms came around him then, and he jerked against them.

  “Calm down,” the chauffeur said as security guards swarmed out of the Harwick & Taylor building.

  Men in security uniforms surrounded him, and he heard police sirens in the distance. He struggled against the arms restraining him.

  “Let me go, goddammit!”

  Harwick finally straightened and marched over, his eyes hard as marbles now. Terrance had grown up around killers, and he knew what a man’s looked like when he wanted to hurt someone for fun. Harwick had that look.

  “I’m going to destroy you for that and that bitch Liz too.”

  Then he punched Terrance in the gut and stormed back into his family’s building, the blond running after him in her four-inch designer heels.

  The blow didn’t make him flinch. Or cough. Or even spit. As a youth, he’d become a master at keeping his cool when bigger kids beat him up.

  The police elbowed their way through the crowd that had clustered around the scene, some of the onlookers still taking photos. Videos. Hell, he’d just given them an eyeful. It would already be hitting Twitter.

  But it didn’t matter.

  None of it mattered.

  The chauffeur released him into the police’s custody, and he was taken to sit in the closest vehicle after he showed them his ID. His ID! Like they didn’t know who he was. The people on the street were shouting his name.

  Harwick had refused to allow the police to bring him inside, away from the media-frenzied crowd, likely hoping to add to Terrance’s disgrace.

  When the cop asked him for a statement, he shrugged and said he didn’t have one to make. The cop left him alone with a guard by the car, telling him not to leave until they sorted the situation out. People continued to take photos of him, and he lowered his head.

  Elizabeth had known all along and hadn’t told him.

  She’d talked to Vince about him and hadn’t said a word.

  Everything they’d promised each other had been a lie.

  Chapter 38

  By the time Elizabeth had hailed a cab to head downtown to Harwick & Taylor, Twitter was exploding with tweets about the violent altercation between Terrance and Vincent Harwick, the scion of financial giant Harwick & Taylor. Terrance wouldn’t answer her calls or texts, and she had no idea whether he could. All she could do was click on links to pictures of them fighting in front of the bank on the street in front of hundreds of witnesses.

  It was her worst nightmare come true.

  Terrance’s face looked like cut steel, so hard and angry she shivered in her seat. Vince looked the same. Menacing. Triumphant. Especially in the picture where his chauffeur was restraining a struggling Terrance on the street.

  The only silver lining were the pictures of Vince’s cloying mistress hanging onto him as he rushed back into the building. People were speculating on the identity of the woman since she wasn’t Mrs. Harwick.

  Reporters were already on site, and cops seemed to be everywhere, judging from the live photos taken at the scene. An assault on a senior bank executive like Vincent Harwick was big news. Even bigger since the perpetrator was a celebrity chef.

  And since the photographic evidence of Terrance’s recent altercation with Ryan had made the rounds, that story was woven into the one with Vince. Each media sound bite, each tweet was building a picture of a troubled man who’d snapped.

  Based on what she could see online, no statements had been made by either Vince or Terrance. Her phone rang, and she saw that it was Mac. Dread circling in her belly, she answered.

  “Mac,” she said simply, chafing at the monotonous crawl of traffic.

  “Elizabeth. I assume whatever it was that you didn’t want Terrance to know about Harwick & Taylor has come to light. My publicist just called to fill me in on the events out there. Where are you?”

  His hotel chain would be affected by this, she suddenly realized, since he employed Terrance. Her nightmare grew.

  “In a cab trying to get to the bank.”

  “Go home. If you show up, it will only make things worse. You need to start thinking like a publicist. Terrance is going to need our help now.”

  Help. Yes, he would need that and more. “You’re right.”

  She told the cab to take her back to the apartment, frustration making her sit on the edge of the seat. Terrance would come home sometime. Then he’d have to talk to her.

  “Are you going to tell me now what your reservations were about Harwick & Taylor?” She’d known Mac for too long to miss the edge in his voice.

  “Vince Harwick stalked me when I attended Harvard.” She glanced at the cab driver. With the TV screen blaring on the divider between the front and the back, she didn’t think he could hear her. Still, she wanted to err on the side of caution.

  “Oh, Elizabeth,” Mac said, his voice whisper soft.

  She hung her head.

  “And you didn’t tell Terrance that?”

  “I was trying to prevent this from happening. Look I’m not in a place to talk now.”

  “Okay. We’ll do what we can with Terrance’s people. For the moment, I suggest you say nothing.”

  Nothing. She’d been good at that of late. “Agreed. I’ll talk to you later.”

  She realized there might be reporters camping out on the doorstep of Terrance’s building, so she dialed up his building’s phone number and asked if there was a private entrance she could use. After paying the cab driver a block away, she followed the directions to the underground entrance.

  Inside Terrance’s apartment, she turned on the TV, dialed up her computer, and watched her phone. The story continued to spread. Reporters speculated the business deal between Harwick and Terrance must have gone bad. Others discussed Terrance’s reputation for violence, and how it seemed to have escalated in recent days.

  No one said anything negative about Harwick & Taylor. Their esteemed reputation would keep them looking lily white through all this.

  Soon, a new story broke, and it had her sinking to her knees in the middle of his penthouse. His primetime TV network had announced they were dropping his new reality TV cooking show.

  Terrance was losing everything.

  And it was all her fault.

  The tears started. Her phone rang, and she grabbed it, hoping it was Terrance. It was her best friend instead.

  “Jane,” she whispered, her throat raw.

  “Liz. Oh, Liz. What happened?”

  She told her what she knew, which wasn’t much.

  “Jane. I need you.”

  “I know. I’ve just rented a private plane in Denver.”

  God, she was so lucky. She hadn’t even needed to ask her to come. “Terrance is so angry, Jane. And now he’s lost the TV show because of this. Because of me.”

  “Stop. This is not your fault.”

  Her gaze swept around the penthouse to where her things were mingled with his. Everything had felt so right between them. Now she couldn’t imagine how they would ever reclaim that.

  “I should have told him.” Maybe if she’d done things differently…

  She should never have trusted Vince. He must have said something to Terrance. Nothing else made sense.

  “Terrance might have taken a swing at Vince anyway. Matt said he would have, if that makes you feel any better. Liz, Rhett and Abbie are coming with Matt and me.”

  Her family was circling the wagons. She’d always been able to count on them. “How mad is Rhett?”

  “He loves you, Liz, but he was hurt. And mad. I’ve never seen him so mad. He wanted to take Vince to the woodshed. But it doesn’t change how he feels about you.”

  Her guilt grew. Rhett had been her brother, friend, boss, and savior. God she hoped he could forgive he
r.

  “Mac is trying to decide if he should come with us to New York or stay in Dare,” Jane continued “He’s being inundated with phone calls.”

  Yes, the press would want to know if the hotel tycoon was going to dump his violent celebrity chef like the primetime network had done. There was already speculation about what Mac would do in the media, and reading the speculation made her gut churn.

  “Has anyone heard from Terrance?” she asked Jane, wishing he would call back, if only to tell her he was okay.

  If the police charged him with assault…

  Since people had tweeted that Vince had hit Terrance too she was hoping it would even things out. Harrison Harwick wouldn’t want to charge Terrance with assault if his own beloved son could be implicated for anything—like stalking Elizabeth. He’d remember Liz Parenti once Vince clued him in on the situation.

  The Harwick men would find other ways to punish Terrance. First up would be reneging on their business contract for Terrance’s culinary product line. Then they would turn their attention on her, she’d bet.

  “He’s briefly talked to Mac,” Jane told her. “He’s waiting to hear if he’s going to be charged.”

  Then her friend paused, and she knew she was about to hear something that would hurt her.

  “He told Mac he’s going to say it was a business misunderstanding if they press him.”

  “He’s protecting me?” she breathed out. “Even now? But he’ll lose everything if he says it’s a business misunderstanding. No one will want to work with him again.”

  “I know.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand, trying to hold back the sobs that wanted to break free. Terrance might be angry with her, but he was trying to save her too, just like she had done for him.

  “I need to go to him.”

  “You know you can’t. You have to trust him—and Mac. His team is on this now.”

  She heaved herself off the floor, wishing she was the kind of person who threw things. It might make her feel better. “I hate the waiting.”

  “Just hold on. We’ll probably get in late, but we’ll be there as soon as we can. Liz, we’re going to get through this—just like we did last time.”