“Of course.”
“Well, a line chef is supposed to master all the fine techniques of true cooking by unfailingly following the orders of the sous-chef and the chef-de-cuisine over him. But the thing of it is, the only way for someone on the bottom to make a name for himself is to find his own voice—to buck the system. He needs to break away from slavishly following what the authorities above him have taught him to do.”
“Are you saying I need to do that? I need to break away from my father’s yoke?”
He shook his head vigorously. “No, don’t you get it? You’ve already done that. You took the curator’s job and are sticking with it despite your father’s harassment. You’ve found something you love. That makes you happy.”
“I guess I was starting to become more independent, as well as subconsciously finding myself, when I took the library-science degree, too,” Penelope thought out loud. Then she looked at him. “I guess this makes me something of a late bloomer.”
“Some of the most beautiful flowers are late bloomers. And waiting for them to blossom fully only enhances their allure.”
“It does?” She found herself mesmerized by his lips, and not just the words coming out of them. She thought how wonderful they might feel against hers.
“So, I take it that you agree with my diagnosis?” Nick asked.
She pictured his mouth moving from her lips to her cheeks, then her neck and parts even more sensitive.
Penelope shook her head. “I suppose what you say might have some academic merit. After all, it is a well-documented psychiatric finding that the desire to garner favor from a person of authority—be it familial or otherwise—is not necessarily a wise one. You know, you really do have an amazing mouth…” she said, her voice trailing off.
Nick grinned. “I’m glad you think so. I intend to use it in ways you never dreamed of—or at least my overdeveloped male ego likes to think so. If you have no objections, that is.”
She breathed in. “None whatsoever.”
He leaned closer. Then stopped. “Tell me, you said a friend of yours in Italy taught you how to cook?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yes?” She was confused.
“I ask not just out of curiosity, but quite possibly out of jealousy.”
Penelope smiled, pleased. “Really, you have nothing to be jealous about. My friend’s name was Giovanni, or Gigi, as he was often known. I knew him when I lived in Rome. He was a brilliant historian, mind you, an expert on Franciscan theology and the papacy. But he also had a very playful side to him. Always joking. I understood him, too, much the way I can read you.”
“You’re saying nothing to relieve my jealousy,” Nick admitted.
“I’m sorry. I thought you understood. Gigi was gay. And unfortunately, he didn’t practice safe sex and developed HIV. Medication kept it in check for a number of years.” She faltered. “By the time I met him, that was changing. In the last year, I had him move in with me so I could help take care of him. His family, you see, was very conservative, very religious. They had rejected him because of his lifestyle. Can you imagine?”
“Can I imagine some people acting that way? Unfortunately, yes. But you? Never.”
She wet her top lip with the tip of her tongue. She heard him groan softly, an indication of the power she had over him. That made her feel good, made her feel feminine. “Anyway, to make a long story short, Gigi was a very proud man, and he wanted to pay me for what he called my kindness. Obviously I refused any money.”
“Obviously.”
Penelope recognized that he wasn’t being sarcastic. “So, instead, I suggested he give me cooking lessons in return. His specialty was Calabrian food—apparently the love of his life had been a Calabrian—very dark, passionate, an architect. Anyway, Gigi would sit in his chair, bundled up no matter how warm the weather, and instruct me in how to prepare various dishes. I use the term ‘instruct’ loosely. Often, it was more like a screaming match.” She laughed.
“I can imagine.” Nick nodded.
“Then he died.” Penelope stopped to collect herself. She covered her mouth.
“Take your time.” Nick brushed her cheek.
The gesture reassured her. She cleared her throat. “After the funeral, while I was getting ready to come back to the States and my job in Chicago, I was contacted by an Italian solicitor. She informed me that Gigi had left me a house he owned in Capo Vaticano—a house I never even knew he had. The gift came with instructions. I was to take his ashes down to the villa and spread them in the sea by the little beach. I went. And I fell in love with the spot, the house—designed by Gigi’s former lover, I found out later.”
“So you found happiness?” Nick observed.
Penelope reflected. “I guess you could say I did. Through Italy, through friendship and through food—a lot of it was through food. It was the start of my transformation and, I guess, my independence from my father. True, my first job was as an assistant professor of Classics—something in his mold, but I believe I took it because that’s what I had been trained to do, not solely to please him. Yet, when I didn’t get tenure, he was the one who was devastated. I was actually somewhat relieved.”
She laid her head against the headrest of her seat. “This has been a most enlightening conversation.” Then she lavished him with her most genuine smile. “But then I would have expected nothing less from a bestselling author, three-star chef, travel authority and television host, not to mention a champion Beer Pong player.”
“Is this where you throw yourself at me in awe and yearning?” Nick asked playfully.
“And you’re even funny,” she reflected. “Remarkable.” She shifted in her seat, kicking her bag that rested on the floorboards. The toe of her shoe made contact with something solid. “My goodness. I almost forgot.” She bent down and lifted out a large bundle covered in butcher paper. She handed it to him.
Nick held it aloft. “I’m confused.”
“It’s my ’nduja,” Penelope announced. “I brought it tonight as a present for you. I also have some minitoasts in my bag—you know, the ones from France—and a spreader in case your hotel room doesn’t have any utensils.”
She went to search through her bag again, but Nick held her back.
“Did you say my ‘hotel room’?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. Don’t you think that the comfort and privacy of your room would make it easier for me to throw myself at you in awe and admiration? Besides which, in all the years I’ve lived in Grantham, I have never been to a hotel room in our quaint, if overpriced, community.”
He grabbed her and kissed her hard and fierce before swiveling around and putting the engine in Drive. “Then, let me be your first.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
NICK ROLLED OVER ON HIS back and flopped with his arms on either side of his head. “Oh, my God, that was positively mind-blowing.” The twisted top sheet clung to his lower body. His bare chest heaved with each deep breath, a few gray hairs sprinkled among the dark ones.
Penelope licked her fingers. She was sitting up against a mound of pillows, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was totally naked, exposing her lovely rounded breasts. To Nick’s eye, they seemed like barely ripe, lush peaches—minus the fuzz, of course. Her rosy-red nipples pointed slightly upward, firm and erect, a testament to her recent arousal.
Nick sighed. He didn’t do that very often.
“Yes, I think it was a good batch of ’nduja, if I say so myself. I will have to compliment Mike for providing such succulent, tasty pigs,” she said with amusement stamped across her face.
Nick flipped to his side. He reached for her hand and licked her fingers himself. They tasted of the piquant sausage—hot and smooth. Just like Penelope. “You’ve become a regular verbal minx, as they would say
,” he noted. A few crumbs from the cracker on which she’d spread the ’nduja sprinkled down between her breasts.
She looked up thoughtfully, holding the rest of the cracker in her hand. “Minx. I like that. I’ve never heard that used in conversation.”
He slid up and took her in his arms. “Another first. I feel all-powerful.” He bent his head and licked the crumbs off her skin.
Penelope closed her eyes and purred. “I never knew that homemade sausage could be such an aphrodisiac.”
Nick looked up. “The ’nduja was truly inspirational, but do you think that was all?”
Penelope placed a hand on the side of his head and gently stroked his wavy hair. “I like how you’ve gone gray,” she said. “And, no. I don’t think it was just the ’nduja. I love you, you know.” She said it simply, directly.
So like Penelope, Nick thought. Honest and open. “I know. And I think I’m in love with you, too.”
“Think? I thought you told me it was sometimes better to feel?” She stilled her hand.
He brought his head close to hers, angling it just so. “As usual, you are correct.” His lips meshed with hers in a sensuous, exploratory kiss. His hands found her face, her shoulders, her breasts, and even before he had rolled on top, they became oblivious to the crumbs on the bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“WE SEEM TO SPEND A FAIR share of our time in the front seat of a car,” Nick observed hours after their lovemaking. Once more he sat in the driver’s seat, Penelope to his right. The dashboard was lit up in the darkness of night, the engine running and the headlights streaming against her garage door. He had just pulled into her tiny driveway.
He didn’t want to let her out of his sight. Didn’t want to think about anything but being with her and doing all sorts of things with her. Mostly sex. So sue me, as his late grandfather Lou would have said to his fellow retirees after trouncing them yet again at canasta. It was a wild bunch at his nursing home in Englewood, New Jersey.
Penelope looked at him with a sly smile that turned up one corner of her mouth. He wouldn’t put it past her to know what he was thinking.
But being Penelope, she just smiled, and then said, “We’re doing the right thing. This is what’s called discretion and being the parent of an impressionable teenager.”
Nick turned off the engine and killed the headlights. He had the feeling this conversation was just the beginning. “You don’t think Amara isn’t aware that certain things go on between a man and a woman?”
“I think she probably knows more than I.”
Nick frowned. “That’s supposed to be reassuring?”
Penelope laughed. “I think Amara is more than aware of what goes on, as you say. But that doesn’t mean she’s experienced. So that makes it even more imperative that I go home now. Your relationship with her right now is, shall we say, tenuous?”
“At best,” Nick admitted.
“In which case, why complicate an already complicated situation? And besides, if I am here with her, I can make sure she is up in time for The Parade tomorrow morning.” A traditional part of Reunions at Grantham University was the Saturday-morning parade of alumni from all the returning classes, as well as the soon-to-be-graduating class. All the participants marched in outrageous outfits picked out by each class.
“Wait a minute. You’re coming, too, aren’t you?” Nick detected a note of anxiety in his voice.
“I don’t usually march with my class, no. Large gatherings of that nature have never been my style.”
“You don’t have to march with your class. March with mine. You can accompany Amara. It’ll be fun.” Or so he hoped. “For me,” he added for emphasis.
“All right. If not for you, then for Amara. After all, we daughters of successful but emotionally remote fathers have to stick together. Sisterhood is Powerful—or so goes the title of the classic anthology dating from the second wave of radical feminist writings, I believe circa 1970…though, it could be 1971. I need to check that.”
“You do that. And in the meantime, I’ll get Georgie to scrounge up a costume for you.” He knocked the side of his head with the heel of his hand. “That’s right. Amara will need one, too. I don’t want to be the only member of the family to look totally ridiculous, you know.”
She patted him on the leg. “No, don’t bother Georgie. Amara and I are perfectly capable of coming up with color-coordinated creations of our own. Besides, I think I like the idea of being able to make fun of you.” She leaned over the hand brake. There was a glint in her eye.
“What kind of a monster have I created here?” Nick moved toward her and wondered if he could get her to do more than neck. After all, it was dark. It wasn’t as if anyone was up and about this time of night in the quiet residential neighborhood. He was sure that with a little coaxing… His lips touched hers, warm and by now familiar, yet a mystery at the same time…
And then he heard the squeak. He shifted and decided to ignore it. But it only grew louder.
He lifted his head and reached for the headlights mechanism on the dashboard. He flicked them on, and in the sudden glare, saw a dark figure coast a bike to a stop in front of Penelope’s garage door. “What the…” He sat up straight, then pushed the driver’s side door open.
“Amara, what’s going on?” He confronted her on the driveway.
Amara hopped off the bike and turned around. She shaded her eyes from the glare of the lights.
Nick glanced at the illuminated dial on his overly expensive watch, a present to himself after the one-hundredth episode of the television show. “It’s freaking two-thirty in the morning. You said you were going to stay home and go to bed early because you were tired. Now I find you sneaking home.” He loomed over her.
Amara shook her head. “It’s not what you think, Dad.”
“You don’t want to know what I think,” he shouted. From behind him, he heard a car door open and shut.
Penelope joined them. “Perhaps we’d all be more comfortable if we went inside?” She pointed toward the door.
“Thank you.” Nick could control himself enough to be polite. After all, it wasn’t Penelope’s problem that his daughter had the judgment of a gnat and the hormonal urges of…well…a randy teenager.
He tried to calm his anger. Unfortunately he was so rattled by what appeared to be Amara’s poor judgment that there was no way he could keep his cool. “That’s kind of you, but I don’t see any reason to make things easier for Amara. It wasn’t enough for you to take your mother’s car. Now you steal Penelope’s bike?”
“I said she could borrow it.” Penelope came to Amara’s defense.
“But I bet you didn’t say she could borrow it to meet up with Press at all hours of the night?” He saw Penelope flinch, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He was too upset with Amara. He would smooth things over with Penelope later.
Amara stuck out her chin. “Okay, I snuck out to see Press, but that was at some lousy softball game.”
“You know the one between the graduating class and the ten-year alums?” Penelope said, trying to be helpful.
It wasn’t. “A lousy softball game doesn’t last this late at night. You were with him, weren’t you? He put the moves on you, didn’t he?”
Amara shook her head, purposely avoiding his glare. She pulled back her narrow shoulders. “You’d think you know everything. But you’re wrong. I was the one to put the moves on Press. And he rejected me. That’s right, he essentially told me I was a baby.”
“Those wouldn’t have been my words, but you’ll thank him for them one day, trust me,” Nick said, searching for a note of sensitivity.
“Trust you? What have you ever done to make me trust you?” Amara shot back. “Besides, if you really want to know, when Pres
s rejected me I went off with his friend Matt. I was with him until now.”
“So now you’re telling me that you let that little twerp in your pants instead?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Penelope cover her mouth with her hand.
“What!” Amara screamed back.
This was not his finest hour. How do people get through the teenage years anyway? Nick wondered. He tried to pull himself together. “Keep it down, would you?” he ordered.
“I’m supposed to keep it down when you’re allowed to shout all you want?”
“That’s right, because I’m the parent.”
“The parent who doesn’t know his own daughter enough to trust her? What kind of parent is that?” she spat back.
Father and daughter stared each other down.
Penelope stepped between them. “I think it’s getting extremely late. And it’s probably better to continue this discussion after a good night’s sleep, when cooler heads can prevail.”
Nick and Amara looked at her as though she was speaking gibberish. Finally Nick inhaled slowly and worked the base of his neck. “Okay. Penelope’s right. That’s probably enough for now.” Then he pointed a stubborn finger at Amara. “But this discussion is not over, young lady. I have to prepare for filming The Parade in the morning, pretty early, but I’ll come by to pick you both up before the thing starts.”
“It would be easier on everyone if we make our own way over to the staging area,” Penelope suggested. “There’s no need for you to be running around on our account.” She held up her hand. “And, no, Georgie doesn’t need to chaperone us, either. We are perfectly capable of getting there on our own.”
Nick’s blood pressure was still elevated, but at least it had come down from near-stroke point. “All right, but be there. I don’t want to find out about any other extra-curricular activities going on behind my back.” He eyed Amara critically. “And I don’t want to hear you’ve taken advantage of Penelope’s kind nature. She’s predisposed to please other people.”
A Rare Find Page 17