by JoAnn Ross
Shelter Bay was also where she’d given her teenage heart to a rich “summer boy,” only to have it shattered by Labor Day. But she’d tried, with not always successful results, to put that dark day in the past.
“I read all about that.” The pom-pom on her hat bobbed as the woman nodded. “After your folks died in that plane crash, which was a crying shame, you went to live with your grandmother on her lavender farm.
“You can find anything on the Internet these days,” she clarified at Madeline’s surprised glance. “I even found your wedding photos. You sure were a picture in that white dress.”
“My wedding photos are on the Internet?”
“The photographer has them in his gallery.”
“I hadn’t realized that.” The idea of her personal photos out there on the World Wide Web was more than a little unsettling. Unlike her celebrity-chef husband, who thrived in the spotlight, Madeline had always been a private person. It had taken a lot for her to get comfortable in front of the TV cameras.
“Well, you needn’t worry, because they’re beautiful. Did you make that pretty flowered cake yourself?”
“No. I’m not much of a baker.” Unlike the creative freedom and improvisation allowed by the comfort food she’d become known for, baking required precision, a strict attention to measurements, and much more patience than Madeline possessed. “My husband’s pastry chef made it.”
“I stick to cookies when it comes to baking,” Birdy said cheerfully. “They’re a lot harder to mess up than cakes or pies, and the grandkids love them.” Her comfortable way with a total stranger reminded Madeline of her grandmother Sofia. “My mother-in-law’s from South Dakota, so, now that she’s passed, I get the job of cooking her kuchen for this year’s Easter dinner.”
As she launched into a lengthy explanation of the pressures of duplicating the recipe, which used raspberries atop a custard base, an oncoming car fishtailed on the icy road, then headed directly toward them.
Birdy twisted the wheel and braked at the same time. Although she managed to avoid impact, the SUV went into a skid.
As Madeline clutched the door handle, they skated on what felt like an ice rink beneath the tires, bumping over the rumble strip in the middle of the road.
“Hold on,” Birdy advised with what Madeline found to be remarkable calm. “We’re about to come to a stop.”
Which they did as they plowed, hood first, into a frozen, exhaust-darkened snowbank.
“Don’t you worry.” After trying to back up only sent the rear wheels spinning, the woman, who seemed to have sturdy pioneer blood flowing in her veins, dug into her coat pocket and pulled out a phone. “We’ll get you to the mall on time. Not that they can start without you.”
She punched a single number on the keypad. “No point in calling for a tow truck since we’re not all that stuck. The police will be here in a two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
“You have the police department on speed dial?”
“My youngest boy, Jeb, is on the force, so I keep his number handy. He’s the one who’ll pull us out.”
And, sure enough, before Madeline’s feet could turn completely to ice cubes, a huge black SUV with white doors came up behind them, blue and red roof lights flashing.
The officer who climbed out of the driver’s seat was large enough to have played linebacker on the Cornhuskers football team. He was wearing sensible snowpack boots, thick gloves, a parka, and a fur hat with earflaps. While his partner jumped out of the shotgun seat to set a flare and direct traffic, he crunched along the plowed snow at the edge of the roadway.
“Third time this week, Ma,” he greeted her. Although his expression was resigned, his blue eyes revealed relief that the accident hadn’t been worse.
“It wasn’t my fault,” she said. “The driver of the other car, who didn’t even stick around to see the trouble he caused, went across the line first.” She turned toward Madeline. “Tell him.”
“Your mother did a lot better than I would have under the circumstances,” Madeline said.
“Driven in a lot of snow, have you, ma’am?” he asked.
“No, but—”
“You must be the celebrity chef from New York City,” he said, cutting her off.
Madeline was about to explain again that she wasn’t a celebrity, but decided it wasn’t germane to their situation.
“She is. And we need to get her to the mall on time.” Birdy might be a good foot shorter than her son, but that didn’t stop her from pulling out her mom voice. “Jebediah, meet Chef Madeline Durand. Chef Madeline, this is my baby boy. Who I’m usually super proud of.” She drummed her mitten-clad fingers on the steering wheel. “Except for when he wastes time scolding his mother when she has important things to do.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said politely to Madeline. “And I worry about you,” he told his mother.
“Well, that makes us even for all the years I’ve worried about you,” she shot back. “Now, if you don’t mind, we’re going to be late if we don’t get this show on the road.”
“That’s very good,” Madeline murmured after Officer Jebediah Hinlemeir trudged back to his Omaha Police SUV.
“One of the perks of being a mother,” Birdy said cheerfully, as snowflakes began to pile up on the windshield. “You get to boss around people bigger than you. Jeb’s about to become a father himself in the next month or so, but he’ll always be my baby. You and your husband planning to have kids anytime soon?”
“I do want children—someday—but we’re both occupied with our careers right now.”
Madeline wasn’t prepared to share the fact that she and Maxime weren’t exactly on the same page when it came to starting a family. Admittedly, the timing wasn’t right now, when she was forced to give every waking moment to her work and supporting Maxime’s far-flung enterprises. At twenty-eight, she had years left to convince her husband that she could, as her own mother had, successfully combine work and a career, despite Maxime’s fear that a child would take her focus off her career. Or, more likely, as she often suspected, off him.
“Well, you’re still young,” Birdy pointed out. “Of course, your husband’s quite a bit older, but age isn’t such a big deal for men. They’re not the ones with their eggs getting older by the day.”
And wasn’t that a fun thought?
It didn’t take long for Jebediah and his partner to pull them out of the snowbank, and within fifteen minutes the SUV was crunching its way across the mall parking lot.
“Nice thing about winter,” Birdy said, her optimism once again reminding Madeline of her grandmother. “The snow fills in all the potholes.”
The kitchen setup in the store was as good as promised. As she entered the area to the enthusiastic applause of all the women—along with a few men—who’d braved the weather to show up today, Madeline felt almost like a rock star.
Birdy’s assistant had warmed up the preprepared dish, sending the rich aroma of wine gravy and braised meat wafting throughout the store.
“That scrumptious smell’s goin’ to be drawing them in from all over the mall,” Birdy predicted.
Which appeared to be true as the crowd grew while Madeline demonstrated how to caramelize meat in a sauté pan from ChefSteel, the company with whom her agent had negotiated an endorsement deal. Birdy had gone all out, setting up a video camera, which allowed those in the back of the crowd to watch on a large-screen television.
“Sizzling’s good,” Madeline said as the olive oil danced. “This part takes patience because you want the meat to be nicely colored on all sides. That’s what elevates your dish to perfection.”
She took the ribs out of the pan and put them on a plate. “Now we’ll sauté our mirepoix—which is simply a fancy French name for a mixture of cut celery, carrots, and onions—in the drippings from the meat.”
Again, the assistant had come through with the prep work.
“The fat in the pan is bringing up more meat flavors into the veg
gies,” Madeline said as she stirred them. “We’ll cook just until they’re tender. An interesting little bit of trivia is that mirepoix is named for a duke who was a field marshal for King Louis the Fifteenth. According to the stories, despite being incompetent, he was given the post of ambassador because the king appreciated his wife’s charms.”
As always, that story raised eyebrows.
“Whatever Mirepoix’s alleged failings, the man could definitely cook. He gave his name to lots of different sauces, but this one’s become the standard.”
As she went on to demonstrate how to deglaze with balsamic vinegar and red wine, Madeline thought the bit of eighteenth-century gossip was the cause of the murmurs humming through the crowd. Then she noticed a couple sharing an iPhone, while others around them were busily tapping into their own smart phones.
Curious, she glanced over at Birdy, who, after looking up from her own phone’s screen, went as pale as the onions sautéing in the pan.
The older woman hurried over to Madeline. “Now that Chef Madeline’s been good enough to share her wonderful culinary tips with us, Julie will be serving the final result,” she announced. “And I know you’ll all enjoy it.” She took hold of Madeline’s arm and dragged her behind a tall counter filled with shiny, upscale coffeemakers.
“What’s wrong?” Madeline asked.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, dear, but one of the women in the crowd apparently hit on a YouTube video while Googling your name. My guess is she’s a shopper who didn’t know about you being here today and went online to find out more about you.”
“Which video?” The network kept several of her past episodes on their Web site.
Birdy winced. “It’s hard to explain. Maybe I’d best just show you.” She handed Madeline her phone.
The screen was small and a distracting glare from the store’s bright overhead lights at first made it difficult for Madeline to make out what she was seeing.
It appeared to be a man and woman having sex. Energetic, hot, sweaty sex. Fortunately, the phone’s sound had been muted.
Madeline was still wondering what this had to do with her when realization hit like a meat mallet to her head.
It wasn’t just any man. The crescent-shaped birthmark on his butt gave him away.
It was Maxime.
Her husband.
Proving, Madeline thought as white spots like snowflakes began to dance in front of her eyes, that not everything that happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas.
2
The sky was high and as blue as a robin’s egg the spring day Navy SEAL medic Lucas Chaffee buried his father at sea. The sea Duncan Chaffee had loved so well.
The Kelli, a gleaming white boat operated by Cole Douchett, brother of one of Lucas’ former SEAL teammates, cut through the waves as they headed three miles away from the coast.
“How are you doing?” a quiet voice asked. Charity Tiernan had become his stepsister during the brief time his father had been married to her mother. She’d stayed his friend long after their parents’ divorce.
“I’m okay. If he had to go, at least he went exactly the way he would’ve wanted. Having a great day on the water.”
“That is something. Do you have any plans?”
He’d had one. One that he and his dad had been discussing in back-and-forth e-mail between Portland and Afghanistan for the past year.
Which was what made the timing of his father’s death so ironic.
The plan, as carefully detailed as the opera house with its soaring wings that his dad had designed on Hong Kong’s harbor, had been for Duncan to step down from the presidency of the architecture firm he’d founded; then the two of them would go into business restoring old homes up and down the West Coast.
Having grown up on construction sites, and mentally exhausted from struggling to save lives on battlefields, Lucas had jumped at the idea, which included taking the obligatory professional training and the exam covering business practices and laws. So, at the moment, he had an Oregon state contractor’s license, but no work and no plans.
“I haven’t a clue.” He dragged a hand through his hair, which, while not nearly as short as a Marine’s high-and-tight, was still shorter than he’d worn it during his days tracking down terrorists in the Afghan mountains. “I was thinking this morning Scout and I might hang out in Shelter Bay a while. In the house.” His father had built the gray-shingled, oceanfront Cape Cod cottage as a place to escape after Lucas’ mother had left them both. It was the same cottage where he and Charity had lived with their parents during what was, hands down, the second-best summer of his life.
The best had been that later summer when he’d discovered love with an impetuous, stunning girl with smoky eyes and a mass of dark, corkscrew curls that had danced in the sea breeze around a face that had, the first time he’d seen it, stopped his heart.
Even now, the memory of how that summer had ended pricked a heart that was already aching.
On hearing her name, Scout, the German shepherd seated beside him, happily thumped her tail. He absently reached down and patted the dog’s head.
Charity’s smile was brighter than the sun that was creating diamonds on the water. “Oh, I’d love that.” She immediately sobered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound as if I’m glad—”
“I know.” He took hold of her hand, the one that wasn’t holding the white rose she’d brought for the ceremony, as they stood side by side at the gleaming brass rail. Since turning his family’s fishing boat into a tourists’ charter boat, Cole had spiffed it up a lot. “I’d like a chance to catch up, too.” It was his turn to smile. “And make sure that Marine you’ve hooked up with is good enough for you.”
“It’s a lot more than just a hookup. And Gabe is really, really good for me. You’ll like him.”
“He’s a jarhead.” Even after all these years apart, the easy verbal sparring felt familiar. And loosened the anchor chain that had been around his heart since he’d gotten the news of his father’s heart attack from one of the associate partners in the firm.
“That’s funny.” Her eyes danced with teasing laughter. “Because although I wasn’t going to mention it, especially given the circumstances, he called you a Frog Boy.”
Lucas laughed. A deep, booming laugh that swelled his chest and broke the chain. “Your loyalties have shifted.”
She immediately sobered again, reminding Lucas how much family meant to Charity. Which made sense, given her serial-marrying parents. “I was kidding,” she said.
“I know. And I can’t think of anyone who deserves a happily-ever-after more than you. So if you’re happy, I’m happy.”
“I’m beyond happy. What about you? Are you still involved with that decorator?”
“She’s an interior designer.” Brooke Kendall, who’d worked on developments with his father, was gorgeous, smart as a whip, talented, and ambitious. On the rebound from a divorce, she’d been available when he’d landed back in Portland two months ago after his separation from the Navy. “I suppose that depends on what your definition of involved is.”
“But you’re still dating?”
He cringed at the idea. “Geez, that sounds so high school.”
After all he’d seen, all he’d been through, those days seemed to have taken place in another lifetime. He might not have come home with flaming PTSD like others he’d served with, but he wasn’t the same person he’d been before his first deployment. Hell, he wasn’t even the same guy who, despite his father’s concerns, had turned his back on medical school and gone off to SEAL BUD/S training so he could do his part in the war against terrorism.
“You’re right. I hated it when my mother kept referring to Gabe and me as dating. So, are you sleeping with her?”
“Dad taught me never to kiss and tell.”
“Which pretty much answers the question. Is it serious?”
“No.” What it was, he considered, was convenient.
“Exclusive?”
“I don’t know.” It had been for him. But now that Lucas thought about it, he’d never asked Brooke if she was seeing anyone else.
“Again, if you haven’t even gotten to the point where you’re discussing it, your relationship can’t be that serious. Which, I suppose, is why you didn’t bring her along today.”
“She had an appointment.” When Charity gave him a knowing look, he tacked on, “Hey, it’s a big deal. A chance to handle all the interior design for Winfield Palace’s new Paris hotel.”
“When deluxe will no longer do,” she quoted the chain’s slogan. “That’s impressive, and how exciting for her.…So, how do you feel about cupcakes?”
“I like them,” he said, even as the non sequitur puzzled him. “Who doesn’t? Why?”
“Because I have this friend.…a baker in town—”
“No.”
“You don’t even know her. Yet.”
“I’m sure, if she’s your friend, she’s wonderful. Better than wonderful. She’s undoubtedly a paragon of womanhood. Who can bake, which is a plus. But since I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing next week, this isn’t a good time to meet anyone new.”
“I’m not suggesting you give her your class ring and ask her to go steady, Lucas. I just thought you’d like her.”
There were, Lucas knew, few individuals more determined than Charity. Which was why, according to Sax Douchett, nearly every person in Shelter Bay had adopted a cat or dog from the veterinarian’s no-kill shelter. “And since your designer might be going off to Paris—”
“She’s not my designer.”
“Well, then, why don’t you at least keep the possibility in mind?”
“I’ll do that.” It wasn’t the entire truth. But he figured it might put her off for at least a couple days.
It didn’t.
“You have to eat,” she pressed on, reminding Lucas how stubborn his stepsister could be when she set her mind to something. “What would you say to coming over to dinner Wednesday night? Gabe will be back from his meeting with his agent and publisher in New York. We can grill some rib eyes and—”