She felt Jack move away from behind her. Moments later a rolling pin appeared by her elbow on the counter. Trudy laughed loudly into her mic. “You’re giving me a weapon after all that? Dumb move there, Chef Dozen.”
Jack shrugged and grinned. “The risk is small. You’ve already killed your dough. We’re just going to use it now to show the rolling pin technique. For the end result of the pie, we’ll use the one I baked at home this morning. It came out perfect.”
Trudy rolled her eyes at his bragging and picked up the rolling pin. She brandished it in the air. “Insult my pie dough again and I’ll demonstrate the fine art of self-defense with kitchen implements. We’re baking my pie when I get done just so I can prove my pie crust skills are as good as yours. Remember whose biscuits came out higher and fluffier?”
“Okay. Okay. We’ll bake your pie. Sheesh… put the rolling pin down,” Jack said, sounding as doubtful as it was possible to sound. “Are you going to keep bringing up your better biscuits every week?”
Then the teasing jerk winked at her.
Snorting, she reached out a hand and pushed on his chest, leaving a big white handprint on his sweater. The audience laughed at their small skirmish. She instantly thought of Ann and Georgia accusing her of flirting and touching him.
Realizing now that they might have been right sobered her up and had her moving her attention away from Jack. Turning back to her crust, Trudy put all her focus on it. She floured the rolling pin and ran it lightly over the dough.
In the background, Jack talked about making the filling while tossing all the ingredients together. After she laid her crust on the pie plate, Jack bumped her with his hip to scoot her down so he could pour the filling into the crust and assemble her pie.
She picked up the rolling pin again, patting it on one palm as the audience laughed at them.
Chapter Eight
Brandon drummed his fingers on the table, an annoying habit he picked up to teach himself patience. He counted the fall of each finger on the tablecloth, or at least, that’s how he used to do it. Now he just counted a single set of fingers landing and multiplied by four. Some days—like today—it was the only way to slow down his brain.
He posted a lookout to watch for Chef Baker’s arrival. The text message he’d been waiting for finally arrived and he let out a sigh of relief. He’d had many moments in the last week to worry about whether or not she’d stand him up. He gave her immediate points for being a woman who kept her word.
When she entered the restaurant and stopped at the vacant hostess stand, Brandon stood and waved to her. She saw him, waved back, and tentatively smiled. He stepped around the table and pulled out her chair. His up close impression was of a lush smiling woman who smelled like vanilla—someone very unlike the divorced soccer mom groupies his father tended to date and drop.
“Hi Trudy. I’m Brandon,” he said, helping her sit. “Thanks for having dinner with me.”
“Brandon, you’re every bit as good looking as your picture.” She picked up the glass of water by her plate and studied him while she sipped. “And you look familiar to me. Have we met?”
Brandon shook his head. “No, but you know my father. I’ll just confess up front that he’s actually the reason I’m here.”
Trudy belly laughed over her dating luck as her glass dropped to the table. “Well, that’s certainly a new one. You’re scoping me out for your father? Here I thought you wanted me for yourself. You know… that older woman thing everyone keeps talking about.”
Brandon grinned. “It might have been true a couple years ago, but my heart is currently taken with another.”
“How poetically put.” Her grin could not have been wider. The kid was turning out to be highly entertaining at least. “So how often do you pay this much money to scope out potential women for your dad?”
“Actually, this is a first.” Brandon lifted a hand and the waiter nodded. He turned back to her. “Menus are on their way.”
He smiled and tried to relax, but the woman put off a wild energy. And he knew someone who exuded the mate of it most days.
“My father definitely doesn’t know I’ve done this. I am certain he wouldn’t approve. However, I owe him every joy of my life, so here I am with you. You are thoroughly charming and quite beautiful in the most womanly of ways. I can see why he is attracted to you. I’m sure there’s been no lack of male companionship in your life.”
“And you would be correct,” Trudy said, being honest. “Did you watch my video?”
Brandon nodded. “Yes. Several times. Your sad story about never falling in love was one of the reasons why I decided to ask you out.”
Trudy closed her eyes and shook her head. “Great. So this is a pity date as well as a father scope. Unbelievable.”
“No, no,” Brandon denied. “Let’s not be too quick to apply psychological labels to my motives. Let’s just say this date is a meal being shared by two people who will one day be the best of friends.”
The waiter showed up with menus, told them the specials, and then scurried away to give them a moment to choose.
Brandon frowned at the man’s hasty, nervous exit. “Unfortunately… I think he recognized you. I didn’t plan for that possibility. Perhaps we should have gone to a hot dog vendor along the river walk.”
Snorting at the sincerity of his comment, and at knowing the handsome kid would have fed her a hot dog for dinner, Trudy grinned at her unusual date. “It’s okay, Brandon. I’m used to that kind of attention in restaurants. God only knows what kind of food we’ll get though. They’ll be trying too hard to do their best work and that never goes well.”
“The food here is not as good as one of your restaurants, but my father prefers their Asian cuisine to all others. I’m having one of my favorites here, which is the duck dumplings with plum sauce. My grandmother used to make those for my birthday. When I eat them, I think of her.”
Okay. The kid was charming in his strange way. Trudy smiled. “Sounds perfect. I’ll have the same,” she said, laying the menu aside. “So when are you going to tell me your mysterious father’s name? I’m all keyed up wondering about him.”
“How about I reveal his name with dessert?” Brandon suggested.
Trudy belly laughed again. As incredible as it seemed, she was having a good time… and at least the kid hadn’t stood her up. It was almost too hard to believe that Mariah was getting paid for this.
“Alright. At least give me a hint or two. Was your father one of my students?”
Maybe she’d kicked his father out of one of her classes. She’d done that frequently to those who couldn’t keep up and that could easily explain the kid’s determination to pitch his father’s case to her. Men who left never returned. Pride wouldn’t let them.
Brandon shrugged. “Dad says everything important about life he learned on his own, but I do think he learned some life lessons from knowing you.”
“I’m not sure what you think I’ve done to your father, but if I let you order for me, will I be forgiven for my yet unnamed sins?” Trudy asked.
Brandon shrugged. “From what I’ve pieced together, you were merely being your true self and so was he. My fiancée is Hindu and would say that what happened and didn’t happen was just part of your life journey.”
Trudy shrugged. “I think I agree with her. I don’t have many regrets about my life, Brandon.”
He folded his hands on the table and studied her kind eyes. “My mother died when I was ten. Just before she passed, she told me my birth father’s name. Her Irish Catholic family was strict and disowned her when I was conceived, so at her death I was placed in a children’s home. It took six months for authorities to actually find the man she identified. Even then, they only let me send him a registered letter. My father was twenty-five when I contacted him—the same age I am now. I can’t imagine what finding out about me must have been like for him. He said my mother was his first lover and that he’d had no idea she’d conceived his child.”<
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“Oh my goodness. He fathered you at fifteen?” Trudy asked, stunned because that kind of news was always a bit of a shock to hear. The boy’s father would still be very young.
The waiter returned at that moment and Brandon placed their orders with a food expertise she almost never saw in someone so young. Before leaving, the waiter deposited a basket of hot buns on the table. Trudy helped herself and buttered one, instantly passing half over to Brandon without thinking about what she was doing. He took it and smiled like she’d handed him a piece of gold.
She felt her face heating, but it was mostly over having lowered her guard around her strange date. “Sorry. It’s habit for me to feed people. I was so entranced by your story that I moved into autopilot.”
Brandon smiled. “It’s a very nice habit to feed people. I appreciate it.”
“Thank you,” Trudy said, her blush fading away. “So back to your story… your mother died when you were ten and you went into a children’s home. When you found your father, he was only twenty-five. What happened next?”
Brandon ate his bread, enjoying every bite as he told her the story. She was a great listener.
“Yes. My mother was only five years older than my father. They never told anyone about their relationship because he was so young. His age was why she never told him about having his child. My father’s story about this is that she left town shortly after they’d been together and he never heard from her again. I believe him completely. My mother never spoke of him outside of her last moments before death. She was engaged to be married once when I was eight, but the man wanted her to give me away. She refused to do so and that ended their relationship. Outside of that, my mother lived most of her life with me alone.”
The waiter returned and put small bowls of the soup special on the table. They hadn’t ordered soup, but she wasn’t surprised it had appeared.
She smiled at the waiter in gratitude. “The bread is delicious. Please tell the chef.” He wasn’t even savvy about hiding his relief as he hurriedly agreed to do so.
She looked back at Brandon. “How did your mother die?”
“At the time it happened, I was only ten so I didn’t actually know. The school took me to the hospital to see her and sort of left me there. After I met my father, he investigated the situation and found out her car had been hit by a drunk driver. She suffered internal bleeding they just couldn’t get stopped. My strongest memory of that time was sitting in her hospital room playing with an electronic game I carried around in my school backpack. She literally told me my father’s name moments before she passed. Luckily I was worried about her being sick and was paying close attention to every moment. I often didn’t pay attention well at that age.”
Trudy shook her head in awe as she buttered Brandon another piece of bread and handed it over before going for her soup. It was quite good too. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you at that age. Your entire life changed in an instant.”
Brandon shrugged. “My father eventually read the letter I sent to him and came to the boy’s home to see me. He looked into my eyes and that was all the proof he said he needed. The courts made us have a DNA test done before they would approve his parentage, but by that point, he would never have given me up anyway. I have concluded since that both my parents loved and wanted me. I had a far better situation than most of the other boys had in the home where I lived.”
Trudy nodded. “A chef I know just recently revealed he was a foster father at a boy’s home. I was totally surprised to learn that about him. It’s so strange how Jack’s story matches…”
She looked across the table and into Brandon’s eyes. She choked on a bite of bread and coughed as she figured it out. She pointed what was left of the bread in her hand at him. “Jack. Oh my God, you have Jack’s eyes. That’s why you looked familiar to me. Jack’s your father.”
Brandon sighed and surveyed the table. “I am disappointed in myself for giving too much away. We didn’t even get to the main course.”
Trudy set down her spoon and what was left of her bread. “I don’t understand, Brandon. Why did you set this phony date up? Did Jack ask you to talk to me?”
“No, I swear this was all my idea and he knows nothing about it. After I met Jivika through The Perfect Date and fell in love, I tried without success to get Dad to join. But I will tell you everything about our situation if you want to know. My father’s story is yet another sad story, and unlike mine, his sad story had not yet ended,” Brandon warned.
Trudy leaned back in her chair. “Sad, huh? Okay. Maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Maybe you don’t. I’ve kept his secrets and shared his emotional pain for a decade. It’s been an emotional burden for me to know he’s unhappy,” Brandon said.
They stared at each other silently while the waiter served their duck dumplings. She’d glared at the food, mad at herself for not figuring it out before she started liking the kid. The truth had nearly robbed her of her appetite.
Trudy’s gaze dropped as Brandon drummed his fingers on the table. His face wrinkled as he thought. Then he motioned to someone across the room. She turned, expecting to see Jack come waltzing in, but instead a lovely woman with dark eyes and dark hair floated gracefully across the room.
Brandon stood politely, but the woman waved him down as she pulled out and sat in one of the vacant chairs. He nodded to her and smiled. “Trudy, this is my fiancée, Dr. Jivika Anand. Jivika, this is Chef Trudy Baker.”
“It is my great pleasure to meet you,” Jivika said politely. “Forgive us please for our small deception. It was for the greater good of our family—well, the greater good of Brandon’s father at least. If you had been a horrible person, we would never reveal any of Jack’s heartache to you.” She looked at the table. “Please eat before your food gets cold. I wasn’t supposed to join you until dessert. I’ve already eaten my meal.”
Trudy was unsure about how to react to the completely weird situation this date had turned into, so she picked up her fork. She turned her attention to her food as she spoke. Jack’s mature, twenty-five year old son had taken her so far out of her comfort zone, she couldn’t even see that boundary any more.
The only reason she stayed in her chair was her absolute certainty that Jack would have walked through fire before admitting he was in any kind of pain, especially to her. Ironically, that was also why she decided she had to know what Brandon wanted to tell her. She sighed over her dumplings. They looked too good to waste anyway. The food here was good. It didn’t surprise that Jack praised it to his son.
“Okay. Tell me Jack’s sad story,” Trudy ordered. “You’ve paid to get me here and I assume you’re also buying me dinner. Since I’m staying until I’ve eaten this wonderful food, you might as well spill the rest.”
She spooned plum sauce over her dumplings and passed the remainder over the table. Brandon nodded in thanks and added the rest to his food. He sighed heavily as the now empty sauce dish hit the table.
“My father doesn’t date at all,” Brandon confessed. “He hooks up with food groupies once in a while, but that doesn’t give him a real social life. Some of the women are nice, but he doesn’t keep them. If it were not for his love of good bourbon, I never would have learned that he’s still grieving his first love.”
Trudy held up a hand. “My history with Jack is not one of roses and chocolates either. I kicked your father out of my cooking class for flirting with me and not taking it seriously. That was fifteen years ago. A lot can happen in fifteen years. People get over things in that span of time,” she said, seeing no reason to admit Jack had kissed her senseless once before she threw him out of class. She still hated admitting to herself that his kiss had been her true motivation for breaking off their connection. She still hated knowing someone so young had been that appealing to her.
Brandon spoke firmly, shaking his head. “Dad did not tell me about you or cooking classes or anything of that nature. He only said the reason he didn�
��t date was that he’d once kissed a woman he could never forget. I asked him where the woman was now. He said it didn’t matter because the woman still didn’t want him. It wasn’t until recently that I finally figured out it was you. Jivika was helping a friend fill out an application for The Perfect Date and saw your dating video pop up as being new. I took that—we both took that—as a sign of divine intervention.”
Trudy stared at the handsome young man Jack had accidentally created. “Maybe your mother was the love of his life, Brandon. Maybe that’s why Jack came after you. Maybe Jack’s drunken ramblings were just remorse over a past mistake he will take to his grave with him because your mother died.”
Brandon sighed, shook his head, and put his attention on eating. Trudy’s attention shifted when Jivika tilted her beautiful head to study her as she spoke.
“Brandon’s father is a fine man, Chef Baker. He is handsome, a good wage earner, and even bought the boy’s home where his son was raised. Brandon keeps the books for the home and for his father. Jack lives in a nearly empty studio apartment so he can spend most of the money he makes to care for the children. Is this not a good man by your standards?”
Trudy looked at the beautiful woman. She and Brandon would make a beautiful family one day. “That would be a good man by any woman’s standards, but that doesn’t mean I’m the love of Jack’s life. And even if I was… that doesn’t mean I can love him back. I don’t date either. If you watched my video, you know that about me. Frankly, I like my independent life.”
Brandon stopped eating to stare. “But what if my father is your greatest love? Are you going to go to your grave without ever knowing the joy that comes from sharing everything with that one perfect person?”
“I guess I am because Jack Dozen is far from perfect,” Trudy said.
Never Ever Satisfied (The Perfect Date Book 4) Page 7