by Mindy Klasky
“Love, Red.” So simple. So straightforward. Just like his final confession had been.
He’d been a kid, back in college. He’d been scared. He’d wondered what he was missing.
Wasn’t that what she’d done in New York—exploring the music scene, photographing all the darkness, all the danger? She’d tested a life without Nick in it, a life without the safety and security of marrying her college sweetheart.
Sure, he should have told her. They should have talked. But that had been seven years ago. How much had she learned in seven years? How much smarter was she now, were they now? Smarter and braver and wiser.
“Nick,” she finally said. “I can’t believe you brought that for Olivia.”
And she saw him reach a decision. “That’s not the only thing I brought.” She watched him reach into his front pocket this time. He extended his palm toward her, almost reluctant to unfold his fingers, to reveal whatever he held. She measured the effort it took, saw the determination in his eyes.
And then she was staring at a diamond ring. A simple band—yellow gold, a small square-cut stone.
It wasn’t a ring for a millionaire’s wife. It didn’t boast of success, of a successful pro sports career, of coveted endorsements and fame. It was a ring for a college student, a senior, a girl who had her whole life ahead of her—challenges and fears and goals. It was the ring she’d handed back to Nick before he’d walked out of her dorm room.
The first time, he’d made a game of his proposal, spreading a dozen clues around campus until she’d found the ring beneath the pillow in his dorm room. This time, he wasn’t playing, not at all. He was deadly serious, his green eyes steady, his palm open, his breathing so slow she couldn’t see his chest rise and fall.
“Jamie,” he said. “You said yes once before. I’d give anything to hear you say yes again. I’d give anything, say anything, do anything. Jamie Martin, is there any possible way you’d consider marrying me?”
When she’d said yes seven years before, she’d thought the world would always be a game. She’d believed she could do anything, be anything, succeed at her every heart’s desire.
In the intervening time, she’d learned there were hard choices to make. She couldn’t spend her entire professional life on the creative knife’s edge of music clubs, not if she wanted to be home for her daughter. She couldn’t live in the sheltered nest of her family’s Connecticut home, not if she wanted to be strong and independent. She couldn’t wallow in past pain, in old mistakes, in the desperate decisions of frightened, pressured youth, not if she wanted to be a fully-functioning adult.
Nick had hurt her. He’d capsized her safe world, left her adrift when she’d most needed a safe harbor.
With TrueLove, he’d lied, withheld his identity even after he’d discovered hers. But the fact remained that they’d found each other in the tangle of computerized accounts. They’d fallen into the easy communion of old lovers. Shygirl6 and RoadWarrior had slipped into instant rapport because Jamie and Nick knew each other so well.
And now, finally, he’d told her the truth about that terrible day in college. He didn’t put the blame on Jeremy Epson; he didn’t try to say that he’d acted for her own benefit. He’d admitted the truth—he’d wanted to know if there was more out there, what the world would be like without her in it.
He’d come back to her. He’d trusted her by admitting to her the very worst that he could be.
She looked at the note for Olivia, still trembling in her fingers. She looked at the ring, offered on his palm.
“Yes,” she said, finally answering his question. The single syllable felt round and full on her lips. It was right. “Yes, Nick Durban. I’ll marry you.”
She let him slip the ring on her finger. She laughed as his arms folded around her, pulling her into his familiar embrace. His lips on hers were tentative at first, soft, but they heated under her enthusiastic response. His fingers meshed in her hair. His hips shifted against hers, melting her, guiding her, until she felt the conference room table at the back of her legs. One of his broad hands spread across her belly, easing under the hem of her shirt, making her shudder with the iron heat of his palm. She clutched his back with her hands, intending to pull him closer, to free his shirt, to feel the heat of his chest against hers.
But the crackle of paper broke through the haze of her desire. She looked down in bemused surprise at the letter she still held, Nick’s drawing for Olivia. She’d accidentally crumpled the masterpiece, folding tight creases into the page.
Nick’s look of disappointment was comical. She cupped his jaw with her free hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You don’t need to give her a letter. You’ll see her at the concert tonight. And the next letter you write to her, you can sign ‘Daddy.’”
Nick’s growl of satisfaction was everything Jamie could have wished for. She glanced at the locked door. “I figure, we have about five more minutes before that receptionist comes looking for us.”
“Five minutes?” he asked with mock innocence. “What can anyone do in five minutes?”
She traced the front of his shirt with one sharp fingernail. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
And she was right. They figured out a perfect solution to the problem—together.
BATTER UP!
Read on, for a sneak peek at the next Diamond Brides romance, Third Degree!
~~~
Sugar and spice and everything nice…
Ashley Harris slammed her meat cleaver into the chicken bones, severing the dark-meat quarter at its joint. With the efficiency of long practice, she shoved the resulting pieces to the side of her cutting board.
“Whoa!” said Dustin Parsons. “Remind me not to make you angry!”
“I’m not angry,” Ashley said. Whack. Another chicken quarter severed. “I’m working.” Whack.
Her fellow chef shifted his grip on his own knife, making short work of converting a yellow onion into perfect half-moons of eye-smarting crunch. “Of course,” he agreed as Ashley slammed her way through another innocent chicken leg. “You always grit your teeth when you work.”
“I’m not,” whack, “Gritting my teeth.”
“Ash, babe, I can hear you halfway across the kitchen.”
She paused in her chicken dissection for long enough to give Dustin a well-deserved glare. The man was absolutely unflappable. And that was a good thing, given the heat in the kitchen where they worked. Outside the restaurant, it might be a chilly November afternoon, but inside, the kitchen was already climbing toward ninety degrees—and that was before the giant pots of water were set to boil for the pasta dishes that were the mainstay at Mangia Italian Kitchen.
Ashley set her cleaver on her cutting board. “It’s November 3rd,” she said.
“Excellent!” Dustin crowed. “I knew working near the university would rub off on you! And they said you’d never master reading the calendar!”
She twisted her lips into a frown to show her dissatisfaction with her colleague’s sarcasm. “I was supposed to hear from Wake Up Wake County by the first.”
Dustin’s mouth framed a comical O. He could tease all he wanted, but Ashley had her heart set on competing in Who Wears the Apron. The most popular morning viewing in Raleigh, Wake Up had been promoting its first-ever cooking contest everywhere, with ads on TV and radio, even on the sides of city buses.
Dustin recovered by asking, “I thought you had a Master Plan?”
The Master Plan. She’d worked her way up through local Raleigh restaurants—busing tables in high school, working as a hostess and server in college, progressing from salad chef to line chef to head chef in the seven years since graduation. She’d planned on staying three years at Mangia, learning the ins and outs of the restaurant business, mastering recipes as the head chef while she observed all the front-of-house operations. After all, Raleigh scion Duke Throckmorton was the owner, and he believed in quality cooking; he was willing to spend money on fine ingredients, even
costly out-of-season treasures like copious amounts of basil in November.
Alas, he also believed that hiring Ashley to cook in his kitchen gave him the right to put his hand on her ass every time he walked by. He brushed against her boobs, too, whenever he thought he could get away with it—the guy was oblivious to the danger of a freshly-sharpened chef’s knife. Just that evening, he’d caught her by the fry station, and she’d seriously contemplated adding his octopus hands to the neat rings of cornmeal-dusted calamari.
But that would have been a disaster, if the health inspector stopped by.
Now, she shrugged as Dustin shifted his attention from onions to mushrooms. “The Master Plan is one thing—I’ve been salting away part of my paycheck for months. But winning Apron would put me ahead by years. One hundred thousand dollars… Do you know how long it’ll take for me to save that? And a year of consulting with Gerald Brown is worth that much again.”
The famous expert on restaurant management had taught at Mid-Atlantic Culinary Institute, the cooking school where Ashley had pursued an advanced degree after college. He’d been ancient then, teaching all his classes from an armchair at the front of the room. Who knew how long the genius would remain in the business? But Apron promised his services for one lucky winner—for an entire twelve months.
And all she’d had to do was complete her application, double-and triple-check the forms where she listed her past experience in restaurants, provide evidence of her undergraduate degree in business management, present her course work at Mid-Atlantic. She’d drawn up a menu for a multi-course meal, focusing on traditional Southern foods that she’d spiced up with her own unique flair.
But Wake Up was now two days past its own deadline. Ashley was fast losing hope that she’d be one of the ten luckywomen to compete against ten men, preparing a single dish for the next round of the contest. This opportunity was going to fall apart the same way culinary school had become a disaster.
Well, not the same way. She hadn’t slept with anyone connected with Who Wears the Apron.
She’d learned her lesson at cooking school. Then, she’d welcomed the physical attention from star chef and professor Martin Davies. Those sly touches, the unexpected encounters that heated up the walk-in freezer, the hidden caresses that led to late-night dinners, to wild nights in bed, and more…
Crap. They’d also led to her leaving Mid-Atlantic in disgrace. She never should have fallen into the habit of spending the night at Martin’s place. She never should have been caught there when the dean of students stopped by for a morning consultation on curriculum. Her dalliance with Martin had cost her a diploma, and it had changed the way she thought about all men in her life. She’d take a tumble in the sheets if she liked a guy well enough, but she wasn’t about to spend the night. Not when the cost could be so high.
If she could just launch her own restaurant, she wouldn’t have to deal with any of this crap—grabby Throckmorton, the lingering shame of Davies, the frustration of working in someone else’s kitchen, of cooking to someone else’s requirements.
“Well,” Dustin said gamely. “You don’t know they told the winners on time. Maybe it took them longer to review the applications than they thought it would.”
Ashley shook her head. “It’s a good thing you’re a great cook,” she said. “Because you’re a really lousy liar.”
One of the waiters spun through the kitchen’s swinging doors. “They’re heeere,” he chanted, announcing the first paying customers of the evening. Ashley turned her attention to Mangia’s traditional Italian meals, setting aside her dreams of a New Southern feast all of her own making.
~~~
Six hours later, Ashley was finally sitting on one of the high barstools at the counter that passed for a table in her own apartment’s kitchen. She’d poured herself a glass of pinot noir and flipped through her mail, which consisted entirely of paper flyers that the mailman shoved into her mailbox. Shaking her head at the ads for products she’d never use, she reached for her laptop.
Sure, she hadn’t had any email when she got home. But that had been fifteen minutes ago. Anything could have come in since then.
There was a message waiting. A message with impossible good news.
She blinked hard and read the words again. Another gulp of pinot, a hard shake of her head. The email stayed the same.
“Congratulations! Wake Up Wake County is inviting you to Round 2 of Who Wears the Apron!”
Ashley glanced at the time on her phone. It was well after midnight. Too late to call any civilized friend. Well, Dustin wasn’t civilized. She punched his number and waited for his weary answer.
“I could have sworn we just said goodbye half an hour ago.”
She laughed. “And I could have sworn you were wide awake, sitting with your feet up on the coffee table, even though you know Sheila would be furious if she was up too. You’re drinking a Blue Moon, and you’re watching porn on your computer.”
“Ah, friendship,” Dustin said. “You know me so well. What’s up?”
“Listen to this: ‘You are one of ten women competing in our contest, which will air in a series of special segments on our usual morning television show. You have been randomly assigned to present your first dish, which can be any course from any menu, to our judges on Friday, November 14. On that date, our judges will also announce the five men and five women who will move on to Round 3. Please see the attached document for all rules and regulations related to Who Wears the Apron! Congratulations and good luck!’”
“Holy shit!”
“Hush!” she said. “If you wake Sheila now, she’ll really be pissed.”
“She’ll be thrilled she gets to share your news!”
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously, Ash. That’s great! What are you going to make for Round 2?”
And that was the hundred-thousand dollar question, wasn’t it? What was she going to cook? “Any suggestions?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t bother to stifle his yawn “I’ll have about a dozen for you. Tomorrow, when I see you at work.”
“Okay,” she said. “Be that way.”
“You’re not going to sleep, are you?”
She was already opening up the vast collection of recipes on her computer. “Of course I’m going to sleep. It’s late, and work was exhausting!”
“Don’t try to con a conner. You’ll be up all night, and you’ll be a bitch at work tomorrow.”
She laughed. “But you’ll love me anyway.”
Dustin agreed and signed off, and she dove into her files, trying to find the one dish that would guarantee her victory in Round 2.
~~~
Josh Cantor brought his grandmother a fresh old-fashioned. “You know, Angel, some people would say it’s too early to be drinking.”
She plucked the orange slice from the rim of the glass and ate the juicy triangles of fruit before she used the rind to point at him. “And some would say you’re too young to be correcting your elders. I waited until 5:00 yesterday.”
She probably hadn’t. Angel wasn’t remembering things very well these days. At least not the things she didn’t want to remember.
Josh folded himself onto the rattan loveseat. He was sweating like he’d just finished a full workout in the gym at Rockets Field, even though it was the first week of November. His grandmother insisted on outfitting her deck with massive space heaters, the sort that should have been used on a restaurant patio. Angel had lived in Raleigh her entire life, but she still refused to admit that North Carolina experienced winter weather. In fact, Angel refused to admit anything that didn’t agree with her view of right and wrong—a view that was increasingly narrow as she grew more frail.
He passed his grandmother a cut-glass plate with the deep-fried olives he’d made for her that morning. “Can I get you anything?” he asked. “A napkin? Something else to snack on?”
Angel cocked her head. With her outrageous flowered scarf wrapped around her forehead, she looke
d like a pirate with a passion for poppies. “I’ve got a napkin from the first three times you asked, boy. And I don’t need you to fatten me up with anything else. Are you going to ask me for a favor, or just wait for me to doze off so you can take what you want?”
Angel always could see right through him. He looked at his scuffed shoes and wiped his palms against his jeans. Christ. Alzheimer’s or no, she was going to toss him out on his ass if he didn’t man up. He looked her right in the eye and said, “Angel, I want your recipe book.”
He didn’t just want it. He needed it. He’d gotten the email yesterday—he was one of ten men selected for Who Wears the Apron. The contest couldn’t come at a better time—November was the off-season so he had time to compete, time to fight for the hundred-grand purse and a consultant who could help him turn his dream of a successful investment gig into a reality. But all the time in the world was nothing, if he didn’t have Angel’s recipes to back up his bid for success.
“What are you going to do with a bunch of tidewater receipts?” She plunged her thumb and forefinger into her drink and pulled out the first of the three cherries Josh had given her.
“Use them for my restaurant,” he mumbled.
“What’s that?” She put down her glass and eyed him like a fox considering a chicken dinner. “I could have sworn you just said you wanted to use Cantor family recipes for that money pit you’re planning.”
“It’s not a money pit!”
“How much have you sunk into it so far?”
Shit. He was going to lose this argument. But he didn’t have any other option, so he said, “It wasn’t my fault the lease fell through.”
“On how many places?”
God, he should have waited until she had a couple more drinks in her. Maybe an entire bottle of whiskey. “Three, Angel. But there were circumstances beyond my control.” He could recite all the details for her, explain why it was so goddamn hard to set up a restaurant while he was busy with his real job.