by Kim Barnouin
“We had a good time at the party last night,” she said. “Your friend Ty is really great.”
“Yeah, he is,” I said, giving her a vanilla chai cupcake for the road.
She squeezed me into a hug, then raced down the steps, which made me wonder if I’d get a call from Zach in a couple of hours about how I should have advised her to dump the boyfriend.
“God, Clem,” Sara said from the bathroom. “Did you just counsel a Confused Young Person? Impressive.” The blow-dryer started up, then Sara came into the kitchen. “My hair looks nothing like Ty’s sister made it look yesterday.”
“Still looks great, though,” I told her.
She promised she’d help me look for my recipes when she got home from work, just in case someone had drunkenly mistaken them for a bunch of napkins or something and they were in the garbage or behind a table. Which they weren’t. I’d looked everywhere.
When Sara left, I checked my calendar. I’d cleared today to work on the final recipes, so at least I didn’t have to bake anything or deal with any personal chef clients. For the next half hour, I re-created the lasagna recipe on paper, using Sara’s copy of the recipe I’d handed out the first night of class, which was more Desdemona’s than mine. I’d changed it around over the past couple of years, making it mine, but now I couldn’t remember the exact amounts, which sucked. At least I had the cooking class copy, or I would have forgotten the sea salt, which I was out of. I was also running low on tomatoes, so I headed to my favorite farmers’ market by the Santa Monica Pier.
I detoured past my new dream space for Clementine’s No Crap Café. Which made my blood boil. All my years of work on those recipes—and just like that, gone. The menus I created for the restaurants had to be the best—and original. Not trumped-up copies from restaurants I’d worked in.
And five recipes were due to be demonstrated for the owner and chef of Stark 22 on Friday. Two days.
Because I had no time to stand there and whine about it, I hit up the farmers’ market, stuffing my bag with tomatoes and sea salt and olive oil, and then couldn’t resist the chocolate bark table. I bought a piece and then stopped at a juice booth—and did a double take.
Because there was no fucking way I was seeing what I was seeing.
Alexander. And Rain Welch. All over each other on a bench across from the market.
My Alexander. And Rain Welch, who’d gotten me fired from Fresh and then tried to screw me out of an account with Julia’s for Skinny Bitch Bakes. They were both sitting, and she was leaning back against him, her head tilted back for a kiss. Then she practically straddled him and they were making out.
Alexander and Rain?
The thought slammed into me that Alexander had been at my party last night. The party where my recipes had been until someone there had taken them.
And now here he was getting a lap dance from Rain.
She must have talked him into screwing me over somehow. Alexander knew that the L.A. Times reporter would be coming to the class; I’d told him when I called to invite him to Sara’s party. Maybe Rain had told him all kinds of lies about me and now he thought I was the asshole, so he’d stolen the recipes as payback or something. Or just to ensure a good lay that night.
Maybe he had been sent by Emil to check up on me that first night he’d showed up in my apartment clutching a cooking class flyer, all apologetic about getting a great gig at my expense. To find out what my plans were, where I was working. To report back so Emil could get his revenge somehow. Or maybe he and Rain had always been seeing each other, and he’d been doing her dirty work that night. I tried to remember the times I’d mentioned her, if Alexander had said anything about her, but I couldn’t. I was pretty sure he’d said everyone knew she’d sabotaged me. But maybe he was bullshitting.
And like anyone really brought their ill grandmum soup.
But then I thought about him placing a chef’s hat on Jesse’s head and showing a shy girl how to fold a burrito. Giving Jesse a standing ovation and wolf-whistling at his school concert. Standing in his kitchen in his sort-of tux, thanking me for being such a cool friend and helping him with the Dr. Who cupcakes.
Kissing me at Fontana’s.
No way would Alexander screw me like that. He wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t have believed he’d hook up with Rain either. And there he was, all over her.
By the end of the day, I had a whole wheat lasagna noodle on my foot, my orgasmic red sauce on the ends of my hair, and vegan mozzarella under my nails. And I smelled like vegan ground “beef.” But I’d re-created the lasagna recipe to my very high standards and then made Ty taste it.
“Incredible,” he said, standing next to me by the oven, where I’d barely been able to wait for the lasagna to cool enough not to burn his lips. He forked another bite. “Perfect.”
Relief. If it was good enough for Ty and me, it was done.
On to fettuccini. Stark 22 wanted at least two pasta dishes. And my fettuccini with porcini mushrooms was one of my own favorites. I was deciding between whole wheat or brown rice for the pasta when Ty grabbed my long yellow pad from me. “This can wait a half hour. Go talk to Alexander—not to accuse him, just to bring up seeing him with Rain.”
“What am I supposed to say, exactly?”
“Whatever comes out of your mouth will work,” he said, handing me my phone.
I called Alexander and said I wanted to talk to him about something and when could we meet up.
Now was no good because he was on his way to work. After work was no good because he was meeting Jesse. Later tonight was no good because he had plans.
Yeah, no doubt with Rain. He was clearly trying to avoid me.
“Tomorrow sometime? It’s kind of important.”
Now, Ty mouthed at me.
“Scratch tomorrow. I really need to talk to you now.”
“You could meet me on 14th and walk me to work,” he said.
Yeah, so he and Rain could ambush me and stuff me in the freezer, never to be found again. You never knew, right?
He was standing on the corner in front of the used bookstore and tapping on his phone when I arrived. He wore a gray T-shirt, low-slung jeans, and a messenger bag probably stuffed with my recipes across his torso.
“So what’s up?” he asked as we started walking.
Dammit. This was not the face, the expression of the guilty. He looked all fresh-scrubbed as usual, his dark brown eyes as sweet and warm and open as always.
But now he was shooting me these weird glances. Like he knew I knew. Like he was guilty and maybe felt bad about it.
“Anything you want to say to me?” I asked.
He stared at me for a second like he had no clue what I was talking about. “Ah. I know what this is about.”
Yeah. Big surprise.
“It’s about that kiss. At Fontana’s.”
“Actually, no,” I said. “It’s not about that at all.” Was he stalling or what? “Okay, fine. I’ll just say it like it happened.”
“Please do, Clem, because I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
Right. Just like you thought Rain was a bitch a couple of months ago who got what she deserved.
“Last night, right before people started showing up for Sara’s party, I had a thick packet on my kitchen counter of the recipes I was developing for the restaurants. After the party, the recipes were gone.”
“Gone?” he repeated.
“Gone. I found one of the recipes in the hallway. Which makes me think someone took them and dropped one on the way out.”
“Why would someone steal your recipes, though, Clem?”
“Maybe because someone’s suddenly seeing someone who hates my guts? And she talked him into it?”
“Like who?”
“I saw you practically fucking Rain Welch on a bench at the pier this morning, Alexander.”
He stopped in the middle of the street. “Wait,” he said, staring at me. “You’re saying you think I stole your recipes? Me. You’re saying th
at.”
He sounded so . . . hurt that for a second I doubted it all over again.
“I just know what I saw. You and Rain. She got me fired from Fresh, remember? Where you now work. And you two are suddenly together.”
“Right. So because I was making out with Rain, I stole your recipes. What exactly did I do with them, anyway? I’m curious. Give them to Rain with my mwa-ha-ha evil laugh? And what would she do with them?”
“She’d have them. So I wouldn’t. So I wouldn’t have my original recipes that I’ve worked on my entire life. She’d pass them off as hers.”
“I see.” He didn’t sound hurt anymore. Just pissed. “I’m going to say this once, Clem. I didn’t take your recipes.”
“Then why—”
“I don’t need to explain who I’m dating to you,” he interrupted. “I know you and Rain have your issues. I know what you said she did to you at Fresh. I know what she said she didn’t do. But the fact that you actually think I’d do something so bloody awful to you?” He shook his head. “Have a nice life.”
He crossed the street and kept walking.
So did he or didn’t he? Was he just covering his ass? And Rain’s?
Either he hadn’t taken my recipes or he was a really good actor. But who else could have taken them?
I went through every person who’d walked through the door the night of Sara’s party. There was no reason for anyone to have taken my recipes. First of all, no one but Ty and I were even vegans.
Someone who was jealous? Someone who hated me? No one at that party hated me. I didn’t think so anyway.
But someone had stolen the recipes. Paper clip by the door. Soup recipe found on the stairwell. Someone had stolen them.
I headed toward the farmers’ market where I’d seen Alexander and Rain. I had porcini mushrooms to buy. And fettuccini to perfect.
Three hours later, I not only had the recipe down—and copied—but an exquisite plate of brown rice fettuccini with porcini mushrooms and an amazing creamy garlic sauce.
Except instead of feeling relieved and happy, I felt like shit.
According to Zach, whose chest I lay against in the Jacuzzi tub in his bathroom, a great guy could be driven to shitty acts by a manipulative woman, so Alexander could be guilty. But as Zach made squiggles on my stomach with hot bubbly soap, he said to go with my gut instinct, which was . . . wobbling. It wasn’t like I knew Alexander that well, but I knew him well enough that asshole and prick weren’t on the list of words that described him.
And he was a do-gooder. He spent hours as a Big Brother to a twelve-year-old who hadn’t seen his father in years. He volunteered at the youth center. He brought his grandmother soup when she was sick. Would that guy turn around and steal years’ worth of my original recipes because the woman he was seeing wanted me brought down?
“I once did some stupid crap for a woman I was infatuated with,” Zach said, wrapping his arms around me. “I wised up after a while, but in the middle of it, I would have done anything. It’s like your brain is gone when you’re that infatuated.”
Alexander probably was that infatuated. Rain had always had guys after her at Fresh. She wasn’t even beautiful, but she had something. Ty couldn’t stand her and thought what she had was the I’m-a-bad-girl-but-so-vulnerable-help-me bullshit down pat. I could see Alexander falling for it. She had that same look as the jealous one he’d dumped.
“If you don’t get the recipes back, you’ll just re-create them,” he said.
“It’s not that easy. It took me three years to get my lasagna perfect. If I hadn’t had the copy of the recipe from my cooking class, I would have had to guesstimate everything instead of the additions and deletions I’ve made over the past couple of years. You know how intricate my pad thai is? I definitely need my recipe to make that for Asia Asia.”
“I’m not saying it’s going to be simple. I’m saying I have faith in you.”
“Oh.” I turned over and kissed him.
The doorbell rang. And rang and rang.
“Has to be Jolie,” he said. “We’re not home.”
The front door opened. “Zach?” Jolie yelled.
“Why did I give her a key?” he asked.
So much for our delicious bath. I could have stayed in there for another hour at least.
“Gimme a second,” he called downstairs, holding a towel but not giving it to me.
“Do you want your sister to see me naked?”
“I want to see you naked,” he said. He pulled me against him and kissed me, then sighed and wrapped the towel around me.
When we went downstairs after getting dressed, Jolie and Rufus were lip-locked by the door to the deck.
“Oh hi, Clementine,” Jolie said. “I’m glad you’re here. You can both hear our amazing news!” She held up her hand and waved it around. The little diamond twinkled in the dimly lit room. “We’re officially engaged!”
I glanced at Zach. He was sort of shaking his head. Jolie was frowning. Rufus just looked like he wanted to get the hell out of here.
Zach was glaring at Jolie. “Am I supposed to say congratulations? You graduated from high school all of two weeks ago.”
“Yeah, you are supposed to,” Jolie said. “I’m engaged. It doesn’t matter how old I am. It matters how we feel about each other.” She turned to me and grabbed my hands. “Clementine, you totally have to be in the bridal party. If it wasn’t for you and everything you said the other day, this wouldn’t have happened at all.” She squeezed me into a hug.
Zach stared at me. “Wait a minute. You talked her into getting married?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about getting married. I was talking—”
“You’re not getting married,” Zach interrupted, shooting daggers at Jolie and Rufus. “Unless you want to make a huge mistake.”
“Yeah, it’s a huge mistake that we love each other,” she said. “That we’re committed to each other so much that we want to get married. Big mistake.”
“Jolie, you’re eighteen.”
“So fucking what. Whatever. Come on, Rufus. Let’s go celebrate with people who’ll actually be happy for us.”
She stalked out, Rufus behind her. I could only assume the guy had working vocal cords, since he was in a band, but I’d never actually heard him utter more than five words.
“So this was you again?” he said to me. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Zach, she came over sobbing the other day because Rufus was flirting with some girl in the band. I just asked her questions to help her see whether or not she could trust him, and she could, so she left all happy. That was it.”
He paced for a few moments and shook his head again. “Well, she trusts him so much she’s marrying him. There’s no way she’ll ask him to sign a prenup.”
“Wait, that’s why you’re so against this?”
He let out a breath. “If you had any idea how much our family is worth, you’d get it.”
“And if your family had no money?”
“I’d still think she was a moron for getting married at eighteen. No one knows who they are at eighteen. I was backpacking through Italy and Switzerland at eighteen, crushed over a girl whose last name I can’t even remember.”
“Well, Jolie seems pretty smart to me,” I said.
He stared at me like I’d sprouted another head. “Smart? She’s a princess. Please.”
How did I keep getting dragged into the Jeffries’ family reality show drama? “She doesn’t seem like a princess to me.”
“You’ve known her for what—a week? Don’t give me advice when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Excuse me? I don’t know what I’m talking about? I don’t have an opinion?”
“Not when it comes to Jolie. She’s a fucking kid, Clem. And you’ve already—” He let out a breath and stalked over to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine.
“I’ve already what? Screwed things up?
Been a bad influence?”
“Something like that. Yeah.”
Asshole. ASSHOLE. “Well, I’ll tell you what. Since we’re through, you can tell your sister to go to your next girlfriend for advice.”
I grabbed my bag and pulled open the door, startled to find Jolie marching up the walkway, Rufus with his hands stuffed in his pockets behind her.
“And another thing, Zach,” she shouted past me at him. “Just because Vivienne didn’t want to marry you doesn’t mean you can’t be happy for anyone else who does want to get married!” Then she huffed off.
Whoa. I turned around and Zach looked half pissed as hell and half . . . very, very sad.
“You were leaving, Clem,” he said through gritted teeth. “So do it.”
Good, he was back to being an ass. I slammed the door on the way out.
Chapter 18
My so-called love life, stolen recipes, and British chefs who hated my guts would have to wait because the Los Angeles Times article on me and Skinny Bitch came out the next morning. Front page of the Food section.
Front page.
Because she was great, Sara had bought ten copies of the paper on her way back from sunrise yoga even though she was only in the photos—and in the fifteen-second video of the class—in the online edition. In the newspaper, there was a big-ass photo of me spooning the butternut squash into a wonton wrapper. Caption: Chef Clementine Cooper of Skinny Bitch is in high demand in L.A.
My phone started ringing at 7:30 a.m. and didn’t stop. Including calls from every restaurant that had slammed the door in my face after Emil had fired me from Fresh. Ha! Suddenly they all wanted me. I told them I’d get back to them, which I wouldn’t. I took way too many baking orders from coffee shops and cafés and boutiques all over L.A. and even had to waitlist some that I’d never heard of. The personal assistants of twelve celebs—ranging from A list to who?—called to book my personal chef services. Eleven more restaurants wanted me as a menu consultant. I now charged two thousand bucks for the service. Yeah, I did.
By the end of the day, I also had seven speaking gigs. Me, at a podium, talking. For thousands of dollars.