Gabe looked up and met Corbyn’s gaze. “All right, lay it on me.”
“You know my boyfriend, Charles, is a producer with Food Network,” Corbyn began.
Nothing was written in stone, but several cooking networks and morning news programs had been interested in booking him for regular appearances. One network had even hinted they wanted to give him his own show.
Gabe closed his eyes. Damn the power Monica still held over him. Damn his foolish pride. “Yeah, I know who your boyfriend is, Corbyn. Are they pulling the offer off the table?”
“Word travels fast in this world. You know that, Gabe.”
Gabe rubbed his eyes. “What’s Charles hearing?”
“Let’s just say, you’re in wait-and-see-land. Think of it as purgatory. Nobody’s sent you to hell, but they aren’t swinging the pearly gates open for you either.”
Gabe rubbed at a kink in his neck. “What do you suggest we do?”
He had worked so damned hard. His stomach twisted with remorse over upsetting the young couple and with anger over the fact that even though it had been over a fucking decade, Monica still controlled his every move.
“In my opinion—” Corbyn began, but Gabe cut him off.
“I’ll cut the appearances. We’ll nix the travel for the next few weeks. I’ll lay low at Bread and Vine. That should give things time to blow over.” He turned back to the pile on his desk, but Corbyn was still there. He waited for a beat, but his PR rep didn’t move. “You disagree, Corbyn?”
“I disagree,” came a deep voice with a rich Italian accent.
Gabe’s mentor, Leo Russo, stood in the doorway.
Gabe sprang to his feet. “Chef, what brings you here?”
While Leo owned several successful restaurants in New York City, he had been phasing out his day to day duties in the kitchen. At almost eighty years old, his wife of sixty-two years had persuaded him to slow down. They’d purchased a brownstone in Brooklyn’s tree-lined streets of the Cobble Hill neighborhood to be closer to his grandchildren.
“You, Gabe, you bring me here,” the old chef replied. He gestured out to the kitchen. “Come, sit with me. I opened a bottle.”
Corbyn’s phone rang, and he excused himself, leaving Gabe time to visit with Leo privately.
Leo led him over to the pass, the area between the kitchen and the front of the house where the plates are checked over before the waitstaff is allowed to deliver them to the tables.
“Why here, chef?” Gabe asked. “Wouldn’t you rather sit at a table?”
Leo chuckled and adjusted his considerable girth on a bar stool. “I like to spend time at the pass. It gives a chef the opportunity to look at the whole picture, the whole composition, and act accordingly.”
Gabe felt his cheeks heat as he took the stool next to Leo. “You heard about my outburst?”
The senior chef chuckled and poured two glasses of Cabernet. “You can thank my granddaughter for that. She showed me the video clip on her e-Pad.”
“I think you mean iPad, chef,” Gabe said on the breath of an exhausted laugh.
Leo sipped his wine and hummed his approval. “I’m an old man, Gabe. People recording your every move and your every word was never something I had to contend with as a young chef. But the culinary world has always been one fraught with great challenges. You’re expected to be at your best each day, no matter what. A chef is a leader. A chef always strives for absolute perfection.”
Gabe took a long sip of his wine.
Leo narrowed his gaze over the rim of the glass. “You and I both know, the greatest challenge comes from here.” Leo gestured to his head. “And here.” He gestured to his heart. “When the balance between these two is disrupted, it does not matter how good of a chef you are. I told you this weeks ago. You have neglected your mise en place. You are everywhere: London, South of France, Los Angeles, Colorado. Cooking and smiling on television. It’s no wonder you had a…” Leo trailed off and looked around the room. “Corbyn, what is the word?”
Corbyn pocketed his phone and joined them, biting back a smile. “Hissy fit, chef.”
“Hissy fit,” Leo said, his strong accent articulating each syllable.
“I’m sorry, chef,” Gabe said. “I’ve told Corbyn to cut my appearances and limit my travel.”
“You need more than that, Gabe,” Leo said. “When was the last time you took a break?”
He parted his lips to answer, but nothing came out.
“I’ll tell you when, Gabe. Never, you’ve never taken time off,” Leo said, finishing off his first glass and pouring a second.
“It’s true,” Corbyn added. “In the three years I’ve known you, you’ve never taken a vacation.”
Agitation sparked in Gabe’s chest. “Chef, I’ve been with you since I was eighteen. You worked harder than anyone I know. You never took time off.”
Leo stared past Gabe. “Perhaps, but in my quest to be the best, whatever that means, I missed out on my children growing up. I missed out on holidays abroad. Just imagine what I could have brought to my cooking with that love—with those experiences.”
“But you’re one of the best, chef,” Gabe pressed. He could hear the desperation in his voice.
A shadow of regret passed over Leo’s face. “I could have been better.”
“But, chef—”
Leo raised his hand. “Take a break. Find your mise en place.” He swirled the last of the Cabernet in his glass before drinking the last sip. He set the glass down gently and came to his feet. “We’ll talk soon.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself, chef,” Gabe blurted out.
“You’re expected in Kansas City tomorrow. Somewhere called Langley Park,” Corbyn said, checking his phone.
“Christ!” Gabe sighed. “That’s my hometown. It’s my cousin’s wedding. I nearly forgot.”
Leo smiled. “This is just what you need. Go back to Langley Park. Say hello to my dear friend, Gerda. Find your mise en place. Find what is important to you. Use this time to balance your head and your heart, Gabe.”
Gabe nodded, and the old chef left the restaurant.
Corbyn patted his arm. “It’s good advice, especially if you want a show or endorsements. Go home, chef. Lay low. Clean up your act.”
Gabe stared into his empty wine glass. “I guess it’s Langley Park or bust.”
11
Monica wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Oma, do you have the air conditioning turned on?”
She’d gotten spoiled by San Francisco’s mild climate and had forgotten about the Midwest summer’s sweltering heat and stifling humidity. In the few days she had been home she’d been reminded that if there was a month for air conditioning in Langley Park, Kansas, it was August.
Monica had driven twelve hours straight from the transit station in Palo Alto to Salt Lake City. That’s where she’d found a pay phone and left an anonymous report with the Palo Alto Police. All she’d said was that there was an injured person at a home in the Portola Valley. That’s all she could report. It turned her stomach not to do more, but she’d grown up with the rich and powerful. The rules didn’t apply to them in the same way they applied to everyone else. To stay safe, she needed to remain anonymous.
After a few hours spent sleeping in her car, nestled among the big rigs at a truck stop outside of Salt Lake, she had driven the rest of the way through Wyoming and Nebraska back to The Little Bakery on Mulberry Drive in Langley Park. It was almost one in the morning when she’d parked her Subaru behind the shop. She slid her key into the bakery’s back door, expecting it not to budge, but with the flick of her wrist and click that sounded like her fate being sealed, it opened.
She’d gone up to her old room and crashed onto her bed. The next day, Oma had tapped her shoulder, waking her only a few hours later at four fifteen in the morning. Her grandmother, already in her starched white apron, had rattled off a laundry list of bakery tasks for her to complete as if a day hadn’t passed since sh
e’d left on her eighteenth birthday.
Two days and over a hundred frosted cupcakes later, neither one of them had mentioned her decade-plus absence or her abrupt middle of the night return. Oma was never one for sentimental heart to hearts, and for that, Monica was grateful.
Oma went to the shelf and removed a copper pot, shook her head, and then pulled out a cookie sheet. She glanced over her shoulder. “Of course, I turned on the air conditioner. You know what happens to the cream tortes when it gets too hot.”
Monica left the charm rolls she was filling with vanilla buttercream and went to the thermostat. It was nearly eighty degrees in the shop. “Oma, it’s not on.”
Her grandmother threw up her arms. “Then, turn it on.”
Monica glanced back onto Oma’s office. Making heads or tails of anything inside it was difficult. Papers were everywhere, and she couldn’t find a schedule posted.
“Do you have anyone coming in today to help out in the shop?” she asked, returning to her rolls.
Saturday used to be one of their busiest days. A young man had arrived early to do some deliveries this morning, but no one else had reported to work. Oma always had a few part-timers helping out, but since she had been back, the schedule seemed erratic.
“All these questions, enkelin,” Oma said. She returned the cookie sheet and went back to the copper pot.
“All right, all right!” Monica answered.
She blew out an exasperated breath. How did more than a decade pass since she’d last stepped foot inside this place? She knew the answer. The first couple of years with Cora Leigh had been a whirlwind of travel, fancy parties, extravagant shoots, and flashy runway shows. She’d barely had time to catch her breath. She would write Oma and send her postcards. Monica would always call her grandmother on her birthday, but Oma wasn’t one for girly chats on the phone. Then, just as she’d hit her stride in the modeling world, every part of the life she had come to love had vanished. Cora and Leigh split up over creative differences, and she was left a cover girl without anyone wanting her for their covers.
She couldn’t go home a failure with her tail between her legs, so she didn’t. She settled in San Francisco where she’d made contacts with some designers and picked up modeling jobs here and there. Her face, once gracing magazine ads and billboards, now waited in cattle call line-ups to see if a casting agent thought she had the right look. To add insult to injury, the faces in those queues seemed to get younger and younger as she grew older.
The phone rang, and Oma answered.
Monica went to the stovetop where a copper pot sat empty, heating up needlessly, and switched off the gas. “You left the burner on. What are you doing on the stove?” she asked, but Oma, still on the phone, waved her question off.
Her grandmother hung up and started filling a cake box with pink and blue iced cupcakes from the display case.
“What’s this for?” Monica asked.
“Babies,” Oma said with a twinkle in her eye.
Monica cocked her head. “A baby just called in an order?”
Oma already had a dozen in the box and was still filling it with more.
“These cupcakes are not for the babies, Monica. For the parents! Remember the wedding cake that went out for delivery this morning?”
“Sure, the one that went to the Langley Park Botanic Gardens.”
“That was the gardens’ events director on the phone. Both brides were pregnant and went into labor during the ceremony. They’re in the hospital, over at Midwest Medical Center. She told me nobody got to eat any cake, and it’s been sitting out for hours. I told her to throw it away. She says she heard the mothers are doing well, and there is a baby boy and a baby girl. I thought it would be nice to send something sweet over to the hospital.”
Monica hummed her acknowledgment skeptically.
“Was ist es? What is it, Monica?” Oma asked and closed the pastry box.
“Two pregnant brides?” Monica queried. “You sent me to parochial school for thirteen years. I’m surprised you’re okay with that.”
Oma lifted her chin and narrowed her gaze. “Do you know what I learned growing up in Germany during the Second World War?”
Monica’s mouth fell open. While she knew quite well the dire circumstances of her grandmother’s childhood, Oma had rarely spoken of it. She closed her mouth and shook her head.
“No one, not you, not me, can stand in judgment of another human being. Have you ever seen me treat anyone differently?”
“No, I just—”
Oma raised a hand. “I had my reasons for sending you to Sacred Heart, but it had nothing to do with religion.”
“I’m sorry, Oma. I didn’t mean to imply anything,” Monica said. She grabbed a pad of paper and scribbled out a note then took the box of cupcakes from her grandmother. “I wrote my cell number down. I’ll deliver the cupcakes to the hospital for you now. Call me if you need anything while I’m gone.”
It was almost half past six when Monica left the bakery with the cupcakes hanging from her forearm in the shop’s signature pink bag with the three-tiered cake emblem printed prominently on the side. Dark clouds had rolled in, and with them had come a cool breeze that cut through the day’s humidity. She decided against driving to the hospital and set out on foot. It would only take her twenty minutes or so to walk through the Langley Park Botanic Gardens and connect with the Boley Lake trail that linked the town center to the medical campus.
This was the first time she had ventured out since she’d arrived. She glanced from left to right, expecting to see familiar faces, but didn’t recognize anyone. The town was different, fresher. The place had been spruced up since she’d last strolled these streets. Hanging baskets spilled over with cascades of purple and pink petunias. Crisp window displays and shops buzzing with patrons met her eye as she headed north on Mulberry Drive and passed a coffee shop, a yoga studio, and a sleek camera store.
Collier’s Flower Shop was still there, but it had been reconfigured. It had gone from a simple store with bouquets to one of warm elegance with orchid displays and a bright array of sunflowers gracing the front window.
A restaurant called Park Tavern had opened catty-corner across the street from her grandmother’s bakery. During the day, families and couples alike flocked there to share a meal on the outdoor tables that dotted the front entrance. In the evenings, the bar, packed with patrons, looked like the hip place to be in Langley Park.
She headed east on Prairie Rose Street and passed the Community Recreation Center. It had been updated since she’d seen it last with a new, modern entrance. She’d worked there one summer as a junior counselor when she was fourteen. She’d still had to get up at four thirty in the morning and help Oma open the shop. But from eight until lunchtime, she’d gotten to be outdoors, helping the older counselors care for the children. That had been the one and the only summer she hadn’t been completely relegated to the bakery. She bit her lip and glanced behind the building. The basketball courts were still there. She let out a shaky breath and focused on the sidewalk. It took all the willpower she had not to run over to the spot where she had shaken Gabe’s hand and learned his name.
Gabe Sinclair. Her paperboy had a name.
The Boley Lake trailhead was much like she remembered. Thick green foliage welcomed her as the lake sat calm and serene. The city had made improvements to the botanic gardens over the years. From what she could tell, they’d added new trails and sitting areas and planted a wider variety of plant life. In all her travels, she’d always made it a point to find a botanical garden in whatever city she had landed in. Langley Park’s botanic garden may not have had any palm trees, but the sweeping rows of flowers and meticulously maintained hedges reminded her of the lush gardens she’d visited in Madrid off the Paseo del Prado.
She couldn’t deny that the town she had so longed to leave as a teenager was now quite charming.
She veered off the trail and headed toward the main building of the Midwest M
edical and Psychiatric Center. As she entered, she had to do a double-take when she saw the nurse at the information desk.
“Donna?” she asked, swiping her bangs out of her eyes.
“Well, I’ll be,” the woman said with a toothy smile, coming around the counter. “Look what the cat dragged in!”
Donna’s mahogany skin glowed as she wrapped Monica in a warm embrace.
“It’s good to see you, Donna. How are you?”
“I’m doing well. I have two grandchildren now.” She paused a beat, and her smile disappeared. “I’m not sure if you know, but remember your friend, Vanessa?”
Monica swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I know. I saw Mrs. Garza years ago right before I left town.”
Donna nodded solemnly. “That little girl’s passing was just a shame. It broke everyone’s heart here at the hospital.”
A beat of silence stretched between them before Donna rubbed her hands together and looked down at the bag with the cake emblem. “Anything in there for me?”
Grateful for the change of subject, Monica opened the pastry box and passed the nurse a frosted strawberry cupcake. “I don’t think they’ll miss one. Actually, they don’t even know that they’re getting cupcakes. My grandmother wanted me to deliver these to the two women who went into labor during their joint wedding.”
“Oh, yes!” Donna said with a chuckle. “Those poor women got dropped off here in a pedicab of all things!”
“A what?” Monica asked.
“Like a rickshaw or a bike taxi. Except this one was all decorated for their wedding.”
Monica grimaced. “Whatever works, I guess. Would it be okay if I delivered these to their rooms?”
“Half of Langley Park is up there with them. I don’t think they’ll mind anyone bringing them some delicious treats, though. You head up in the elevator. I’ll call Labor and Delivery and let them know you’re coming.”
Monica gave Donna one last hug then headed over to the bank of elevators. The doors clanged open, and she stepped inside. The doors closed, and a shiver passed through her. She pressed the button for the labor and delivery floor, but before the elevator had barely moved, she hit the emergency stop.
The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5) Page 89