“Get on a horse? I’m supposed to get on a horse? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that your marriage is over, and I’m really, really sorry Cal turned out to have loose morals even by L.A. standards. But you can’t give up on all weddings.”
“Getting back on the horse after Cal left would be having sex again, not catering weddings. And for your information I have already done that.”
Max was staring at her. “You had sex and didn’t tell me?”
She flapped a hand. “Completely forgettable. I just needed to ride a different horse.”
“Who was he?”
“Friend of a friend. Like I said, no big deal.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
Max was suddenly grinning like a fool. “ England has excellent horses.”
Rachel spent three days getting the kitchen cleaned, organized, and stocked exactly as she wanted it. She’d been in England two weeks, and amazingly she was starting to feel better. The smell of crisp apples ready to be picked stirred her senses when she walked around the estate. The scents of lavender, rosemary, and thyme lay heavy in the autumn sunshine bathing the kitchen garden, and her hands itched to cook.
If Max was going to make her cater events then she was going to have the kitchen as efficient as possible. She’d brought her favorite chef’s knife with her, the one tool she hated to be without. Vaguely, she’d imagined cooking a few meals for Maxine and Earl George, never that she’d be catering a wedding. But holding out against Max at the best of times was tough. When she was emotionally pathetic, it was hopeless. In fact, there were lots of catering jobs large and small she could do while she was here, and after she’d heard about the mother-and-son catering disaster, she knew she had to step in and help her sister. On some level she even understood she needed to do this for her own healing.
The knife was lightweight Japanese steel and fit her hand so well it was like an extension of her fingers. The rest of the knives at Hart House were German, and so dull she’d made Max drive her into town this morning to get them sharpened.
A mistake she wouldn’t be making again anytime soon. How had she forgotten that Maxine couldn’t talk and drive at the same time in the States, never mind while driving on the opposite side of the road?
She shuddered in memory. She was hot, frazzled, had seen her life pass before her eyes too many times today, and had discovered something called a roundabout, a traffic circle of hell. She wished she hadn’t picked today to offer to cook for Maxine and George because Maxine had trilled her excitement and run off to invite a few friends.
The produce she’d discovered at a local greengrocer’s lay before her, along with the perfectly ripe soft cheese from the cheese shop. Marinating in the fridge was lamb so local she didn’t want to think about it too closely.
Somebody who’d cooked here recently had let the big orange cat who paraded around the place make a nuisance of itself. Rachel did not allow cats in her kitchen, but this old tabby was acting like the kitchen was his and if she fed him enough tidbits, he might consider letting her stay.
It was hot, too hot to close the door that led to a small yard and then the kitchen garden.
Still, she was cooking again. The knife felt like a forgotten lover back in her arms, the vegetables and fruits and fresh herbs scattered before her were like paints ready to be mixed and, by her hands, turned into art.
Some of her black mood drained and she found herself falling into the rhythms that gave her life work and made her work pleasure. While she prepared a sauce for the lamb, she mentally worked out the timeline for table service and made a list of the wines she’d need.
That done, she moved to the homelier task of peeling veggies. When she thought about how many aspiring chefs had fought for the sous chef jobs in her restaurant, she smiled to herself. How far the mighty had fallen. She didn’t really mind, though. The rhythm of the movements, the scrape of peeler on carrot, the smell of vegetables and herbs fresh from the earth pleased her.
The scrape of gravel informed her she had a visitor and her moment of Zen tranquility vanished. Damn cat.
“Out!” she yelled, determined to get rid of that infernal mooch once and for all. She grabbed a potato from the tile counter and threw it hard, high enough that it wouldn’t actually hit the cat, but simply let the animal know that her kitchen was out of bounds.
In fact, she discovered that she’d pitched the potato exactly at crotch height of a tall man when she heard a distinctly human oomph and spun around.
His instincts were quick, at least. He had his hands crossed over his privates as the missile hit the cupped backs of his hands and bounced to the floor with a hollow plop.
For a stunned second there was utter silence. She stood there, staring at a rangy, athletic man with close-cropped hair and a lean, intelligent face, with his hands crossed over his crotch. Slowly, he removed his hands and straightened.
“Unmanned by a spud,” the man said, looking down at the potato, which had rolled, as though embarrassed by its bad temper, under the butcher’s block.
“I’m sorry. I thought you were the cat,” Rachel said.
“Ah, that explains it.” He had a cultured voice. Crisper than George’s, though. More BBC America announcer than royal family. Sharp gray eyes, she noticed, and hair that would curl if he didn’t keep it so short. An athlete’s build. As she replayed the protective move with his hands, she realized she’d seen that same posture during shoot-outs in soccer games.
He was looking at her as though wondering whether he dared cross the threshold. Smart guy.
“This is the private part of the house,” she said, glad Max had warned her about the tourists who sometimes got lost. “The old kitchen is in the next building, around the corner. Do you want me to show you?”
“No, thank you. I came to see you.”
He looked at her with those heavy-lidded gray eyes, and for the first time since Cal Moody had broken her heart, she felt the stirring of…something. A little of that male-female thing that always led to no good in her experience.
“You came to see me?” she repeated stupidly.
“About the wedding. I understand from Maxine that you’ll be doing the catering.”
“Right, the wedding.” She picked up a carrot and attacked it with the peeler.
Her unwanted visitor knelt to the ground and picked up the potato, then walked briskly forward and placed it beside her. “Do I detect a certain animosity toward the upcoming happy event?”
Silently, she marveled at the sheer number of words guys like George and this dude needed to say the simplest things. She also reminded herself to remain silent about her feelings referring to the upcoming “happy event.” George and Max needed the money and it was up to her to make sure the catering was superb. That was all she had to do. So she forced herself to look up and try to keep her expression pleasant. She’d always stayed in the background of food preparation for good reason. She hated dealing with the customers.
“I’m sure the event will be so happy it will do cartwheels. I promise the food will be good.” And she went back to her carrot.
He rolled the potato back and forth under his fingers as though it were a bumpy and rather dirty marble. She couldn’t help noticing his hands. He had great hands. They looked tough and strong, like a fighter’s-or a chef’s. Better on a man than a woman. Hers were so scarred, burned, and generally mistreated that she never drew attention to them. On a guy, though, the roughed-up hands looked good-sexy. For a blind moment she imagined those hands on her, and then snapped herself out of her inappropriate sexual reverie.
What was wrong with her? She must be crazier than she thought.
She felt that he was watching her and wished fervently it had been the cat who’d intruded on her kitchen.