Letting Hearts Heal (11 page)

Mason started gathering the plates. “I’ll do the dishes. You guys go watch football.”

“That’s okay. I can do it,” Dean said. Mason had done the dishes plenty of times, but now that Dean knew how he felt about cooking and kitchens, he wasn’t about to force him to do anything.

“Dean, go watch football with your son. I’m good here. Promise.”

“You sure?”

“Yep. Doing dishes involves water. Just my element. And I may have stayed away from kitchens, but this one is special. Always has been.”

“All right. Holler if you change your mind.” Dean picked up a beer and the ice bag he’d left in the freezer during dinner and went to find Wyatt. He knew he wasn’t up for a Father of the Year Award, but he could at least teach his son about football.

M
ASON
HUMMED
to himself while he cleaned the kitchen. It felt strange to be happy in a kitchen again, but it had been a weight off his shoulders to tell Dean why he’d been freaking out. After that, experiencing the wonder of a perfectly normal holiday was enough to make anyone whistle happily while they washed dirty dishes.

Holidays in the Schneider household were uncomfortable when Mason was growing up. His dad was a king on his recliner/throne while his mom slaved away in the kitchen and Mason and his siblings tried to be quiet, well-behaved, and not do anything to make their dad pull out the leather belt or the Bible. Before and during the mediocre meals—Mason’s mom was never much of a cook—Mason was forced to listen to ravings about God that never seemed to match what he got out of the Bible himself when he was forced to read it every Sunday afternoon until he was sixteen.

Wyatt shuffled into the kitchen. “Daddy said I could have a juice box.”

“Lucky you.” Mason grinned and grabbed an orange juice from the fridge.

With amazing patience for a kid his age, Wyatt carefully got out the straw and stuck it into the box. Drinking with a frown, he watched Mason for a while. “Mason?”

“Yes?”

“Daddy says you have to watch football for Thanksgivin’. Is that true?”

Mason hid his smile. There’d been an awful lot of “Daddy says” lately, and it was great that father and son were finally starting to bond. “Well, I don’t think that you
have
to, but a lot of people like to watch football at Thanksgiving. You don’t like football?”

Wyatt shrugged. “I like cartoons better.”

“I think I do too.” Mason wasn’t even kidding, but he wouldn’t admit it to Dean, who took his football very seriously. It was nice to know that if push came to shove, they’d be two against one in favor of cartoons.

Encouraged by Mason’s support, Wyatt started chattering about his favorite cartoons. None of them sounded like the ones Mason had been allowed to watch as a kid. Or the ones he watched as an adult when he bought the tiniest TV in the history of TVs as one of the first purchases for his small apartment in New York. Unrestricted TV watching had felt like heaven.

“You’re not listening.” Wyatt said, his bottom lip jutting out in a pout.

“You’re right, and that’s rude. I’m sorry, Wyatt. I was just thinking about my own favorite cartoons.”

“You can choose next time we get to watch cartoons,” Wyatt offered generously, quick to forgive.

“Thank you.” Mason smiled at Wyatt, who looked pleased with himself, and wiped down the kitchen counter. “All right, I’m done here. Wanna go humor your daddy and watch the game?”

Wyatt sighed as if the world’s burdens were on his little shoulders. “Sure.”

Later that night when Wyatt had fallen asleep on the couch, Dean turned and faced Mason on the couch. “Tell me about New York?”

Mason heard the question for what it was. What Dean really wanted to know about was the whole chef thing. Looking at the muted TV and the old western he’d lost interest in, Mason considered his words. “When I first got there, I felt like a horse on a dance floor. I didn’t belong in the big city—had never dreamed of going there. The only reason I went there was to find my biological mother.”

He turned to look at Dean and their knees touched. The little bit of contact gave Mason the courage to go on. He’d never been good at talking about feelings and personal things with anyone but Dean. In New York, he’d acted rather than talked. “I was lucky to get a job as a busboy at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. The owner had a tendency to lose interest in the business once in a while. I think maybe Pierre—he was the sous-chef and practically ran the place—felt sorry for the country boy who was gonna get eaten by the big bad city if no one saved him. He was good to me, though. Took me under his wing when he didn’t have to.”

“Working there got you interested in cooking?” Dean asked.

“Not the way you probably think. I hadn’t given cooking or advancing beyond busboy any thought before I was asked to fill in as waiter one night. Then before I knew it, I was a waiter. I didn’t question it, I just went with the flow, feeling as if I wasn’t really in control of my life, but not knowing how to change it. It was around that time that Pierre began to take a different interest in me, if you know what I mean. I was lonely, he was nice… I don’t know. It seemed right at the time.

“I started hanging out in the restaurant in the mornings when it was closed and Pierre was testing new recipes. He’d come up with the most amazing things. He was from France originally, and he called himself an Italian convert… said French cuisine was too pretentious. He’d ask me to taste what he cooked and give my opinion. I did, and he told me I had an excellent palate. He taught me how to cook, and it didn’t take long before I realized that I was good at it. Really good at it. And it was exhilarating.

“I started out doing the prep. You know, chopping vegetables, making stock—all that kind of stuff that’s done before the restaurant opens. But it didn’t take long before I was cooking alongside chefs who had diplomas from fancy culinary schools that I’d never even heard of. My mind couldn’t catch up, so I just kept my head down and went with it.”

“Wow.” Dean shook his head slowly. “Shit, Mase. To do all that without going to school for it….”

“I took some flak for it initially, but most of them shut up when they tasted my cooking. I was just lucky that Pierre saw something in me that I didn’t even know was there.”

“Were you happy with him?”

The question startled Mason because he’d never really thought about it. “You know, in many ways, everything that happened in New York just happened. Not because I chose it. I was just carried along like the paper ships I used to throw into the creek as a kid and watch disappear out of sight as they were taken away by the current. I wasn’t happy in New York, and I wasn’t unhappy either. I just was. And Pierre…. I’m grateful that he discovered something in me that I didn’t know was there, but in the end I still wasn’t good enough for him. So, I guess the real answer to your question is no. I wasn’t happy with him.”

Mason had been dormant in New York, he realized. He’d been waiting for the chance to go home.

T
HE
FOLLOWING
morning, Mason began to seriously question Dean’s sanity. At breakfast, Dean asked if Mason would mind watching Wyatt and then proceeded to share his plan to go shopping.

“Today?” Mason asked, feeling like he should check Dean’s forehead for a fever.

“Today’s as good a day as any,” Dean replied, unbothered. “I’ll drop off that first batch of beer at the store so Karen and Pete can get them on the shelves.”

“You do know that the whole country will be shopping today, right?” Mason asked.

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad. Media’s always exaggerating stuff.”

“Famous last words.”

And then Dean drove off, headed toward a madness he clearly had no clue about. Mason was happy he hadn’t been asked to go.

“All right, kiddo,” Mason said to Wyatt. “I guess it’s just you and me today. What should we do?”

“Um….” Wyatt considered the question seriously as he always did. “Dunno.”

“Do you want to help me with something? Like a secret project?”

Wyatt nodded with his whole body, bouncing up and down. “And we won’t tell anyone.”

Mason chuckled. “That’s right. We need to start outside, so bundle up.”

They went outside to one of the greenhouses where Mason knew he could find some herbs. He wanted to test one of the many ideas the bound and gagged chef inside of him had come up with since he learned about Dean’s business.

“Do you know what the herbs are called?” Mason asked Wyatt.

“Parmesan?”

Mason bit his tongue. “Uh, no. That’s a cheese. Maybe you mean parsley?”

“Yes.”

Kneeling down, Mason picked some parsley and held it under Wyatt’s nose. “Smells good, doesn’t it? Do you want to taste it?”

Wyatt nodded and took off his gloves. He tasted it, smiled, and demanded to learn more herb names.

They spent a couple of hours outside, picking and tasting. Wyatt giggled his way through all the different names. When they returned he declared that his favorite was still parmesan.

Mason had a basket filled with different herbs, and Wyatt helped him rinse them. Then they mixed them with salt in a food processor—Mason had decided that food processors weren’t likely to burst into flames—and laid them out to dry.

On his visits to the store, Mason had found that different herb salts—maybe smoked salt when he found the courage to light a fire to something on purpose—would be a great addition to the product range. The first step was to test which ones worked, how they worked, and why they worked—and then hope that this tiny, tiny step didn’t lead Dean to expect him to instantly become the chef he’d been looking for. Because Mason was not ready.

Chapter 9

“N
EVER
AGAIN
.
Never fucking again,” Dean fumed as he barreled through the front door. When he spotted Mason, he had to suppress a growl. “You knew. Why didn’t you tell me how bad it would be?”

“I tried to,” Mason objected, looking suspiciously like he was trying to hold back laughter.

So maybe Mason had tried to warn him, but he could have tried a little harder considering he obviously knew that Dean had been heading into a war zone. Sure, he’d heard of Black Friday shopping, but he honestly thought people were exaggerating. They hadn’t been. They’d been downplaying the whole thing. Bastards.

“Why didn’t you wait when you saw how bad it was?” Mason asked, keeping his distance as Dean took off his coat.

“Because.” Dean wondered that too. “Because Wyatt is growing out of his clothes. Do you want him to walk around naked?”

“I’m sure he’d still have been able to fit into something from his closet tomorrow.”

“But what if he hadn’t?” Dean knew he was being completely unreasonable, but he’d almost been killed several times over children’s clothes. He was entitled. “I need a beer,” he muttered.

“Daddy?” Wyatt was coloring at the kitchen table and looked a bit scared.

Dean tried to smile. “Hey, buddy. I got you some new clothes.”

“A pea coat?” Mason snickered into his ear. Dean jumped because he hadn’t heard him sneak up.

“Shit. I should have gotten him that, shouldn’t I?”

“Maybe for Christmas.” Mason looked amused, and Dean could feel the tension leaving his body just looking at Mason’s smile.

“Speaking of Christmas.” Dean cleared his throat. “I got some lights for the porch. I thought maybe we could put them up today.”

And so they did. Dean felt all the stress evaporate as he watched Mason wrap up a giggling Wyatt in a string of lights and proclaim him a Christmas tree. By the time it got dark, the porch looked more Christmassy than anything on the ranch ever had. The only thing more beautiful was the look of wonder and awe on Wyatt’s face. Suddenly the horrendous shopping trip seemed completely worth it.

Dean got up early the following morning. He was behind on work and only stopped long enough to make coffee before setting up camp in his office. He’d always loved the room, even when it had been his dad’s domain and strictly off limits to a curious little boy. Maybe that was why it had been so interesting. Dean had made it his first project when he inherited the ranch. He stripped it of everything that reminded him of his dad and made it his cave. When Wyatt arrived Dean had made certain to always keep the door open and welcome his son inside.

Looking through the list of suppliers for the store, Dean was impressed at how many new names and products Mason had brought in. Often Dean had a difficult time explaining the full potential of his idea, but Mason just seemed to get it. He had ideas along the lines of Dean’s own, which was both exciting and scary—exciting because Dean had sometimes felt alone in his enterprise, and scary because Dean had never met anyone who had understood him even half as well as Mason.

“Daddy?” Wyatt’s voice interrupted Dean’s thoughts. He stood in the doorway, pulling at his shirt sleeve. “It’s too big.”

Dean looked at his son. He was wearing some of the clothes Dean had risked his life to buy the previous day, and Wyatt was right. They were way too big.
Shit.