Menu for Romance (17 page)

Major hurried down the hall to the executive dining room and through to the kitchen. “Ma, what’s wrong?” He slid the tray onto the island and went back to stop the swinging door’s flapping.

“Does anything have to be wrong for a mother to call her son?”

“No, but you don’t usually call me unless something’s happened. So what’s wrong?”

“Well, you see, Joan and I were going into the dining room for supper—but they call it dinner around here, and I don’t know why. You need to tell them that dinner is lunch and dinner at nighttime is supper.”

“Ma, focus. What happened?” Major snapped the lights on, tucked the phone between shoulder and ear, and set to hand-washing the dishes.

“We’d just gotten our trays, but Gene—he’s the one with the daughter I was telling you about, the one that just got married.” She paused, obviously expecting a response.

“Yes, Gene with the daughter who just got married.”

“Right. Anyway, Gene was behind someone else who stopped right in front of him, and Gene ran into her and both of them spilled their iced tea, see?”

“No, Ma. I don’t really see yet. Keep going.”

“So, Joan and I were talking and we weren’t paying much attention to Gene. You know, all he ever talks about is his daughter who just got married. It’s like he’s rubbing it in that his kid is married and mine isn’t. I want grandchildren, Major.”

He needed to bang his head against something hard. “What happened, Ma?”

“I fell.”

His hands stilled—but his heart pounded faster. “Fell? Are you hurt?”

“No. But they’re trying to make me go to bed. I don’t want to go to bed, Danny. Tell them I don’t have to go to bed.”

Head throbbing, he set the clean dishes on the drain board and found a clean towel to dry his hands on. “Put the doctor on.”

“There’s no doctor, just that little boy who keeps saying he is one. But I don’t think he’s old enough. You need to come out here and tell them I don’t want to go to bed.”

“Give the phone to him, please.”

“You’re coming, right?”

“Yes, Ma, I’ll come. Now give the phone to ... the little boy.”

A bit of fumbling on the line ended with, “This is Nick Sevellier.”

“Dr. Sevellier, how bad is she?”

“She’s a little banged up and hit her head pretty hard when she fell. But it’s not a concussion, so we see no reason to have her taken to the emergency room.”

Major’d taken his share of spills, working in kitchens since he was fifteen, and he knew just how dangerous even falling on a wood floor like those at BPC could be. “Was she knocked out?”

“Not at all. But she’s developing a pretty good knot on the back of her head.”

“And your medical opinion is bed rest?” The kid called himself a doctor, but Major didn’t know this kid’s credentials.

“My previous rotation was in the emergency room, Mr. O’Hara. I had to deal with a lot of head traumas there. I’m more worried about how sore she’s likely to be tomorrow. She wrenched her back a little bit, so I’d like her to lie down and let the nurses give her an ice and heat treatment.”

“Okay. Thanks. Put her back on the phone.” Major sighed.

“Did you tell him I’m not going to bed?”

“Ma, let them take care of you. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

By the time he convinced her, he was back in his office gathering his coat and duffel. “Ma, I’ve got to go,” he said quietly, to avoid Jeff or Sandra hearing him out in the kitchen. “Hang up the phone and let the nurses take you back to your room. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

“I don’t like you very much right now.” The line clicked and went dead.

“I love you, too, Ma.” Major threw the phone into his bag and turned off the office light.

“Everything okay, boss?” Sandra asked. The cookies she’d just taken from the oven filled the large space with a heavenly aroma.

“Yeah, just fine.” He slung his bag over his shoulder. “Jeff, there are some dishes on the drain board down in the executive kitchen. Will you bring those up and run them through the sterilizer with everything else before you leave tonight?”

“Can do, Chef.” Jeff didn’t look up from the cheese straws he was piping onto a large baking sheet with a pastry bag.

“Meredith is in her office if you need anything.”

“Yes, Chef,” both cooks responded.

Once in the elevator, Major leaned heavily against the wall, rubbing his forehead. Though he hated keeping secrets from Meredith, tonight’s episode with Ma reminded him of why he needed to keep her as far away from Meredith as he could, lest she ruin Meredith’s life, too.

Major rubbed his dry, burning eyes and looked around the condo one more time, just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Which he knew he hadn’t, since he’d been up at 4:00a.m. to clean an already spotless apartment.

Maybe he should vacuum one more time.

No. He’d vacuumed twice already. He stepped into the kitchen and caught sight of the clock on the back of the stove. They would be here in less than fifteen minutes, and he wasn’t even dressed.

The producer from Alaine’s show who’d called yesterday had suggested Major not wear his chef ’s jacket for the segments. He slid the closet door open and shuffled through his button-down shirts. Solid blue in a variety of shades; blue with stripes and patterns; white with blue stripes of various widths ... didn’t he have anything other than blue? Yes—gray. The producer had wanted him somewhat casual—“weekend wear,” she’d called it. Well, he didn’t really think that sweats and a ULB T-shirt were appropriate. Instead, he donned a plain white T-shirt, khakis, and a blue-gray waffle-weave pullover that allowed a bit of the white undershirt to show at the neck.

With just a few minutes remaining, he ducked into the bathroom to brush his teeth, again. He should have gotten his hair cut before today. It was going to be flopping down onto his forehead all day. After cleaning the sink and counter with a disinfecting wipe, he straightened the hand towels one more time.

He jumped at the rifle-shot sound of the knock on the front door. When he opened it, a plain woman of indeterminate age wearing a Channel Six–logoed Windbreaker stood on the other side.

She extended her right hand. “Major O’Hara? I’m Pricilla Wilson. We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

“Yes. Please come in.” He stepped out of the doorway into the space between his living room and dining area.

The cameraman who’d come with Alaine to the tasting last week entered behind her, pushing a cart piled with equipment cases.

“Can I help with anything?”

The cameraman grunted, which Major took as a no, and Major pointed him toward the kitchen.

“While he sets up the lights and cameras, let’s sit and discuss the plan for today.” Pricilla pulled out one of the chairs and sat at the table, scattering a stack of papers all over it in a matter of seconds. “We’ve got a lot of stuff to film and not a lot of time to do it.”

Eight hours sounded like quite a lot of time to Major.

“The girl doing your hair and makeup will be here in about forty-five minutes—”

“Hey, Priss”—the camera guy came around the corner—“you’d better come look.”

Major followed them but stood in the hallway outside the kitchen, since three people wouldn’t fit.

Pricilla hit a couple of keys on her phone and pressed it to her ear. “Hey, it’s me. We’ve got no joy here.”

Mortification rang in Major’s ears and burned every surface of his body.

“Kitchen’s way too small for the equipment we need for filming.” Pricilla came out of the kitchen to pace the length of the living room. “Of course not. We expected a chef would have at least a decent home kitchen.... You want what?”

She brushed past Major again and pulled the phone away from her ear. “Nelson, pack it all up. We’re going.” Back to the person on the other end of the phone, she said, “Yeah. We’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”

Major followed her back to the dining table, where she scraped up all her papers—and the placemat.

He reached over and rescued the mat. “What’s going on?”

She stuffed the papers into her bag. “We can’t shoot here. Your kitchen’s too small. So we’re taking all this elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Alaine’s place.”

Major stopped cold. “Where?”

“Alaine Delacroix’s place. She thinks her kitchen will work better, so bring what you might need that she may not have, and let’s get going. We’re on a tight schedule today.” Pricilla turned her back on him and made another phone call.

Major had to wait until Nelson got all of his equipment cases out of the kitchen before he could go in. He looked around for what to take with him and grabbed his knife case right away. No chef ever went anywhere without his knives. But what about everything else? Food processor, blender, steamer, butane warmers...

The whole point of what they were doing today was to familiarize people with stuff they already had in their home kitchens. What better way to do that than in the kitchen of someone who didn’t have professional-quality products? He tucked his knife case into his duffel bag and joined the production assistant and cameraman at the door.

“I’ll follow you over there.” He locked the door behind them and trailed them out to the parking lot where, this time, Nelson accepted his help in loading all of the equipment back into their van.

The van headed toward Old Towne and into an older part of the townhouse development where Forbes lived. Major had looked at a couple of units here when he’d moved back to town, but even though he’d much preferred the kitchens, the price on his condo had been more palatable.

He parked one space away from the van to give them room for taking equipment out, just as a small, sporty Mazda with dark windows pulled into the driveway at the townhouse across the roadway.

Alaine sprang out of the little black car—but if Major hadn’t known she was meeting them here, he might not have recognized her. Dressed in jeans and a black sweater, she wore her hair pulled up at the back of her head haphazardly as if done on the fly, and she didn’t have any makeup on, making her look pale and wan.

“I had a great idea on the way over here.” Alaine jogged across the street to help with equipment. “Hey, Major.”

“Hi, Alaine.”

“What’s this idea?” Pricilla asked.

“Were you working at the Food Network when Gordon Elliott did that show where he went around and dropped in on people and made a meal from whatever they had in their kitchens?”

“That was before my time, but I watched it pretty regularly.” Pricilla heaved a large case onto the cart. “You want him to do something like that?”

Major loved being talked about as if he weren’t standing right there with them.

“Similar idea. What if he were to fix a meal just from whatever I have on hand in my kitchen? He could explain what he’s doing but also go ahead and give recipes and tips and a cooking demonstration along the way.” Alaine finally turned to acknowledge his presence. “What do you think?”

Considering he hadn’t wanted to do this in the first place? “Sounds like it would be better than me trying to demonstrate how different things work or explain what they’re used for.”

“Try to use as much of the stuff that I have in my kitchen as you can—there are a bunch of things in there that I don’t even know what they are. My mom gives me stuff for my kitchen every year on my birthday and at Christmas. I guess she hopes I’ll eventually stop hating to cook and start using all of it.” She wrinkled her nose like Samantha on
Bewitched
when she grinned.

He couldn’t help but laugh. Why did everyone he know hate to cook? “I’ll see what I can do. But if you don’t like cooking, am I going to have any ingredients to work with?”

“I went to the grocery store last night. I always have the greatest intentions, but I never follow through. Fortunately, Mama likes my kitchen better than her own, so she usually comes over one night during the week and cooks up a bunch of meals for me.”

Oh, to have a mother who could do stuff like that without burning down the building. “Great. Let’s go see what you have, and I’ll come up with a menu.”

He followed Alaine through the one-car garage—which was empty, so it looked as if she actually used it for her car—up several steps, and into a utility room/pantry. He stopped and looked at the dry goods on the shelves. Flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, spices, dried herbs, canned vegetables and fruits, and cereal—lots of cereal.

Alaine’s cheeks were red when he finished his perusal. “I’m a big cereal-for-supper girl. And breakfast.”

Meredith had been that way, too, until he’d stepped in and started making sure she had decent meals to take home with her every day. “Show me to your kitchen.”

Jealousy struck instantly when he stepped out of the utility room and into the main part of the house. Though not huge, the fact that the kitchen was completely open to the living and dining rooms made it feel huge. And she had upgraded stainless appliances, including a gas stove built into the eat-at island that divided the kitchen from the rest of the space.

“So, Chef, tell me what you think.” Pride laced Alaine’s voice.

“It’s great. I didn’t know any of these units had kitchens like this. The ones I looked at were much smaller and more closed off—they just had pass-through windows.”

“The people who owned this before me completely renovated it based on something they saw on TV. The colors were hideous—tomato red walls and a green tile backsplash so it looked like Christmas all the time—but that was a pretty easy fix. And I got the place for a song—I mean, most buyers can’t stand the fact that the front overlooks a bunch of old, dilapidated warehouses across the highway.”

“But you don’t care about the view?”

Alaine turned slowly around, her arms extended. “When I could have this?”

“I see your point.”

She looked at her watch and sighed. “While I’d love to stay and watch you work, I’ve got to get back to the station and finish writing some stories for today’s show. Have fun, and leave me some leftovers.” She winked and left.

Pricilla and Nelson brought in the equipment and went to work setting it all up while Major explored Alaine’s kitchen. At first, he felt odd going through all the drawers and cabinets, until he started seeing the quality of her cookware and small appliances. Not quite professional quality, but definitely top of the line.

Once familiar with where everything was, he pulled his spiral notebook out of his duffel and went to the fridge. Inventorying its contents, he started writing down ideas for dishes that were moderately simple and quick, that pretty much anyone could cook if given the right instruction. The freezer offered up even more ideas, especially once he saw the lamb shoulder steaks and artichoke hearts. He took them out, filled half the sink with cold water, and put the plastic-bagged meat in it to start thawing.

The makeup gal, Charla, arrived and had Major sit on one of the stools from the island, which had been moved into the middle of the living room. She tucked paper towels around his collar and went to work. Pricilla took the opportunity to wire him up with a lapel microphone—which she had to run up under his shirt from the battery pack clipped to the back of his belt. As he could throughout the process, he wrote recipe ideas, trying to figure out exactly how to explain the processes and eliminating several ideas as too complicated to explain.

“Have you ever thought about getting your teeth whitened?” Charla asked.

“No. Can’t say as I have.” What—were his teeth
that
bad?

“Hmm.” Charla shrugged and made a face as if to say,
Your funeral.

Great, one more thing to be self-conscious about. Pudgy face, check. Bad hair, check. Hideously discolored teeth, check. He’d hit the trifecta.

He held his breath to keep from sneezing when Charla dusted powder over his whole face. “Now, whatever you do, don’t touch your face. Don’t scratch your nose or rub your eyes.”

Immediately, his entire face started itching. “I’ll do my best. What about sweating?”

“This makeup can withstand a lot of moisture, but try not to sweat too much. If you feel like you’re going to need it, turn the thermostat down or open some windows to cool off.” She closed up her makeup kit—which looked like a fishing tackle box—and shrugged into a coat with a huge furry collar. “I’ll be in and out all day for touch-ups.”

“Thanks.”

“Keep those paper towels in your collar except when you’re filming. I guess they didn’t tell you not to wear white up on your neck.”

“No. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Just try to keep your head up at all times so your makeup doesn’t rub onto the white shirt.”

Great. Now everyone involved in this project was frustrated with him. “Will do.”

“Chef, we’re ready to get some test shots of you,” Pricilla called.

They’d set the tripod camera up across the island from the cooktop, and Nelson had another one on his shoulder.

“Here’s the deal.” Pricilla pulled one of the stools over beside the tripod and set her clipboard down on the seat. “This is the camera you’re going to talk into, and I’m going to be running it. Nelson is going to be getting shots from more of an over-your-shoulder perspective. We may have to run through some of the steps a couple of times so that he can get close-ups of what you’re doing.”

“Did I hear Alaine say you used to work at the Food Network?”

“I did two internships there as an undergrad and as a graduate student and then worked there a couple of years after college.” Pricilla smiled for the first time this morning. “Having a cooking segment on Alaine’s show was my suggestion.”

Now he knew whom to blame for this entire fiasco. He went around to the stove. Pricilla adjusted the fixed camera’s angle. “Move around as if you’re cooking—go to the sink and the fridge, move to the side of the stove where you’ll chop vegetables....”

Major moved around the kitchen as directed, doing his best not to be freaked out that a big guy with a large camera on his shoulder was following his every move. The lights they’d put up in every corner of the triangular kitchen were really heating up the place, and he hadn’t even turned on the stove or oven yet.

“You good, Nelson?” Pricilla asked.

“Yep.”

“Let’s go through your menu, Chef, and figure out the best order for doing this. We want it to be real time as much as possible—meaning that if someone was really making this for a meal, they’d have to be working on multiple projects all at once. We aren’t just going to do a dish at a time.”

Forty-five minutes later, he pulled the paper towels out of his collar and began explaining to the camera how to thaw frozen meat safely.

“Let me stop you for a second, Chef.” Pricilla came out from behind her camera.