Skinny Bitch in Love (6 page)

“My husband takes Pilates, so, yeah, I’d say you can love books,” Eva muttered.

Before we explored that little gem again, I stood up and said, “Okay, so everyone up, and let’s hit the kitchen. We’re making a vegan lasagna, but you won’t be able to tell you’re not eating ricotta cheese or ground beef. That’s how amazing it’ll be. We’re also going to make one of my favorite things—sun-dried
tomato and eggplant bruschetta. And a simple green salad with a miso-ginger dressing.”

They crowded around me at the long stretch of counter, which wasn’t hideous formica but a nice white tile that I was suddenly really grateful for. “We’ll start with the lasagna, since it takes the longest to prepare and assemble. Tonight we’ll use prepared strips of pasta, but in another class I’ll teach you how to make your own dough.”

Everything was laid out on the counter, including the recipe, which I adapted from Candle 22, the restaurant that gave me my start as vegetable chef. No one’s lasagna was better—except for mine. Big pot of water on the stove, baking dish prepped, I was showing them how to properly peel and chop garlic when the intercom buzzed.

Another student off the street? I grabbed a dish towel, wiped the gunk from my hands, and pressed TALK on the intercom. “Skinny Bitch Cooking School, Clementine speaking.”

“Um, yes,” said an English accent. “Clementine, my name is Alexander Orr. I’m the new sous chef at Fresh.”

Never heard of him. I pressed TALK again. “And?” Had he come to rub his job in my face?

“Um, well, I was sorry about what transpired at Fresh and all, and was passing by and saw your sign for the cooking class, and realized I was right in front of your building, and—”

Jesus. I pressed UNLOCK and let the poor English sap up.

“ ‘
Transpired
’ is a nice word,” Sara said, whipping her knife around so fast that she almost maimed Duncan.

“I like that you appreciate words,” Duncan said. Sara smiled.

Interesting. He wasn’t her type at all. But Sara had an open mind. When it came to eating
and
dating. This was a good thing.

I held open the door and could hear him clomping up the steps. Finally, there appeared a very cute guy, thirty tops, with sandy-brown almost-curly hair and dark brown eyes. He had a dimple in both cheeks. He was tall and lanky and wearing a long-sleeved button-down white shirt and army-green cargo pants. Converse sneakers.

“Ah, the famous Clementine in the flesh,” he said, and his cheeks actually reddened. “It’s been a long time since I last saw you.”

“We’ve met?”

“At Desdemona’s. I was waiting for my interview with the chef. You were a line cook, working on artichokes, I recall. You told me if I wanted the job I’d better talk extra fast during the interview because the chef was in a shitty mood. I didn’t get the job, but he said he could tell I was an okay bloke and recommended me to Organic X, where I worked for the past year as an assistant sous chef until Fresh recruited me.”

“Oh, yeah! I do remember you.” He’d tripped over the sack of potatoes and his glasses went flying off his face and almost landed in a sauté pan full of onions. He must have gotten contacts.

He glanced through the archway into the kitchen. “I can see you’re in the middle of your class. I guess I just, well, wanted to say I’m sorry I got a great job at your expense. Though I see you’re doing quite well.”

The compliment, accent, and dimples conspired against me. “You can hang out if you want, be co-teacher tonight.”

He looked at me intently for a moment as if trying to decide if I was just being friendly. I wasn’t sure myself. “I would love to, Clementine, I really would, but I promised my ill grandmum I’d stop by with some soup.” He pointed at the bag he’d put down by the door. “Maybe I could, um, give you a call sometime? Or you could call me.” He pulled a card out of his wallet, scribbled his number on the back, and handed it to me.

Wow, picked up in my own apartment. That was new. “Um, sure,” I said.

“Cute!” Sara said when the door shut behind him. “And bringing his ill grand
mum
soup!”

He
was
cute. Not totally my type, which was a lot more jerkish from the get-go, unfortunately. But cute. And a chef. And, like Sara said, bringing his grandmum soup.

“Watch out,” Eva said, knife pointed at me. “British guys trap you with their accents and use all these terms that make you think they care much more than they actually do. I dated a Brit once, and two seconds after dumping me he said he ‘fancied a shag.’ It sounded so polite I couldn’t resist.”

“My college roommate was from Wales and he was a great guy. Chap,” Duncan said, sliding the garlic bits off his knife with his finger.

I helped Eva chop her garlic more finely. “For all I know, he was sent by Emil—the executive chef at this restaurant that unfairly fired me—to spy on me or get back at me in some way.” I’d never been much of a cynic until a pat of butter entered my
life. “I mean, who could think that sweet face and Englishness could be up to no good?”

“Well, at least go out with him,” Sara said. “You can get him to convince everyone that you were set up. Clear your name.”

Smart thinking. “We’ll see. Okay, now on to the mushrooms.”

There was chopping, talking, laughing, instruction, and there were sips of wine. And a few minutes later, everyone crowded around me to learn about tofu—how to buy, how to handle, and how braising it first before sautéing it with the vegetables would give it flavor and texture. “Okay, so you take the block of tofu and—”

A booming drill sounded right outside the window.

“What the hell is that?” Sara asked, going over to the living room to peer out the window as another mind-blowing whir of drill blasted us. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” I asked, following her. The noise was deafening, like someone was drilling into my head. By the time I got to the window, it stopped. Because the guy on a ladder across the street was done hanging a huge sign that was covered in bubble wrap.

Above the beautiful arched windowpane of my space for Clementine’s No Crap Café. Oh, shit was right.

Sara rubbed my shoulder. “Sorry, Clem. I know you had your eye on that space. But just think, by the time whatever’s going in goes out of business in three months like the last place, you might have enough money to lease it.”

That actually made me feel better.

A man came out the door, put on dark sunglasses, and stared up at the sign. He seemed to be okaying how it had been mounted. The man on the ladder started unwrapping the bubble wrap. After two solid minutes of unwrapping, facing right at me was a 3D silver steer’s head. A steer’s head. Fucking horns and everything. As he unwrapped the entire sign, I could clearly read the etched name from here.

THE SILVER STEER.

“Why not just call the place ‘Meat’?” I muttered. Fuck. Shit. Fuck shit! No way was I doing my sunrise yoga while looking out the window at a dead steer head. “Sara, can you hold the fort while I confront this carcass-eating moron about his stupid sign? I’ll be back in five.”

“You’re gonna tell him to move it?” Eva asked, and I could tell I went up a few notches in her estimation.

“Shit, yeah, I am. Or at least to take off the dead deer head. It’s totally offensive.”

I marched downstairs and crossed the street and pulled open The Silver Steer’s door. A group of people was crowded around the one table in the place, a roll of blueprints spread out. An officious-looking woman with a clipboard and safety goggles around her neck came storming up to me. “No one can enter without authorization,” she said. “For safety purposes.”

“I have a problem with the sign outside. For
my
safety.” And yours, lady.

“The sign meets city regulations, Miss. Now if you’ll—”

“Who owns this place?” I asked, looking around for the guy in the dark sunglasses.

“Miss, Mr. Jeffries is very busy. If you’ll—”

“Is there a problem?” a man asked, leaning back from the table to eye me. “I’m Zach Jeffries.” It was the guy in the dark sunglasses, except now he wasn’t wearing sunglasses. And he was so unbelievably good-looking that I couldn’t speak for a moment. Tall. Thick dark brown hair. Intense dark blue eyes. Okay, yes, a teeny bit like Ben’s. White shirt, sleeves rolled up. The slightest cleft in his chin.

Because I’d gone mute, he’d leaned back in, and the meeting resumed.

“The sign,” I said, raising my voice. “It has to go.”

He leaned back again and stared at me. “What about it bothers you?”

“I live across the street,” I said, pointing up at my window, not that he’d know which one it was. “I’m a vegan chef and I am conducting cooking classes out of my home. I was about to teach my students how to properly handle a block of tofu when your dead animal sign went up and is now staring with its dead eyes directly into my living room.”

There was a hint of smile. “And?” he prompted.

I thought I had covered the
and
. “And it’s bad enough that you stole this space out from under me before I even had a chance—” I took a deep breath. Stick to the subject. “
And
this is not good for business! The smell of rotting animal carcass will make my students—and me—want to hurl.” Although I
was the only vegan in my apartment at the moment. Not that this asshole needed to know that. “My students are very upset. They might not even be willing to return next week. And it’s only the first night of class.”

“I sympathize,” he replied, his dark blue eyes looking straight into mine. “My sister Avery is a vegan. Drinks all sorts of raw vegetables for breakfast, carries around her own not-cheese in some sort of purse cooler.”

“So you’ll take down the dead cow?” I asked, hopeful.

“Steer,” he corrected. “And no, sorry. You’re cute, though.”

Someone laughed. Trust that it wasn’t me.

Could he
be
more condescending?

“Zach, I’ve only got ten minutes,” someone at the table said.

“Excuse us, please,” Zach said to me. “And again, my apologies.”

“This way, Miss,” Clipboard said.

“You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” I shot toward Zach Jeffries like an idiot. My carnivore lawyer sister would probably ask if I could get her into The Silver Steer on opening night.

As I left, I saw him watching me go.

I forced myself to take deep cleansing breaths on the way back to my apartment. These people weren’t paying four hundred bucks to listen to me snarl curses at an aluminum sign. So when I opened the front door, I calmly announced that the
owner was an ass and we had bruschetta to make and a lasagna to assemble.

Eva was a little aggressive with her chopping, but she seemed to need this class more than I needed perfectly sliced zucchini. Duncan and Sara were becoming very chummy as they parboiled the tomatoes for the bruschetta and sliced the Italian bread, rubbing the rounds with olive oil and garlic.

Once the lasagna and bruschetta were in the oven, we sat around my laptop and Googled The Silver Steer, Santa Monica. Up came more than twenty articles about how Zach Jeffries, thirty-two-year-old millionaire restaurateur, was opening a new steakhouse on Montana Avenue in a prime corner location.

As Duncan and Sara worked on the salad, and Eva and I started the miso-ginger dressing, the buzzer buzzed. I pressed TALK. “Skinny Bitch Cooking School, Clementine speaking.” Honestly, I didn’t know how much longer I could go around spitting out that mouthful.

“It’s Zach Jeffries. From across the street. I assume you’re the woman who doesn’t care for my sign?”

It took a lot to shock me, but Zach Jeffries just pulled it off. I turned toward the table. They were as shocked as I was. I mean, two seconds ago, we were staring daggers at the guy’s picture in the
L.A. Times,
reading about his new blood-dripping restaurant, and here he was, using the tinny intercom downstairs.

“Can I speak with you?” he asked. “I mean, face-to-face. I really don’t like the idea of offending a neighbor and potentially hurting a fellow business across the street.”

A fellow business. That was nice. I pressed UNLOCK.

“Maybe he’s not a jerk,” Duncan said. “He seems to actually care that the sign bothers you.”