When in Doubt, Add Butter (7 page)

There was a hesitation on the other side of the door, and the voice said, “Sir, could you open the door?”

“Um, yeah, one second.”

I grabbed my clothes and dashed into the bathroom. He slid on his pants and opened the door.

A small dark woman in a light blue cop uniform—the kind that real cops never actually seem to wear—stood in the hall. She was the same one who had been behind the desk when we came through the lobby, but I made a point of coming into her line of vision anyway, just to make sure she wouldn’t hold this against Lynn.

She took one look at Mack, his shirtless body, and then my face, which went hot the moment she glanced my way, and then she nodded.

“Quiet down, lovebirds.”

She said it without humor, then left. He closed the door and came back over to me.

I could not help bursting out laughing. He did, too.

“That was really rude of us,” I said, grimacing.

“Probably.”

“Couldn’t be ruder.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know that
that’s
true. We could try.”

I shrugged. “It’s not like she can kick us out. It’s my friend’s apartment, not a hotel room.”

“She’d need to get the police involved.”

“That would be embarrassing.”

He bent down and kissed my neck. “It’s unlikely.”

Before I knew it, he had his arms around me and his mouth on mine, and suddenly—unstoppably—we were doing it all over again.

Thank goodness the condoms came in a three-pack.

Chapter 5

Monday night.

The Van Houghten house in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

“I want to be raw.”

I looked at Angela Burns-Van Houghten, who was sipping a large glass of chardonnay in her recently remodeled kitchen, and involuntarily took a step back. If she was going to get
raw
with me, that couldn’t be pretty. She was the most abrasive person I’d ever met.

In the mid-’90s she’d been sort of a sub-supermodel. Not quite at the level of, say, Kate Moss, but she’d had a name and a lot of people knew her when they saw her still, partly because of that, and partly because she was a frenemy of Marie Lemurra and had made the final cut of several episodes of the reality show, though her screen time was never as much as I think she hoped it would be, based on the amount of loud laughing and broad movements I’d witnessed her making at one of the dinner parties I’d catered for Marie on the show.

So Angela was relegated to the netherworld of D.C. subcelebrities—not quite interesting enough to be famous but just famous enough to be interesting. Here in “Hollywood East,” our celebs didn’t tend to be attractive so much as powerful. Thus attractive-and-famous ruled supreme, and attractive-and-semi-famous came in at a very close second.

Close enough for someone like Angela Burns-Van Houghten to feel absolutely free to be an imperious bitch with a lowly servant like myself.

I braced myself for whatever “raw” truth she might be preparing to tell me. “Okay, go ahead.”

She frowned slightly. “That’s what I have
you
for.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t”—
have any idea what the fuck you’re talking about
—“understand.”

She sighed. “Do you know what raw means?”

It meant
several things.
“Yes. Of course. But I don’t know what
you
mean by it.”

“That’s the way I want you to cook from now on.”

“Raw?”

“Correct.”

“In other words,
un
cooked?”

Uncertainty flashed across her features for just a split second. “Well, it’s not really
uncooked,
is it?”

“Raw is, yes.”

“I’m talking about a kind of cooking.”

The raw food movement, yes, I got it. But still. “Yes, that is essentially uncooked food. Nothing is prepared at higher than something like a hundred and twenty degrees. Which means no more grilled turkey burgers.”

She was undaunted. “That’s just fine, we don’t want the carcinogens.”

The Van Houghtens had a gas grill—something I, personally, don’t consider
real
grilling—which meant
there are no carcinogens in gas grilling.

Her kohl-lined hazel eyes narrowed at me. “Do we need to argue about this, or can you just do it?”

I had the bad feeling it might end up being both. “We’ll need to sit down and talk about your food preferences again.”

“You already know my food preferences. No onion, no nuts, no garlic, no dairy, no cinnamon, and so on. Oh, and I’m starting to think about no herbs at all. The pesticides are just too prevalent.”

Oh no. No, no, no. If she cut all herbs out of her diet, in addition to the no dairy and no dairy derivatives, no soy, et cetera, it was going to be
impossible
to cook for her.

Or at least seriously unfun.

“Let’s back up a minute,” I said quickly, hoping to derail that train before it picked up too much speed. “Let’s get the basics down first. Are you looking for a very vegetable-heavy diet?”

“Yes.”

“But you realize that things will be served at a cool temperature, right?” She would take that as condescending—I knew she would—so I added, “I only ask because I remember how much you enjoy things like turkey chili and lentil soup in the cold weather.”

She paused. “But it’s a very healthy diet.”

“It is.”

The front door opened and closed. Peter was home. Angela’s husband. He was a former Olympic decathlete and current local sports radio host, playing the “good cop” to his cohost’s shock jock “bad cop” persona.

“And I do have Stephen to consider,” she added, though it sounded like it was an afterthought.

Stephen was her six-year-old son who could have used a fucking cheeseburger, if you asked me, but no one was asking me for my opinion on the Van Houghten diet. At least, the Van Houghtens weren’t.

“Well, of course, a healthy diet is important for children, as well as variety—”

Her phone rang and she glanced at it. “Ugh, it’s the nanny. Excuse me.”

I was 100 percent sure if she had been standing here with the nanny and I had called, she would have looked at her phone and said,
Ugh, it’s the cook
. Which, in a way, spoke better of her. She was nondiscriminatory in her discrimination toward anyone she felt was in any way
lesser
than she was.

We were
all
lesser than she was, in her view.

I’d heard her complain about the maids putting the pillows on the bed wrong, the nanny arriving fifteen minutes late in a blizzard, the babysitter going to a funeral and leaving Stephen to deal with a different caretaker … and so on. Angela was one of those people who felt entitled to everything, preferably at the expense of everyone else.

I didn’t like working for her.

She put her finger in her free ear and walked away from me, as if concerned that I would eavesdrop on the super-private stuff she had to talk to the nanny about.

I returned to the task at hand, making
cooked
pasta sauce—no oil, no onions—for steamed vegetables. No noodles. No Parmesan (only a nutritional yeast substitute).

No fun.

Peter came into the kitchen and draped his jacket over the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Hi, there,” he said, and came over to the pot I was stirring.

“Hi.” I stepped aside as he bent down and sniffed the sauce.

Peter Van Houghten was a good-looking guy by almost anyone’s definition. Tousled dark brown hair, dark blue eyes, and a tall, trim body, thanks to a painfully lean diet and the fact that he worked out regularly and ran a few marathons every year.

Under other circumstances, I might have found him attractive, but not under these circumstances.

I swear I have never had a romantic relationship of
any
sort with
any
of my clients. And I never would. Though with one bad almost-engagement behind me, it would figure if I did fall for a guy who was both attractive and unavailable. Whatever small appeal Peter Van Houghten’s looks held for me, it was probably based mostly on the fact that nothing could ever happen.

With a chilling rush in my chest, I thought of Mack at the bar on Friday. This happened every time I thought of him. Right about now, I was feeling like I could just relive that night like
Groundhog Day,
over and over, and never get tired of it.

But then there’d been the Morning After, when I’d awoken, bleary-eyed and my head in a vise—and alone. For a horrible moment, I wondered if it had even happened. I fumbled for the bottle of water by the bed, but knocked it over. I muttered a curse word, and then flew to the bathroom for a washcloth. I came back and started sopping up the wet mess. I blinked the mascara out of my eyes a few times, and then saw that I’d been running the cloth over a soggy, ink-stained piece of paper. There had been words on it, I could tell. But now they were as illegible as could be.

So. I was probably never going to see that guy again. And in the meantime, I’d just have to think of him every five minutes and notice actively how different it felt to have someone else standing closely behind me.

I handed Peter the spoon and took a small step from him. “Go ahead and taste it. Tell me if you think it needs anything.”

He lifted the wooden spoon to his lips, blew gently, then tasted. “Needs onion.”

I sighed. Almost everything I cooked for them would benefit from onions. “I know.” We both nodded a little sadly. “Other than that?”

“It’s delicious.” He met my eyes, his pupils dilated in that way my seventh grade science teacher said meant you like what you’re looking at. “Just like everything you make.”

My face grew warm and I went to the sink to wash my already-clean hands. “Thanks,” I said casually, “but I think it needs something. Apart from the obvious.” I gave a laugh. “I wished I could put something onion-ish in, but Angela is allergic to the entire onion family, so there’s no getting away with that.”

“Ahh.” He gave a dismissive gesture. “She eats onion all the time and just doesn’t know it. She’s not allergic to anything, she just says that.” He moved back and leaned on the counter. “You should cook the way you want to.”

I shook my head with a smile. “No way. I cook the way the client wants me to. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be in business long.”

He gave a half shrug and was about to say something else when an exasperated Angela flounced back in.

“Honestly, we need two nannies just so they can cover each other’s erratic schedule.” She looked to Peter. “Kim needs to go to the doctor tomorrow while she’s got Stephen, and wants to either bring in a friend of hers to cover for an hour or two, or take him with her. Like Stephen needs to go hang out in a doctor’s office!” She gave a sharp laugh and shook her head.

“Why doesn’t she go while he’s in school?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Exactly. She said the only time she could get was one thirty, but, come on. She could go to an urgent care place any time in the morning and be back on time to get Stephen.”

Unless, say, she wanted to see her
own
doctor. But what could I say? Like Kim, I was just the help. So I said nothing. Just stirred the sauce and sautéed the vegetables.

“So I was just telling Gemma how we want to go raw from now on,” she said to Peter.

He looked completely confused. “Raw—?”

See? It wasn’t that obvious what she was talking about.

“Food,” she snapped.

“We do?”

“Absolutely. It’s the healthiest diet there is. Cooking destroys the enzymes in food.” She glanced disapprovingly at the stove, despite the fact that she had
loved
this very dish just last month. “It’s almost better not to eat at all.”

“That’s certainly an option,” Peter said. “Myself, I’d rather have spaghetti and meatballs once in a while.”

“Gross!”
Angela looked at him, scandalized and mouth agape, like he said he’d like live puppies dipped in ox blood. “We just don’t need to consume rotting flesh. It’s disgusting.”

“Put that way, it is,” he said at the exact same moment that I thought the exact same words.

“So from now on,” she said to me, her posture suggesting she’d had enough of him, “it’s all raw, all the time, okay?”

“Same constrictions as before, with regards to onions, garlic, and so on?” I asked.

“Yes.
Of course.”

“What about Stephen?” I asked. “Do you want me to do something”—
anything
—“to supplement his diet with a little more protein and calcium?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re talking about cheese, right?”

“Not necessarily—”

“Cheese causes phlegm. Dairy is the most common allergy in the United States, but no one even knows it. Everyone just keeps on eating it, coughing, and eating it some more.” She shook her head, a distinct look of they’ll-all-see-one-day-when-it’s-too-late. “People are so stupid.”

Myself, I couldn’t think of anything in the world better than stirring sharp white cheddar, smoked Gouda, creamy Havarti, Monterey Jack, and a touch of piquant Maytag blue cheese into a bubbling hot white sauce, stirring it to a thick honey consistency, and pouring it over al dente macaroni to toast to a crispy deep golden on top.

“Okay.” I tried to sound patient, but it was hard. Because I wasn’t. “But there are other options. Tofu. Textured vegetable protein. Nuts. Lean meats would be ideal.”

She looked dubious. “I’ll have to think about that. Except the tofu, of course. No tofu. Or meat.” She turned away from me and started talking to Peter, clearly indicating her time with me was done.

I knew exactly what it meant because I’d experienced this same thing time and again with her. It was almost funny. It certainly didn’t hurt my feelings, as it was nearly impossible to take someone like this personally.

“I don’t like that we have to eat so late because you take so long to get home,” she said to him, walking away but not so far that I couldn’t hear every single word she said. “Why the hell don’t you leave work earlier?”

“You’re welcome to eat without me,” he returned, completely calm in the face of her snappishness.