by Lisa Hughey
He studied it with his eyes. Then smelled, inhaling deeply and taking in the aromas before tasting the food. Then he chewed slowly trying to soak up all the flavors and tastes in each item.
What struck her the most was his absolute absorption in the task.
After they went back to his cabin, she sat in the “living room” area with her laptop while he created his masterpieces.
The entire one-room cabin consisted of a living room area with a queen-size iron day bed, coffee table, a television stand that held a small twenty-inch Roku TV. The kitchen was literally one long counter with a sink, a tiny European range with two burners and a narrow oven, and a single drawer dishwasher. The fridge was an old-fashioned Smeg in a mint color. The countertop was a pale gray Formica.
She was embarrassed to admit that the entire kitchen would fit in her pantry. And she didn’t cook.
Tracy sat on an upholstered wing chair next to Colt’s day bed and watched as he moved around the kitchen in a choreographed dance, his hands sure and steady as he chopped and diced. A sauce simmered on the stove, scenting the entire cabin with spices. They’d picked up a small set of cookware at the hardware store on the way home.
It had felt momentous. As if he were taking a huge step into the present. But she knew better than to make a big deal about it. She didn’t want to upset his delicate balance. Wasn’t that why she kept trying to leave him alone?
Colt was in his element, his face a study in concentration as he tasted a savory and sweet sauce and browned the pork loin in a large cast iron pan.
“You want help?” she asked reluctantly. She had no idea what she could do to contribute but she would help if he asked. Maybe she could hand him things.
“Nope. I’ve got this.” He had a dish towel thrown over one shoulder and smudge of something on his face.
Goodness. Every woman’s fantasy. A man who cooks. And he didn’t just adequately cook. His food was amazing.
They settled into a quiet rhythm.
She wasn’t sure that she’d ever had this kind of simple ease with someone she’d just met. Normally she felt compelled to keep the conversational ball rolling but Colt was lost in his preparations and she needed to go through her emails.
Tracy plowed through her correspondence, deleting any that came from reporters. Yolanda had sent her the report from the private investigator. She read through the investigator’s report on Esme.
He had had to dig deep. The background check that Fairy Tale Beginnings had run on Esme had come back without any red flags. But using his PI magic he’d discovered that Esme had done a ton of research on her brother. Apparently her online history was full of articles about both Thomas and the Thayer family. She’d paid someone to clean up her credit report and to smooth over some other incidents in her past. Tracy wasn’t even sure what Esme’s end game was. Except maybe to extort money.
The private investigator was still digging but the first round of information had been eye opening. She’d clearly gone to a lot of trouble to camouflage her real background.
That reminded her to text her brother:
Tracy: How are you?
* * *
Thomas: Still reeling from the betrayal of both my fiancée and my sister.
Tracy’s heart clenched.
Tracy: I didn’t betray you.
* * *
Thomas: You omitted a critical piece of your life. Now I understand why you were always so busy. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this app.
She picked up her cell phone. “You mind if I call my brother?”
“Go ahead.”
She dialed her phone. “I’m sorry.” She said before he could say hello.
He sighed. “I know.”
They’d grown up more like twins, their births less than a year apart. Technically he was older, nine months barely, but they operated more like equals than older sibling/younger sibling.
After growing up together, as adults their lives took different paths.
Thomas had embraced the political arena. He’d been groomed his entire life to continue in the family business. Tracy had been working part time for her father since she was out of college, but she tried to stay out of the spotlight. She enjoyed the marketing and social media and the event planning. The spinning and the constant need to consider how actions could be perceived and whether it would poll well with voters she hated.
Being Cee-Cee had been freeing. She’d been able to relax and think about what she wanted to do. Not what was politically expedient.
“You doing okay?” she asked.
“I’ll get there.”
She wondered what had gone wrong with Esme. “Did she say why she left?”
“She was expecting some glamorous life of parties and yachts and other sh—stuff.”
“So my suggestion to have quiet dinners in was not good?”
Thomas had been really busy on the campaign trail. He’d taken a leave of absence from his law firm to focus on campaigning and the upcoming election. Strong relationships were forged in the quiet times and in the stressful times. Tracy had assumed that Esme would prefer to spend time alone to cement their young relationship.
“Apparently she’d rather be jetting to Europe for the weekend.”
“She clearly doesn’t have a good grasp of what your life is really like.” For one thing, obvious displays of wealth were considered both gauche and in bad form as a politician.
“No shit,” Thomas said tiredly. “She brought up Muffy’s birthday party.”
Tracy shuddered. Her cousin Muffy had had a completely over-the-top sixteenth birthday party about ten years ago. The pictures had been splashed all over People magazine and other tabloid papers. They had spotlighted Thomas and Tracy in the articles because their dad was more famous than his brother, her uncle, Seth.
“We’ll get through this.” She decided not to bring up the fact that she had a private investigator looking into Esme’s background. At this point, Tracy wasn’t sure it mattered. Their family couldn’t afford for Esme to reveal their closely held secret. Because if she did, no amount of spin could put that genie back in the bottle. As much as Tracy wished the truth could come out, the secret was not hers to tell.
The private investigator was digging further but there was nothing that Tracy could do until they had more information. Of course, they were also looking into Esme and Thomas’s app counselor. Tracy prided herself on the personal touch. The client liaisons had training and knew there were steep penalties for divulging client information. Whenever people were involved, the human factor meant there was a window for corruption and bribery but the company screened carefully and they paid well.
“I’m tired of being alone, Trace.”
“I know,” she said softly. Sometimes she missed the days when it was the two of them against the world. “I’m trying to figure out what went wrong.”
Because she believed that somehow her app had been gamed.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re in damage control mode right now.” Thomas sounded defeated. “We’re going to pay her off so she doesn’t reveal you know what.”
“I can’t believe you told her.”
“At some point we’ve got to find a way to trust. I just made a bad choice,” Thomas grumbled. “I knew I shouldn’t have used that matchmaking service.”
“It’s worked for plenty of people.”
“But we aren’t plenty of people.”
That was true.
“Love you, T.”
“You too.”
She hung up with her brother and stared at the coffee table pensively, wondering what else she could do to help.
“Everything okay?”
“My brother’s fiancée left him.”
“Ah.” Colt continued to stir the sauce on the stove. “Did you have anything to do with setting them up?”
What? How could he know? “Not exactly.”
“Then it isn’t your fault.” Colt tried to make her feel better
. “Sometimes people just aren’t meant to be together.”
But she felt guilty because she’d been pinning her own hopes on Thomas’s marriage.
Her family had done a lot of good over the years. The Thayer Family Foundation, founded by her great-grandmother, focused on helping families and funding early education programs.
Her grandmother continued the administration until she retired, and then Tracy’s mother became the driving philanthropic force behind the foundation.
Tracy had no desire to continue on that path. She’d been hoping that Esme would take on the next generation of Thayer involvement so that Tracy could opt out of becoming the figurehead.
She’d felt trapped and locked in by generational expectations based on the circumstances of her birth. She was active in the organization, but she had no desire to run it.
However her experience in Colebury had opened her eyes to the precarious plight of working women and working parents. She really had no idea of how out of touch she’d been with the average person until she started living like one.
Colt had gone back to cooking, humming a Latin tune while he moved around the miniscule kitchen with ease, his movements so unlike the jerky uncoordinated efforts from the soup experience.
His hips swiveled and rocked as he sniffed and sauteed and tasted his creations.
Of course this wasn’t exactly the average person’s reality either. She was sitting in a small cabin in Vermont while a world-class chef prepared her dinner.
13
Tracy
They ate at the tiny drop-leaf table by the window. The evening sunlight blazed over the trees in the distance. The window was open and the gentle breeze ushered in the sounds of peace and silence. Someone must be having a bonfire because woodsmoke drifted in the air.
Colt had picked some more daisies and set them in an old glass bottle with a rubber stopper lid. The cheerful flowers and linen napkins and bright Fiestaware ceramics were all backdrop details. The food was the star of the evening.
“This is amazing.”
“Happy to see you eating.”
Tracy put down her fork. “What does that mean?”
“Just that sometimes women don’t eat.”
She watched her diet, for sure, and worked hard to maintain a healthy body weight. But she also acknowledged that genetics played a part. “I love food.” Celiac had made her far more conscious of her food choices than plenty of people.
“I used to get really frustrated with customers who wanted to change the dish.” The confession burst out of him. “The flavors are all wrong if you omit an ingredient. And I took that personally.”
“Some people can’t tell the difference. And some people,” she gestured to herself, “literally can’t eat it the way you imagined, without getting sick.”
“Somehow I lost the pleasure of nourishing people and connections. Caught up in my own hubris.” He stared out the window. “The act of eating together has become passé. My family ate together every night we could. Simple dishes but it was the together that mattered.”
“Oh, that’s nice. It was frequently just my brother and I.”
“The one you were on the phone with?”
“The only one.”
“Your parents worked a lot too?”
“They were gone off and on.” She and Thomas had nannies and other staff who’d looked out for them. But for a long time it had just been her and her brother. No boarding school. They’d gone to a prep school but they’d gone home at night. Her father had avoided the appearance of having a lot of money. He’d actively avoided elitism and made it his life mission to look out for regular folks. They lived in a mansion but besides the giant house and the staff to maintain it, they lived what she had always assumed was a relatively modest lifestyle. Her parents drove mid-range American cars. They didn’t throw lavish parties, unless they were entertaining political guests or foreign dignitaries.
“I used to be a pretty boring eater.” They’d had to eat a variety of different cuisines when they’d been at dinners with visiting guests from other countries. So when it had been just her and Thomas, they’d had the staples.
“What was your favorite?”
“Macaroni and cheese.”
“Something else you can’t eat now.”
She looked blankly at him.
“In addition to cinnamon rolls.”
She’d forgotten.
“In the grand scheme of things, having to avoid certain foods isn’t a great tragedy.” She’d never had to worry about having food on the table. She’d been pretty damn lucky.
“True.” He smiled at her.
And she smiled back.
“My turn to clean up.” Then Tracy looked at the miniscule kitchen. There were pans everywhere, piled on the stove and the counter. She blanched.
He laughed at the look on her face. “I’ll help.”
Colt ran a sink full of hot soapy water. They washed the dishes together.
Dinner had been amazing. And the conversation had been fun. Being Cee-Cee had freed her from her normal constraints. She hadn’t worried about what she could or couldn’t say. She hadn’t considered each word before she spoke.
She’d been honest.
Was that what Thomas had felt like while talking to Esme?
The relief at being able to tell the truth had been amazing. And she didn’t want to stop.
“I hate lobster,” she announced boldly.
“Okay. I promise never to cook lobster for you.”
“Don’t tell anyone.” Then she had an instant hit of remorse. But the amount of relief that flowed through her was disproportionate to the magnitude of the admission.
Her father supported the fishing industry. It was vital to the state of Massachusetts and she understood that, but she had no desire to eat it.
“Your secret is safe with me.” He laughed.
Oh my God it felt good to get that off her chest.
He raised one eyebrow. He probably thought she was a nut.
“Any other deep dark secrets you have a burning need to share?” He was teasing but suddenly she couldn’t hold it inside any longer.
“When I was thirteen at a…dinner with my family I found out my mom was having an affair.”
“Oh, shit.” He squeezed her hand and threaded their fingers together. She held on tight. Tighter than necessary. But now that it had come out, she couldn’t seem to stop.
“I saw them kissing. I was shocked. I adored my father. He was this larger-than-life figure and I couldn’t believe that she could hurt him that way.”
He didn’t offer platitudes. Didn’t try to explain it away.
She pulled her hand free and scrubbed at the dirty pan with fierce concentration. “It was like in a single instant my entire life shifted on its axis. I was adrift and confused. Everything I’d believed was a lie.”
“What happened then?” As if he already knew her, knew that there was no way she could let that transgression lie.
“If I am the princess—”
“Ah so you come by that title honestly.”
She poked him in the side, and he laughed. “—she was the queen.” Tracy leaned against the counter, her hands sinking into the hot water as she stared out the little window over the sink. “I was devasted.”
Her mother’s actions weren’t just a betrayal of Tracy’s father but of their entire family.
She’d had a strong moral compass, a sense of right and wrong instilled in her from both her parents.
She remembered the conversation with her mother vividly.
“I’m going to tell Daddy.”
“We’ll discuss this at home. Right now you need to put on your public face and be a charming teenager.” Her mother turned the knife. “You don’t want to disappoint your father.”
Tracy was a daddy’s girl.
So the next day she’d gone to her father to talk to him. And her world was completely shattered when her father revealed that the marriage w
as a sham.
After she approached her father, he sat her down and laid out the facts of life. “Your mother and I have a relationship that works for us. It works for this family.”
She decided then that she didn’t want that kind of relationship. She’d stuck to that decision, but she also had never dated anyone seriously.
“Why do they stay together then?” His question jolted her out of her painful memories.
“Expectations. And weirdly their relationship works in every other way.”
A fact she couldn’t reconcile at thirteen, but now that she was an adult, she saw that they loved and supported each other. They just weren’t in love with each other anymore. But she hated the lie that they perpetuated and that kept her trapped in a situation where she couldn’t be honest with her own romantic partners.
“I guess this is where I whip out the NDA.”
He snorted.
He thought she was kidding. If he only knew. But she would leave Colebury and he would never know who she was. He didn’t read gossip magazines. And he didn’t seem to be one to watch news. She’d caught him watching hockey at the Speakeasy but that was about it.
If she gave him a nondisclosure agreement he’d think she was nuts. Besides an NDA wasn’t foolproof. After all, Thomas had Esme sign one. And if Esme revealed their family secret, even if they enforced the NDA it wouldn’t matter. The secret would be out and the truth couldn’t be denied. Years of silence and secrecy would be gone in an instant.
Most men would be uncomfortable discussing marriage issues after such a short time together. Maybe because it was temporary. Maybe because they both knew she would be leaving but there was no expectation or uncomfortable emotions associated with the fraught subject.
She shouldn’t have even told him. But she’d never been honest with a lover in her life. And she didn’t see how they were going to keep it a secret if Esme revealed what she knew about her parent’s relationship.
So why shouldn’t she take this moment and be completely honest?
Fortunately he moved on. “So that’s why you’re always trying to set people up?”
