Cook the Books

by Jessica Conant-Park

  I started the stromboli dough, which had to rise for at least an hour. Kyle arrived just as I was setting it in a bowl. He waved at me though the glass window on the back door, and I yelled for him to let himself in. When I smiled and held up my dough-covered hands, he smiled back. Good. Maybe things between us wouldn’t be horribly awkward. For all I knew, he’d even appreciated my enthusiastic, if clumsy, attempt at romance. Tonight could be a romantic evening for all of us. Two couples in the kitchen, whipping up delicious food, maybe sipping some wine…

  Contemplating the possibilities, I struggled to push the Josh situation to the back of my mind. Amazingly, I hadn’t told Adrianna about seeing Josh. Since Ade and I always told each other everything, usually as soon as possible and at great length, it was very unlike me not to have immediately called her up after the emotional reunion. On this occasion, however, I just hadn’t wanted to deal with my feelings about Josh, and a big two-hour talk with Ade about my turbulent emotions and the implications of seeing him would only have made the mess more real. The new Chloe was forging ahead!

  “What are you making, Chloe?” Kyle was dressed casually tonight in a pale blue fitted shirt and jeans. I realized that it was the first time that I’d seen him in anything other than a suit. I wasn’t complaining either.

  “Stromboli dough,” I said. “I thought I’d get it going early since we’ve got so much to do.”

  Kyle followed me into the kitchen, where I showed him the recipes we were going to make.

  “These all look really good,” he said. “I’m glad you were able to get hold of your friend Digger’s recipes, too. We’ll do a nice section on him. I’m sorry again about how my father behaved the morning of the fire. He’s just very focused on getting this book done right, and he wasn’t thinking about anything else.”

  “I’m happy about the food, too. This stromboli is Digger’s, so I’m sure it’ll be good.”

  “So Adrianna is helping us out tonight, too?” Kyle sat down at my small kitchen table, but I immediately grabbed his hand and lifted him up.

  “Yes, help will be here shortly,” I promised. “You’re in charge of washing vegetables, so roll up your sleeves.”

  “Aw, really? That’s not exciting. I was hoping to be in charge of searing and roasting and sautéing!” He feigned a pout and then smiled. “If you insist.”

  I opened the refrigerator and began covering the counter-top with produce. The ingredients for all of tonight’s dishes had come with such a hefty price tag that I hoped Kyle wouldn’t faint when he saw the receipt. Kyle began scrubbing celery root while I located an assortment of mixing bowls, sauté pans, knives, and cutting boards. I’d acquired a lot of decent cooking equipment over the past year, mostly because I’d been embarrassed to have Josh try to cook in my house with lousy stuff.

  At least the good knives hadn’t followed him to Hawaii.

  TWELVE

  I heard the back door open when Ade and Owen let themselves in.

  “We’re here and ready to follow orders,” Ade called as her high heels clicked across the floor.

  She came into the kitchen, carrying Patrick close to her body in a Snugli. No one but Adrianna could manage heels that high and a baby, too. Patrick must have been sleeping well, I thought, because she looked rested. Her thick blonde hair was flawlessly styled, and she’d made up her eyes in smoky gray eyeliner and heavy black mascara. I had a strong suspicion that I wouldn’t look nearly so glamorous if I had a three-month-old. But that was Adrianna for you: she could survive a tornado and emerge sultry and sexy. If Adrianna had flaunted her looks, I might have been filled with envy, but she remained so oblivious to how attractive she was that I couldn’t hold her spectacular beauty against her.

  “Hi, Kyle. Chloe’s got you working already? Tough boss, huh?” Adrianna winked at him and laughed.

  “Hey!” I protested as I set a ceramic bowl on the table. “I’m just trying to be organized about this. We’ve got a lot of work to do and not that much space, so we have to go at this with a game plan. I’ve got the timeline all worked out.” I rubbed Patrick’s feet and grinned at his sleepy face.

  “Well, Patrick just ate, so he should go to sleep for a while. Owen is just setting up the Pack ’n Play in Chloe’s bedroom.”

  “I didn’t realize Owen would be here, too,” Kyle said over the whoosh of the faucet. “I finally get to meet him.”

  “Yes, but don’t let him cook anything,” Ade warned. “Last night we had hamburgers that were burned on the outside and still mooing on the inside.” She wrinkled her nose. “We had to finish them off in the oven, but that didn’t help the burned taste.”

  Kyle moved the celery root to the side and started peeling some of the fruit for the salad. “Adrianna, do you want to start the squash?”

  “Sure. Let me just set Patrick down and I’ll be right there.”

  A few minutes later Owen tiptoed into the kitchen. “The little man is out like the proverbial light. And I am ready to cook!”

  I raised my eyebrows at Owen. He had on one of his awful T-shirts, the one that was supposed to look like a tuxedo top, and on his head was a towering red- and-white-striped felt hat. The Cat in the Hat had come to dinner. I giggled and shook my head at Owen. “Thank God Adrianna is around to dress Patrick. If you were in charge, who knows what the poor kid might be wearing?”

  “Patrick is lucky to have me as a role model. All of us need a little Dr. Seuss in our lives.” Owen bowed dramatically.

  “Even in that outfit, you still look adorable.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “And yes, there is something to be said for Seussing up one’s life, but at least I got you to cut out your attempt at duplicating his style in your wedding vows!”

  Owen rolled his eyes as Adrianna came up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist. She looked at Kyle and explained. “We wrote our own vows, and Chloe performed our wedding ceremony. My dear husband had the audacity to write his vows to the beat of Dr. Seuss. Chloe had to practically throttle him until he agreed to go a more traditional route.”

  “Hey, it would have been funny!” Owen stuck out his lower lip. “So, you must be Kyle?” He stepped toward my boss and stuck out his hand. “I’ve heard so much about you. Thanks for treating Adrianna to dinner the other night. She said she had a wonderful time. Not as good as my burgers, but a close second.”

  Kyle laughed. “I’m glad. It’s nice to meet you, too.” He shook Owen’s hand politely, but I could see that he was taking in Owen’s eccentric attire.

  “So, where do you want us?” Owen looked around my cramped kitchen.

  “I think it might make sense to send you and Kyle into the living room. You can prep all the vegetables and fruit that we’ll need there. Just move whatever’s on the coffee table onto a chair. Here,” I said, reaching behind my toaster, “take this cutting board and the two from the table. Kyle, is everything washed?”

  “Yup, just about.” Kyle handed Owen a colander filled with ingredients and then grabbed the stack of bowls I’d set out for him. “We’ll chop, slice, and dice, and be ready in no time.”

  “And, here, take this.” I gave Kyle a large serving bowl that held the ingredients for the aloha salad dressing. “Ade and I will work on the stromboli filling, the pork loin, and the swordfish.”

  “Hey, Chloe?” Kyle said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for doing all of this. I know you have a lot going on with school and your internship, and maybe this job is more than you bargained for. But I’m really grateful for your help.” He followed Owen to the makeshift prep station in the living room.

  “Well, well.” Adrianna shot me a questioning look. Almost whispering, she asked, “What’s going on between you two?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing,” I murmured. “He’s my boss.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said with a laugh. “We’ll talk later.”

  Adrianna was great in the kitchen. In particular, she helped me follow the recipes exa
ctly as they were written; if we improvised, we’d be playing with the recipes rather than testing them. So far, I’d found no glaring errors in what the chefs had written, and I expected tonight’s dishes to be successful. Adrianna talked about Patrick: he was growing so quickly and doing something new every day. We could hear Owen and Kyle talking in the background, and I was pleased that the two were getting along so well. This was a fun foursome we had tonight. Maybe it would become a regular thing?

  “Chloe, do you want to come taste this dressing?” Kyle called.

  I joined the men and surveyed their progress. Bowls were spread out on the table, and they’d done pretty well slicing and dicing the ingredients. Then I eyed the bowl of dressing that Kyle held out. “Oh my. That’s quite a bit of dressing.”

  “Yeah, the recipe made a large amount, but it’s good. I actually ran out of lemons to juice, but it’s good anyway.”

  I saw Owen’s eyes widen as I dipped a spoon into the bowl and took a taste. Oh God! I puckered my lips. “It’s rather… acidic.”

  “You think? I like it. I followed the recipe. Look,” he said as he held out the typed page. “Oh, wait. Oops. I thought it said three cups of lemon juice.”

  “That would explain it. It’s supposed to be one- third cup of lemon juice.” I smiled falsely. “No problem. I have a few more lemons in the fridge, so we can make another batch.” I retrieved the lemons and handed them to Owen, hoping that he’d get the hint to keep an eye on Kyle. I laughed inwardly at the idea of putting Owen in charge of anything even remotely related to cooking, but clearly Kyle needed supervision, and even Owen wouldn’t use three cups of lemon juice when a recipe called for a third of a cup. I could hardly believe that anyone, never mind a cookbook writer and Hank Boucher’s son, had failed to notice the overwhelming taste of lemon in the dressing. Worse, Kyle had told me that the dressing was good! What kind of palate did he have? Ugh. Did he have a palate at all?

  Despite the dressing mishap, I was having a good time. Adrianna was putting the pork loin into the oven and I was just about to fill the stromboli dough when the phone rang. “Hello, Chaos Central!” I chirped happily.

  “Hi.” There was a long pause. “It’s me.”

  My stomach tightened and I swallowed hard. It was the call I’d been both longing for and dreading. It was Josh. He must have gotten my new cell number from someone. I strongly suspected Ade or Owen. “Oh. Hi.”

  “How you doin’?” The sound of his voice practically knocked the wind out of me.

  “Um… fine.” I saw that Adrianna was staring at me. I could feel my cheeks heat up and wondered whether my best friend could hear my heart pounding. “Hold on a second.” I went into the hallway. I couldn’t go to the living room, where Owen and Kyle would overhear, or to the bedroom, where Patrick was sleeping. That left the bathroom. As I stepped onto the tile floor, Kyle let out a sharp cry. “Are you okay?” I called.

  “Yeah,” Kyle answered. “Just nicked myself, that’s all.”

  “Josh?” I said into the phone.

  “Yeah. You’ve obviously got someone there. Sorry to have bothered you,” he said quickly. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “No, wait! Don’t go!” I pleaded uselessly after he’d hung up. I shut my eyes and took a breath before going back to the kitchen.

  Adrianna set the timer on the oven and turned to me. “Anything you want to tell me, pal?”

  As my eyes started to well up, Ade took me into a tight hug. “That was Josh, wasn’t it?” she asked. I nodded and she squeezed me tighter.

  “I saw him on Sunday. At Digger’s.” I gave her a whispered rundown of the surprise encounter. “I’m trying to pretend this isn’t happening.”

  “I know it hurts,” she whispered in my ear. “I know how much you love him.”

  “Loved him,” I corrected her and pulled away. “He heard Kyle. He probably thinks… well, he heard him.”

  “Is that what you want him to think?”

  “Yes.” I paused. “No. I shouldn’t play games, and there’s nothing going on with Kyle. Well, not really.” I described my ludicrous attempt to make out with Kyle in his car. “I just don’t think it’s happening with us. I don’t know if I even want it to.”

  “Look, for now, let’s get through tonight and enjoy dinner. Whether or not you and Kyle have anything, he’s a nice guy, and we’ll have fun. You can deal with Josh later. Come on, let’s go check on the boys.”

  The four of us worked well as a team, especially because Owen and Kyle were willing to follow our orders blindly. The food was fabulous. Because we had two main dishes as well as the stromboli and the fruit salad, the meal was more an uncoordinated tasting experience than it was a dinner, but everyone got into the spirit and lavished praise on the chefs who had created the recipes. I was sure that Digger would have been pleased with our attempts to recreate his dishes. The stromboli was so hot that steam flew out of the dough as I tore off pieces for all of us. After the honey-pineapple-lemon dressing had been remade, we all enjoyed the delicious salad of mango, apple, banana, orange, coconut, dates, and macadamia nuts.

  We ate in the living room with our plates on our laps or on the coffee table, but the tight dining quarters didn’t bother us. “With food this great, I don’t care where we eat,” Ade said as she bit into a piece of swordfish. “You’ve got more room here then we do at our place, Chloe, so this feels like a mansion.”

  “Yeah, I know we’re cramped right now, hon,” Owen said. “Things will get better.”

  Ade shrugged. “We’ll see. This fish business of yours isn’t doing so well, though. How long should we give it?”

  Ade had pushed a button with her husband. Owen rarely got irritated, but his face tensed visibly. “Let’s hang on a bit longer. I’m still working to get in good with restaurants and to get the chefs to trust that I’ll bring them the best product.”

  “Whatever,” Ade said rather coolly.

  Patrick, who’d awakened midway through our meal, was now in the crook of Adrianna’s arm, gazing admiringly at his mother. Adrianna, seated on the floor, leaned back and rested a hand on the rug. “I think this cookbook is going to hit the best-seller list. Keep working, you two, so we can come back and taste test more recipes. I haven’t eaten this well since, well, since Kyle took us out,” she said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, how do I get in on this dining-out gig?” Owen asked as he adjusted his striped hat.

  “Anytime,” Kyle answered, but he was staring at Patrick. “You two make quite a pair,” he said, looking at Adrianna. “Patrick looks very happy and comfortable.”

  “Do you want to have kids?” Owen asked.

  “Definitely.” Kyle began clearing dishes. “If I didn’t before, Patrick would have changed my mind.”

  “You’re seeing him at his best, though,” Ade said. “You might change your mind if you heard him screaming his brains out at two thirty in the morning.”

  “Aw, he’s a great baby,” Kyle said. “I’ll start washing dishes so poor Chloe isn’t stuck with too much to do herself.” He surprised me by tousling my hair as he walked by me.

  “Thanks. I’ll start packing up the leftovers. Everyone is going home with food for the rest of the week, I think.”

  I scrounged around for whatever storage containers I could find. Since it was pointless to try to find matching lids, most of the containers got covered in plastic wrap. Owen put away pots and pans while Adrianna got Patrick ready to go home. Because they lived only a few blocks away, they’d walked over, but in addition to the baby and all of his gear, they now had leftovers to carry and were laden down.

  “Why don’t I drive Owen home, and he can get the car and come back for you and Patrick and all of your stuff?” I suggested.

  “Nah, it’s only a few blocks. We’ll be fine,” Ade said, but she glanced at her high heels.

  “I’ll walk them back,” Kyle offered. “I’d drive you, except that I assume you need a car seat for the baby. I should get going
anyway.” He turned to me. “Chloe, thanks again for hosting this evening. And please bill us for all of the hours you spent preparing for tonight and for this evening. Great work. I’ll talk to you in a few days, and we’ll figure out our next step.”

  “Sure.” I tried to look cheery. So much for any romantic intentions on Kyle’s part. I had half expected him to hang around after my friends left, but we were apparently all business. Still, it was thoughtful of him to help Owen and Ade out. “Things are pretty well cleaned up here, and I should be getting to bed. I have another long day at my field placement tomorrow.”

  Ade and Owen hugged me good- bye, and Ade promised to call me the next day. Kyle took my hand in his and politely kissed me on the cheek, thanking me again for all of my help. Suddenly, my condo was empty and disturbingly quiet. I’d been alone for only a few minutes when the emptiness overwhelmed me. I wanted nothing more than for Josh to call back. It didn’t matter how many people I crammed into my condo or how much fun we had or how temporarily distracted I got. The truth was that I missed Josh so much that it hurt. I picked the phone up and started to dial his number, but stopped just before I hit the Talk button.

  I set the phone back into the cradle and got ready for bed.

  THIRTEEN

  I dragged myself up the stairs after a tough day at the mental health center. Especially because I was drained, it was an incredible relief to see Adrianna sitting in front of my door. She handed me a coffee in a foam cup.

  “Thank God,” I said. “How’d you know I needed you and caffeine, in that order?”

  Ade stretched out her hand, and I lifted her up. “I know this Josh thing has you shook up. Thought you could use a friend. Besides, Owen is home reading to Patrick, so I thought I’d escape the house for a bit.”

  After I unlocked the door, turned on a few lights, and threw the mail on the coffee table, we both headed for the couch. “He’s reading to him? How cute!”