She indicated the package on the counter she’d just taken out for him. “Now chop up the mushrooms and stir those in, too.”
“Do I add them in slowly, too?” he asked, putting down the spatula and ripping open the package.
She grinned. “Doesn’t matter. All they do is just shrink as they cook—and also add taste,” she said, anticipating his next question, which would undoubtedly be why he was adding mushrooms if it didn’t matter how they went in.
“Oh. Okay.” Presented with a chopping board and the eight-ounce box of whole mushrooms, Blake went to work. Chopping was clearly his favorite part of cooking, she observed.
He glanced in her direction. “You have this all in your head, don’t you? Recipes,” he clarified in case she didn’t know what he was referring to.
“There’s not all that much to remember,” she told him with a careless shrug, throwing out the empty paper box and plastic wrap.
She was selling herself short, he thought. Looking back, he realized that it wasn’t the first time she’d done so, either. She had a habit of doing that. Modesty, he supposed. Something that Brittany wouldn’t have known anything about, he mused.
“Still,” he acknowledged, “that’s pretty impressive.”
It was all in how you looked at things, Katie thought. “You retain sales figures. Same thing.”
In more ways than one, he thought. Or didn’t she realize that? “You do, too,” he pointed out.
Something akin to a tiny starburst nestled into her chest. Blake had actually noticed her proficiency with sales figures. Score one for the underdog. Katie silently congratulated herself on the tiny gain she’d just made. Smiling, she absently gathered up the mushrooms he had just chopped and deposited them into the pot, making sure to distribute them evenly.
“I thought I was supposed to do everything by myself.” The initial object, when she’d told him about it earlier, was for him to make the meal from start to finish with only a little verbal guidance from her, but nothing more.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Katie said. “Deal?” And then, as if to seal it, she winked.
He had no idea why—maybe it was the heat in the kitchen, or his preoccupation that it all turn out right—but there was something about that wink that seemed to burrow straight into his gut like a whirling dervish. His stomach tighten so hard in response that for a second, he wasn’t sure he could catch his breath.
What the hell was going on here?
Had to be the heat, he decided with conviction. Couldn’t have had anything to do with the woman he had known all of his life, he silently argued. That would be just plain ridiculous.
“Deal,” he muttered. He grabbed a large spoon and dipped it into the Stroganoff. “Wait,” he said as she turned away. “You might as well try it.” Pulling the spoon out again, he held it out to her.
Because there was steam rising from it, she blew on the spoon’s contents, and again he felt his stomach tightening, this time yet another notch.
What the hell had gotten into him? He was acting like a simpering teenager—something he wasn’t even when he had been a teenager.
Get a grip, damn it, Blake ordered himself.
The second Katie tasted the fruits of Blake’s labor, her eyes instantly began to water. But it wasn’t her eyes that were the problem. It was her mouth, which felt as if it was on fire. So much so that it was a full minute before she could successfully use her tongue. Even so, she was somewhat surprised that it hadn’t burned off.
“What else did you put in here?” she wanted to know, her voice exceedingly raspy.
“Why? What’s wrong?” he wanted to know, instantly concerned. When she didn’t answer him immediately, Blake reviewed the list of ingredients, ending with, “and pepper.”
“What kind of pepper?” she asked, the fire in her throat finally subsiding after she’d downed half a glass of water.
He looked at her blankly. “Pepper pepper,” he said. “I don’t know. There’re kinds?” When she nodded, he picked up the small container he’d used and held it up. “I put a tablespoon of this in.”
She looked at the label. Now it made sense. “The recipe calls for a dash of pepper,” she told him. “Not a tablespoon and it was supposed to be white pepper, not cayenne pepper.”
“What the hell is a dash?” he demanded, irritated with his mistake.
“A lot less than a tablespoon,” she told him.
He frowned. “White pepper?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
This all sounded Greek to him. “There’s a difference?”
Katie took another long drink of water. She was beginning to feel human again. “There’s a difference.”
His frown deepened as he looked at the pot of gently simmering Stroganoff. “So you’re saying it’s ruined?”
Not if she could help it, she thought. “No, it’s not ruined,” she answered.
“But you were just spitting fire,” he said.
She opened up another can of consommé—she’d bought backup quantities of everything. “We’ll just have to add more consommé and more flour to dilute it.”
Hopefully, she added silently as she proceeded to do exactly that, moving a great deal faster and with more confidence than he had just displayed. Once she had stirred everything in and restored the balance, she told him, “Unless you’ve burned something down to a charcoal bit, you can usually salvage it in some manner.” There, that was a good color, she congratulated herself. “You just have to be creative.”
“You’re the creative one,” he told her, then confessed with a shrug, “It’s not my thing.”
“It’ll come to you,” she promised as she went on stirring the revitalized Stroganoff. “No one knows this stuff when they first start out. Remember, you were the one who came up with the marketing strategy to land the Fontaine account when it looked pretty hopeless,” she reminded him, doing her best to restore Blake’s confidence.
She hated to see him down, even if having him bounce back meant she was sending him directly into Brittany’s finely manicured clutches.
“That was a Hail Mary play,” he recalled honestly.
“So is salvaging Stroganoff—except that people’s jobs aren’t hanging in the balance like they were with the Fontaine account. Yours was the far more creative save,” she pointed out.
When he grinned, she knew she’d done her job.
He watched her move around the kitchen and he couldn’t help noting the way she handled everything with such assurance. He was never going to be that confident and he knew it. Maybe this was all just a waste of their time.
When she turned around to face him again, he asked, “Do I really have to learn how to cook?”
She could hear the resistance in his voice. “Think of it as a last resort,” she promised. And then she smiled. “You’ll no doubt dazzle her with that footwork you’ve been working on. But if that fails, knowing how to whip up a good meal isn’t really such a bad backup plan.” She paused to take a taste of the now-salvaged Stroganoff. Thank God. “Here, you try,” she coaxed, holding up the ladle that she’d filled for him.
Anticipating disaster, Blake took a very tiny, tentative taste, hardly touching his lips to the contents of the ladle. When they didn’t fall off, he took another, decent-size sample this time. Surprise spread through him faster than the food.
“Hey,” he cried, pleased, “not bad.”
“No, not bad at all,” she agreed, putting the ladle down on the spoon rest. “See? I told you. You really can cook.”
There was a big leap between what he could do and what she had accomplished and he was smart enough to see the difference. “No, I can throw ingredients together. You can cook,” he pointed out.
She wasn’t
about to stand here and argue with him, especially since, for the time being, he was right. “Let’s just call it a joint project,” she proposed. “And now, since this is ready,” she indicated the pot, “why don’t we have lunch?”
Eating something that he had actually prepared—or at least had had a hand in preparing—was rather a novel concept for him and the idea intrigued him. “Sure, why not? And after that, I’m going to be heading back to the hospital. I promised Wendy,” he reminded Katie.
Since there was nothing pressing for her to attend to, she welcomed the idea of going back to see her friend. “Mind if I hitch a ride with you?”
His eyes met hers just before he helped himself to a generous portion of their joint effort. “Don’t mind at all.”
The way he said it warmed up her insides far more than the Stroganoff.
“Why can’t we go in?”
John Michael Fortune’s deep voice boomed up and down the corridor as he directed the annoyed question at the very young, very inexperienced-looking nurse standing beside his wife. Still a very handsome man at sixty-two, his six-foot-four, athletic frame made him seem even more imposing than he already was. The deep frown on his aristocratic face didn’t help, either. Grown men were known to cower before the expression that was presently on his face. Virginia, his wife of thirty-six years, merely looked passed it and waited for the storm to blow over. It always did.
The young nurse took her cue from her.
“I did not drop everything and fly out all this way just to stand outside my daughter’s hospital door,” he declared, glaring at the closed door. “I came here to see her.”
“And you will, Mr. Fortune,” the nurse was quick to assure him. “Just as soon as the doctor is through examining her. It really shouldn’t be much longer,” she added nervously.
Accustomed to getting his way, John Michael was about to push his way past the little bit of a thing standing in front of him. Her words made him abruptly stop dead in his tracks.
“Examining her?” he echoed. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” he demanded, more flustered than angry this time. “Damn it, girl, I almost walked in on my own daughter and embarrassed us both.”
Relief flooded over the young woman’s pale features. “But you didn’t, and I did—say so, sir,” she quickly tacked on when her patient’s father looked at her quizzically.
Just then, the door behind her opened and with an even greater look of relief than a moment ago, the nurse stepped off to the side. She didn’t have to be told that if she so much as hesitated even for a slight second, she ran the very real risk of getting trampled on by a man who allowed nothing to get in his way.
Nodding curtly at the physician who emerged, John Michael muttered, “It’s about time,” under his breath but loud enough for anyone within ten feet of him to hear. There was no doubt that the departing doctor heard.
The head of the Fortune clan, followed by the rest of the family that had flown out with him, strode into the room and crossed directly over to his daughter’s hospital bed.
“You look pale,” he observed.
“Must be the lighting in here,” Wendy countered, then, because she had never been afraid to speak her mind, she admonished her father and said, “I heard you all the way in here, Dad. With the door closed.”
If she was trying to make him express regret, she should have known better and just saved her breath.
“Good. I wanted you to know we were out there,” he told his youngest child in his no-nonsense voice. And then he paused to look at her more closely. She really did look pale. “How are you feeling?”
Her mouth curved. “Much better, Dad,” she replied. “Hi, Mom,” she said as Virginia, the complete epitome of Southern gentility, leaned over and brushed a soft kiss against her cheek. Straightening, Virginia paused to push Wendy’s hair away from her face in an old, familiar gesture that went all the way back to when she was a little girl whose bangs were always falling into her eyes.
John Michael, oblivious to the fact that his other children all had questions for Wendy, nodded as he leaned in closer. His very manner reduced the room down to only the two of them.
“No aftereffects? Everything okay?” he pressed in a slightly gentler tone that still, for all intents and purposes, sounded businesslike.
“Yes, Dad, everything’s okay. Honest,” she underscored when he raised his eyebrows as if he intended to grill her, the way he had when he’d caught her sneaking into the house after two in the morning. She’d just turned eighteen at the time.
“And the baby?” he wanted to know.
“Yes, how is she?” Virginia asked, adding her soft voice to the chorus.
“She’s fine, too. Just a little small, so they’re going to keep MaryAnne here in the hospital for a little while, make sure everything’s going well.” She said it so matter-of-factly, no one would guess that the thought of leaving her little girl behind when she went home tomorrow was all but killing her.
“So you really did have a girl, huh,” John Michael said. He gave the impression that he’d thought perhaps the amniocentesis had been wrong.
Wendy did her best to hide her amusement. “Yes, Dad, she’s a girl.”
“And her name is MaryAnne.”
She could hear her father’s disappointment. “Don’t worry, Dad. She’s not going to be an only child. If the next one’s a boy, maybe we’ll name it after you.”
Her father nodded, brightening at the possibility and trying not to show it. “You could do worse.”
Virginia Fortune smiled at her daughter. “I think MaryAnne’s a lovely name. I know I like it.”
“Her name could be ‘mud,’ for all it matters,” her sister Emily said with feeling.
The rest of the family all turned to look at her. Ever since the tornado had wreaked such havoc for all of them, Emily had been acting a little off center, but no one wanted to mention it, hoping that it would pass. They were all coping with the event in their own way and were cutting one another slack.
Still, this was something that Virginia felt needed to be commented on. “Emily, that’s just an awful name,” her mother cried, appalled.
“What matters,” Emily continued as if nothing was said, “is that she’s healthy.”
“I agree with Em,” Michael chimed in.
John Michael shrugged his broad, thin shoulders. “Well, apparently we don’t have a say in the name,” he commented, still reflecting on the fact that his first grandchild would not bear any part of the family name.
Wendy braced herself to offer a defense of her choice, “Dad—”
But her father held his hands up to stop her protest before it was launched. “Hey, I said it wasn’t a bad name,” he reminded her.
Just then, the door to her room opened again and she immediately looked in that direction, hoping for reinforcements or a diversion. Her father had a way of belaboring a point if it suited him.
When she saw Blake and Katie walking in, the relief she felt was overwhelming. “You came back.”
Blake crossed to her bed and positioned himself beside her—and across from his father. “Said we would,” he told her.
Katie noted that he’d said “we,” when this morning, he had promised that only he would return. Was this progress? Or just the effects of too much cayenne pepper? she wondered wryly.
Either way, she savored it for a moment, telling herself that at least she had that.
Chapter Twelve
Within a few minutes, as they surrounded her bed, the sound of Wendy’s family’s voices began to grow and swell, until they were all but deafening. They were each vying for her attention.
Virginia attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to keep the volume down. After a few more minutes had passed and the decibel level
continued to climb, it was inevitable that the noise would attract someone’s attention. And it did.
Ten minutes into their visit, a tall, heavyset and seasoned nurse with the bearing of a drill sergeant stuck her head into the overcrowded single care unit and did a quick assessment of the situation.
Walking in, she announced, “There’re way too many people in this room. I’m afraid you’re going to have to take turns visiting with the new mama.” Her tone left no leeway for argument.
Nonetheless, Wendy’s father drew himself up to his full and rather intimidating height, then scowled down at her. She looked to be approximately ten inches shorter. “Young woman, do you know who I am?”
Meeting his steely gaze, she looked completely unfazed. “One of the people who’s going to be waiting outside for his turn at the new mother’s bedside,” the nurse replied matter-of-factly.
The steely glare narrowed into slits. “I’m John Michael Fortune,” he informed her coldly, “and I recently made a sizable donation to this hospital because they took such good care of my daughter when she went into premature labor.”
“Did you, now?” For a split second, it looked as if the nurse was going to relent and back away, but then she merely nodded. “All right, then you get to be one of the ones who gets first crack at visiting, but I still need half of you to wait outside.”
Ever the peacemaker, Katie quickly moved to the front of the group and said to them, “Why don’t I show all of you the way to the nursery so you can meet the cutest baby you’ll ever hope to see,” she suggested, looking from one of Wendy’s siblings to another.
Emily spoke up first, crossing to Katie. She hooked her arms through Katie’s, as if to seal the deal. “I’d love to see the baby.”
She said it with such feeling that, along with her earlier comment, Blake caught himself wondering if something was going on with his sister. He started to leave with the others.
But Wendy wanted him to run interference for her with their father. Ordinarily, she was more than up to it, but the delivery had literally and figuratively taken a great deal out of her and she needed an ally on her side—just in case.
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