The Cook's Secret Ingredient

by Meg Maxwell

  “Are either of the women your aunt?” Carson whispered. “They look young.”

  She shook her head. Both women were in their twenties. Aunt Sarah was forty-eight.

  “Can I help you?” one of the women called out.

  “I heard there was a hairstylist who works here named Sarah who’s great with men’s hair,” Carson said.

  Olivia supposed that was his line to get info.

  The man beamed, which told Olivia he was the owner and liked the word-of-mouth praise for one of his employees. He eyed Carson’s hair, which was thick but relatively short. “Sarah doesn’t come in until ten thirty. If you want to wait, I’m sure she can squeeze you in before her eleven o’clock client.”

  “Could you describe her?” Carson asked. “My friend said Sarah is in her forties. Auburn hair?”

  “That’s Sarah,” the man said.

  Olivia’s heart squeezed. Aunt Sarah worked here. She was coming in a half hour!

  “Bingo,” Carson said. “That was easy,” he added on a whisper to Olivia. “We’ll wait,” he said to the owner.

  Could it really be this simple? Olivia liked simple, but when was anything this easy? Their first day out, their first hair salon, their first try? Aunt Sarah materializes through a Tuckerville doorway?

  They sat down on the padded bench. Olivia watched the man pull a big round brush through a blonde’s wavy hair, straightening the tresses. She glanced at the clock on the wall—10:02 a.m. The anticipation was too much. This would be a long thirty minutes.

  Carson took a little notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped through it. He nodded a couple times, jotted something down, then returned it to his pocket.

  “What’s your aunt like?” he asked.

  Olivia thought of tall, strong Aunt Sarah. “Well, she’s a bit private and always kept to herself, but when I was growing up she’d come see me a few times a week, help me study, take me shoe shopping, bring me MP3 players loaded with songs she thought I’d like. When I was getting my catering business off the ground she would post flyers for me in shops and bulletin boards all over Blue Gulch County. She sent me quite a few of my first customers.”

  Carson glanced at her. “She sounds kind.”

  “She is.” Olivia wanted to add, See, you don’t have to worry about your dad and Sarah, she’s wonderful, really. But Carson would just say there would be no “Dad and Aunt Sarah” and cross his arms over his chest and glower, so she kept that to herself.

  They sat and watched a woman get her highlights wrapped in foil and listened to the chitchat. Olivia now knew all about an affair going on in the stylist’s family, the client’s teenaged son’s struggles in language arts class and how many bottles of color number twelve the salon needed to order.

  “Have any earplugs?” Carson leaned over to whisper.

  Olivia couldn’t help but smile. She actually liked all the chatter and gossip and chitchat. She always worked alone—for years in her kitchen, cooking for her clients, and for the last few weeks in the food truck. It’s lonely, a little voice acknowledged. Before, she’d go home to her mother, who never stopped talking. Now she went home to a silent house and constant reminders of her losses. I do want to find you, Aunt Sarah, she thought suddenly. Very much.

  The bell jangled, and Olivia almost jumped. She glanced up at the big clock on the wall—10:25 a.m. Aunt Sarah? She looked over at the woman who entered. She was tall, like Sarah Mack. Auburn-haired, like Sarah Mack, though her aunt’s hair was curly and this woman’s was pin-straight. Of course, a flatiron could have made that happen. Big black sunglasses covered her face.

  Olivia hadn’t seen her aunt in five years, but she felt sure that she’d know her aunt anywhere. And this woman...wasn’t Sarah Mack.

  Olivia stayed in her seat, disappointment prickling her heart.

  “Sarah Mack?” Carson said, standing up.

  The woman turned to Carson and took off her sunglasses. Dark brown eyes looked at him quizzically. “Sorry. I’m Sarah O’Dalley.”

  Carson’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. Sorry to bother you. I was looking for a different Sarah.” He asked if the stylists knew of any Sarahs who worked out of their homes, but no one was sure.

  Olivia finally stood up and he glanced at her, his expression softening at the sadness she couldn’t hide from her eyes, the dashed hope. He put a hand on each of her shoulders. The heavy warmth felt good.

  “Sorry,” he said as they headed for the door. “I should have asked the owner if her last name was Mack before we bothered waiting.” They stepped out into the bright sunshine. “But then again, she may have married and changed it—or changed it even if she didn’t marry. We’ll find her, though.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “If a person doesn’t want to be found...”

  “It’s one salon,” he said. “Three more to check with Sarahs, and we can go to the other two just in case she changed her name entirely. If she’s not in this town, we’ll just keep looking. We’ll find her.”

  Olivia shrugged. She wasn’t so sure.

  He stared at her for a moment. “You really miss her, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “She’s my only family. My mother didn’t marry my father and he just sort of disappeared before I was even born. I mentioned I didn’t have grandparents. For the longest time it was just me, my mom and Aunt Sarah.” A chill snaked its way around her body.

  “And now it’s just you,” he said.

  She nodded, looking away. “I had no way of getting in touch with Sarah about my mother’s death. And I tried very hard to find my aunt then. Maybe it’s wrong to look for her. Maybe I should respect her wishes.”

  “Except now it’s about your mother’s wishes,” he said gently.

  Yes. That was exactly it. She felt so comforted by the fact that he understood that she almost threw herself around him.

  Until she remembered he had his own reason for finding Sarah Mack. And it had nothing to do with the last promise she made to her mother on her deathbed.

  “We’ll find her,” Carson repeated with conviction. “I promise.”

  That was a big promise. And she’d do well to remember he was motivated by self-interest—saving his father from possible heartbreak and financial ruin by finding his supposed second great love so that his father could see there was nothing between them. That Sarah was just a stranger.

  An hour later, Olivia and Carson had visited the five other salons in Tuckerville. There were three Sarahs. None was Olivia’s aunt. They stopped in a coffee shop to ask around if anyone knew of a freelance stylist named Sarah who worked out of her home, but no one did.

  “For all we know, my aunt is working in a salon across the state, nowhere near a rodeo,” Olivia said as they walked out of the coffee shop. “But it was a good try. She did love watching the rodeo.”

  Carson stared at her for a moment, gently pulling her out of the way of a man walking six dogs. “You know what we need?” he asked.

  “What?” Olivia asked.

  “Lunch.”

  She smiled. She was pretty hungry now that she thought about it.

  He glanced around at the many restaurants and cafés on both sides of the main street. “Fancy or the bagel place for chicken salad on everything bagels?”

  “The bagel place,” Olivia said. “For tuna salad on a sesame bagel.”

  He nodded and took her hand, leading the way. His hand tight against hers felt so good she wanted to kiss him.

  Grr. She had to be careful where Carson Ford was concerned. It was one thing to appreciate a man’s handsome face and rock-hard body and deep voice and so on and so on, with Carson’s many physical attributes. It was another to have her heart responding to him.

  And it was, darn it.

  * * *

  As Carson turn
ed on Blue Gulch Street, he remembered that he’d promised Olivia he’d help her cook for whoever this Mr. Crenshaw was.

  “So what did you say we’re making Mr. Crenshaw?” he asked as he pulled behind Olivia’s car in her driveway.

  “I won’t hold you to helping me,” she said. “If you need to get back to your work or go pick up Danny, I’ll understand.”

  “I spent three hours early this morning on the case I’m working on. And my father complains he doesn’t get enough time with Danny, so it’s fine to leave them together for a couple extra hours.”

  “Well, then, we’re making chicken parmigiana with garlic bread and a side of linguine in red sauce, one of Mr. Crenshaw’s favorites. I make it from a recipe his wife had handed down from her great-grandmother.”

  As they headed inside Olivia’s little house, she explained about her clients and their various dietary plans. Mr. Crenshaw was her secret favorite, she said. An eighty-seven-year-old widower who lived at the local assisted-living center but grumbled about the food. So Olivia cooked for him three times a week at a very big discount.

  The moment Carson stepped through the doorway, the black-and-white cat weaved between his legs and he reached down to pet her. She rubbed her head against his shin, her long white whiskers stark against his charcoal pants.

  Olivia smiled. “If my mother had witnessed that, she’d say you were okay, that Sweetie knows her people.”

  Carson raised an eyebrow. “A psychic cat. Just what the world needs.”

  She laughed, the sound making him happy. She hadn’t laughed much today.

  He followed Olivia into the kitchen, aware of the sway of her hips in her skirt, the way the late afternoon sun streaming in through the bay window lit the brown hair that hung in waves past her shoulders. She handed him an apron but he was so busy staring at her lips that he dropped it.

  He scooped it up. “Olivia Mack, Personal Chef and Caterer” was embroidered in white script along the big red pocket.

  “Put me to work,” he said. “Should I be on linguine or chicken?”

  “If you could take care of the linguine and the salad, I can focus on the chicken. My kitchen is yours, so just open the fridge and cabinets at will.”

  He wasn’t really that much of a cook. He made breakfast and dinner for him and Danny every night. French toast was Danny’s favorite so that was in heavy rotation in the mornings. As were homemade chicken fingers with sweet potato French fries for dinner. Then there was his mother’s meat loaf recipe. Spaghetti in marinara sauce. Omelets stuffed with cheese and vegetables, which Danny gobbled up. He could handle linguine and a salad, though he doubted it would be up to a personal chef’s usual level.

  An array of pots and pans dangled from a rack above the stove. As he moved to the cabinets to search for the pasta pot, he brushed against Olivia, who was pulling the chicken breasts from the refrigerator. He wanted to take the chicken out of her hand, toss the pot and lean her up against the fridge and kiss her senseless. He wanted to but, of course, he pretended great interest in filling up the big pot with water. He glanced over at Olivia, and she glanced at him.

  Had she felt the jolt, too? Had she felt nothing? He had no idea. Usually he could tell when a woman was as attracted to him as he was to her, but Olivia seemed very neutral to him. Too neutral, given what had brought them together and was still before them in finding her aunt.

  He smiled. Maybe she was just as attracted.

  “Thinking of something?” she asked as she covered the chicken in flour.

  “I’m thinking that it’s very comforting to watch someone cook. My mother was a great cook. She was obsessed with Julia Child and making her way through her giant cookbook. No chicken fingers for me as a kid. I was eating beef bourguignonne at three. Danny’s probably lucky I’m not a great or adventurous cook. He hates mushrooms.”

  Olivia laughed. “Your mother sounds wonderful.”

  “She was,” he said. “Did you learn to cook from your mom?”

  She shook her head. “Madam Miranda wasn’t much of a cook, but she had a few favorites that she learned to make. Cooking was never big in my family.”

  “Who taught you?” he asked as he set the back burner to high.

  “I just always knew. When I was five, I could make a three-course dinner.”

  Her “gift,” supposedly. Which Carson didn’t want to think about or talk about. People had talents. Olivia’s was cooking. End of story.

  “Won’t Mr. Crenshaw be disappointed when he tastes my rubber pasta and marinara sauce without enough pepper?” he asked as he salted the water for the linguine.

  She eyed the pot. “You seem to know what you’re doing. And besides, I’m watching. Closely.”

  He stopped stirring the linguine and stared at her. There was the slightest hint of flirtation in that last word. Her cheeks flushed and she turned back to her chicken. Suddenly she was very involved in making homemade bread crumbs and seasoning them. Hmm. Maybe she was as aware of him as he was of her.

  He had the urge to walk up behind her and smell her hair. Breathe her in. Wrap his arms around her. When he used to think about what marriage would be like, he used to think about that. Doing boring everyday things, but while making out.

  He turned his attention back to the water. Marriage. Ha. Marriage had gotten him all alone with a son who lately had been saying, “My mommy?” And because Carson knew exactly what Danny was asking, he wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t just because it was so damned painful to answer.

  You have a mommy, he’d say. But she had to go away.

  Mommy back? Danny would say, his hazel-green eyes just curious, not sad, not heavyhearted like his father’s always were. Danny had never known his mother and at eighteen months, he was still young enough not to realize that something wasn’t right about why his mother wasn’t in his life.

  All I know for sure is that if your mother knew you, she’d be unable to stay away from you, Carson would say, his heart feeling like it might implode. Explode.

  Choc bunny? his son would say then, and relief would flood Carson’s veins and he’d hand him the little chocolate bunny he’d bought as a treat and let Danny nibble an ear.

  Danny’s sweet face came to mind, his absolute trust in Carson. What was he doing, thinking about kissing Olivia Mack? Romance and love led to heartache and loss, and Carson had taken himself out of the running for that end result. He needed all the room in his heart for Danny.

  Somehow he’d have to resist Olivia Mack. He’d make the salad, get the sauce going and then he’d leave. Olivia could handle the garlic bread.

  Except as he was opening the fridge to find the lettuce, she was about to do the same and they collided. She was a half inch from him, flour on her cheek. Before he could think, he leaned down and kissed her, then took her face in his hands and deepened the kiss, opening his eyes when he dragged his mouth away from hers, dying to see her beautiful face.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and he kissed her again, harder, longer, and backed her against the counter, the scent of her soap and seasoned bread crumbs assailing him.

  Sweetie the cat meowed so loudly that they both pulled back and stared down at the black-and-white cat staring up at them with her amber-stone eyes.

  “You did say the cat was psychic,” he said, stepping back. “So clearly it’s a sign that we shouldn’t be...”

  “She’s not really psychic,” Olivia said and he tried to read the expression in her eyes, but all he got was neutral. She was good at masking how she felt. Or maybe this wasn’t such a big deal. A hot kiss in a hot kitchen. That’s all it was. He just didn’t go around kissing women in kitchens or anywhere, for that matter. So it was a big deal. And he had the feeling it was for her, too.

  “If I’m late with dinner, Mr. Crenshaw will pace the hall at the assisted-li
ving center,” she said. “So we should really get back to cooking.”

  He opened the fridge again and pulled out the lettuce. And a cucumber. And the tomatoes. He reached around Olivia’s sexy form for a knife and began chopping and slicing. Once the salad was done, he asked Olivia about dressing, but apparently Mr. Crenshaw liked plain old olive oil and vinegar, which he had in his room. It turned out that Olivia had made the marinara sauce that morning, so he was done here.

  “I guess I’ll be in touch when I have some news about your aunt,” he said. “Now that I have the basic information and the photos you gave me, I can work on my own.”

  “Oh,” she said, the neutral expression back on her pretty face.

  He might have thought she really didn’t care either way, but the set of her shoulders, the way she held herself so stiffly, told him she did. He wanted to go over and massage them, tell her that he was just...what? Closed off? Closed, period? Refusing to start something he couldn’t finish because he didn’t want to hurt her? And that he would hurt her because he didn’t believe in romance or love anymore? Yes. All that.

  “Okay,” she said, turning to face him for a moment before laying a piece of mozzarella cheese on the chicken. He could see the cloud in her eyes. “Thanks for helping.”

  He nodded. “See you around,” he said and shot out of there. But he stood on her porch for a good long minute, wishing he could go back inside and prolong what they had started.

  Chapter Six

  Olivia had not heard from Carson in two days. She assumed that meant he hadn’t found her aunt and was still looking. She also assumed that meant he regretted his impulsive kiss.

  She didn’t.

  All day today and yesterday she’d hoped he’d come to the food-truck window, but he hadn’t made an appearance. That kiss had been hovering in the air between them for a while and she thought it was better that it was acted on than ignored. Ignoring the truth is among the worst things for your health, her mother used to say.

  So Olivia hadn’t ignored the truth of her growing feelings for Carson Ford on all levels and when he kissed her, she kissed him back. Two days ago, while they’d been cooking together in her small kitchen, she’d barely been able to concentrate on Mr. Crenshaw’s chicken parmigiana. In fact, she’d been so focused on her feelings for Carson that she must have infused the chicken with some passion because one of the assisted-living nurses reported that Mr. Crenshaw had asked a lady to dance at the weekly social for the first time since arriving two years earlier.