The Cook's Secret Ingredient

by Meg Maxwell

“Emma’s mostly going to be working at the restaurant,” Annabel said, “but we thought she could learn the ropes of the truck so that she could help out during rushes or pinch-hit if you or Dylan are sick. I know your busy time is about to start, Olivia, so could you use a hand?”

  “I’d love the help,” Olivia said, smiling at Emma.

  Fifteen minutes later, Olivia had just finished giving Emma the lay of the land and going over the recipes for all the po’boys and cannoli when a crowd came out of Texas Trust and headed for the food truck. Then the real estate office crew walked over.

  Olivia gestured with her chin at the people coming their way. “We’re about to get as busy as Annabel said.”

  “I’m ready!” Emma said, rolling up her sleeves.

  Olivia smiled. Emma might have a secret up those sleeves, but she liked her and was grateful for her very competent help.

  By the end of the lunch rush—almost two hundred po’boys and over a hundred cannoli—Olivia could finally sit down at the little desk by the driver’s seat and clink a lemonade toast with Emma to a rush gone well. As she made a mini strawberry cannoli for Emma, Olivia was struck by the notion that Emma Hurley had a big secret to share with someone—someone she was having trouble finding.

  She tried to ask her new assistant a few questions about herself, but Emma was a bit cagey and Olivia realized that the woman probably didn’t want to be asked questions. Emma helped clean up like a champ and then Olivia said she might as well clock out for the day.

  A shadow loomed at the window and at first Olivia thought Emma was back, but it was Carson.

  Her heart moved. He looked so damned handsome. He wore a navy blue Henley shirt and sexy jeans and his brown cowboy boots. She hadn’t laid eyes on him in an entire week, but she’d sensed she hadn’t seen the last of Carson Ford. He needed time, to think and process and mull—and miss her. She didn’t know how long that would take, but she was sure glad to see him now. It definitely meant the missing part had begun.

  He took off his aviator sunglasses. “I’d love a shrimp po’boy.”

  She smiled. “That’s what you ordered the day I met you.”

  “I’m trying for a do-over,” he said. “I wasn’t very nice to you that day. And that night, you told me about your gift when I was walking you home from my dad’s house. I didn’t believe you, even though I saw some evidence of it since. Like with that pushy lady.”

  “I remember,” she said, reaching for the container of shrimp that Emma had helped her season. He was simply “making nice.” Her aunt and his dad were an item, and it made sense for Carson to be on good, friendly terms with Olivia.

  “If you do have a gift,” he added, “I’d appreciate it if you’d infuse my po’boy with a little assurance. A lot of assurance, actually.”

  She moved closer to the window. “Assurance for what?”

  He disappeared from view and the door to the food truck opened. He stepped up inside. “That the woman I love will forgive me for being so stubborn.”

  A rush of happiness zinged from Olivia’s toes to the top of her head.

  “I love you, Olivia Mack. I love everything you are.” He opened a little velvet box; a beautiful diamond ring sparkled. “The sales guy at Blue Gulch Jewelers told me this ring was destined for my bride. That was the exact word he used.”

  She laughed. “You don’t believe in destiny.”

  “But I believe in how I feel about you. I’m just going to run with that. That’s what I want to teach Danny. To love, to be open, not to run away. I love you, Olivia,” he said.

  “I love you, too.”

  He kissed her, then pulled back. “I wasn’t sure about proposing here—if you’d want to remember that you got engaged in a food truck. But this is where we met, after all.”

  Happy tears poked at her eyes. “There’s no place that could have been more special.”

  “I guess it was destiny,” he said, kissing her again.

  Epilogue

  Four weeks later, on a breathtaking, warm and breezy late-March evening, Olivia stood with Dory Drummond in the beautiful backyard of Edmund Ford’s mansion, admiring the twinkling white lights strung among the trees. Hundreds of guests at Edmund and Sarah’s engagement party mingled, sipping champagne and trying appetizers that uniformed waiters appeared with on round silver trays.

  “If I could have your attention,” Edmund said, standing in front of the weeping willow and clinking his glass with a spoon. Aunt Sarah stood beside him, looking so lovely in her pale yellow dress and strappy sandals, her curly auburn hair down around her shoulders. “I’d like to thank you all for coming to share in my good fortune.” He shot a wink at Carson, who was standing a few feet from Olivia with Beaufort Harrington. “Until very recently, I never thought I would find a second chance at happiness. But this wonderful woman changed all that. I’m very happy to announce that Sarah and I have set a wedding date for September and you’re all invited.”

  There was a big round of applause and excited chatter as guests crowded around the happy couple. Olivia excused herself from Dory and rushed up to her aunt, wrapping her in a hug.

  “When Edmund first proposed last week,” Sarah said, “I was so flabbergasted, but my answer was in my heart. A very big and sure yes. My fiancé has been asking what kind of wedding I’d like, and I was thinking maybe we’d elope, but I don’t want such a big and special day to pass without you there. Or Carson. You’re both family.”

  “I wouldn’t want to miss your wedding, Aunt Sarah,” Olivia said, so thrilled for the woman. “Just think, by the fall we’ll both be married women.”

  “I just might join that club, too,” Dory said as she joined them, her expression all dreamy as she gazed at Beaufort. “What a difference a month makes. Now that Beau and I have gotten to know each other apart from any expectations, we’re madly in love.”

  “I’m so happy for you, Dory,” Olivia said, hugging her dear friend.

  The huge Hurley group came over to meet Sarah, and Olivia made the introductions. There were Annabel and West, Georgia and Nick, Clementine and Logan, and even seventy-five-year-old Essie Hurley had a date, the charming and dapper owner of the independent bookstore on the far end of Blue Gulch Street. Love was most definitely in the air in Blue Gulch, Texas.

  Sarah’s cell phone rang, and she reached into her little sequined purse for it. “Unfamiliar number,” she said. “Hello?” She listened for a moment, her left hand flying to her mouth. She looked like she might cry.

  Oh, no. What was this? Olivia wondered.

  Sarah turned and walked a few feet away, standing beside the weeping willow as if to talk in private. Wait, was she smiling now? Suddenly the hand was back at her mouth. She was pacing a bit, talking, then listening. Then smiling. Then just standing very still, staring out at the night.

  Finally, she put the phone away and came over to Olivia. “Let’s go find Carson and Edmund,” Sarah said. “I have some news to share.”

  Wondering what was up, Olivia scanned the crowd. “There’s Edmund. He’s standing with Carson and a few others.”

  They walked over to find Edmund and Carson listening to one of the men telling a very long story about a Texas Trust deal; they both looked a little bored, so Olivia figured it was a good time to steal them away. She gestured them over.

  The four of them walked across the yard and stood behind another tree.

  “I just received a telephone call from Jake Morrow,” Sarah said. “It’s been a month since I wrote that letter to him, and I’d pretty much given up hope that he’d want contact. But he said he’d spent some time thinking things over and he would like
to meet me.”

  “That’s great!” Olivia said, squeezing her aunt’s hand. “I’m so glad he responded.” Over the past month, every day that the mail hadn’t brought a letter and the phone hadn’t rung with a call from Jake, Olivia had noticed a bit of sad wistfulness in the air around her aunt. But now, there was joy on her face.

  Edmund wrapped his fiancée in a hug. “I’m so happy for you.”

  “I had a feeling he’d come around,” Carson said. “Jake started the ball rolling five years ago, then stopped it, so the want—the need—was there. Is he coming to Blue Gulch or will you travel to his ranch?”

  “He’s coming to Blue Gulch next Saturday,” Sarah said. “He said he’d like to see where he began, understand a little about his birth family. And he is hoping I can help him locate his twin brother. So far, he’s had no luck with that.”

  “Well, I’ll certainly help if I can,” Carson said, his arm around Olivia.

  Olivia noticed her aunt was looking at her as though wondering something, trying to figure out if Sarah should say what was on her mind.

  “Sarah?” Olivia prompted.

  “I was just thinking,” she began, glancing at Edmund and Carson, and then back at Olivia. “Since we’re both engaged to these wonderful men here, and they’re family and we’re family, wouldn’t it be nice to have a double wedding?”

  Olivia gasped. “I’d love it!”

  “We’re already each other’s best man,” Carson said, looking at his dad, “so that works.”

  Olivia smiled. “And Danny can be our ring bearer. I can just see him in his little tuxedo.”

  “Two dads down the aisle with our beautiful brides,” Edmund said. “Count me in.”

  With the people she loved most beside her and the stars twinkling overhead, Olivia felt her mother’s presence more strongly than she ever had these months without Miranda.

  “Want to know something?” Carson whispered as the foursome began heading back to the party.

  “What?” she asked, unable to drag her gaze away from Carson’s handsome face, his hazel-green eyes.

  “When I kissed Danny good-night before heading over to your house to pick you up, he said something I think you’re going to like.”

  She couldn’t imagine being any happier than she was right now. “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Liva mama?’”

  Olivia’s heart flip-flopped. “He did? He said that?”

  Carson nodded and stopped on the grass, holding her close.

  “I am going to be his mama,” she whispered, her cup running over to the point that tears were threatening.

  “I owe this all to a fortune, destiny, stubbornness, reality, life and hard work,” Carson said. “All of that. It all played a part. I’m just glad it did.”

  She leaned up to kiss her fiancé. “Me, too. Because love played the biggest part of all.”

  * * * * *

  Look for Jake Morrow and Emma Hurley’s story, CHARM SCHOOL FOR COWBOYS, coming soon as the HURLEY’S HOMESTYLE KITCHEN miniseries continues!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from FALLING FOR THE REBOUND BRIDE by Karen Templeton.

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  Falling for the Rebound Bride

  by Karen Templeton

  Chapter One

  The young woman had been eyeing him from the other side of the luggage carousel for several minutes, her pale forehead slightly crimped. Far too wiped out to be paranoid—or return her interest, if that’s what it was—Colin instead focused on his phone as he reflexively massaged an unyielding knot in the back of his neck. Although truthfully his entire body was one giant screaming ache after nearly two days either on a plane or waiting for one—

  “Um... Colin? Colin Talbot?”

  Instinctively clutching his camera bag, he frowned into a pair of sweet, wary blue eyes he was pretty sure he’d never seen in his life. Clearly he was even more tired than he’d realized, letting her sneak up on him like that.

  With a squeaky groan, the carousel lurched into action, the contents of the plane’s belly tumbling down the chute, bags and boxes jostling each other like a bunch of sleepy drunks. The other passengers closed in, ready to pounce, many sporting the standard assortment of cowboy hats and beat-up boots you’d expect to see in New Mexico. Colin squinted toward the business end, keeping one grit-scraped eye out for his beat-up duffel, then faced the young woman again. Crap, his backpack felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Not to mention his head.

  “Have we met? Because I don’t—”

  “I was a kid, the last time I saw you,” she said, a smile flicking across a mouth as glossy as her long, wavy hair, some undefined color between blond and brown. “When I visited the ranch.” She tucked some of that shiny hair behind one ear, the move revealing a simple gold hoop, as well as lifting the hem of her creamy blouse just enough to hint at the shapely hips her fitted jeans weren’t really hiding. Hell. Next to this perfect specimen of refinement, Colin felt like week-old roadkill. Probably smelled like it, too, judging from the way the dude next to him on that last leg from Dallas kept leaning away.

  The smile flickered again, although he now saw it didn’t quite connect with her eyes. She pressed a slender, perfectly manicured hand to her chest. “Emily Weber? Deanna’s cousin?”

  Deanna. His younger brother Josh’s new wife. And their dad’s old boss’s daughter. Now, vaguely, Colin remembered the gangly little middle schooler who’d spent a few weeks on the Vista Encantada that summer more than ten years ago. Vaguely, because not only had he already been in college, but she was right, they hadn’t talked much. If at all. Mostly because of the age difference thing. That she even recognized him now...

  “Oh. Right.” Colin dredged up a smile of sorts, before his forehead cramped again. “You don’t look much like I remember.”

  Humor briefly flickered in her eyes. “Neither do you.”

  He shifted, easing the weight of the backpack. “Then how’d you know it was me?”

  A faint blush swept over her cheeks. “I didn’t, at first. Especially with the beard. But it’s hard to ignore the tallest man in the room. Then I
noticed the camera bag, and I remembered the photo I spotted at your folks’ house, when I was there a few months ago for the wedding. Josh’s wedding, I mean.” She grinned. “There’s been a few of those in your family of late.”

  Seriously, his brothers had been getting hitched like there’d been a “buy one, get two free” sale on marriage licenses. First Levi, then Josh—his twin younger brothers—and soon Zach, the oldest, would be marrying for the second time—

  “In any case,” she said, “enough pieces started fitting together that I decided to take a chance, see if it was you. Although you probably wondered who the creeper chick trying to pick you up was.”

  Colin glanced back toward the carousel. “Thought never crossed my mind.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her gaze lower to her glittery flat shoes. “Crazy, huh?” she said, looking up again. But not at him. “After all this time, both of us being on the same plane to Albuquerque.”

  “Yeah.”

  This time the sound that pushed from her chest held a definite note of exasperation. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy or whatever. I just thought, since I did recognize you, it’d be weird not to say anything. Especially since we’re probably both headed up to the ranch. Unless...” Another flush streaked across her cheeks. “You’re not?”

  Colin shut his eyes, as if that’d stop her words’ pummeling. True, he was exhausted and starving and not at all in the mood for conversation, especially with some classy, chatty chick he barely remembered. A chatty chick who clearly didn’t know from awkward. Or didn’t care. But she was right, he was being an ass. For no other reason than he could. Cripes, his father would knock him clear into next week for that. Not to mention his mother.

  “No. I am,” he said, daring to meet her gaze. And the you’ve-gone-too-far-buster set to her mouth under it. A mouth that under other circumstances—although what those might be, God alone knew—might have even provoked a glimmer of sexual interest. Okay, more than a glimmer. But those days were long gone, stuffed in some bottom drawer of his brain where they couldn’t get him in trouble anymore. “And I apologize. It was a rough flight. Part of it, anyway.”