He thought about throwing out a pithy retort but settled for, “Thank you.” He was proud of himself. This past hour in the kitchen and the prep work that had gone into it made him feel good in the same way cooking dinner for his family did.
“Any questions while we plate the food?” Sam asked the kids.
“Have you ever beaten anyone up on your show?”
“No.” Ben shook his head.
“Even after they turned off the camera? Remember that time the chef in New Jersey threw a plate of food at you? You were so mad they had to beep out half of the episode. You made him cry.”
Ben cringed, rubbing his hand along the back of his neck. “I remember.” What he also remembered was discovering the chef, who also owned the restaurant where the show was filming, had a little girl with a congenital heart defect. His marriage was in shambles and he was struggling to pay the bills both at home and his restaurant so had taken to cutting corners in the kitchen to save money.
“Nothing happened off camera,” he told the kids. Actually, what had happened off camera was that Ben had given the man a check to cover the surgery his daughter needed. That had been the beginning of the end of him wanting to live up to his Beast reputation. It was when it dawned on him, much too late, that he wasn’t the only one with a past that had screwed him up or with things he was trying to work through. He glanced at Chloe, who stood in the back corner watching the class.
He’d been so angry at her rejection last night that his first impulse was to leave camp entirely, to head back to Denver and down to one of the trendy bars he’d avoided since he’d been in town. There was an almost irresistible urge to lose himself in alcohol and his celebrity status, and to seek out the bullshit hangers-on he knew would be waiting for him. The camp was too quiet, with time for him to think and reflect on why he wasn’t enough for her.
As he’d stalked back toward his cabin, car keys jingling in his hand, he’d gotten a glimpse of Zach and some of the other boys through the window of the cabin. They were having a major-league pillow fight and the pure joy on his nephew’s face had stopped him in his tracks. Although Abby did most of the caregiving, it dawned on Ben that Zach, as much as he seemed unaffected by the circumstances of his life, probably had never had a simple sleepover or time to hang out with friends. Bryce Hollow was truly the first time the kid could have fun without worrying about what was coming next in life.
So he’d veered off the trail into the boys’ cabin, picked up a pillow, and challenged Zach and his new friends to the ultimate boy-versus-Beast pillow fight. Of course, Ben had been properly pummeled and the counselors had eventually shut down the shenanigans, but the hug Zach had given him as he’d left the cabin had made the whole weekend worth it. For once in his life, Ben hadn’t walked away or let his temper get the best of him.
“Have you ever met Bobby Flay?” one of the girls asked.
“Yep. A few times. He’s a good guy.”
“Is he a better chef than you?” another kid chimed in.
“He has his style and I have mine.” Unfortunately, Ben’s style was more about proving he could best other chefs than about the food he prepared.
“Did you ever beat him up?” the same kid from before asked.
Bloodthirsty little cuss. “Never.” Ben looked directly at the kid. “There are better ways to solve problems than with your fists.”
“Like screaming at people and making them cry?” the boy suggested, making Ben wish he could burn every recording of A Beast in Your Kitchen that was out in the world.
He looked around the room for rescue, but all of the kids and counselors were staring at him expectantly. Sam was smiling slightly and Chloe’s expression was blank. To Ben, the lack of emotion was worse than anything else she could have shown him.
“Like talking about problems and working them out,” he told the boy.
The kid rolled his eyes. “That’s not what you do on TV.”
“You’re right,” Ben agreed, taking a step forward. He knew many of these kids had suffered through upbringings similar to his, but he also knew there was a better way to cope with issues than his way. Chloe had shown him that, and even if she didn’t want to be with him, he needed to make her understand that their time together meant something to him. That she still meant something, more than he even understood.
“Yes, I yell on camera and I’ve done way too much of it.” He pointed to his niece and nephew. “Abby and Zach can tell you that.”
“He’s getting better,” Zach said immediately. “He makes more sense when he’s not screaming.”
Ben threw his nephew a wry smile. “I’m learning to control my temper because I want people to hear the words I say, not just my temper. I grew up in a family of people who fought all the time. Maybe some of you can relate to that?” He glanced around as he said the words, his skin burning after revealing such a personal detail about himself to a group of kids. But several of them nodded and a couple just stared at the ground. Those were the ones who understood what he was saying.
“What I know now and I hope you understand way before I did is that you are in control of who you are and what you want to be. You don’t need to yell or fight to have that kind of power. It’s already yours, and you need to hold on to it. Don’t let anyone make you believe you’re less than you know yourself to be. Find people, like your friends and counselors at this camp, who like you for who you are. Who take care of you and protect you, not tear you down or force you to be someone you’re not. You deserve people in your life who believe in you and your dreams.”
He picked up one of the plates from the counter. “Do you know how many people told me it was stupid to want to become a chef? That someone like me had no business in a fancy restaurant? I used my anger as a shield because I was so damn . . .” He looked at Abby. “I mean so darn scared.”
“What’s so scary about cooking?” one of the older boys asked. “My mom cooks every night.”
“Then you’re lucky, and you better say thank you and compliment whatever she serves.” Ben took a step forward and the boy nodded his head and swallowed. “But it was different for a big, troublemaking teenage boy. I got mad, and I stayed mad for a long time. But that’s not what made me a success. What made me a success was that I love cooking. The anger fueled me, but the love made me good at what I do. Figure out what you love to do, and don’t get caught up in what other people think of it like I did. Because being mad all the time isn’t actually much fun.” He leveled a look at the boy who’d asked the original question. “Despite how it looks on TV.”
The boy stared at him for a moment then nodded. “Love is cool,” he said casually. “Now can we try the food? I’m starving.”
Ben laughed and the other kids cheered, but before they could start eating, Sam let out a long whistle. “I think all of us want to thank Chef Ben, for not only an enlightening cooking demonstration, but also for his very wise words.” She flashed him a cheeky grin. “Nice switch from Beast to Beauty.” Then as she led the campers in a round of applause, Ben found himself actually blushing.
“I didn’t mean to go off on that tangent,” he said quietly as the kids took their plates out to the mess hall.
“It was a good tangent,” Sam said, patting him on the back. “And a helpful class. A lot of these boys don’t have male role models in their lives, so to hear from someone like you that they can follow their dreams is a big deal. Even if you weren’t saying it for their benefit.”
Ben’s gaze flicked to the empty corner of the kitchen. “Chloe left.”
“A few minutes ago,” Sam confirmed. “She heard what you needed her to hear.”
“She thinks I’m playing games. That this is all about winning.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Despite what I told the kids, fighting is what I know how to do. Sometimes it seems like it’s all I know how to do.”
“You know how to love, too.”
To his surprise, Ben didn’t hear any sarcasm
in Sam’s tone. “Yeah, right.”
“I don’t believe what you said about loving to cook was a lie.” She nudged his arm. “And it’s clear you love those kids.”
“I’ve only really known them for a few weeks. Before that—”
Sam held up a hand. “You don’t have to know someone for a long time to love them, Chef Biceps.”
Ben smiled and shook his head at her description of him.
“Sometimes it happens in an instant.” She squeezed his arm. “Or in a matter of weeks.”
He studied her for a moment. “There’s more to you than that million-dollar face.”
“Just like there’s more to you than the temper and the muscles.” She squeezed him again.
“I think you like the muscles.”
She gave him a grin that was more a friendly leer than flirty. “I’m only human. Want to take your shirt off?”
“You don’t mean that,” he said, shaking his head.
“I do, but only from a purely theoretical standpoint.”
He laughed. “I’m going to sit down with the kids before you molest me.”
“You wish.”
He was almost to the kitchen door when Sam called his name. “There’s a little cabin about halfway around the lake on the east side. It would be a good place to go if you wanted some privacy.”
“I don’t—” He paused as realization dawned. “Do you think Chloe wanted privacy when she left here?”
“Well, I can’t tell you that,” Sam said with an eye roll. “But if I had to guess—”
“Thank you.” Ben sat with the kids for a few minutes, answering more questions, mostly about foods that were in season and what could be grown locally in Denver. He knew community gardens were gaining popularity in most urban cities, and decided he’d try to find out more about what Denver had to offer kids who might not otherwise have access to fresh food.
After checking in with Zach and Abby, he stopped by the staff cabin to grab a jacket then headed east around the lake.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“She told you where to find me.” Chloe said the words softly as she heard someone approach around the edge of the old fishing cabin. She sat on the glider on the back of the deck, watching the sun start to leave pink-and-gold trails across the Colorado sky.
This time of afternoon had always been her favorite at camp. The temperature had dropped several degrees as billowy clouds gathered over the mountain that rose up beyond the western edge of the lake.
The main camp was peaceful, the kids clearly having their hour of mandatory quiet time before dinner. Most of them chose to read or journal. Often one or two of the boys would take a kayak onto the lake, but today the water was still, other than the occasional bubble of a fish surfacing.
“If you want me to go I will,” Ben said from her side. “I just wanted to apologize for . . . well, everything.”
She glanced up at him, his hair a soft silhouette against the pine trees behind him. He’d put on a light jacket, the collar flipped up and grazing his jaw the way she wanted to with her fingers. He’d worked hard to make himself a success and overcome everything he’d been up against as a kid. She knew how important it was for him to prove wrong the people who’d doubted him. Yet today he’d given those kids—and her—a glimpse of the softness inside him she’d glimpsed only late at night when they were together.
“Sit down.” She patted the bench next to her.
Ben folded his tall frame into the corner of the glider. Even though he was clearly trying to keep his distance, the heat was coming off him in waves and she wanted to curl into it, to take the edge off the chill in the air whispering through the surrounding pine trees.
“You don’t need to apologize,” she told him after a moment. “But I do want you to explain.”
“About the recipes I made today?”
Chloe barked out a laugh. “Nice try. Tell me about how you knew Stan Butterfield.”
She felt rather than saw him stiffen.
“When I gave your father the baseball that had been Stan’s, he seemed almost giddy.”
“My dad has a long memory,” Ben muttered.
“I don’t think he’s the only one.”
“I told the kids today that everyone has a dream.”
“It was great what you said to them.”
“My brother’s dream was to be an archaeologist.” He pressed a hand to his forehead, rubbing it as if he had a huge headache. “It seems ludicrous now, with everything that happened. But Cory was obsessed after he found an arrowhead buried in our backyard. He was constantly digging, looking for more artifacts, bones . . . anything he could find.”
“That’s cute.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “It was annoying as hell. But The Toy Chest had this geoscience digging kit on display for months before Christmas the year Cory turned twelve. Cory would walk past every day after school to stare at it. Mom had left that summer, and to say Dad was out of control would be an understatement.”
He shook his head. “But Butterfield had banned both of us from his shop.”
She glanced at him.
“Zach comes by his sticky fingers honestly, I guess, because Cory had gotten caught more than once stealing piddly stuff from the toy store—mostly baseball cards and Matchbox cars. Every time Butterfield called the cops and my dad. He’d give my father these long lectures about raising reprobate boys and how the apple doesn’t fall from the tree, etc. Dad wasn’t a saint when he was younger, either.”
“That had to be difficult for him.”
“It definitely made him hate The Toy Chest. He would have never bought Cory that science set, even if he had the money. But things weren’t like they are today. There was no Internet, only the big chain stores and a few neighborhood specialty places like Butterfield’s. I knew Cory had to have that set. It had taken on some bigger meaning for him, you know? Like it was tied to his future somehow. I told him I’d help him get the money for it and we’d hide it from Dad. All that fall we did chores and odd jobs for people around the neighborhood, raking leaves and washing cars then shoveling snow as the weather turned colder.”
“What were you getting out of it?”
He took a breath and stretched his long legs in front of him. “I was angry when Mom left. I’d always been more like Harry with my temper. Cory was a total mama’s boy. I’m actually still shocked she didn’t take him with her when she left. He cried himself to sleep for months after she was gone. We shared a room and I’d lie there at night, my pillow crammed over my head trying not to hear him. He needed something to take his mind off it, and the dinosaur crap did. I guess I wanted a peaceful night’s sleep.”
She wanted to reach for him, to offer some comfort against the painful memories and the idea that a young boy, already wounded from his mother’s desertion, would be put in that position. But she knew from her training that talking was also part of healing. It took all her willpower, but Chloe forced herself to be an impartial listener as he spoke.
“It was just after Thanksgiving that we had enough money. It was going to be an early Christmas gift since there was no doubt Dad wasn’t in a position to go all out for the holidays.”
“How wonderful. Your brother must have been so happy.”
He threw her a sidelong glance. “Stan Butterfield wouldn’t let us in the store.”
Chloe felt herself frowning. “What do you mean? Why not?”
“I told you Cory had lifted a few things from the shop. Butterfield decided we were trouble and he wanted nothing to do with either of us.”
“But you had the money. Did you show him the money?”
Ben’s smile was sad. “He accused us of stealing it. Made a big show of berating Cory and me in front of a store full of holiday shoppers. Bad seeds, future criminals. You name the insult, he used it.”
Chloe couldn’t reconcile the gentle, supportive older man she knew with the grown-up bully Ben described. “What happened? Did your Dad ge
t involved?”
“Eventually,” Ben said, his voice gravelly with emotion. “Cory and I went back home, me running my mouth as usual. Yelling and cussing about all the things I was going to do to get back at Butterfield. They were just words, but not to Cory. He snuck out that night, took one of Dad’s baseball bats, broke the front window, and set fire to a display of baseball cards. All the things I’d threatened, Cory actually did. He went crazy. It was like his anger over Mom and Dad, about everything, bubbled up to the surface and spilled over in one horrible outburst. The cops came, of course, and Butterfield was livid. Dad begged him to handle it privately, promised to pay for the damage. But he pressed charges and Cory went to a juvenile detention center.”
“Oh, Ben. No.”
“It was only for a couple of nights plus a community service sentence, but it changed Cory. There was no more talk of archaeology or earning money for doing chores. No more tears in his pillow. That night hardened him. It changed his relationship with Dad and his reputation in the neighborhood. I tried to keep him away from the troublemakers, but he wouldn’t listen, and, for a time, I ended up right there beside him. It was the only way I could protect him.”
He jumped to his feet and walked a few paces toward the lake then back again. The light was softer now and the clouds had thinned. Shades of pink and orange streaked the sky, making shadows fall across the forest. Chloe held her arms tightly against her chest to ward off the cold seeping through her fleece sweater.
“I hated Stan Butterfield.”
“I understand why.”
“And I hated The Toy Chest. That store represented all the things that were screwed up in my family. I vowed that I’d find a way to shut it down. Butterfield loved the place. It was his whole life, and I wanted him to see it fail. Hell, there was more than one occasion when I was tempted to burn the whole thing to the ground and the consequences be damned.”
“Ben.”
He turned to her. “He owned it outright so there was never anything I could do. But when he died . . .”
Recipe for Kisses Page 18
