Getting Lucky

by Susan Andersen

  His agitation appeared to be linked to Mrs. Beaumont, so partly to divert the woman from doing whatever it was that was putting his back up, and partly because Lily couldn’t abide one more day eating second-rate food, she left the sideboard to approach the older woman.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You must think I’m terribly rude. It’s just that I adore food, and we’ve been eating such catch-as-catch-can meals since leaving California that I was looking forward to a real breakfast. But I have a suggestion that might suit everyone’s needs. I love to cook, and I’d be happy to fill in until Ernestine is feeling more herself.”

  The offer was clearly tempting, but Mrs. Beaumont said politely, “Oh, no. You’re our guest. We could never ask you to slave in the kitchen.”

  Lily laughed. “You didn’t ask, and to me it isn’t slaving. Zach and I showed up on your doorstep unannounced, and you’ve been gracious enough to offer us lodging. So, please. Allow me to repay you, if only a little, by doing this in return.”

  Richard, who had been quietly sipping coffee across the table, tossed his shiny brown hair out of his eyes and reached over to give the older woman’s hand a squeeze. “It’s a generous offer, Aunt Maureen. Take her up on it.”

  Mrs. Beaumont looked from him to Lily. “Well, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind…”

  “I truly wouldn’t. In fact I’d enjoy it, and if someone will simply point me in the direction of the kitchen, I’ll go put together a nice hot breakfast. Everyone’s under a great deal of stress. Keeping fueled is an essential part of dealing with it.”

  Jessica set her half-eaten slice of toast on her plate. “I’ll show you.”

  As she rose from the table, Zach leaned back in his chair and regarded Lily with raised eyebrows. “I know you can cook,” he said as his gaze ran over her, pausing a moment on the multistrand necklace of glittery crystals that spilled across her breasts. “But there’s a difference between cooking for one or two people, and a group this size. Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  Cooking for seven? Not even that, if Cassidy and Christopher didn’t eat breakfast. She managed not to roll her eyes. “Oh, I think I can muddle through somehow.”

  As she followed Jessica down a short hallway off the foyer, she heard the other woman murmur wonderingly to herself, “A ‘group this size’?”

  She laughed. “I know,” she agreed. “Why is it men so often think that because we wear lipstick and have parts that jiggle, our competency must be in inverse proportion? Oh!” she breathed as she stepped into the kitchen. “This is fabulous.” It was a state-of-the-art work space, her personal idea of heaven.

  “At least you have jiggly parts,” Jessica said under her breath. “I should be so lucky. As for lipstick…”

  Her soft voice pulled Lily away from an ecstatic inspection of the Viking range, and she really looked at the other woman for the first time. “You should wear it,” she said decisively, after giving her a thorough inspection. “Most women would kill for bee-stung lips like yours. In fact, I’ve got a lipstick I bet would be perfect for you. It’s a shade called Pink Smooch that I fell in love with in the store, but when I got it home I discovered it was all wrong for my coloring. I’ll dig it out for you after I get breakfast on the table.”

  Jessica gave her such a helpless look that Lily couldn’t help but smile. “I’m guessing you don’t share my passion for makeup.” She splayed her fingers across her chest. “Be still my heart. I find that completely shocking.”

  “According to my sister, it’s nothing short of heresy.”

  Lily laughed. “At the very least.”

  “Yes, well, not all of us are slaves to fashion.”

  “Oh, honey, of course we are. You obviously just haven’t met the right consultant yet.” Until now. There was nothing more frustrating to Lily than untapped potential, and seeing Jessica’s made her itch to do a complete makeover.

  Not only was the other woman’s face devoid of makeup, her medium-brown hair was much too long and bushy for her narrow face, overwhelming its delicate bone structure. Lily didn’t need labels to recognize quality clothing when she saw it, and she could tell at a glance that Jessica’s sweater was an expensive one. But the color was all wrong for the brunette, muddying her fair complexion, and it was too bulky for her slender frame. Her jeans were fine, but those shoes were a nightmare. They looked like a potato farmer’s brogues.

  It wasn’t up to her to barge in and start rearranging anyone’s life, however, so she simply smiled and turned back to the marvelous kitchen she’d been given permission to play in. But wiggling her painted toes appreciatively in her own Cuban-heeled, open-toed, retro pumps, she thought dryly, So I won’t barge. I can hold off for a day.

  She was immersed in deep admiration for all the wonderful gadgets and the well-stocked pantry when Jessica said uncertainly, “Well, you’d probably like me to get out of your way.”

  Lily swung around. “Oh, no; don’t go. I could use your help familiarizing myself with where everything is. That is—oh, dear, I’m being presumptuous, supposing you don’t have anything better to do, or that you’d ordinarily spend a minute longer in a kitchen than you have to, aren’t I? I’m sorry. Am I keeping you?”

  Jessica laughed, and it was a surprisingly bawdy sound, as if someone had just told her a deliciously dirty joke. “No, you’re not keeping me from anything more pressing than a quilt I’m working on, and as my family would be the first to tell you, that’s merely a hobby. As for spending time in the kitchen, considering I’m the one responsible for that abysmal offering in the dining room this morning, I leave it to you to determine if I should be allowed in one.”

  Lily grinned, then headed for the refrigerator to see what she had to work with. “I’m going to take a wild leap here and assume you’re not as crazy about cooking as I am.”

  “As a matter of fact, I have a feeling I might actually enjoy it, but I haven’t had much opportunity to find out.”

  “Wait, don’t tell me. Would that be because you’ve always had a cook to do for you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, poor little rich girl. You’re not expecting a lot of sympathy from me, I trust.” It wasn’t until the words left her mouth that Lily realized what she’d said. With a jolt, it occurred to her that she felt nearly as comfortable with the other woman as she did with her friend Mimi in Laguna, which explained why she hadn’t even hesitated to give her a bad time.

  To her relief, Jessica seemed to feel the same way. “Actually,” she said, “I think you should feel very sorry for me. You have no idea what a sad tale I have to tell.”

  “Yeah?” Lily started pulling ingredients out of the fridge, giving Jessica a wry look as she passed the items to the other woman to set on the counter. She twirled one hand like royalty granting an audience. “So spill.”

  “Richard, Cassidy, and I are—are you prepared for this?—the ‘poor’ relations in the Beaumont clan.”

  Lily gave a mock gasp.

  Jessica flashed a smile that transformed her face from plain to almost pretty. “I know. Shocking, isn’t it? Mama was one of those women for whom appearance is everything, so of course we had a cook, as did everyone in our set. The difference was, while we merely appeared to be wealthy, they actually were. If there had been any real money in our part of the family, I might have been allowed in the kitchen. But only genuinely rich girls can afford to behave as if they don’t have a bean to their names. What we had,” she said with a shrug, “was connections.” Then, with the slightest hint of bitterness, she added to herself, “Yes indeed. We certainly do have those all important connections.”

  Lily didn’t know her well enough to ask what that was all about, so she merely said lightly, “Well, I don’t have a connection to my name outside the restaurant industry. But stick with me, kid, and I can at least teach you to cook.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.”

  Jessica came to stand by he
r side. “What are you going to make?”

  “Just something very basic this morning, since we’re a little pressed for time. We’ll do scrambled egg-stuffed breakfast pitas and a cantaloupe-blueberry salad. Will your husband and sister be joining us?”

  “I…imagine.”

  “I wasn’t sure if they’d already left for work.”

  “Oh, no, the office for B Networks is upstairs in the east wing.”

  “Okay, then, we’ll plan on seven.” She indicated the eggs, mushrooms, red pepper, onion, and cheese assembled on the counter. “You see anything here that anyone can’t eat?”

  “No.”

  “Excellent. I’ll make a poppyseed dressing for the salad first so it can chill while I get everything else ready.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Cut the cantaloupe and assemble the salads,” Lily replied, reaching for a bowl. “Do crosswise slices.”

  Jessica raised her eyebrows, and Lily demonstrated what she meant, cutting the melon the long way, then handing the other woman the knife. She turned back to her own station and scraped a carton of vanilla yogurt into the bowl and added some lemon juice and poppyseeds. A few minutes later she glanced up from grating orange zest in the bowl. “I think I saw some Boston lettuce leaves in the fridge, so when you’re done there, get those out and put a few on each plate to make a bed. Then add four or five slices of cantaloupe and sprinkle them with a handful of blueberries.” She whipped the dressing, covered it with plastic wrap, and placed it in the freezer for a quick chill. Then she went to work chopping the vegetables.

  “How do you do that?” Jessica demanded a moment later.

  “What?”

  “Chop that fast without slicing off a finger.”

  Lily laughed. “Practice. Training.”

  “Can you teach me how to do it?”

  “Sure. C’mere.” When Jessica joined her, she held up her left hand. “The trick is keeping your fingers tucked under. See?” She demonstrated how to pin down the green onions in such a way that there were no horizontal protrusions to accidentally cut off. Finishing the onions, she julienned the red pepper, then offered the knife to Jessica. “You want to try it on the these?”

  Jessica did better than she’d anticipated, but in no way did she attain anything close to Lily’s speed. She laughed and went back to removing the last of the rinds from the cantaloupe slices. “I can see it’ll take a little practice.”

  Lily wagged her eyebrows. “Meet me here an hour before each meal and I can give you plenty of that.”

  “I just might.” Jessica smiled and scraped the rinds into the compost bucket Ernestine kept next to the sink. She hadn’t expected this, she realized as she washed and dried her hands, then collected salad plates from the cupboard and set them out on the counter to adorn with lettuce leaves. She hadn’t expected to like Lily this much, to feel this almost instant sense of kinship with her, as if they were best friends from grade school who’d just met up again and taken right up where they’d left off.

  And wasn’t that amazing? With Lily’s blonde bombshell looks, sparkly jewelry, and wiggly walk, she was exactly the sort of woman who usually made Jessica feel about as exciting as yesterday’s leftovers. She was one of the girly-girls, those ultrafeminine types who seemed to know instinctively all the things that escaped Jess. What colors to wear, which makeup to buy, how to put together an ensemble that made the most of one’s assets. A woman like Cassidy.

  Except Lily didn’t make her feel inadequate. She made her laugh, Jessica thought warmly. She made her feel…useful.

  “Those look great.” Lily nodded at the arrangement of fruit on the lettuce leaves. She grabbed the poppyseed dressing out of the freezer and handed it to Jessica. “Stir that up and then spoon it down the middle of the fruit. And if you’ll point me to a platter, I’ll stuff this egg mixture into the pitas, and we’ll be ready to go.”

  A few minutes later, carrying a tray on which she’d carefully balanced all the salads, Jessica followed Lily back into the dining room. She felt as flushed with accomplishment as if she’d devised the menu herself.

  The first person she saw when she entered the room was Christopher, and her smile widened with the instinctive flash of joy the sight of her husband invariably gave her. She noted that her sister had yet to put in an appearance—not that that had anything to do with anything. Cassidy was always late…and surely the fact that Christopher had also been late getting to the dining room this morning was strictly coincidental.

  Circling the table, she offered a salad first to the dark, silent Marine who quite frankly rather unnerved her, then to the members of her family.

  “My word,” Aunt Maureen said, looking up from the prettily arranged plate to Lily, who was placing a breakfast pita on everyone’s bread plate. “This is amazing. You were only gone ten minutes. How on earth did you manage something so nice in such a short amount of time?”

  Lily shrugged. “It’s what I do—I’m a chef by trade. Besides, I had a terrific assistant.” She shot Jessica a grin, then turned back to Maureen. “Your niece actually made the salads.”

  “Well, I followed directions, anyway,” Jess amended. Setting the rest of the plates down in the vacant places at the table, she propped the tray against the sideboard and took her seat next to Christopher.

  “Yes, Jessie’s a good little direction follower.” Cassidy breezed into the room, wearing just the right outfit, complete with chunky jewelry, her hair twisted up in a messy, casual do that Jessica knew took her forever to arrange. “Good morning, all.” She slid into the vacant chair next to Zach that Lily had been heading toward and looked down at the salad plate in front of her. “So what was your contribution, Jess? Washing the lettuce?”

  Jessica felt herself start to disappear, simply fading away until she became part of the surroundings, the way she so often did around her younger sister.

  Then simultaneously, Christopher squeezed her thigh beneath the table while Lily sat down and leveled a look at Cassidy as she reached for her linen napkin and shook it open. “Actually, she pretty much did it all. Cut the fruit, arranged it, dressed it. And as you can see, she did a lovely job of the presentation. What is it that you do, Ms. Beaumont?”

  The question was asked in a perfectly polite tone of voice, but Cassidy’s cheeks mottled red beneath her impeccable makeup. And suddenly Jess didn’t feel quite so much like a part of the wallpaper.

  “Cassidy shops,” Richard supplied, and picked up his pita. He took a bite and hummed a little in appreciation.

  Cassidy shot her brother a sour look. Then she turned to Lily with a superior smile. “Actually, my real forte is fund-raising. Someone has to look after the less fortunate.” She glanced down at the plate in front of her but made no move to pick up her fork. “Being a cook is certainly a useful little job, though. If you’re looking for work, I’m sure I could find you a place on someone’s staff. Our crowd is always looking for good help.”

  Jessica winced at her sister’s rudeness and Aunt Maureen said, “Cassidy,” in a remonstrative tone.

  But Lily merely smiled. “That’s very kind of you, but I have a job.”

  “Do you. Do you work for a good family, dear? Or perhaps cook for a nice little diner?”

  “No. I’m a corporate chef.”

  Cassidy shrugged impatiently. “Cook, chef, what’s the difference?”

  “Training, chiefly—a chef has a great deal more of it. I got mine at the Culinary Academy in San Francisco and in Le Cordon Bleu at the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena. Then I apprenticed for several years with two of the top chefs in Los Angeles.”

  Zach abruptly set down his fork. It clattered against his china, and Jessica looked over in time to see him push his chair back from the table.

  With his shuttered eyes and unsmiling mouth, he appeared completely intimidating to her, but obviously her sister didn’t agree. She reached out to run her beautifully manicured fingers down his arm, and sent him
a flirtatious glance from beneath her long lashes. “You’re not leaving already, are you?”

  “Yes.” His face expressed no emotion as he stared down at her fingers tracing the soft veins that stood beneath the tanned skin of his forearm. “I have some calls to make.” Withdrawing his arm from beneath her hand, he stepped back, circled the table, and walked out of the room.

  No one said a word for an instant, then Lily, too, set her napkin aside and rose to her feet. “Excuse me, won’t you?” she murmured. “I need to talk to Zach for a moment, then I’ll be back to clean up the kitchen.”

  “Oh, dear, you needn’t do that,” Aunt Maureen said with a little flutter of her hands.

  “I don’t mind, Mrs. Beaumont, really. It’s just another part of the job.”

  “What?” Cassidy demanded sweetly. “The big, important chef doesn’t have a little helper-bee to do the dirty work for her?”

  “Shut up, Cassidy,” Jessica snapped.

  Her sister turned cool eyes on her. “Well, well, the mouse speaks.” Then she turned away, and Jessica watched her watch Lily walk out of the room.

  As soon as the petite blonde disappeared, however, Cassidy turned back to her, and something about her air of satisfaction made Jessica’s stomach churn.

  “So,” Cassidy said. “Did Christopher tell you about the…service…he performed for me this morning?”

  11

  A CHEF! ZACH STALKED ACROSS THE FOYER AND up the graceful central staircase, taking the stairs two at a time. And not just a line cook giving herself a fancy title, either, from the sound of it, but a highly trained professional. He swore with inspired creativity beneath his breath. Because, as much as he’d love to scoff at the notion, it made an awful sort of sense.

  Nothing like having your fuck-ups come home to roost. All of a sudden he couldn’t even convince himself that, in spite of having a career, the possibility still existed that Lily was the golddigger he’d repeatedly accused her of being. For, too late, he figured out the fault in his logic that had bothered him the other day when he’d demanded to know if she was worried his stopping Glynnis from marrying David would lose Lily her meal ticket. He smacked himself in the forehead. It never occurred to you, genius, that if a meal ticket had been her big concern she would’ve been all for you breaking up the big romance? Once Glynnie has a husband to monitor her finances, chances of wriggling money out of her are pretty much shot.