The Secret Ingredient

by Kilby Blades

  From there, it was her turn to watch him as he moved around her kitchen, working just as methodically and efficiently. The dulcet tones of smooth jazz floated from built-in speakers above.

  “You’re not mad?” It was the one question he’d known was coming.

  “What? That my amazing, generous, persistent friend offered to add to her plate in order to fill mine?” He stopped what he was doing and shook his head. “No, Cella. I’m definitely not mad.”

  “Persistent I agree with…but, amazing? Wow.”

  “Shut up. You know you’re amazing.”

  He rinsed another plate, willing himself not to think about how the way she’d fought so hard to help him made him fall for her even more.

  “My grandkids will never believe me. Forty years from now, you’ll be plotting world domination and I’ll be some old coot telling stories about how I cooked with the amazing Marcella Dawes.”

  He kept on with the dishes. She didn’t respond. He didn’t expect her to. He tried to focus on the music.

  “Forty years from now…” she said a minute later, “…I’ll be a washed-up has-been who brags to the other old ladies that I once cooked with Max Piccarelli, the only doctor to ever win a Michelin Star.”

  His hands stopped what he was doing and he looked at her then, halted by the thing he could never explain. When she spoke her unbridled confidence in him, it didn’t feel like lip service.

  “That’s a beautiful dream.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. Before you stop taking my calls, just remember. Marcella fucking Dawes knew you when…”

  Twenty minutes later, she lazed sleepily on her couch as Max massaged her feet. Touching her like that was an impulse he’d felt each time they’d watched movies together on his sofa—one he didn’t act on until that night. Max tried to focus on soothing her tired feet. It might have been innocent enough if it hadn’t made him want to touch more of Cella.

  Max didn’t know much about fetishes, but he thought he might be developing one. Never before had he felt the impulse to suck on a woman’s toes, or to hear the sounds she made when his deft fingers worked their magic on her ankles, or wanted to slide his nose all the way up her body via her calves. And, God, he could tell she liked it, and not just because her feet were tired.

  She’s going to break my heart. And I’m going to let her.

  For the better part of a week, he’d known it was true. Whatever chemistry they shared had become impossible to ignore. He and Cella were more in sync with one another than he’d been with any woman in any relationship. He’d never even kissed this woman, and, some days, it felt like they’d been together for years.

  Acting on it would be a tragedy, because it was bound to end, and soon. But not acting on it would squash their chance of experiencing something real, no matter how fleeting that thing would be. And he was certain that a moment of decision would come. Maybe in a day. Maybe in a week. And Max was going to have to pick his poison.

  18 The Sauce

  “Kevin.” The sheer act of saying his name irked Cella beyond reason. It bothered her even more that she was missing out on a good lunch with Max. Someone from the Sand Dollar had brought in food, which included her now-known favorite. The calamari weren’t nearly as good when they weren’t piping hot.

  “Cella. You’re a hard woman to reach.”

  The false cheer in his voice was an awkward departure from the easy rapport she’d thought she and Kevin had once shared—that was, before she’d found out she was the last in a long line of people he had lied to.

  “I’ve been traveling,” came her vague reply, in her own brand of false lightness.

  “What’s in Longport, North Carolina?”

  Looking down at the phone she was calling from in Dr. Fletcher’s office, she realized he must have picked up her location from his caller ID.

  “It’s just a little tourist town. I came here for some R&R and to write my next book.”

  “Working hard, as usual….”

  “Look, Kevin…” She ignored the spite in his voice. “This is getting messy. If we keep down this road, no one will come out unscathed.”

  “I agree.”

  “Then let’s find our own way out.”

  “I’m guessing you have a proposal.”

  “Not really. I wanted to hear from you. I thought that if we talked, we could find a way for both of us to get what we want.”

  When Kevin paused, Cella mused that perhaps Liz had been right. If letting him feel like he got the last word would end this debacle, she’d do it.

  “Get me a different chef. A big one.”

  But hell would freeze over before Cella steered one of her friends to do business with someone as unscrupulous as him.

  “All my friends already have restaurants. Either way, that’s out of my control.”

  “Then get me a rising star. Some up-and-coming chef who you’re connected to. You could say you had to back out because of your Sliced deal. Then vouch for him and position him as your protégé.”

  Cella’s jaw dropped. Because even if she planned on doing it, the Sliced deal’s existence wasn’t something Kevin should have known about.

  “I think you’ve gotten some bad information.”

  “Come on, Cella. This is a small town.”

  Cella put the Sliced rumor aside and thought about his proposal for a minute. It wasn’t a bad idea. For a great chef without the money to go big on a restaurant of her own, the project could pay off. But she had to find a way for it to benefit an up-and-comer without giving Kevin the power to screw it up and take both of them down.

  “Make me a controlling partner.” The idea was still forming in her head as the words exited her mouth. “If the market value increases by the end of the year, I’ll buy you out on the difference for your half.”

  “And the other half?”

  “I’ll give your chef the option to buy my half. If she doesn’t want it, you can give me fair market for my stake. If you don’t want it, I sell to whoever I want.”

  “What if I want out at the end of the year?”

  “If it’s doing well, why would you?”

  The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Tying the price she’d pay for it to the restaurant’s success would give Kevin incentives to be all-in. Her controlling stake would be insurance that she could protect the other chef if Kevin did anything wrong. Best of all, she’d be helping another chef. She would’ve killed for an opportunity like this early in her career.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  She asked it in a controlled voice and bit back other words she itched to say—that if he didn’t take it, she’d see him in court.

  “It’s a deal,” he said finally, without any of the enthusiasm he should have had for someone who had just saved his ass.

  “I’ll have the attorneys draw up the paperwork.”

  “Hey! I’m glad you called.”

  Cella always liked dealing with Piper. She was the junior attorney on her legal team, but she had the enthusiastic ambition that seemed reserved for the young. Feeling victorious after her call with Kevin, Cella had Piper on speakerphone and had risen to pace across Ed’s office.

  “And with good news about Kevin, if you can believe that. Did his attorneys already reach out?”

  “We haven’t heard from them in days.”

  “Oh.” Cella was surprised. “Then why are you glad I called?”

  “It’s about the contracts for Sliced.”

  “What about them?”

  Cella eyed the clock on the wall. She really wanted to get to lunch with Max.

  “Liz sent them in this morning, with comments, and told us that if we negotiated her terms, she’d be ready to sign today.”

  “Liz doesn’t sign my contracts.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, but Piper would know what she meant. Liz had delegation of authority, but the intention was for her to do mundane business on Cella’s behalf. Liz’s own personal assistant d
id some of the assistant work for Cella, making Liz’s agency a one-stop shop that did things like authorizing personal purchases and renting the beach house in her name.

  “I figured I’d better check—I didn’t see the kinds of terms you usually come back with, and you usually sign the big ones yourself.”

  “What terms?”

  “An extended shooting schedule, fan tours and a merchandising deal.”

  “I did not authorize that.”

  Cella said it bluntly with a fire in her voice that matched the heat that had crept into her face. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the hand-washing sink, her ears were so red they looked sunburnt.

  “Yeah…”

  By then, Cella had flopped down on the desk chair, utterly speechless at news of what Liz had done. She wracked her brain to think back to whether she’d said anything that would have made her agent think it was a go, but knew she hadn’t. Liz had crossed a line.

  “Sorry to have to drop this on you. I just wanted to make sure.”

  “No…” Cella murmured. “You did the right thing.”

  “So, what’s this thing about Kevin?”

  Whatever satisfaction she’d felt at having made a deal had been dampened by then.

  “We came to an agreement.”

  “Who’s “we”? You talked to his attorneys?”

  “I just got off the phone with him.”

  Piper’s silence was a bad sign. “He called you?”

  “Actually, Liz suggested it.” An uneasy feeling in the pit of Cella’s stomach began to brew. “She thought the negotiation would go better if he felt like he had access to me.”

  “Cella…” The tone in Piper’s voice made the feeling in her stomach worse. “We really don’t want you talking to him directly. It’s not that we don’t trust you—it’s that, from a legal perspective, there are things that we know not to say—things that could set us back on the negotiation.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry…”

  “Don’t apologize. It sounds like you came to a resolution?”

  Cella spent the next minute explaining to Piper what they’d decided.

  “We’ll re-draw the contracts,” Piper concluded efficiently.

  “Thanks…and I’m sorry again. I didn’t mean to go over your head.”

  “I know Liz advised you to take the call, but…when agents break protocol, it’s hard for us to do our jobs.”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “She’s been talking to him, then?”

  It wasn’t a question Cella had bothered to ask herself. Now that it was in front of her, she realized Liz must have been.

  “I guess so.”

  “At least so we know what’s going on, we need to have a conversation with her.”

  Annoyance turned to alarm bells.

  “Should I be worried?”

  Piper sighed. “If you’re asking whether this is the first time I’ve seen an agent overstep, it’s not.”

  “But what?” Cella knew there was a “but”.

  “But I’d watch her if I were you. Word on the street is, she’s been having trouble…I mean with her other clients.”

  “What trouble?”

  “I have it on good authority that Jon Kincaid just dropped her. And I don’t think he was the first.”

  Cella knew Jon, or at least she had met him in passing. He had a show about grilling and was some sort of bible belt barbecue king. She was fairly sure she could get him on the phone and get the scoop.

  Not wanting to put Piper on the spot—because her attorney already said more than she probably wanted—Cella let her off the hook and bid her goodbye. All thoughts of a quiet lunch with Max went out the window as she faced what she had to do. She needed to make more calls.

  "What the fuck am I doing wrong?" Cella asked bluntly, still in a bit of a foul mood from that afternoon. A call with Jon had confirmed what Piper had said. She’d called Liz right after, informing her in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t be taking the Sliced deal and instructing her expressly to confirm future contract business directly with her.

  Cella looked back and forth between the two pots of Bolognese sauce sitting on the front burners of the stove. The left had been cooked by Max, the right cooked by Cella. Both worked off of a recipe found in her grandmother’s book. The sun had long since set, and through his windows she saw only faint hints of the shoreline through the darkness. Her tasting spoon sat, forgotten, in her hand.

  "Do these not look the same?"

  He nodded affirmation, but she was already on a tear.

  "Smell the same?"

  Another nod.

  "Did we not go through each and every ingredient together?

  He nodded again.

  "Have we not tried this experiment twice?"

  "We have.”

  "Then why does your sauce still taste better than mine?" She looked up sharply. "Don't laugh at me, Max!" she warned.

  "I can't help it,” he chuckled through sweeping breaths.

  Sighing dejectedly, she flopped down on her stool. "I don't understand what I'm doing wrong."

  "You're not doing anything wrong," he soothed, tugging the end of her ponytail that had long-since fallen out of its bun.

  "But there must be something you're doing, that I'm not."

  It wasn’t a bad theory that Cella was simply off. She didn’t cook well when she was in a bad mood.

  "I'm going to share a family secret with you. Do you want to know what it is?"

  She nodded her head lightly, in a question. Whereas his mood had been joking just moments before, she could see that he was about to speak in solemn truth.

  "The secret ingredient is love."

  For all the love lost between she and Liz that day, it served only to sadden her. Cella was pretty sure she had to fire her agent.

  "What if I'm fresh out of that?" Her voice caught slightly at the end.

  He knew what was bugging her. He’d remained silent as she relayed the entire sordid tale on the bike ride home.

  "Then I'll put in enough for the both of us…just until you get yours back."

  She swallowed, still facing the sauce.

  "Can you show me?"

  He reached toward the stove, placing his hand on hers where it lay upon a long wooden spoon. Lifting their hands in tandem, he placed the spoon into Cella's batch. Slowly—so slowly—he stirred their hands as he stepped in closer behind her. He closed his eyes as he bent his head lower. If she wasn’t mistaken, he was inhaling the scent of her hair.

  "Close your eyes, Cella.” His voice held gentle command.

  They stirred a rotation.

  "Now, think of who you're cooking this for, what a gift this will be to all who taste it, what a gift it is to have plenty of food to eat…"

  Their hands kept stirring, with Max's guiding, but Cella's slowly taking over. He continued his tutelage.

  “Think of the people you like sitting down to a meal with—people you love and people who love you…"

  Though she exhaled shakily, she relaxed. She liked the way her substantial figure fit into his, the way one of his hands had fallen to her hip. For what seemed like minutes, they stirred. She found herself lost in his scent, in the heaven of their bodies so close, in the intimacy of their shared breaths. Though they kept their pace steady, some energy was building between them, working them towards something more, something she’d begun to want more fiercely with every minute they spent together.

  "Can you feel it?"

  "Yes.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Tell me how it feels.“

  "Like nothing I've felt before."

  "Now, taste it," he whispered, lifting his hand from the spoon.

  Cella’s eyes remained closed but her ears were keen to the smacking of her lips.

  "No offense, but it's better than yours."

  He kissed the top of her head and murmured, "Twice as much love…”

  19 The Change of Plans


  Max spent much of that night wondering what she might have done if he had kissed her over a batch of Bolognese. It marked the third time he nearly had in as many days. She’d looked entirely too appealing day-before-yesterday, soaking wet and laughing as they’d washed his dog. That same night when they’d headed to Kaito’s for karaoke, they’d gotten a bit handsy after two sake bombs. There was no way this would hold for another two weeks.

  "Change of plans.” Cella’s voice held command as she breezed into the kitchen the next morning. "We'll do Tiramisu tomorrow. Today it's Capezzoli di Venere."

  He blinked, wondering whether he’d gotten the translation right.

  "Nipples of Venus.” She busily removed ingredients from her bag, not meeting his gaze. "Roman chestnuts in brandied sugar.”

  Her eyes held something he hadn't seen before.

  "It's a difficult dish.” She ignored the fact that he had yet to speak. "The sugar has to be molded so it forms a hard shell on the surface, but stay so soft inside that you have to lick out it's creamy middle. The candied chestnuts are finished with salt, which makes them a bit savory. Placing them in the sugar can be tricky. I'm putting you in charge of tweaking the nipples."

  Holy fuck.

  But he followed her lead.

  "So, tell me." he asked cautiously, once they got started. "What led to this change of heart?"

  "Tiramisu is so predictable.” Her voice lost some of its muster. "I thought maybe it was time I took a risk."

  She stopped measuring out sugar, refusing to meet his eyes again as she stared down at the scoop.

  "Does that scare you?"

  He knew they weren't talking about recipes and cookbooks. Vanilla extract sat motionlessly in his hand.

  She laughed ironically. "Everything scares me, Max. I thought you figured that out.”

  He set down the bottle.

  "Do I scare you?"

  She didn't laugh this time. "You scare me most of all."

  Since we're being honest…

  “You scare me, too."