Kaye Dacus - Menu for Romance

“No, Ma. I don’t really see yet. Keep going.”

“So, Joan and I were talking and we weren’t paying much attention to Gene. You know, all he ever talks about is his daughter who just got married. It’s like he’s rubbing it in that his kid is married and mine isn’t. I want grandchildren, Major.”

He needed to bang his head against something hard. “What happened, Ma?”

“I fell.”

His hands stilled—but his heart pounded faster. “Fell? Are you hurt?”

“No. But they’re trying to make me go to bed. I don’t want to go to bed, Danny. Tell them I don’t have to go to bed.”

Head throbbing, he set the clean dishes on the drain board and found a clean towel to dry his hands on. “Put the doctor on.”

“There’s no doctor, just that little boy who keeps saying he is one. But I don’t think he’s old enough. You need to come out here and tell them I don’t want to go to bed.”

“Give the phone to him, please.”

“You’re coming, right?”

“Yes, Ma, I’ll come. Now give the phone to ... the little boy.”

A bit of fumbling on the line ended with, “This is Nick Sevellier.”

“Dr. Sevellier, how bad is she?”

“She’s a little banged up and hit her head pretty hard when she fell. But it’s not a concussion, so we see no reason to have her taken to the emergency room.”

Major’d taken his share of spills, working in kitchens since he was fifteen, and he knew just how dangerous even falling on a wood floor like those at BPC could be. “Was she knocked out?”

“Not at all. But she’s developing a pretty good knot on the back of her head.”

“And your medical opinion is bed rest?” The kid called himself a doctor, but Major didn’t know this kid’s credentials.

“My previous rotation was in the emergency room, Mr. O’Hara. I had to deal with a lot of head traumas there. I’m more worried about how sore she’s likely to be tomorrow. She wrenched her back a little bit, so I’d like her to lie down and let the nurses give her an ice and heat treatment.”

“Okay. Thanks. Put her back on the phone.” Major sighed.

“Did you tell him I’m not going to bed?”

“Ma, let them take care of you. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

By the time he convinced her, he was back in his office gathering his coat and duffel. “Ma, I’ve got to go,” he said quietly, to avoid Jeff or Sandra hearing him out in the kitchen. “Hang up the phone and let the nurses take you back to your room. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

“I don’t like you very much right now.” The line clicked and went dead.

“I love you, too, Ma.” Major threw the phone into his bag and turned off the office light.

“Everything okay, boss?” Sandra asked. The cookies she’d just taken from the oven filled the large space with a heavenly aroma.

“Yeah, just fine.” He slung his bag over his shoulder. “Jeff, there are some dishes on the drain board down in the executive kitchen. Will you bring those up and run them through the sterilizer with everything else before you leave tonight?”

“Can do, Chef.” Jeff didn’t look up from the cheese straws he was piping onto a large baking sheet with a pastry bag.

“Meredith is in her office if you need anything.”

“Yes, Chef,” both cooks responded.

Once in the elevator, Major leaned heavily against the wall, rubbing his forehead. Though he hated keeping secrets from Meredith, tonight’s episode with Ma reminded him of why he needed to keep her as far away from Meredith as he could, lest she ruin Meredith’s life, too.

Major rubbed his dry, burning eyes and looked around the condo one more time, just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Which he knew he hadn’t, since he’d been up at 4:00a.m. to clean an already spotless apartment.

Maybe he should vacuum one more time.

No. He’d vacuumed twice already. He stepped into the kitchen and caught sight of the clock on the back of the stove. They would be here in less than fifteen minutes, and he wasn’t even dressed.

The producer from Alaine’s show who’d called yesterday had suggested Major not wear his chef’s jacket for the segments. He slid the closet door open and shuffled through his button-down shirts. Solid blue in a variety of shades; blue with stripes and patterns; white with blue stripes of various widths ... didn’t he have anything other than blue? Yes—gray. The producer had wanted him somewhat casual—“weekend wear,” she’d called it. Well, he didn’t really think that sweats and a ULB T-shirt were appropriate. Instead, he donned a plain white T-shirt, khakis, and a blue-gray waffle-weave pullover that allowed a bit of the white undershirt to show at the neck.

With just a few minutes remaining, he ducked into the bathroom to brush his teeth, again. He should have gotten his hair cut before today. It was going to be flopping down onto his forehead all day. After cleaning the sink and counter with a disinfecting wipe, he straightened the hand towels one more time.

He jumped at the rifle-shot sound of the knock on the front door. When he opened it, a plain woman of indeterminate age wearing a Channel Six–logoed Windbreaker stood on the other side.

She extended her right hand. “Major O’Hara? I’m Pricilla Wilson. We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

“Yes. Please come in.” He stepped out of the doorway into the space between his living room and dining area.

The cameraman who’d come with Alaine to the tasting last week entered behind her, pushing a cart piled with equipment cases.

“Can I help with anything?”

The cameraman grunted, which Major took as a no, and Major pointed him toward the kitchen.

“While he sets up the lights and cameras, let’s sit and discuss the plan for today.” Pricilla pulled out one of the chairs and sat at the table, scattering a stack of papers all over it in a matter of seconds. “We’ve got a lot of stuff to film and not a lot of time to do it.”

Eight hours sounded like quite a lot of time to Major.

“The girl doing your hair and makeup will be here in about forty-five minutes—”

“Hey, Priss”—the camera guy came around the corner—“you’d better come look.”

Major followed them but stood in the hallway outside the kitchen, since three people wouldn’t fit.

Pricilla hit a couple of keys on her phone and pressed it to her ear. “Hey, it’s me. We’ve got no joy here.”

Mortification rang in Major’s ears and burned every surface of his body.

“Kitchen’s way too small for the equipment we need for filming.” Pricilla came out of the kitchen to pace the length of the living room. “Of course not. We expected a chef would have at least a decent home kitchen.... You want what?”

She brushed past Major again and pulled the phone away from her ear. “Nelson, pack it all up. We’re going.” Back to the person on the other end of the phone, she said, “Yeah. We’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”

Major followed her back to the dining table, where she scraped up all her papers—and the placemat.

He reached over and rescued the mat. “What’s going on?”

She stuffed the papers into her bag. “We can’t shoot here. Your kitchen’s too small. So we’re taking all this elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Alaine’s place.”

Major stopped cold. “Where?”

“Alaine Delacroix’s place. She thinks her kitchen will work better, so bring what you might need that she may not have, and let’s get going. We’re on a tight schedule today.” Pricilla turned her back on him and made another phone call.

Major had to wait until Nelson got all of his equipment cases out of the kitchen before he could go in. He looked around for what to take with him and grabbed his knife case right away. No chef ever went anywhere without his knives. But what about everything else? Food processor, blender, steamer, butane warmers...

The whole point of what they were doing today was to familiarize people with stuff they already had in their home kitchens. What better way to do that than in the kitchen of someone who didn’t have professional-quality products? He tucked his knife case into his duffel bag and joined the production assistant and cameraman at the door.

“I’ll follow you over there.” He locked the door behind them and trailed them out to the parking lot where, this time, Nelson accepted his help in loading all of the equipment back into their van.

The van headed toward Old Towne and into an older part of the townhouse development where Forbes lived. Major had looked at a couple of units here when he’d moved back to town, but even though he’d much preferred the kitchens, the price on his condo had been more palatable.

He parked one space away from the van to give them room for taking equipment out, just as a small, sporty Mazda with dark windows pulled into the driveway at the townhouse across the roadway.

Alaine sprang out of the little black car—but if Major hadn’t known she was meeting them here, he might not have recognized her. Dressed in jeans and a black sweater, she wore her hair pulled up at the back of her head haphazardly as if done on the fly, and she didn’t have any makeup on, making her look pale and wan.

“I had a great idea on the way over here.” Alaine jogged across the street to help with equipment. “Hey, Major.”

“Hi, Alaine.”

“What’s this idea?” Pricilla asked.

“Were you working at the Food Network when Gordon Elliott did that show where he went around and dropped in on people and made a meal from whatever they had in their kitchens?”

“That was before my time, but I watched it pretty regularly.” Pricilla heaved a large case onto the cart. “You want him to do something like that?”