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A Pinch of Cool
Mary Leo
A pinch of cool.A dash of sass.A cup of lust.Mix, stir and repeat.When trend-spotter and supreme-style-guru Mya Strano is called in to rescue her mother's cooking show from ratings oblivion, what she has in mind is a little seasoning to heighten the taste. That's the plan. Until she discovers that it's her childhood nemesis, Eric Baldini, whom she's up against. He's got a few ideas of his own that sound like a recipe for disaster in her expert opinion. And the two of them in the same kitchen? Never!Still, she's noticed that for someone who really works at being anti-hip, this guy has a way of making her divinely hot. Which makes him so cool that this fashionista is actually toying with the idea of trading in her designer gear for oven mitts and an apron…. Ouch!
Dear Reader,
There are times when everything seems to be going well.
Don’t be frightened. It won’t last.
I got the idea for this story during one of those rare moments when I arrogantly thought I could accomplish one of my goals. It was at that exact moment of total self-satisfaction when life stepped in and slapped me with a ripe tomato…thank you very much.
I like to think I can roll with the punches, but most of the time it’s more of a heavyweight championship. When goals come too easily, it makes me uncomfortable. I tend to crave the challenge, or else, what’s the point?
That’s why I brought Mya and Eric together. It seemed only right that they should battle it out and come to the only reasonable conclusion…well, I can’t tell you that conclusion here. You’ll simply have to read the book.
Please come visit me at www.maryleo.net. We’ll talk more.
Enjoy the tomatoes.
Best,
Mary Leo
So there they stood, arms locked around each other like they were old friends, buddies, soul mates, or even lovers.
To the world they were just another kissing couple at the airport.
However, Mya had a different take on the whole thing. Hers was more of the startled variety. Such as, when out of a crowd of people, a stranger calls your name and you try your best to recognize this person.
Okay, it wasn’t quite like that, but it should have been for all the contact she’d had with Eric over the years. Let’s see, the last real memory Mya had of him was when they were seven years old and he had just thrown a huge bucket of water over her sand castle. Of course, she had retaliated by wrecking his sand castle by bulldozing it with her sweet little feet.
She had seen pictures of him at various stages of growth and accomplishment, but who can keep up with all that changing? She was too busy with her own life to worry about Eric’s—he had just been the boy who tormented her and whom she loved to torment back.
Now Mya didn’t know what to say—which absolutely, positively never happened to her. Yet here she was in the arms of Eric Baldini, who, for some odd reason, made her pulse quicken and, for a brief moment, seemed enormously sexy.
A Pinch Of Cool
Mary Leo
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A Pinch of Cool is Mary Leo’s third novel. She’s had careers as a salesgirl in Chicago, a cocktail waitress and Keno runner in Las Vegas, a bartender in Silicon Valley and a production assistant in Hollywood. She has recently given up her career as an IC Layout Engineer to pursue her constant passion: writing romance.
Mary now lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and new puppy.
I’ve been blessed to have known
quite a few extraordinary women in my life,
but none of them have impressed me more, been
as plucky, made me laugh, guided me, inspired
me, shown as much courage, and ultimately been
as cool as Katina Resann. This book,
my flamboyant friend, is dedicated to you.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
1
“MOM, DON’T CRY . I hate it when you cry,” Mya Strano said into the phone. Her mother had called bright and early on a Monday morning in April, just to chat, but there had been very little chatting. Just that silent thing mixed in with heavy sighing and runny-nose sounds, which only meant one thing. Tears.
“Who said I was crying?” Rita Strano spluttered.
Denial, that was the key. Always a clue to her mom’s true emotions.
“I can hear it in your voice.”
“A person can’t hear tears.”
“Believe me, Mom. I could hear your tears in my sleep.”
“How you talk.”
It was one thing to hear a friend cry, or see a coworker cry, or watch tears stream down Cher’s face in a movie. Why is it that she never got a red nose? Some people have all the luck. But when your own mother cried, it was almost surreal. Like, it couldn’t possibly be happening. Not to my mom.
Mothers weren’t supposed to cry, at least not on the phone to their daughters. The whole mother-daughter system wasn’t set up for such episodes. It threw the world off balance, blew the stars out of the sky, and made twenty-six-year-old daughters want to hurl themselves down flights of stairs for lack of knowing what to do to stop it—a completely unstable act, but acceptable given the extreme circumstances.
“Okay. So maybe I’m upset.” Ah, an admission. The first step in the order of things. “But who wouldn’t be? We’ve made that network more money than anybody else and just because we’re slipping a little…”
The knot in Mya’s stomach began to unwind, and she could forgo the stair hurling. A ray of light had beamed in through the tunnel of despair, or something equally as metaphorical.
“Mom, how far are you slipping?”
Mya gazed at her light gray cubical walls and waited for the answer. This might take a while. The walls were littered with local fashion ads, mostly from SoHo, upscale restaurant logos, and pictures of New York street vendors. She especially liked the street vendors. Some of those guys were really cute in an entrepreneurial sort of way. There was something sexy about a guy who depended on his ability to pitch to make his living that was exciting to her. Not that she’d go off and have an affair with one of them. Not really. Okay, there was that one artist in Times Square who hocked those cute little cigar-box purses—so totally out now—but he didn’t count. He was actually an intellectual, caught up in society’s intolerance of the struggling artist.
All right, so she fell for the line, and until she came to her senses, they’d had a great time together…that one night, when he gave her all the purses, then left for Toledo to take over his father’s plumbing business. But that was ancient history, when she’d first arrived in the city. Something like that could never happen again, she told herself as her feet rested on a recently delivered carton of I Heart N.Y. T-shirts.
“Minor details,” her mother finally said.
“What?” Could her mother now hear her inner musings? Had she gone psychic?
“Stay with me, dear. Our ratings should be minor details to the network. We still get a ton of fan mail.”
Oh, yeah, crying mothers. “Mom, the network doesn’t care about fan mail. They only care about ratings.”
“Fickle bastards.”
Mya sat back in her Aeron—ergonomically chic chair. She thought she should simply get used to these mom-tears. They weren’t for anything catastrophic like a relative dying or a mile-long meteor heading for earth, although, to her mom, low ratings ranked right up there with a good blight, or the ever popular imploding sun.
Mya’s mother, Rita, and Franko Baldini, Rita’s long-time business partner and sometimes lover, were the stars of a network cooking show, La Dolce Rita. The show had been on the air for nine straight years. Lately, however, the show was hitting a dry spell, and her mother seemed to get all weepy about it almost every time Mya spoke with her. Only this time Mya was determined to do something, despite her mother’s inability to accept help.
“Mom, tell me what I can do for you.”
“You can be happy you’re not on TV. It’s a competitive, young world and I’m getting too old for it. You get one lousy wrinkle and they want to take you off the air.”
Her mom let out a long sob. It was simply too much. Mya wished she could be there to cheer her up, but Rita lived in Los Angeles and Mya now lived in New York City, a move she was beginning to…she couldn’t even think it…okay, a move she was beginning to regret. God, now I’m going to start crying.
She sat up straight and reined in her tearful thoughts. “That’s not true. Look at Emeril. He has wrinkles.”
“He’s a man, dear.”
“Okay, so Emeril’s not a good example, but age has nothing to do with your ability to cook and entertain.”
“Tell that to my producers. They probably want to replace Franko and me with a couple of teenagers in tight miniskirts and purple hair. I bet they’re even talking to Paris Hilton. Maybe if I dye my hair blond, and get a face-lift and wear designer clothes—”
“That’s it,” Mya announced after taking a swig of her raspberry-mocha low-fat latte. Her mother had come up with the perfect way for Mya to help.
“You want me to get a face-lift?”
“Not you, silly. The show. La Dolce Rita needs a face-lift and I’m the girl to give it one.”
“But how—”
Mya felt that rush of excitement she lived for. She absolutely loved to plan, and do, and make over. It was her passion to find the latest trend and bring it into focus. Actually, it was her job at NowQuest, a trend analysis boutique in the ultra-cool, significantly hip SoHo. Mya was addicted to cool in a way that only another trend spotter could understand. She woke up each morning and skimmed four big-city newspapers, watched MTV and the Style Network for countless hours, read hundreds of magazines, traveled with a small video camera, her laptop, a Polaroid, a picture-taking cell phone and started up conversations with strangers—hence the T-shirts and cigar-box purses—just to see what they were thinking. Mya was an information omnivore and reveled in every aspect of it.
“Here’s the thing. Somebody has to fly out to Vegas for a client, so I’m thinking I’ll volunteer, but I’ll start the fact-seeking odyssey in L.A. with you and Franko. It should only take me about a week, maybe two at the most to get your show all hipped up.” A new set with a hot band, and maybe some guest appearances. “My head’s already whirling with ideas. I’ve got a buildup of vacation hours, so my boss won’t care. Then I’ll hop on over to Vegas, get our client all happy, take in a show or two—a girl’s gotta have fun—and fly back here with my research. How’s that?”
Her mother didn’t respond. Not really. It was more in the form of someone trying to get over a crying spell, with that breathy sound kids get when they want your attention. Apparently, her mother needed a bit more coaxing.
“Mom, you know you want me to do this.”
“Will I have to dye my hair pink?”
“Only if you want to, but pink hair is way out. A deep auburn might be nice, but I’ll check it out and let you know. It might be the Diane Keaton look, or maybe that was last year. We may add some sassy highlights just to give it that extra drama.”
Silence.
“Mom? Are you there? You can cook for me every day if you want. Fattening foods, like rice pudding with real cream and a pound of sugar. I’ll even gain some weight for you. C’mon, Mom. Let me at least pitch the ideas to you. If you don’t like ’em, you can hire some new agent to needle your producers, but please let me try.”
Mya glanced at the Hello Kitty clock on her desk. She had exactly ten minutes to get to a meeting about that very Vegas client, and she hadn’t even looked at her notes yet.
More silence.
“Mom. Say something, please.”
Mya pulled out her notebook on Blues Rock Bistro, the client whom she and her entire company were trying to convince to change their image in order to open a Las Vegas hotel and casino. So far, Blues Rock was interested, but they still hadn’t signed on the bottom line.
She skimmed her notes while her mother spoke. “If you really think you can help, then who am I to stop you?”
“Is that a yes?”
“Maybe you’re just what we need to get our ratings back into the top ten.”
“Great!” Mya opened her calendar on her ultra-thin laptop screen and skimmed her appointments. Her days were booked solid, but her evenings sucked. Not one real date. “I can be there a week from Thursday.”
“I have a meeting with the producers this Friday. I’d love it if you could be here for the meeting. I’m feeling especially vulnerable these days and I couldn’t take it if the meeting didn’t go well. I think I need all the support I can get.”
Like that is even remotely possible. How on earth did her mother expect her to be there by Friday? And with a presentation? She couldn’t possibly—
More sniffling.
