The Cook's Secret Ingredient

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“I don’t think any. Which is unusual.”

He was disappointed. For a moment there, despite everything, he’d felt drawn to this woman. But here she was, spouting the same nonsense her mother had. He wanted to walk away, but he wasn’t going to just abandon her in the evening on the sidewalk, even in very safe Blue Gulch. He’d been raised to be a gentleman.

So he’d play along. Maybe he’d trip her up, get her to admit how ridiculous the idea was. Lifting hearts with her food? Lord. “So how do you set this up? You offer customers a chance to turn their frown upside down for an extra five bucks?”

She shot him a glare. “Did I say one word to you when you ordered? No. I don’t charge extra. I just get a sense of what someone needs and I infuse the food naturally. Maybe an insecure person will get a boost of confidence. A hurting person will feel a bit stronger.”

“And a pissed-off man like me, worried about my father wasting his time and energy on some crazy fortune? Why didn’t the po’boy change my mood?”

She bit her lip and looked down at the ground. “I really don’t know.”

“Shocker.”

“You don’t have to be rude,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

Right then, under the darkening sky, the combination of her hurt expression and how alone she seemed made him feel like a heel. “Sorry. I’m just...my father is new to me, Olivia. My whole life, until my mother died, my father was a stranger I barely saw. Work was the most important thing in his life. Now, he’s a different person. Kinder, interested in family, in people, in the community and world around him. I once thought he had no heart, and now he has too much heart. You see how he is with Danny.”

She tilted her head. “Can a person have too much heart? He’s wonderful with Danny. A dream grandpa.”

“All that extra heart means a lot more room to be hurt and easily swindled.” He stopped walking for a moment, struck by what he’d just said. He hadn’t realized how worried he was that his father would be hurt—not just swindled. The man who made Danny laugh and shout “yay!” whenever Carson mentioned they were going to see grandpa was not going to get that heart stepped on by a con artist.

“I think my mother meant every word of that fortune, Carson.”

Why was she so frustrating? Who cared if Madam Miranda believed in her phony “gift”? There was no such thing as predicting the future. There was probability and possibility and plain old-fashioned guesses. But there was no crystal ball. “Right, Olivia. So somewhere out there is a green-eyed woman named Sarah in a hair salon with some ridiculous blow-dryer tattoo. And she’s my supposedly my father’s second great love.”

Olivia nodded. She seemed about to say something, then looked away.

“Well, I’m not going to let my father go on some wild-goose chase and let some swindler snow my dad for his money. I finally have my dad. I’m not going to let him get hurt.”

“Or you could have a little faith, Carson Ford.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’d laugh but I don’t want to be rude again.”

She lifted her chin. “I live just down this street,” she said, pointing to Golden Way. “Please thank your father for his hospitality.” Then she stalked off.

He watched her walk to the second house on the left, a tiny yellow cottage with a white picket fence and a bunch of wind chimes. A black-and-white cat was sitting on the porch and wrapped around her legs, the yellow-brown cowboy boots. Olivia bent down and scratched the cat behind the ears, then picked it up and gave it a nuzzle before carrying it inside.

When the door closed, he felt strangely bereft, the lack of her so startling that he wanted to knock on the door and argue with her a little more just to be near her.

He had to clamp down on that feeling. He’d been through the wringer with his ex-wife and had no interest in feeling anything for a woman. Everything he had, all the mush and gush he had left, went to his son. Olivia Mack was likely in on her mother’s scam, though she did strike him as honest, and Carson considered himself a pretty good judge of character, of sizing someone up.

She wasn’t going to help dissuade his father from heartbreak and a big time-waster. Which meant he had to forget Olivia Mack and the way she got under his skin.

Chapter Three (#ulink_0c24edfd-95dc-5e39-9951-4b92f677f282)

By twelve thirty in the afternoon the next day, Olivia had sold thirty-seven po’boys and thirty-two cannoli. Not bad for an hour’s work. Being so busy in the food truck had taken her mind off a certain tall, sexy PI. She’d barely slept last night, tossing and turning as she thought about all Carson had said, all his father had said, her mother’s prediction, her aunt Sarah, who she missed terribly. Carson was a complicated man. The situation was complicated. But cooking wasn’t complicated at all. You followed a recipe and there you had it. Simple.

She stood at the cannoli station, which was a two-foot-long section of stainless-steel counter, and added a dusting of powdered sugar to a mini strawberry cannoli.

“Here you go,” she said to Clementine Hurley Grainger, who sat at the swivel stool at the tiny desk near the cab of the truck.

Twenty-five-year-old Clementine’s dark eyes lit up and she put down the stack of receipts she’d been going through. “Ooh, that looks amazing—thank you.” She took a bite. “Absolutely delicious!”

Among Olivia’s favorite words.

Clementine took another bite, then put down the cannoli. “I’m amazed by these receipts!” she said, picking up a few. “One order alone was for seven cannoli—and not even the lower-priced minis!”

Olivia smiled at her friend and one-quarter boss. Clementine’s grandmother, Essie Hurley, owned Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen, where Clementine was a waitress. Clementine had had the brilliant idea for the food truck while on a family honeymoon with her new husband, Logan Grainger, his twin three-year-olds and the foster daughter they were in the process of trying to adopt. On a road trip across Texas, everywhere they stopped there were brightly colored, inviting food trucks with long lines of customers. One family meeting later, some numbers crunched with Georgia Hurley—Clementine’s sister, who baked for the restaurant and handled the books—and creating the menu with Annabel Hurley—their other sister and the lead chef for the restaurant—and the food truck came into existence. Working with the three Hurley sisters and Essie to get the truck ready for business had given Olivia such purpose the past weeks.

“Mandy from the real estate office bought those,” Olivia said as she sautéed onions, celery and garlic for the next batch of pulled-pork po’boys. “She says they tend to put clients in signing mode.” And for the past week, one o’clock meant she’d have a line of hungry customers from Texas Trust, the employees at the coffee shop, plus the construction crew working on a house just around the corner that always ordered three po’boys per guy.

“We get compliments on your po’boys and cannoli all the time at the restaurant,” Clementine said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, ‘I could be in the worst mood, have one of Olivia’s cannoli and suddenly have a skip in my step.’ Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. Gram is thrilled with the success you’ve made of the truck.”

“I’m so happy to hear that,” Olivia said. “I don’t know what I would have done without this new venture to focus on and throw myself into. I owe you and your sisters and grandmother everything.”

“We’re even, then,” Clementine said, taking another bite of her cannoli. “Ooh, hot construction workers coming your way,” she said, upping her chin at the group of six men walking toward the truck. Olivia laughed. “Well, I’d better get to work myself. See you later.”

By two o’clock, Olivia had made over a hundred po’boys and seventy-five cannoli, which was up since she’d started offering the mini cannoli.

“Excuse me, but I was here first!” a grumpy female voice snapped.

“Actually I was, but please, go ahead,” responded a familiar deep voice.

Olivia peered out the window, setting aside the head of lettuce she was about to rip apart. A thirtysomething woman was elbowing Carson out of her way, jockeying for position in front of him at the food-truck window. Carson moved behind the sourpuss, who was busily texting so fast, with such fury on her face, that Olivia was surprised the phone didn’t explode from the sparks.

“May I help you?” Olivia asked the woman. She glanced past the woman at Carson. He wore cop-like sunglasses and his leather jacket.

No response.

Olivia cleared her throat. “Next!” she called out, which always woke people up.

“Meatball-parm po’boy with extra parm,” the woman grunted without looking up from her phone. “And two mini cannoli, one chocolate with chocolate chips on the ends and one peanut butter.”

There was anxiety under the woman’s anger, Olivia knew suddenly. Someone close to her—a boss? A teenager?—was driving her insane.

“Do you want me to take the test for him?” the woman screeched at the phone, shaking her head. She seemed to be yelling at a text she’d received. “Never get married,” she said to Olivia, fury on her face. “Then you’ll never have to deal with an idiot ex-husband who blames you for your fifteen-year-old’s F in chemistry and D in Algebra Two.”

Olivia tried for a commiserating smile. “Your order is coming right up,” she said, heating the meatballs in the sauté pan. She scooped them out onto the baguette and layered the sauce—her aunt Sarah’s old recipe—and then added the Parmesan cheese, then another layer, per the request. She could feel a shift in the air around the po’boy and knew her abilities were at work. Exactly how the woman would be affected was a mystery.

Olivia handed over the order in a serving wedge and the woman stalked over to the pub table a few feet away.

“She practically ran me over since her face was glued to her phone,” Carson said, stepping up to the window. “She even stepped on my feet with those clodhopper cowboy boots.”

Olivia smiled. “How are your toes?” She bit her lip. Was she flirting? She didn’t want to flirt with Carson Ford.

He smiled back. “They’ll survive.”

“Oh, God,” the grumpy woman said from her table. She held up the po’boy and examined it, taking another bite, letting the Parmesan cheese stretch high in the air before gobbling it up. “Oh, my God, this is good.” She inhaled the rest of her po’boy, then sipped her water and took a very deep breath, exhaling as though she was meditating. She held up one of the cannoli. “This almost looks too pretty to eat, doesn’t it?” she said cheerfully to Carson.

“It looks very edible, actually,” he said.

The woman laughed as though that was hilarious. She took a giant bite of the chocolate cannoli. Then a bite of the peanut-butter one. “Scrumptious. Absolutely scrumptious!” She grabbed her phone and pressed in numbers. “Donald Peachley, please. I don’t care that he’s in a meeting. Tell him it’s an emergency.” Olivia eyed Carson. “Donald, your ex-wife here. I have an idea. Let’s get DJ a tutor and we’ll split the cost. Since I make twenty percent more than you, I’m even willing to pay twenty percent more...Great...Bye now.” She then popped the rest of the chocolate cannoli in her mouth, quickly followed by the peanut-butter one.

Olivia smiled at Carson. An innocent smile. An I-told-you smile.

“Excuse me,” Carson said to the woman. “But I’m curious about something. You seemed very upset five minutes ago. But you came up with a good solution to your problem and handled it very well,” he said in a fishing tone.

“Well, I know what a cheapskate tab-keeper my ex is, so I figured if I offered to pay a little more for the tutor he’d go for it. It’s funny, though—before lunch I never would have been so...reasonable or generous. I’ve been accused of being my own worst enemy. Can you believe that?”

Carson didn’t answer that. “So you probably had low blood sugar, had some food and felt better, which got you thinking clearly.”

“Low blood sugar? I had two slices of pizza at Pizzateria ten minutes before I came over here. When I’m furious, I eat.”

Carson scowled.

“Something about these cannoli always peps me up,” she said. She glanced at her phone. “Back to the grind. See y’all.”

Carson crossed his arms over his chest. “People like cannoli,” he said to Olivia. “It’s a pick-me-up. That’s all there is to it.”

“I agree,” Olivia said. “That’s how I look at it most of the time. Until I start thinking about how my food seems to have such specific effect on people. Then I start to doubt myself as a doubter.”

And the more Carson insisted her gift was malarkey, the more she was forced to acknowledge that it wasn’t. Deep down she’d always known and didn’t want to acknowledge it. But she did have some kind of gift to restore through food.

Except maybe when it came to this man.

“What can I get you?” she asked. “Special today is pulled pork. I have six kinds of sauces. And the cannoli of the day is the peanut-butter cream.”

“I actually came to tell you that I made a decision about my father and the prediction. My dad has business he can’t just blow off this week. Which is crazy because when I was growing up, I would have loved for him to put his personal life before work. Now here I am, insisting he honor his commitments. I’m going to track down his Sarah for him.”

Olivia froze. “You are? I thought the last thing you wanted was for him to find this mystery woman.”

“I’m going to find her for him because I can do it quickly—it’s my job to find people. And when I do find her and he feels absolutely nothing for her, I can prove once and for all that the fortune is a bunch of hooey. We can both get on with our lives.”

Well, that sounded cynical, but everything inside her lit up at the idea of reuniting with her aunt. “So you’ve started the search?” she asked.

“No. I’ll do some research tonight and hit the road tomorrow. I need to make this quick. I have a pending case and people counting on me.”

“I’ll help,” she said. “And come with you to find her.”

“What? Why would you want to do that?”

Olivia took a deep breath. She had to tell him. “Because this green-eyed hairstylist named Sarah with the brush-and-blow-dryer tattoo sounds exactly like my estranged aunt.”

The hazel-green eyes narrowed.

* * *

Disappointment conked him over the head, then fury punched him in the stomach so hard he almost staggered backward.

He stared at Olivia and then turned and stalked away.

“Carson, wait!” she called.

He kept walking, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the lying, swindling Mack women as possible. A daughter, a mother, an aunt. All in cahoots.

“Carson!” she called and he could hear her chasing after him. “Please hear me out!”

He noticed some people stopping on the sidewalks, pausing in their window shopping. Busybodies.

He kept walking. He would not hear her out. There was nothing to hear. Of course she’d said she’d help him find “Sarah.” He had no doubt Olivia Mack knew exactly where her aunt was. This was all probably one great big ruse to make this air of mystery around Sarah’s whereabouts so that his father was pulled in even more. No one wanted what came easily. Damn, they were good at being lying swindlers. They reeled in Edmund Ford and now were playing the game, putting the aunt out of his reach just until the fantasy would take over any issues with reality. At this point, his father was in love with the fantasy. She was his predicted second great love, and that’s all he’d need to know.

“Carson, please!” she called.

He kept walking, the cool February air refreshing against the hot anger spiraling inside him. He’d parked his car on a side street, and when he reached it, he got in and sped off toward Oak Creek.

When he opened the front door of his house, he could smell apple pie in the air. Danny’s sitter had made two pies with her little helper, and he was now napping. He let the sitter know he would be doing some research, then tiptoed into Danny’s room. He watched his son’s chest rise and fall, his own tense shoulders relaxing. Watching his son sleep never failed to relax him.

In his office, he sat down on the brown leather couch and pulled out his cell phone to call his dad and tell him this Sarah person was just Olivia’s aunt and the fortune-teller’s sister. And what a nice parting gift to hook up the family with a wealthy widower.

Cheap shot, Ford, he chastised himself.

He punched in his dad’s cell number.

“Edmund Ford speaking.”

“Dad, I just found out this supposed second great love of yours is the fortune-teller’s sister. Clearly, you’ve been set up.”

“Her sister?” Edmund said.

“Olivia told me the person Madam Miranda described sounds a lot like her estranged aunt. Down to the name, the job, the eye color and the tattoo.”

Silence. His father was a smart man. Clearly he now knew this was a ruse and he probably felt exactly like Carson had on the street—sucker punched upside the head and in the gut.

“That’s great!” Edmund said. “That means we have a last name! Maybe even a Social Security number to help track her down. And a physical description beyond eye color. This is great news.”