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Inspiration knocked featherlight against his mind. It might have caught hold if he hadn’t been reminded every five steps of that blasted food festival. A weather-resistant banner proclaiming its start had been stretched across the entrance to Monarch Lane.
He’d watched trucks and trailers roll down the street and disappear around the hill. The rumble of engines and smell of gasoline took a bit of the small-town polish off the town, but he imagined an event like this would help keep businesses open and people employed.
Had he any inclination to dip his toe back in the water that was his former career, seeing Technicolor posters pop into windows as he passed was enough to make him want to scuttle back to the hotel and hole up in his room.
Even if he didn’t plan on attending the festival, seeing the town explode into celebration over its one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary would take the sting off.
A sting that had settled ever since he’d entered the kitchen at the Flutterby Inn. As exhausted as he was, he wasn’t anxious to call it a night. Maybe it was the aftereffects of his conversation with Gary and reliving the last six months yet again. It didn’t matter what his father was doing with the company, not when Jason couldn’t do anything about it.
He’d destroyed his credibility with one wrong decision. No one was going to take him seriously in that world anymore. David could have, though. David could have survived anything.
Except a plane crash.
But Butterfly Harbor, despite its pending participation with his former colleagues, held his interest. He might not understand small-town appeal, but he didn’t like the idea of places like this disappearing. Especially if it meant people like Abby and her grandmother, and maybe even the cutesy diner down on Monarch Lane, would vanish into the past.
The diner. Jason sighed. He supposed he owed it to Abby to try the Butterfly Diner before passing judgment. He relished saying I told you so about as much as she’d probably enjoy telling him you were right.
Jason shook his head, got to his feet and followed the sandy, rocky path to the Flutterby. Maybe he’d keep his revelations, whatever they turned out to be, to himself. Unless it did turn out he was wrong.
In which case he’d have to find a way to choke down his least favorite dish: crow.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_eafb944f-3242-5f85-a60f-56fa7f54b395)
“BUNCO!”
Abby couldn’t help but smile as celebratory cheers exploded from the dining room that overlooked the wave-heavy shoreline. The tides were rolling high tonight, crashing and cresting and echoing peacefully in her ears as she sat behind the registration counter, windows open, her fingers flicking the corner of the festival brochure.
“That’s five buncos since they started,” Lori said as she tugged on her coat. “That might be a new record.”
“Let’s hope Gran’s one of them, otherwise she’s going to be in a grumpy mood when the game’s done. Hey, Lori.” Abby had been putting this off all afternoon. “Are you good going full-time the next few weeks? Maybe even bunking in one of the smaller rooms until after the festival?”
“With my active social life?” Lori blinked wide eyes at her. “Whatever you need, I’m here. Something going on? Does it have something to do with that hot Mr. Corwin?”
“What?” Even the mention of his name was enough to set her blood to boiling. “No, of course not, and stop ogling our guests. I was thinking about entering that amateur cooking competition they’re holding here in Butterfly Harbor.”
“I’m sorry?” Lori’s arms dropped to her side as she stared. “You’re thinking about what?” That her friend was trying not to laugh should be confirmation enough Abby had gone and lost her mind, but she needed that money. She needed to do something to stop the Flutterby from failing. She needed to keep Gran in her home.
Not that entering was enough. She’d have to win.
But she’d worry about that later.
“For the advertisement?” Lori squeaked and fanned her face. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be laughing.”
“I know it sounds crazy.” Abby went along with Lori’s misconception. “The publicity could bring in a good chunk of business. And I figured Paige could give me cooking lessons.”
“Um.” The humor vanished from Lori’s face. “Then you might want to decide now if you’d like to remain friends. That’s not a great position to put someone in. It might make her an accessory when you torch the entire town.”
“I’m not that bad.” Maybe she needed that disclaimer tattooed on her forehead. “I get distracted. I can follow directions. They just get stuck somewhere between my brain and my hands.”
“You do know you set the oven to five hundred fifty degrees this morning, right?” Lori bit her lip. “I checked when I cleaned up the kitchen. I wanted to make sure everything still worked,” she added. “For when Matilda gets back.”
“I was running out of time.” But she kind of guessed that had been the cause. “I thought the scones would bake faster at a higher temperature.”
“That wouldn’t give the baking powder and soda time to activate. You took them from raw dough to rock hard almost instantly.”
“So you do know how to cook?” Hope sprung like a fountain inside her. Maybe she wasn’t crazy after all.
“I know how to watch the National Cooking Network,” Lori corrected. “They do a lot of shows about the science behind food. Those competition things are scary. Like watching people’s worst features being broadcast in front of your eyes.”
“So you wouldn’t be interested in being a contestant in the cook-off.” There went that backup plan.
“I know things are stretched pretty tight around here.” Lori frowned. “But this seems a little extreme, even for you. You sure you want to take this on with everything else that’s happening?”
Abby bit the inside of her cheek. She wasn’t ready to tell anyone other than Holly that the inn was in trouble. Not until she’d exhausted every opportunity to put a cork in the financial hole. “I thought it would be fun and a good way to promote the inn. Each contestant gets a ten-minute profile on NCN when they air their coverage.” In a couple of months. Hopefully not too late.
“Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind,” Lori said. “Whatever you decide to do, I’ll be right behind you. Behind you, Abby. I love you, but not enough to get in front of a camera on national television. I’m going to go grab dinner before I drive the Bunco Babes home.”
Abby smiled. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Let’s hope we never find out. Night.”
An end-of-round bell chimed loud enough to make Abby’s ears ring.
The Bunco Babes—most of whom were significantly on the other side of Social Security—had been holding their monthly die games at the Flutterby long before Abby began working here. The group’s themed get-togethers were both a pleasure and a pain, as inevitably something would get changed at the last minute, from the menu requests—tonight they’d ordered pizza from Zane’s—to the decorations, but that was where Gran came in. Letting her focus on the group, both as a member and an organizer, gave her something to concentrate on other than the fact that she was growing older. Their continued patronage also brought in some extra cash, and right now, every penny counted.
And about those pennies...
Abby returned her attention to the online application Gil had steered her toward. Everything seemed straightforward enough.
No, she wasn’t a professional chef. No, she hadn’t had any professional training. Yes, she agreed not to use any employees of the Flutterby Inn during the competition. No, none of her employees or family were associated in any way with the National Cooking Network.
Her eyes blurred as she clicked the boxes. No wonder people didn’t read the fine print in these migraine-inducing contracts.
“Okay, here we go.” She hovered the mouse over Submit and caught the bold print below the button: “Application not processed until full payment of fifteen hundred dollars is received.”
Abby sagged in her chair.
Fifteen hundred dollars?
Her heart lurched. She couldn’t afford the seven hundred dollars for the miniscule promo tent the network would provide—how did she expect to come up with more than double that? Sell her car? Hardly. The ten-year-old clunker probably needed more than that in repairs, not to mention she needed a vehicle to get Gran to and from her doctors’ and physical therapy appointments.
Asking friends was out of the question. Money and family—and to Abby her friends were family—did not mix. She didn’t own anything of much value. Well, except...
Her stomach twisted as she pulled her parents’ wedding rings free from her shirt. She bit her lip.
She couldn’t be that desperate. Could she? Would it be worth it? Selling the only thing she had of her parents when there was no guarantee she’d win? If she did, she needed to rethink her strategy. She’d have to have help. Not financial. She needed someone to guide her, encourage her. She needed...
She needed a teacher.
Her thoughts spiraled around each other as she minimized the application screen and opened a new window, this time checking out the benefits of the upcoming festival on the NCN site. All those chefs, all those people who made creating meals look as easy as opening a door. How hard could it be if she really focused? Maybe it was as simple as reading as many cookbooks as she could get her hands on, and there was a library full of them in the kitchen. Matilda collected cookbooks like Mr. Vartebetium collected bills.
She clicked through the various chef bios, wishing she had their confidence, their talent. Their...
Abby squinted, leaned forward until her nose was practically pressing against the screen. That face. Her heart pounded. She knew that face. She recognized those eyes.
She gasped and looked toward the staircase. It couldn’t be. Energy she thought she’d lost buzzed inside her like a frenzy of bees trapped for too long. He didn’t have a beard and his hair was a lot longer, but there was no mistaking the attitude that exuded off the screen or those blue eyes.
She bolted through the dining room, lifting a hand in greeting as her Babes called out to her. She flicked on the kitchen light and headed for Matilda’s overflowing shelves filled with her collection of signed cookbooks. Meticulously organized as Matilda was, Abby skimmed her fingers across the top shelf and yanked out the copy of All the Best by Jason and David Corwin.
One glance at the back cover was all she needed, except she almost didn’t recognize him. So he could smile. He could even laugh. She could almost hear the brothers as the affection reached off the page and brushed against her heart.
David Corwin. He’d been killed, she remembered, trying to recall the details. Earlier this year in a plane crash. Ursula and Paige had talked about the tragedy at the diner, seen on the news how the entire food community had gone into mourning.
Along with his brother.
Jason. Now the sadness made sense, but she couldn’t dwell on that.
Jay Corwin was a cook. No. She knew him well enough by now to lay odds he’d take exception to that term. Jason Corwin was a chef.
And he was right here. In Butterfly Harbor. At the Flutterby. Before a food festival.
Hugging the book against her chest, she wandered to the desk, dropping into the chair as her thoughts coalesced. She reopened the application, hovered the mouse over the final submission button.
Did she dare?
Her hand shook. No. Not quite yet.
She clicked off the screen, grabbed the brochure and hurried upstairs, turning the book face-out as she knocked on Jay’s door. The TV inside his room went quiet a few seconds before he answered the door, a hesitant look of welcome on his face.
“Good evening, Abby.”
Did he have to sound like Dracula welcoming her to his lair? Abby shook herself out of distracted mode and thrust the cookbook at him.
“I need you to teach me to cook.”
* * *
OF ALL THE things Jason expected to find on the other side of his door—room service he hadn’t ordered, an offer for turn-down service, a poisoned mint for his pillow—it certainly wasn’t Five-Alarm Manning asking for cooking lessons.
He forced himself to resist the urge to glance at his and David’s first bestselling cookbook. The book that had started them on the path to their dreams. “I’m not a chef anymore.”
“Are, were, whatever. You can still cook.” Abby pushed past him and took a seat in the wing-back chair next to the terrace doors. “I know, I’m being pushy and I’m sure you’re still irritated with me over how I spoke to you before. Sorry about that.”
“I really don’t think you are.” Clearly, she wasn’t leaving any time soon. He closed the door.
“Yeah, okay, you’re right.” Her sneaky grin wrinkled the top of her nose and triggered an odd flutter in his chest. “But what are you going to do? Leave? You’ve paid for three weeks.” Why was she looking at him as if she knew some big secret he remained clueless about? “I don’t care about your employment status. What I need is someone to teach me. I thought about asking Paige since Matilda is out of town, but as Lori said, I’d rather stay friends with her, and, well, you and me? Not friends. Problem solved.”
Jason crossed his arms over his chest and arched a brow. Another one of those layers, he supposed. “You got this spiel out of a self-help book, didn’t you?”
“No, no.” She waved a hand in the air. Her energy and enthusiasm flitted about the room like a rogue butterfly. “I just meant we don’t have anything to protect. I already irritate you, and, well, the feeling’s definitely mutual, but I need to know how to cook.”
“And you want to hire me?” What grand epiphany could she have possibly had since her scone disaster this morning that would have her asking him for help?
“Not hire, exactly.” Her face turned bright red but her expression remained determined. “I’m not exactly flush at the moment, so I was hoping you’d be willing to lend your expertise in exchange for my undying gratitude?”
“Your—what?” Had he missed the spaceship that had dropped her off? She wanted him to teach her and she was broke? “Okay, rewind. How about you start by telling me why you want to learn to cook.”
“Oh.” She held out a skinny pamphlet. “I want to enter this.”
“The By the Bay Food Festival.” Again. Everywhere he turned, he was reminded of that blasted festival. “Wait. A televised cooking competition?” How had he missed that little detail? He reviewed the dates. “You do realize this starts in two weeks.” He’d been right. Gary’s booking him at the Flutterby was on purpose. Tricky son of a—
“Yeah, I know,” Abby said. “But you’re good at this stuff. You said so yourself. It’s in your back cover bio.” She waggled his book in front of him like a red flag in front of a very irritated bull.
His mouth twisted. “Not funny. And not interested.” Even if the idea of stepping foot in a kitchen again didn’t make him twitchy, some people were beyond hope.
“Oh, come on! You’re already bored out of your mind and you’ve been here less than a day. You need something to do. What else is there besides biding your time between sunsets?”
“Someone told me the sunsets are worth the wait.” Clearly his refusal needed an explanation in order to wipe that puppy glimmer out of her all-too-tempting gaze. “Learning to cook in the best of circumstances takes time and patience.” Something he was willing to bet she didn’t have much of. “It’s stressful and demanding.” And required human interaction.
“I don’t have to be able to cook for the president.” Abby rolled her eyes. “I need to learn enough to compete and not set anything on fire. And maybe not poison anyone. Oh, and win, of course.”
Yeah. Nothing to it. “After what I saw this morning? In two weeks? No, I’m sorry. It can’t be done.”
A bit of the fight drained out of her, but in its place, a spark lit her face. That same spark he’d seen when she’d battered that smoke detector. “Is that why you’re hiding out in Butterfly Harbor? Did the stress of running a restaurant get to you after your brother died?”
“No.” His lungs tightened. “No, it wasn’t the stress.” Exactly.
“Then what?”
“Leave it to me to find the one person in the hemisphere who hasn’t heard.” He plucked his tablet from beside the bed to search for himself, a humbling experience for sure, then skimmed past the links detailing David’s crash. “Why don’t you read this and then we’ll see if you want to continue this conversation.” He held out the pad and ignored the unease circling in his stomach. At least Abby’s dislike of him from the start had been genuine and not based on gossip rags and internet features.
She exchanged the pad for his cookbook that he set, cover down, on his bed. Needing some air, he pushed open the terrace doors and leaned his arms on the railing, waiting for the inevitable shocked and disgusted reaction he’d come to expect. Maybe paying for the room in advance hadn’t been such a smart move.
Normally it took a couple of minutes for the facts to hit, but, as he’d begun to learn about Abby, she was ahead of the curve.
“I am sorry about your brother.”
He squeezed his eyes shut until he saw stars. He hated the sympathy, the concern, the apology that accompanied the comment that was cursory at best. He’d heard hundreds if not thousands of them in the last six months. But none had been spoken in Abby’s soft voice, with a gentleness that brushed over his ears as gently as if she’d touched his hair with the tips of her fingers.
“Thank you.”
“Is this true? Did you really cheat in the last round of that competition?”
He didn’t hear shock in her voice, or condemnation, but genuine curiosity. As if she didn’t quite believe he was capable of sinking so low.
“It says you brought in a ringer to help you win this reality show thing.”
Jason leaned over and stared into the bottomless surf. “I tried to pass off a dish my sous chef cooked instead of the one I attempted myself. I needed to win.” Because losing hadn’t been an option. Not with his brother’s memory and his family’s reputation on the line. Not with his father’s expectations set so high he’d have to use a jet pack to reach them. “And then I lied about it.” Which was, when all was said and done, his real crime. “On live TV. You can watch it on YouTube if you want. It’s been viewed over two million times. How do you not know about this?”
