Cook the Books (11 page)

“Josh,” I said. “Josh.”

“
JOSH,
” I repeated in disbelief. I moved my lips to his again, totally delirious and responding instinctively.

He nuzzled his cheek against mine. Feeling his warm breath on my ear, I shuddered.

“God, I missed you,” he said, and I felt him move in to kiss me again.

Suddenly coming to my senses, I shoved him away with both hands. “What the hell are you doing here? You scared the crap out of me!”

“You don’t feel scared to me.” I could tell he was smiling. “What’s with all the pushing?”

“I can push you if I feel like it!” I spun around and again yanked on the front door. I’d break it down if I had to. I felt Josh reach up and heard him slide a dead bolt open. The door unexpectedly flew open, and I went sailing out into the cold air and ended up flailing around idiotically, tangled in a mess of yellow police ribbon.

“Chloe, stop moving,” Josh instructed as he tried to free me from the caution tape.

Considering how pissed I suddenly was, he should have left me tangled up and heeded the neon yellow warning.

“Don’t touch me!” I hollered as I barreled down the front steps. “How dare you try to untangle me after the horrific way you left!” I glared at him, finally getting a good look at the chef who had broken my heart only months before. Streetlights lit his face. It killed me to see that he looked even more gorgeous than ever. Lightened by the sun, his hair was blonder than before, and his skin was tan from those months in Hawaii. Damn, he looked hot! I was angrier than ever. “Do you have any idea what it’s been like for me since you left? Do you? I’m so sick of crying that I can’t cry anymore. You left me, Josh. With barely any explanation except to say that you got a great job offer in Hawaii. The next thing I knew, you were gone!”

Josh stood silently by the door as he absorbed my tirade. I found it satisfying that he looked crushed. Good! He deserved to feel hurt.

“I thought you loved me!” I screamed. Hot tears fell down my cheeks, and I didn’t bother to wipe them away. “I thought you loved me,” I repeated, my voice cracking.

Josh took a step forward, “Chloe, of course—”

“Stay away from me!” I ordered.

I heard a loud creak a few yards away and saw first a fist and then a head sticking out a first- floor window in the building next to us. A man’s voice demanded, “What the hell is going on out here now?”

I squinted in the dark. “Norris?” I could just make out the crabby neighbor I’d spoken with on the morning of the fire, the one who’d complained so much about Digger’s cooking. “Hi, Norris. It’s me, Chloe. From the other day.”

“That building is condemned, young lady. Can’t you read? I ought to call the police.”

“Sorry to bother you. We’re just . . .” I scowled at Josh and corrected myself. “I’m just leaving.”

“Hey!” Norris snarled. “What’s that?” he said, pointing to Digger’s messenger bag. “Are you stealing now? Looting? Jesus Christ, that damned chef is causing as much trouble now that he’s dead as he did when he was alive. All I want is peace and quiet. No noise, no smells, no women, and no robbers! Get outta here!” Norris pulled his head back into his apartment and slammed the window shut.

I started to walk quickly to my car but could hear Josh clamber down the front steps and follow me. I kept walking.

“Chloe? Chloe? Come on. Please talk to me,” he said as he caught up to me. “Slow down, would you?”

“You want to talk? Talk to yourself all you want. I’m going home.”

“Digger,” he said. “At least talk to me about Digger.”

I stopped but kept my back to Josh. Okay, I could do that. “How did you hear?” I asked sadly.

“Snacker called me. That’s why I’m here.”

“Yes, I figured it didn’t have anything to do with me.” I gripped Digger’s bag more tightly. “So what were you doing in his apartment?”

“This story about Digger causing the fire just isn’t credible. Digger was a pro, Chloe. He was careful, and he’d never just leave something on the stove and forget it.”

I faced Josh. “Is that what they’re saying? All I heard is that the fire was an accident.”

Josh nodded. “Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense.” He dropped his head. “Why didn’t you call me and tell me about Digger?”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t my place to anymore. I knew someone would get in touch with you, and obviously someone did. It didn’t have to be me.”

“It would’ve been nice if it’d been you.”

“Yeah, Josh? A lot of things would’ve been nice,” I spat back.

He bit his lip and stared at me. “So what were you doing here? What’s in the bag?”

I continued walking. “I came to get Digger’s recipes.” I briefly explained about helping with Hank Boucher’s cookbook and saw Josh’s eyes widen at the mention of the celebrity chef’s name. “I thought it would be good to include some of Digger’s work, and his girlfriend, Ellie, seemed to agree. Well, at least she did at first. . . . Anyhow, I need to get home and start sorting through this stuff. Kyle will be expecting to hear from me.” When we reached my car, I got in without glancing at Josh. Then I rolled down the window.

“Who’s Kyle?” he asked.

“Kyle is . . . It doesn’t matter. Do you, uh, do you need a ride?”

“No.” Josh shook his head. “I have Snacker’s car.”

“Good. Tell Snacker I said hello.”

“I’m staying with him in my old room until I find out what’s going on here. The couple I work for was really understanding. They told me to take as much time as I needed.”

“How nice for you,” I said sharply.

“I’m not going back to Hawaii until I find out how Digger died. I think he was murdered, Chloe.”

I gripped the steering wheel. I had no idea what to say. Something was off about Digger’s death, but I wasn’t jumping to the conclusion that he’d been deliberately killed. There was no reason to think so. Or was there?

“Listen, can we talk sometime?” he asked.

I started the engine. “I have to go, Josh.” I rolled up the window.

“Chloe, come on!” He had the audacity to sound annoyed.

I took off, leaving Josh standing alone on the curb.

I flew down the street, my heart pounding and my brain full of four-letter words. I was positively bullshit about the run-in with Josh. I’d been completely unprepared. With no defenses at the ready, I’d fallen victim to my visceral reaction to Josh and had totally made out with him in the heat of the moment. If I’d been braced for an encounter with him and had been thinking rationally, none of that hot-and-heavy action would have occurred. At least, I didn’t think so. It was some comfort that I’d yelled at him. If I’d been the reason he’d come back, maybe I’d have felt differently. I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t fault him for the reason he’d returned. His close friend had just died, and he wanted to know how and why. Still, it had been easier to have Josh in Hawaii than it was to have him in Boston, that was for sure.

I vacillated between anger, desire, and depression as I drove home. My brain and my heart felt ready to explode. Even when I had reached the safety of my apartment, I was still agitated. I rushed through the living room and into the bedroom, where I simultaneously turned on my laptop and lifted the phone from the cradle to scan caller ID. No new calls. At the computer, I unblocked Josh’s e-mail address from my message program and hit Send/ Receive four times in a row. No new messages. Good, right? I didn’t want Josh calling or e-mailing me, I told myself. That was why I’d changed my cell number and blocked his e-mail address in the first place. Of course, I’d kept my old landline number. There was that. Still, he was now in Boston, and how was I supposed to move on with him right here? I could practically feel his presence in the city, and my awareness that he was right nearby was going to make it almost impossible to block him out of my consciousness. Here I was, right now, poised by the phone and computer, waiting for some kind of contact from him! And if Josh did call or e-mail me, it would probably be to ask about Digger. On that topic, why was Josh so sure that Digger had been murdered? God, it was tragic enough that Digger had died in the fire. But murdered? I shook my head. Maybe Josh’s suspicion was his way of trying to deal with the loss of his friend.

No matter where Josh was or what was going on with him right now, I had to focus on the rest of my life. School, for instance, still required a lot of work, and I had plenty of cookbook activities to distract me. Plus, the money was pretty damn good. I decided to take a quick look through Digger’s bag in search of material for Hank Boucher’s book.

I opened the messenger bag and cringed. The fabric of the messenger bag reeked of smoke, and the contents smelled equally foul. They consisted of exactly what I expected from a chef: large notebooks filled with scribbled recipes, a few typed pages with notes scrawled on them, and two small notebooks with more recipes, as well as permanent markers, a kitchen thermometer, and some inventory pages. God, he was worse than Kyle! This kind of chaos must be a man thing. But as I’d hoped, the disorganized bag was filled with mouthwatering menus and recipes. Everything about the contents of the bag was so Digger that I teared up as I deciphered his writing. What’s more, I knew that Kyle would be as eager as I was to put some of Digger’s recipes in the cookbook. There was a stromboli recipe that looked delicious. Digger had written,
Family recipe, good comfort food. Restaurant possibility or no?
Digger hadn’t been sure that the stromboli would fit in at the Penthouse, but he’d clearly liked the homemade dough stuffed with fresh mozzarella and herbs. I’d have to copy this and make it myself. I could practically smell the dough baking just thinking about it!

I was feeling good about honoring Digger’s memory when I came upon some of Josh’s recipes in Josh’s own handwriting. Running my hands over the familiar script, I felt terribly sad. The consolation I’d found in the thought of including Digger in the book suddenly vanished, and everything about the smoky bag felt heartbreaking, as if there were nothing left of Digger’s life except some smelly recipes. I felt more or less the same way about my relationship with Josh. Corny as it sounds, it was as if what we’d shared had also gone up in smoke, and all I had left was this ugly, stinky mess.

The phone rang, and my stomach dropped. I glared at the caller ID as I waited for the number to appear. It could be Josh, I told myself. Did I want it to be Josh or not? I wasn’t sure.

Instead of my ex, the caller was Kyle. I wanted to sound completely nonchalant and to behave as though I had never assaulted him, but instead of staying cool, I found myself rattling off ideas at an auctioneer’s pace. “Kyle! Oh, good! Listen, I got ahold of Digger’s recipes, and there are tons here that would be perfect for the book, and I really think that we need to use some of them, which reminds me that we absolutely have to start testing the recipes we do have, because you can never trust a chef, and just because a recipe came from a chef doesn’t mean that the amounts and proportions of ingredients are right and—”

“Breath!” Kyle demanded with a laugh. “Stop and take a breath! But you’re right. We should test the recipes. Why don’t you pick out a few, and we can get together and do some cooking.”

Obediently, I took a slow breath. Kyle was behaving normally, and I should follow suit. “Great. I have some ideas already.”

“Would you mind if we cooked at your place? The apartment I’m renting has a really small galley kitchen, and we’d have a tough time here. I know your place isn’t gargantuan, but it’s the better of the two options.”

“Absolutely. How about Tuesday night? I should be home from my internship by five thirty.”

“Why don’t you do the food shopping, and then I’ll reimburse you in your next check. Oh, and have your friend Adrianna come over if she wants. I’m sure we could use the help, and she seems like she’d give us some honest feedback about the dishes.”

“I bet she’d be thrilled. I’ll give her a call.”

I hung up, started a shopping list, and immediately realized that I was going to blow my entire last paycheck on ingredients. I would get my money back, of course, and I’d charge for every second I spent at the store, but I’d have to go shopping tomorrow night so that we’d have everything we needed for Tuesday. I called Adrianna and Owen, and left a message inviting them over to cook and taste the food with Kyle and me. I was sure they’d take me up on the offer, especially because money was super tight for them these days. In fact, I was seriously worried that they weren’t eating well. In particular, since she was still nursing, Ade needed all the sustenance she could get.

Going through recipes and planning Tuesday’s cooking projects helped to distract me from dwelling on Josh. Helped. Somewhat. A little. In addition to being broke, I was still a jumpy, frazzled mess, and I gave in to the compulsion to keep checking my e-mail every ten minutes or so until I went to bed. Tomorrow, I assured myself, I’d be at my internship all day and nowhere near my computer. Maybe my supervisor would let me use hers, and I’d be able to check my e-mail from work? No, no!
Josh does not exist. Josh does not exist,
I repeated uselessly.

I
shifted my weight in the uncomfortable armchair and forced myself to look sympathetically at my client Alison. She was exceedingly beautiful, there was no doubt about that, but nutty as a loon. I was midway through my day at my internship—pardon me, my field placement—at the community mental health center and was listening to one of my regular clients drone on about her love life. Alison was a twenty-one-year-old college student who could have had practically any man she chose, yet she had a pattern of falling for unavailable older men. The woes of the young and beautiful, huh? Most of our counseling sessions centered on my trying to get to the root of her relationship issues so that we could figure out why she kept setting herself up to fail in her romantic life. So far we hadn’t made much progress, and I increasingly believed that Alison really wanted me to tell her that, yes, it was a brilliant idea for her to devote herself to the married workaholic who thought she had a great ass.