Moonlight Masquerade (35 page)

“Only once.”

“Is this Edilean preacher like him?” she asked.

“More than he knows. After all, he's trying for a merger between you and me. He said you want to be an artist and that you've done a lot of bronzes. He also told me what you did for your sister.”

“I guess he learned all this from my friend Kim?”

“I think so.”

While the idea was appealing, Sophie didn't think it would work. “The problem is that I've never been good at teaching. You saw that in there. A teacher needs to have patience and to . . . well,
teach
. But I just grabbed your sculpture and tore it apart. That's not the way a teacher should be.”

“I can get those on every street corner. I like the other half of that saying ‘those who can do and those who can't, teach.' ”

“I don't understand,” Sophie said. “I can't sculpt for you, now can I?”

“No, but when you're doing your own work I can learn by watching.”

“I don't know,” Sophie said. “I'll have to think about this. Think about everything.”

As Carter stood
in the little restaurant and stared at Henry and Sophie walking down the street, he couldn't help grimacing. He was sure Sophie didn't even know who she was talking to, a man who made
his father look like a pauper. It looked like what his father had said about Sophie not fitting in with “people of our sort” wasn't true. But then, Carter had learned long ago that whatever his father did was for his own purposes.

Carter went to the big refrigerator on the far wall and opened it. While Sophie was upstairs Henry had said he was to make the soup. “Like I'm the damned maid,” he said aloud. “Like I'm not part of Treeborne Foods, like I'm not—” He stopped when he saw that the refrigerator was nearly empty. How was he to make soup—which he didn't know how to make anyway—if there weren't enough groceries? Was he supposed to go buy some?

He shut the door and looked around the place. All Sophie's questions about that damned cookbook had made him think about his family's so-called legacy. His grandfather had been an unpleasant old man, angry at the shrapnel in his body that would always cause him pain, angry at his own father for leaving his family. That his father had died when a boiler blew up made no difference. To his grandfather's mind, the man had still abandoned his family. Most of all, he was furious because his exhausted mother made all four of her children spend their childhoods in a tiny restaurant. He went away to war saying he never wanted anything to do with food. But when he got back with a body riddled with metal pieces, he saw an opportunity and took it. He Americanized their family name and Treeborne Foods was created.

As Carter looked around Sophie's little restaurant he knew that the one his grandmother had run was about
the same size. Little more than a sandwich shop really, and she'd served skimpy plates of food—but she'd sprinkled her secret ingredient on top of everything. She'd been so successful that she'd managed to support her family after her drunken husband died, and she'd helped relatives come over from the old country.

“And now I'm supposed to carry on the family tradition,” Carter said with a sigh. He was supposed to step into the giant beast that Treeborne Foods had become and—

He had to stop his wallow in self-pity because someone was tapping on the door.

“Who's this?” he muttered. “Someone else who wants to marry Sophie? Another man who wants to hit me?” Frowning, he opened the door. A young woman was standing there. She was dressed all in black: boots, tights, shirt, leather jacket. Her hair was cut straight at her chin line, with thick bangs at her brow. It was so black against her white skin that her hair had to have been dyed. She had a tiny silver dot pierced in her nose, and the edge of a tattoo peeped above her collar.

“You're not Sophie,” she said, looking at him as though he'd just lied to her.

“And you're not Sophie, either,” he responded.

Her blue eyes looked him up and down, as though assessing him, then she seemed to dismiss him as she walked into the restaurant.

“You'll have to come back later,” Carter said, annoyed that this girl had pushed past him.

“Russell said I was to cook today.” Her tone was almost belligerent, as though she were challenging him.

“I have no idea who Russell is and you don't look
like any cook I've ever seen. We don't do greaseburgers.” He looked her up and down just as she'd done to him. “And no vampires or werewolves come here.”

“Then how did
you
get in here?” she shot back at him.

Carter could only blink at her. Maybe what Sophie'd said about his being spoiled was true. No one—other than his father, that is—had ever spoken to him like that. He couldn't help it, but he smiled.

She didn't smile back but kept staring at him.

“So you came here to cook?” he asked, the anger leaving him. His mother used to say that he'd inherited the ability to get angry from his father, but her genes made it so Carter couldn't stay angry very long.

The girl turned toward the door. “I think I better come back when this Sophie is here. Tell her I'll be at Russell's house.”

“Wait!” Carter said and put himself in front of the door. “I'm supposed to make some soup for tomorrow.”

“So make it.” She reached out to the door, but Carter didn't move.

“I could spin straw into gold as easily as I could make soup.”

“This woman hired you as a cook but you can't even make a pot of soup?” She again reached for the door.

“It's not Sophie's fault. I came here to ask her to marry me and she told me to leave, but I wanted a second chance so I stayed to help. Then Henry showed up and took her away because she remade that ugly little toad of a sculpture of his. So Henry is the one who told me to make soup. Sophie knows I can't cook. I'm heir to Treeborne Foods but I hardly know a potato from a carrot. Ironic, isn't it?”

She stood there staring at him for a long time, looking as though she was trying to figure him out.

Carter thought she had on too much makeup and he couldn't help thinking that without it she'd be quite pretty.

“How'd you get the eye?” she asked.

He put his hand up to the side of his face. “Sophie's boyfriend doesn't want me here. He's a doctor.”

She blinked at this a few times. “Do you think that making some soup will impress your girlfriend enough to get her back?” She hesitated. “To make her
marry
you?”

He gave a little half smile. “No. I can see that that's not going to happen. But I'd really like to make her forgive me. I did something I regret and—” He broke off because she'd turned her back on him and gone to the refrigerator to open it.

“Not even I could make soup out of this. Where's the wholesale market?”

“Don't look at me, I just got here. I live in Texas.”

“Ah, right. You're Treeborne Foods. The freezer kings.” Her tone was condescending.

Carter couldn't help groaning. “I guess you eat only what you buy at the local farmers' market. You turn your nose up to anything that was picked longer than two hours ago, and I'm sure you'd starve before you used anything that had ever been frozen.”

“For the last year I've been working at an inner-city homeless shelter and we used anything anybody gave us. People look in their pantries, see a can of beans that's been in there for three years, and give it to us. They think they're doing a good deed. Treeborne Foods's fancy frozen
packages would have been a step up for us. You have any more elitist remarks to make to me or you want to go find a grocery and make some soup?”

“Soup,” he said and couldn't help his smile.

She stood by the door. “Well?” she said and he had no idea what she meant. But she was waiting for him to open the door for her. Carter rushed forward and opened it wide.

Once they were outside, he hesitated. “I don't have a key to get back in. Sophie will probably be back, but . . . ” He didn't seem to know what to do.

“This doesn't seem to be a town of rampant thievery,” she said, looking up at him. “Do you have a car? Or did you come with a driver and a limo?”

“It's a rental and I drove it from the airport all by myself.”

“Congratulations. You're on your way to being one of the people.” They walked a block to where his car was parked and she let him open the door for her.

“Kelli,” she said when they were both inside. “Kelli Parker.”

“Lewis Carter Treeborne the Third,” he said. “Better known as Carter.”

“Is that what Sophie calls you?”

“Not at the moment,” he said. “Do you know where the grocery is?”

“The bus passed it on the way in. Turn left here. I want to know everything that's going on.”

“Well,” Carter said, “my father is trying to make me marry some girl to seal a deal, but—”

“So you came here and tried to get Sophie to marry
you because then you'd be safe. Gee. Can't imagine why she said no.”

Carter couldn't help grimacing. “In the Texas town where I live everybody works for Treeborne Foods. And everybody . . . well, treats me with courtesy.”

“And here you have to earn it. Poor you. Turn here. Tell me about this restaurant you've been left in charge of.”

“It's not like that.” He pulled into a parking space, turned off the engine, and looked at her in speculation. “Why did you come from wherever you came from that took a bus to get here just to work in some two-bit sandwich place? I bet there are higher paying jobs back there, wherever it is.”

“Chicago,” Kelli said.

He was incredulous. “You couldn't get a job slapping ham and cheese on rye somewhere in Chicago?”

“If we're going to make soup I think we need to get started.” She pulled up on the door handle but Carter pressed the button and locked it.

“Who are you and what are you up to?” he asked.

“Look. I just met you thirty minutes ago. My life is none of your business, so let me out of here or I'll start screaming.”

Carter didn't move. “Trouble with the law? Were you working in a homeless shelter for community service?”

Kelli just stared at him, but the slight flushing of her cheeks gave her away.

Carter leaned back against the door, smiling. “So what did you do? Hot-wire a car? Threaten someone
with a gun? Lewd sexual behavior?” On the last one he looked hopeful.

“I borrowed some tart pans! There. Now will you let me out?”

Carter, intrigued, unlocked the door and followed Kelli into the grocery. The last time he'd been in one had been with Sophie. He leaned on the basket and guided it as Kelli tossed produce into it. They were silent for a while.

“Did this preacher, Russell, bail you out?”

“More or less,” Kelli said.

He moved along the aisle. “So why did you steal the pans?”

“You're a pest, you know that?”

“Sophie thinks so and my father would agree wholeheartedly, but my mother rather liked me. So why'd you steal the pans?”

“Because my boyfriend ran over mine with his motorcycle and I had to bake six tarts to try to get a job as a pastry chef at a major hotel.”

Carter waited for her to continue.

“I'd been working for a jerk of a chef who took credit for everything I did and I wanted to get away from him. Two days before I was to show up with examples of what I can do, my boyfriend and I had a fight. The next day while I was at work he cleaned out my bank account and ran his bike over every piece of cooking equipment I owned.”

“So you ‘borrowed' some more.”

“That's right. That's what I did.”

“But you got caught?”

“He was stalking me,” she said.

“The boyfriend or the mean chef boss?”

“Boyfriend. He followed me, saw what I was doing, and called the cops. The mean chef pressed charges. The judge thought it was all ridiculous, so he sent me to help at a homeless shelter.”

“And that's where the Edilean pastor met you.”

“Yes, he did, and he called me for this job, even bought my bus ticket.”

“You're a pastry chef but you came all the way from Chicago to take a job in a sandwich shop?”

When Kelli didn't answer, he stopped and stared at her. “If you want me to help you, you need to tell me the whole story.”

“What else is there to tell?” They were in the spice aisle and she was buying the biggest, cheapest containers she could find.

Carter didn't reply but picked up a ten-pound bag of King Arthur flour. “When I started working for Treeborne Foods three years ago I suggested that we branch out into baked goods. Give Sara Lee a run for her money. In front of everyone my father told me to sit down and shut up.”

Kelli seemed to be deciding whether to tell the real reason why she'd come to Edilean. “Russell said that the sandwich shop used to sell pastries and that there's an empty building next door.”