On Lavender Lane (14 page)

“It is,” she’d told Sedona Sullivan on something close to a moan, “like sex in a fluted paper wrapper.”

The baker had laughed at that. “That’s exactly what I was going for.”

“Well, you’ve definitely succeeded.”

And she had. In fact, although Madeline hadn’t been prepared to share that fact, the sinfully rich cupcake was better than any sex she’d had in a very long time. Still, as incredible as it was, it hadn’t made up for her lack of any real food for over twenty-four hours, and she could already feel the impending sugar crash.

“I’ve started some zuppa di fagioli,” Sofia said.

“I was hoping that’s what was in the pot.” It was one of her favorite recipes, handed down from Sofia’s own mother. The first time she’d proudly prepared the Tuscan white bean soup for Maxime, he’d taken one spoonful, then haughtily dismissed it as peasant food.

“I remembered how much you enjoyed it. Also, I found some fabulous bocconcini mozzarella at Blue Heron farm that would make a fabulous spaghetti caprese.”

“That sounds fabulous.” Enough to make her stomach growl. “And the farm must be new.”

“About a year,” Sofia said, after a moment’s thought. “Ethan Concannon bought the old Hardin place—you remember it, darling—and turned it organic, raising cattle, dairy cows, hogs, and chickens on pasture grass. Wait until you taste this cheese. It’s heaven. I’ve already spoken with him about supplying my new restaurant.”

“Ah yes, the restaurant. Lucas told me about that.” And it still grated that her grandmother had chosen to confide in him before her.

“Did he, now?” Sofia poured the berries into the crust and turned her attention to rolling out the lattice top. “I also know how you love marionberry pie.”

“You don’t have to go to all that bother.”

“Oh, it’s no bother at all. I so loved cooking for family before you left home and your grandfather passed. It’s not nearly as much fun cooking for one.”

Good try. And, obviously, like the change in conversation, a ploy to dodge the questions Sofia had to expect.

“Well, I appreciate it. As for the restaurant—”

“I was getting bored,” Sofia said, forestalling the argument she clearly saw coming. “Since I don’t want to take up cruising, like so many other women seem to do after being widowed, I decided I needed a new challenge to help fill all the empty hours in my life. And fill the place with people so I won’t feel so lonely.”

Talk about ladling on the guilt. “Why didn’t you tell me about it before now?”

“Oh, darling.” She placed the lattice crust on top of the berries, sprinkled it with sugar, then moved the tin to a baking sheet, which she then put on the rack in the oven. “You already had so much on your plate, I didn’t want to bother you.”

“It wouldn’t have been any bother. I never have so much to do that I don’t want to hear about your life.”

Damn. It was working. Madeline could feel the guilt settling over her shoulders like a wet, gray wool blanket.

“Well, things weren’t settled yet. There were so many details to figure out. Although I’m terribly sad about poor Duncan, when Lucas came home for the memorial service and seemed a little bit adrift, the last little piece of the puzzle just clicked into place.”

“You don’t know anything about Lucas.”

“Darling, I’ve known him most of his life.”

“You’ve known him during the summers. People aren’t necessarily the same when they’re on vacation as they are in their real lives.” And hadn’t she discovered that the hard way? She’d thought she’d known the boy she’d given her heart to. She’d been so wrong. “And he’s been away for a very long time. At war.”

“All the more reason he’s come home, I suspect. No doubt he’s due for some well-earned peace and quiet.”

“I’m not going to argue that.”

Damn. Madeline had been so surprised and unnerved to find him back in her grandmother’s kitchen, not to mention thrown back into her life, that although she’d felt truly
sorry for him and empathized with his losing his father, she hadn’t stopped to consider what he’d undoubtedly been going through all these past years.

“Which brings up another point,” she said. “How do you know he isn’t suffering from PTSD?” She hadn’t seen any signs, but she certainly wasn’t an expert on the topic.

“Well, I suppose it would probably be a bit surprising if the war hadn’t affected him in some way.”

Madeline had never known a more caring, empathetic person than her grandmother. But caring was one thing. An elderly woman possibly putting her life at risk with a man who could well be unstable was quite another.

“Do you think it’s wise to just give him free run of the house?”

“If I didn’t think that, dear, I wouldn’t do it,” her grandmother said reasonably. “He’s obviously at loose ends, with his father’s death having destroyed his plans for the two of them to work together. The plan that I suspect helped keep his morale up during the last year he was deployed. Since he obviously needed something to focus on, and I needed a contractor, it just seemed like a win-win situation.”

When Madeline didn’t answer, Sofia, who’d always been one to speak her mind, got down to brass tacks. “Do you believe there’s a possibility that the reason you’re not at all happy about my idea is because it involves Lucas Chaffee?”

“I don’t trust him. I’m not sure you should, either.”

Sofia sighed. “What happened between the two of you was a very long time ago. You were both young—”

“And he was wrong.”

“I can’t deny that.” Her grandmother took off her white chef’s apron. “But if you’re comparing him to your husband—”

“I can’t see any difference.”

“Can’t you?”

Madeline jammed her hands into her pockets. “No.”

Which wasn’t entirely the truth. Maxime was a conniving
rat bastard who’d betrayed her in the worst way possible for money. Lucas had betrayed her for, as for as she could tell, no other reason than it had felt good at the time.

And, dammit, although maybe she should be all adult and let bygones be bygones, it still hurt. A lot.

“I need to ask a question,” Sofia said. “It’s not easy to ask. And it might not be easy to answer. But something occurred to me this afternoon that’s been bothering me.”

“Okay.” Her grandmother did not often look uncomfortable. She did now. “Shoot.”

“Did Maxime ever abuse you? I know he disrespected you. Terribly. But did he ever strike you?”

“No. My husband has many faults, one of which is a flash temper, but he never hit me. And I was never afraid that he might.” If he’d so much as raised a hand to her, she would have been out the door on the spot.

“Well. That’s a relief. And getting back to Lucas, I didn’t hire him to be your boyfriend, darling. I hired him to remodel the kitchen.”

“That’s another thing.” Madeline looked around the cozy room where she’d spent so many hours. The one in which she’d learned to roll out dough and julienne a carrot. “Do either of you even know what you’ll need for a commercial kitchen?”

“Not really.” The older woman seemed unperturbed by the magnitude of the project she was taking on. “But I’ve taken out some books from the library. And looked online. I’ve also gotten a list of what the state requires. Plus, I’m hoping that whomever I hire will be able to offer some suggestions.”

“Do you have a list of candidates?”

“I was planning to set up interviews. Until the perfect candidate just fell into my lap.”

“Who?”

Her sun-weathered face wreathed in a smile. “Why, you, of course.”

Madeline almost choked.
Oh no!

“Me? In case you haven’t noticed, Gram, I have a job.” She may be between TV seasons and contracts right now. But it wasn’t as if she was on the verge of being unemployed and homeless.

Okay. Maybe she was currently without her own place to live. But that was only temporary.

“Well, of course you do, darling.” Sofia immediately backpedaled. “And I didn’t mean that I’d expect you to take on the job as chef. But since as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never been able to chill, as you young people say. I thought, perhaps, while you’re back home, you could help Lucas and me design the restaurant. And maybe interview chefs.”

“Oh, Gram…”

Her grandmother had taken her in when she’d had no one else. And although becoming a surrogate parent had curtailed hers and Madeline’s grandfather’s world travel to seek out native plants, not once had she heard Sofia utter a single word of complaint.

The fact was, she owed her.

“Just think about it,” Sofia said mildly. “If you’d rather just relax and lick your wounds, which you’re certainly entitled to do, I’ll find someone else. After all, until that unfortunate incident, I hadn’t thought of asking you for help.”

Despite how much Madeline dreaded the idea of working with Lucas Chaffee, her grandmother’s response nearly made her smile. Passive-aggressive had never been Sofia’s style. The older woman had always been direct to the point of blunt.

So why this sudden change in tactics?

“If you’re planning to get Lucas and me together again, it’s not going to work.”

“Why, I had no such idea.” She splayed a hand across her heart, as if taking an oath. “Truly, darling, it’s merely a coincidence you’re both back in town at the same time.”

While she still didn’t exactly buy her grandmother’s innocent act, Madeline couldn’t argue that. No way could Sofia have planned the sequence of events that had led to both Lucas and her winding up in Lavender Hill Farm’s kitchen.

“As it happens, I have some ideas,” she admitted. Ideas for restaurant design that Maxime had never been willing to even listen to, let alone consider. He’d had his own vision, and, like everything else in their marriage, what Maxime wanted, Maxime got.

Sofia beamed with a delight she didn’t even try to hide. “This is going to be so exciting,” she said. “Do you know, I read that elderly people live longer if they have goals and projects?”

Madeline laughed and threw her hands up. Both metaphorically and literally. “You can stop, Gram. I surrender.”

“It’ll be just like old times,” Sofia promised. “You and me working in the kitchen together again.”

It did not escape Madeline’s notice that she’d left out mentioning the third person involved.

Madeline and Lucas had shared old times, too. Times she’d tried, with varying degrees of success, to forget.

It’s stupid,
she chided herself. Stupid to let any man get under her skin this way. Especially one who’d probably hadn’t given her a thought since she’d run away. As fast and as far as she could.

It wasn’t until he’d shown up in her grandmother’s kitchen, all windblown hair, chocolate eyes, and gunslinger tool belt, that Madeline realized that her husband’s public betrayal had mainly hurt her pride. And although she’d refused to admit it, even to herself, Pepper’s words about Maxime’s being with other women hadn’t been a total surprise.

The suspicions had flittered through her head from time to time. When she watched a jeweled hand linger a bit too long on top of his at the dinner table. When his eyes would
follow an admirer across a banquet room with a bit too much speculation. When air kisses would miss the mark and land instead on his lips.

But she’d ignored them. Locked them away in a steel box with other memories and events that were too painful to be taken out into the bright light of day. Because if they were in the dark, she wouldn’t have to face them.

Like her parents’ death.

And Maxime’s flirtations, which, at least in one case, were full-blow adultery.

And earning his very own special lockbox: Lucas Chaffee.

The same man who’d sauntered into her grandmother’s kitchen as if he had every right to be there.

She’d work with him. But they’d be on her turf. And this time around their relationship would be strictly business.

Just because she had no choice but to let him back into her life—for a very brief, very impersonal time—there was no way she’d be foolish enough to let him back into her heart.

16

Proving that you can, indeed, make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Portland’s Pearl District, which had once been a decaying, downtown warehouse area, had, over the years, been gentrified into a chic, urban neighborhood. Many of the aging warehouses had been turned into luxury lofts and condos, stylish boutiques, specialty retailers, bookstores, and galleries featuring local artists. Trendy restaurants had sprung up to serve the residents.

Brooke Kendall’s building boasted a fabulous view of the Cascade Mountains. Reflecting the owner’s personality, the apartment exuded cool control. Glass and silver predominated, giving what Lucas privately considered an almost operating room–like sterility to a space decorated in shades of gray.

Tasteful modern graphics hung on pale gray walls, illuminated by track lighting along the twelve-foot ceiling.

The furniture, like the art, was contemporary. Italian black leather and molded, modular pieces covered in black and gray striped upholstery blended perfectly with black lacquer bookshelves and glass tables that seemed to float atop the gray and white marble floor.

The kitchen, with its Sub-Zero refrigerator and eight-burner, two-oven stove could turn any professional chef green with envy. Not that Lucas had ever seen Brooke even nuke a frozen dinner. Why should she, when the
building’s concierge was more than willing to call in her order to any of the hot, trendy restaurants in the neighborhood?

“So,” she said, as she plated tonight’s dinner from the foam cartons onto square white plates, “tell me about this job you’ve taken on. It’s not exactly what you’d planned to do, is it?”

“No.” Lucas opened the bottle he’d picked up before driving to Portland from the coast and poured the golden wine into two glasses with matchstick-thin stems that he always worried about snapping. “But Sofia De Luca rescued Dad and me when we were drifting after my parents’ divorce, so I figure I owe her.”

“That’s very nice of you,” she said as she carried the plates over to a glass-topped table set on a black lacquer base. “But if she’s as wonderful a woman as you described on the phone, I’m sure she wouldn’t expect you to pay her back after all these years.”