Skinny Bitch Gets Hitched (8 page)

“They're here,” Finn said, coming into the kitchen. “Matteo just sat them.”

The infamous mother had arrived. I glanced around for a spare hand and spotted Evan McMann helping Gunnar chop; I waved Evan over to stir my pots and headed over to the
out
door, which had a small window.

I didn't have a perfectly clear view of table five across the restaurant, but I could see Zach pointing at the menu and saying something to his brother, Gareth, who sat beside him. Seated on Zach's other side was a striking woman in her late fifties, tall, regal, and quite beautiful. Dominique Jeffries Huffington. She wore a black, sleeveless dress, a lot of bling, and the kind of small, weird hat you'd spot at a British royal wedding. Sitting next to her must be the stepdaughter, Keira, no older than twenty-one, twenty-two tops, also tall and thin, with long, ombré-brown hair, small, dark eyes, a long, sloping nose, and a wide, glossy mouth. The features combined to make her almost beautiful. Next to Keira was Avery, Zach's fraternal twin.

“I wonder how long you have to be on best behavior,” Gunnar said as he slid vegetable chunks on a skewer for blackened kebabs. “Family isn't family until you're arguing over stupid crap at Thanksgiving.”

“Hold the fort and wish me luck,” I said to the kitchen staff.

I pushed through the swinging door of the kitchen into the main dining room and headed toward table five. A smattering of people waited in the open lounge area on the padded benches. The juice bar was full of those waiting to be seated, ordering from the bar menu of tapas and drinking my energy
smoothie. I smiled at my guests as I walked through the room. I asked one table how the fettuccine was, and I welcomed a new table that had just turned over, signaling a waiter to refill lemon-water glasses.

As I approached, Zach stood up and took my hand.

“Mom, Keira, this is Clementine.”

“I'm thrilled to finally meet you,” Dominique said, grasping my hand in both of hers. “You're as lovely as everyone told me.”

I beamed at her. “Thank you. I'm so happy to meet you too.”

Zach looked a lot like his mother—the almond-shaped blue eyes, the perfect nose, the dark hair, and something in their expression.

“Me too,” Keira said. “Congrats on getting engaged.”

They were both much nicer than I expected.

Avery and Gareth stood up and hugged me. As Gareth sat back down, he said, “So what should I order?”

“I'll bet you'd like the Jamaican jerk tofu,” Avery told him. “I've had it and it's amazing.”

Keira was looking at the back of the menu, where drinks were listed. “I don't see Diet Coke and I'm dying for a cold blast of caffeine.”

“The place is called Clementine's No Crap Café for a reason,” Avery told her. “No crap.”

“Is caffeine crap?” Keira asked, clearly confused.

“Diet Coke is drinkable chemicals,” Avery said, saving me the trouble.

“Oh,” Keira said. “I'll have a Diet Sprite or whatever, then.”

“We don't serve soda,” I said. “We have all kinds of great juices and smoothies and wines and beer.”

“Avery, order something I'll like,” Keira said.

“Well, this is such a darling little place,” Dominique said, glancing around, her gaze stopping on the hipster couple at the next table.

If I weren't so focused on her, I might not have noticed the slight edge in her voice, in her expression, but
darling little place
was usually code for “shit shack.”
Smile, Clementine,
I told myself.
Say thank you and get back to work
. “Thank you. Well, I'd better get back to the kitchen and let you look at the menu.”

Zach squeezed my hand and I headed to the kitchen, looking back to see them all perusing the menu. Just then Dominique glanced up at me and lifted her chin, her smile . . . full of something I couldn't quite pinpoint.

The food would win her over. That I was sure of.

Five minutes later, their orders came in. I'd asked Finn to note Dominique's—and was happy to see she'd chosen my fettuccine carbonara. While Gunnar prepared their salads, I helped Alanna with other orders, and when the salads went out, it was time to start on table five's dishes. I gave Alanna and Everett Zach's, Avery's, Gareth's, and Keira's orders, and I went to work on Dominique's dinner. The strips of fresh fettuccine, which I'd made in batches through the afternoon and evening, were
hanging over dowels on the back counter, some dry and ready to go, some drying for later orders. I took a just-dried portion and put the pasta in a pot to boil, then started the sauce—almond milk, crushed garlic, onion, and my own months-in-the-perfecting vegan pancetta. I dipped in a spoon to taste—delicious but just slightly too thick. For Dominique, the sauce had to be perfect. I started over, and this time the sauce was just right.

With Finn's tray loaded and ready to go, I gave each plate the once-over. Perfect.

Five minutes later, Finn was back with an untouched plate of fettuccine carbonara. “Um, chef?” He set the plate down at my station. “Zach's mother said the pasta wasn't toothsome enough.”

I stared at him. “Wait—what?”

“She said—”

“She took a bite of the fettuccine and said it wasn't
toothsome
enough?”

Finn backed away a bit. “Well, she waved me over and said, ‘Darling, the sauce is lovely, but the pasta isn't quite toothsome enough,' and then she pushed it away.”

My heart sank. The pasta was perfect. I knew it was.

Was Dominique trying to tell me that some no-name farmer's daughter who owned this “darling little place” wasn't good enough for her son? No. Why did I even go there? When did I become such a drama queen?

“Clem?” Finn said as I stared at the pasta, trying to figure out her game.

“Yeah?”

“What does
toothsome
even mean?”

“It basically means just right. Not too soft or too firm.”

“Ah. I told her I would bring her another plate right away, but she didn't say anything. She just sipped her wine and started talking to the person next to her.”

“Don't worry about it, Finn. I'll go out.”

Never in the history of Clementine's No Crap Café, which had, granted, been open for only two months, had an entrée been sent back to the kitchen. Overcooked, undercooked, underseasoned, overseasoned—not in my restaurant. Not while I was in the kitchen—and I was always in the kitchen.

Hadn't the restaurant been written up for the second time in
LA Magazine
as the hottest new eatery in Santa Monica—for vegans
and
nonvegans? Yes, it had, I reminded myself—confident that the fettuccine was
not
the problem.

Then again, if my fettuccine couldn't wow my future mother-in-law into eating up instead of complaining, how could it be good enough for the
New York Times
reporter?

I closed my eyes and counted slowly to five, as Zenia, my Pilates teacher, had taught me. Pilates had kept me sane during the first weeks of opening the restaurant.
Breathe, Clementine,
I heard her whisper in my ear, Tibetan bowl music pinging in the background.

As I walked over to the table, Zach was looking at me with an expression that said,
Don't take it personally. This is who she is.

How could I not take it personally, though? Even if the fettuccine sucked, the kind-mother-in-law thing to do would be to say it was delicious. Especially since this was the first time we'd met. If I were invited over to her house and she served something I didn't like, I certainly wouldn't tell her.

She'd sent back her plate.

And everyone at the table was digging in except for Dominique, who sipped her wine and had an untouched piece of focaccia on the little plate in front of her.

“Clementine,” she enunciated as I came over, “I hope I didn't cause too much of a fuss. But a pasta really should be
tooth
some.”

Okay, first of all, who said
toothsome
with a straight face? And second, well, shit. This wasn't how this was supposed to go.

“Of course I wouldn't have breathed a
word
if you'd made it yourself,” Dominique said, barely looking at me. “But I thought you'd want your chef to know,” she added in an exaggerated whisper.

“Actually, I'm owner
and
executive chef and I did make your dish myself,” I said, my knuckles practically white from gripping the back of Zach's chair.

Zach turned and shot me a look that said,
Did you have to go there?

Yeah, I did. I could pretty much be counted on to say what needed to be said. Wasn't that why he'd fallen in love with me?

A faux smile spread across Dominique's matte-red lips.
“Well, dear, even the best chefs have something to learn. You're all of what—twenty-five, Clementine? Though I must say, having your own restaurant, even a cute little place like this”—she glanced around—“is quite an accomplishment.”

Even
. Ha. She was everything Zach said she'd be and more. She'd looked at him pointedly as she'd said that last bit, which meant she thought Zach had funded Clementine's No Crap Café. For the record: I hadn't taken one penny from Zach. Not that he hadn't tried to foist his money on me. But I opened this “cute little place” with my own blood, sweat, and hard-earned cash.

And by the way, I was twenty-six.

“Well, my Jamaican jerk tofu is fabulous,” said Zach. “And that's coming from a serious carnivore.”

“Agreed,” Avery said, taking another bite of her own jerk tofu. “And I know vegan food. This is the best I've had.”

Gareth took a swig of his beer. “I have to admit—my burger is pretty damned good for sprout food.”

I smiled at them. The Jeffries siblings were keepers, definitely.

Considering that Zach had told me that Dominique preferred caviar to just about anything else, I'd take Mommy Dearest's opinion on my precision-timed, homemade, organic pasta with a few grains of sea salt. Even if it still stung.

Keira, Dominique's twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter, wrinkled her nose at her lasagna, one of tonight's other specials. “Clementine, I wasn't going to say anything, but since we're on the subject . . . Um, I'm really sorry, but I'm not loving this
Parmesan cheese.” She leaned in and whispered, “It tastes a little . . . funny.”

“It's vegan Parmesan,” Avery told her. “It's not supposed to taste like the stuff you sprinkle on pasta.”

“Oh,” Keira said, poking at her lasagna. Keira was the only child of Dominique's second and current husband. Dominique and Zach's father had divorced when Zach was a teenager. Dominique had been married to her second husband, even wealthier than her first, for sixteen years, and according to Zach, she considered Keira her own flesh and blood. “I keep forgetting what's vegan and what's not.”

Avery saved me from schooling her. “Keira, vegans don't eat anything that comes from an animal, and that includes dairy, which includes milk, which is turned into butter or cheese.”

I needed to get back into the kitchen before I said something that would get me in trouble. “Well, let me get started on another plate of the fettuccine,” I told Dominique.

“Oh, don't trouble yourself,” she said. “I had two bites, and that's really all I allow myself of overly rich food. But on the next order, remember that a toothsome pasta is neither too soft nor too firm. And, sweetie,” she whispered, “the salmon walls are a bit
too
orange. A more subtle shade would work better. And the silverware could be a hair heavier. Just a hair.” She smiled at me.

I had spent hours torturing the paint mixer at Home Depot to create that exact shade of shimmery persimmon. “Perhaps it's a generational thing,” I blurted out.

She fixed a death stare on me. “Yes,” she drawled out. “It's like I always say. Youth is absolutely wasted on the young.”

Zach was staring at me with an expression that implored,
Not. Another. Word.

I forced myself to smile and headed back into the kitchen. The moment I stepped inside the noisy, bustling space, I felt instantly more at peace.

“I will keep my mouth shut. I will keep my mouth shut,” I said to my sous chef, Alanna. “I will slowly count to five.”

“I won't even ask,” Alanna said, sliding mushrooms into a pinging hot pan.

I counted to five. I breathed. I focused on the next orders, pouring olive oil in a pan to help my vegetable chef keep up with the demand for the roasted vegetable skewers.

“Clem? You okay?” came Zach's voice from behind me.

I closed my eyes for a second. No way would I admit—even to myself—that his mother had gotten to me. I turned around and smiled. “I'm fine. No worries. Go finish your dinner.” I gave his hand a squeeze.