The Love Goddess' Cooking School

Camilla’s Cucinotta Risotto al salto

Leftover risotto alla Milanese

1 pat butter

1 sad memory

1 fervent wish

Melt butter in skillet. Spread risotto on bottom of pan, forming a pancake. On low to medium heat, cook until gilded a golden brown, then cover pan with a lipless lid. Flip pan and lid—risotto should now be on the lid. Return pan to the burner. Slide the risotto from the lid back into the pan and cook other side until gilded.

If the dish does not turn out as you expected,
you simply try again.

DELICIOUS PRAISE FOR
THE LOVE GODDESS’ COOKING SCHOOL

“
The Love Goddess’ Cooking School
reads like a recipe for reinvention, filled with hope and seasoned liberally with forgiveness. But the real magic here is Melissa Senate’s writing, which laps rhythmically against your heart like gentle waves along the coast.”

—Claire Cook, bestselling author of
Must Love Dogs and Seven Year Switch

THE CRITICS ARE JUMPING FOR
MELISSA SENATE’S “WARM, WINNING”
(Booklist) NOVEL THE SECRET OF JOY!

“Engaging.”

—
The Free Lance-Star
(VA)

“Senate’s page-turning comfort read is descriptive and contains a suitable mix of wit and romance. Her characters exemplify the universal need we all have to belong.”

—
Romantic Times

“Now and then, a book appears that is so absorbing, you portion it out to yourself chapter by chapter because you don’t want it to end.
The Secret of Joy
is that kind of book … a big-hearted book with an ending you’ll never guess.”

—
The Portland Press Herald

“Enjoyable characters and a story about finding one’s self apart from men, this book is great for women who love to while away a few hours with a good book and a cup of tea.”

—
York County Coast Star (ME)

“I loved, loved, loved this book. The story was captivating, the narration fresh, the characters fun. I flew through it. The characters were relatable, and the subplot was just as interesting and segued well into the ending for Rebecca and Joy. I don’t think you can go wrong with Melissa Senate.” —Bellas Novella

“
The Secret of Joy
is a beautifully written novel that will have the reader crying one moment and smiling with happiness the next. … Senate weaves together many tales of love and in so doing discusses, through a brilliant array of characters, what it means to love and be loved.” —Rundpinne

“A special story by a special author.
The Secret of Joy
opened my heart, made me laugh, cry, and smile all at the same time. A don’t-miss read.”

—Carly Phillips,
New York Times
bestselling
author of
Kiss Me If You Can

“A warm hug of a book. Insightful, wise, and romantic, it’s as inviting as the small-town life it depicts.”

—Claire LaZebnik, author of
The Smart One and the Pretty One

“A wonderfully heartfelt story about hope, possibilities, and the yearning for real connections.
The Secret of Joy
will take you on a
much needed vacation, while sneaking vital life lessons in when you’re not looking.”

—Caprice Crane, international bestselling
author of
Family Affair

“
The Secret of Joy
is a heartwarming story that hits all the right notes. Senate has you cheering for more.”

—Cara Lockwood,
USA Today
bestselling
author of I Do (But I Don’t)

“A wonderful story that encouraged me to take a deeper look at love, relationships, family, disappointment, and most important, forgiveness. With a smooth and enjoyable writing style, Melissa Senate whisked me into the lives of Rebecca and Joy.”

—Beth Hoffman,
New York Times
bestselling
author of
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Melissa Senate

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery trade paperback edition October 2010

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

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Designed by Renata Di Biase

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Senate, Melissa.

   The love goddess’ cooking school / Melissa Senate.—1st Gallery Books trade pbk. ed.

     p. cm.

   1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Cooking schools—Fiction. 3. Maine—Fiction. 4. Chick lit. I. Title.

   PS3619.E658L68 2010

   813'.6—dc22

                                   2010021190

ISBN 978-1-4391-0723-2
ISBN 978-1-4391-8674-9 (ebook)

In memory of my grandparents,
Ann and Abe Steinberg

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to my agent, Alexis Hurley, whose insight, especially at the idea stage, was invaluable; my editor, Jennifer Heddle, for yet another brilliant, thoughtful revision letter; my family and friends (Lee Nichols Naftali, I am particularly talking to you) for their cheery support; and my dear son, Max, who turned me from the takeout queen into a cook in constant training. (Note: Max is proof that the recipes at the back of the book are kid-friendly.)

I was thirty-two when I started cooking;
up until then, I just ate.

—Julia Child

THE
LOVE GODDESS’
COOKING SCHOOL

One

According to Holly Maguire’s late grandmother, revered on Blue Crab Island, Maine, for her fortune-telling as much as her cooking, the great love of Holly’s life would be one of the few people on earth to like
sa cordula,
an Italian delicacy. It was made of lamb intestines and stewed with onions, tomatoes, and peas in a savory butter sauce that did little to hide the fact that it looked exactly like what it was.

“So I’ll know if someone is ‘the one’ if he likes stewed lamb guts?” Holly had asked repeatedly over the years. “That’s it? That’s my entire fortune?” She’d kept hoping her grandmother would say,
Just kidding! Of course that’s not it, bella. Your true fortune is this: you will be very happy.

Holly would be satisfied with that.

Not that Camilla Constantina would ever say
just kidding.
Or kid, for that matter.

“That is it,” was her grandmother’s response, every time, her gleaming black eyes giving nothing away. “The stones have
spoken.”

A month ago, her hand trembling, her heart hoping, Holly had set a plate of
sa cordula
in front of John Reardon, the man she loved. As she’d been living in California, thousands of miles away from her grandmother in an attic apartment with no oven, she’d paid the Italian butcher’s eighty-six-year-old great-aunt to prepare the dish. Holly and John had been a couple for almost two years. She was practically a stepmother to his four-year-old daughter Lizzie. And more than anything, Holly wanted to become part of their family.

Why had her grandmother saddled her with this fortune? Who could possibly like
sa cordula
? Holly had tasted it three times before, and it was so . . . slimily awful that even Holly’s grandfather, who, per legend, ate even more reviled “delicacies,” had hated it. But the love of Camilla’s life wasn’t supposed to like it. Her Great Love was to have blond hair and blue eyes, and when in 1957 twenty-two-year-old single Camilla had turned down another eligible, dark-eyed, dark-haired man in her small village near Milan, everyone worried she was crazy like her spinster aunt Marcella, who muttered in a back room. But some months later, the dashing Armando Constantina, with his butter-colored hair and Adriatic blue eyes, had come to town and swept her off her feet all the way to America, and Camilla’s reputation as a fortune-teller had been restored.

Holly’s father, Bud Maguire, had taken one bite of
sa cordula
during Thanksgiving dinner in 1982 and forever refused to taste anything his mother-in-law cooked unless he recognized it and knew what it was. Bud liked plain old spaghetti doused
with jarred Ragu and a piece of garlic bread, which was just fine with Holly’s mother, Luciana Maguire, who went by Lucy and had no interest in her heritage or cooking. Or fortune-telling. Especially because Camilla Constantina’s supposed source of knowledge was a trio of small, smooth stones she’d chosen from the banks of the Po River as a three-year-old. “I’d sooner believe in a crystal ball from the clearance aisle in Walmart,” Holly’s mother had often said with her usual disdain.

It had taken Camilla Constantina until Holly was sixteen to tell her granddaughter her fortune. As an adolescent, Holly had asked her grandmother over and over to sit her down with the stones and tell Holly what she was desperate to know—would Mike Overstill ever ask her out? Would she do okay on the American history test worth 85 percent of her final grade? Would her mother ever stop being such a killjoy? Camilla would just take both her hands and tell her all would be well. But finally, on Holly’s sixteenth birthday, when Mike Overstill had not shown up at six thirty to escort her to the junior prom (he had called twenty minutes later to say, “Sorry, um, I forgot I asked someone else”), her grandmother, who was visiting, reached for her white satin pouch (out of eyesight of Holly’s mother, of course) and said
si,
it was time. Camilla took the three smooth stones from the pouch and closed her hands around them. As Holly held her breath in anticipation, her grandmother held Holly’s hand with her free one and closed her eyes for a good half minute.

And the long-awaited revelation was that the great love of Holly’s life would like lamb intestines tossed with peas. In butter sauce.

This, from a woman who’d rightly foretold the fates of hundreds of year-rounders and summer tourists on Blue Crab Island and the nearby mainland towns, who’d drive over the bridge to pay twenty-five dollars to sit in the breakfast nook of Camilla Constantina’s famed kitchen and have their fortunes told.

Holly had said she was sure there was something else. Perhaps her grandmother could close her eyes a bit longer? Or just do it all over again? Camilla would only say that sometimes the fortune could not be understood readily, that it held hidden meaning. To the day Camilla Constantina had died, just two weeks ago, the fortune had not changed. Nor had the meaning become clear. Holly had been taking it literally from the first time she’d fallen in love. At nineteen. Then again at twenty-four. And yet again two years ago, at twenty-eight, when she fell in love with John Reardon.

Because she couldn’t, wouldn’t serve lamb intestines to a guy she was crazy about, she’d wait until she knew she was losing him, knew from the way he stopped holding her gaze, started being impatient, started being unavailable. And unkind.

And so to console herself that this man was
not
her Great Love, she would serve him the
sa cordula
as an appetizer—a small portion so as not to tip the scales in her favor (who
would
like a big portion of sheep guts?). And each time, bittersweet success. The love she was losing was not her Great Love. He was just a guy who didn’t like
sa cordula
—and didn’t love her. It made it easier when he broke up with her.

This time, though,
this
love, was different. Despite John’s pulling away. Despite his impatience. Despite the way he stopped calling her at midnight to tell her he loved her and wish her sweet dreams. She loved John Reardon. She wanted to marry John Reardon, this man she’d fallen for on a solo vacation to San Francisco, where she’d gone to get over a lesser love. This man she’d stayed for, uprooting herself from Boston, hoping to finally find her . . . destiny, what she was meant to do with her life. And she thought she’d found it in this mini family of two. She wanted to spend the rest of her life baking cookies with Lizzie every other weekend during the child’s visitation with her father; she wanted to shampoo those golden curls, push her on swings, and watch her grow. Everyone, namely her mother, had told her she was crazy for dating a newly divorced man with a kid. But Holly adored Lizzie, loved almost-stepmotherhood. And she loved John enough to wait. Though the past few months, he’d stopped referring to “some day” altogether.