The Cook's Secret Ingredient

“But,” Edmund continued, “considering that her fortune-telling parlor was inside her home, which was on the small side, a postage stamp, really, I left her a thousand dollars in cash anonymously. She deserved it.”

The head shaking was back. “Right, Dad. I’m sure that’s how she hooked, lined and sunk her wealthy clients, pretending to care, finding their pasts just so touching, and fully knowing they’d load up her mailbox with cash and gifts. Payment enough—ha.”

“Could you be more cynical?” Edmund said, once again covering little Danny’s ears and making the boy giggle.

“I’m not cynical, Dad. I’m realistic.”

“Who’s ready for desserty-werty?” Edmund said to Danny, kissing his soft little cheek. “I know I am!”

“Me!” Danny shouted.

Olivia glanced at Carson, who was brooding in his seat. She’d say for this round, each man had scored a point each. They both made sense.

Carson let out a breath and shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest.

Edmund stood and lifted Danny out of his high chair and set him down. “Sweets, why don’t you go play with your toys for a few minutes until Mrs. Hilliard brings out dessert.”

The boy went running for his toy chest, surrounded by brightly colored bean bags and low bookshelves.

“Right after I overheard that young lady telling her friend about finding true love,” Edmund said, “I started having all these strange feelings.” He glanced at Carson. “About wanting that for myself. I loved your mother, Carson. Very much. The last eighteen months especially, I’ve found myself changing, becoming very family-oriented when I wasn’t before.”

Carson glanced out the window, but Olivia could tell he was listening.

“After five years as a widow,” Carson continued, “with a new appreciation for loved ones, I found myself longing to find love again. And so I made an appointment with Madam Miranda to see what she might say about my chances.”

Carson let out a deep breath. “It’s not that I don’t want you to find love again, Dad. I just don’t want you to go on some crazy wild-goose chase and end up getting hurt by a gold digger.”

“I know you care, Carson,” Edmund said, his tone reverent. “And I appreciate that you do. But I believed Madam Miranda. I consider myself a pretty good judge of character and that woman looked me in the eye with truth.”

It was like a hug. After Carson’s criticism of her mother, after her own years and years of trying to find some rational explanation for her mother’s abilities, to hear her last client say this with conviction in his voice was like the warm hug that Olivia had needed for six weeks. Her only other family member—Aunt Sarah, very likely Edmund Ford’s second great love—was somewhere out there, long out of hugging distance.

“Will you stay for dessert?” Edmund asked her.

She took another glance at Carson. The man was scowling. His plan to have her derail his father’s belief in her mother’s fortune hadn’t exactly worked.

“I’d better get going. Thank you for dinner,” she said. “I’m so glad we got to meet.”

“Well, rest assured that I will make good on your mother’s prediction for me,” Edmund said. “I will find my green-eyed, hair-cutting Sarah.” Olivia smiled and he took both her hands in his. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Olivia. I know how it feels to lose someone you love so deeply.”

What a dear man he was. “Thank you.”

“I’ll see you out,” Carson said between gritted teeth.

“Bye, Danny,” Olivia said, smiling at the toddler.

“Bye!” Danny said with a smile and a wave and his grandfather joined him in his toy area.

As she and Carson walked through the marble foyer and out the front door, Olivia could tell Carson was waiting until they were outside to let her have it for not backing him up. She could feel the tension in him.

But all he said, while looking around the circular drive, was “Where is your car?”

“I walked, actually. My car is almost fifteen years old and might not have made it up the hill to the drive.”

He seemed surprised. “I’ll walk you home. Let me just tell my dad and Danny I’ll be gone for a while.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—”

“I insist,” he said.

Now he’d have a half hour to give her an earful about how she’d messed up the one thing he wanted.

* * *

“I suppose you feel like I got to eat that amazing rosemary chicken and roasted potatoes and perfectly timed asparagus for nothing,” Olivia said as they headed down the hill toward town.

Carson raised an eyebrow and glanced at her, struck again by how lovely she was. She had a delicate, fine-boned face and her long light brown hair framed it in waves. The cool breeze blew her sweater against her full breasts and he found himself sucking in a breath at how sexy she was. Flower-appliqué felt skirt and yellow cowboy boots and all. He realized he was staring at her and glanced ahead at the twinkling lights in the distance, where the shops and restaurants of Blue Gulch Street were just winding down. How could he be attracted to her?

“Meaning, I don’t think your dad will give up on the quest to find this woman,” Olivia said.

“Well, I appreciated that you came and were fair,” Carson said. “It’s not like you were necessarily on either our sides.” He felt her looking at him. “And I don’t think he’ll give up, either. I’ve tried for two weeks now, ever since he first mentioned it to me. You were my last hope.”

“Two weeks? My mom’s been gone for six, and I know their appointment was just days before she passed away.”

“He said he tucked the fortune away, let himself really think about it, and then decided he was ready to see if it was possible, if there really could be a second great love out there.”

“Carson?” she said, darting a glance at him. “Is the reason you’re so against his trying to find the woman because of your mother?”

“My mother died five years ago. I don’t begrudge my father love or companionship. It’s the fortune-telling aspect that I have problems with.”

“My mom tried to keep a list of all the marriages she was responsible for. Her last count was three hundred twelve.”

Please. “I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t believe much,” she said.

That wasn’t true. He believed in a lot. In his love for his son. In doing his job and helping bring criminals to justice by tracking them down for the police. In the way Olivia Mack’s big brown eyes drew him, making him unable to look away from her face.

Olivia looked past him toward the beautiful horse pasture. The thoroughbreds weren’t out tonight. “Did you grow up in that house?” she asked.

“No, I grew up in Oak Creek.” A town over, Oak Creek was the fancy cousin of Blue Gulch, filled with estate ranches and mansions. “My father sold the family house a year after my mother died. He said the memories were killing him and he needed a fresh start and had always liked Blue Gulch with its quaint mile-long downtown.”

“Ah,” she said. “That’s why I haven’t seen you around. I think just about everyone in town has been to the food truck in the two weeks it’s been open.”

“I meant to tell you—the shrimp po’boy was pretty darn good. I have no doubt that word of mouth will bring in business from the surrounding towns.”

She smiled. “Thanks. My mother’s business worked that way, too. Word of mouth brought in client after client, just as it did with your dad. Relative and friends came in from neighboring states, too, for a chance to meet with Madam Miranda.”

“So tell me how this supposedly works. Your mother had this magic ability to predict the future but it wasn’t passed down to you?”

“According to my mother, all the women on her side of the family have a gift,” she practically mumbled.

“What number am I thinking of?” he asked.

She smiled. “I have no idea.”

“So what is your gift?” he asked.

“That’s a lovely tree,” she said, eyeing the weeping willow at the edge of the Ford property. She clearly didn’t want to talk about this.

He leaned toward her. “You can read minds. You can move objects with your eyes. You can make yourself invisible.”

She laughed. “None of the above. I’m not sure I want to talk to about it, Carson. I’ve struggled with believing it myself, but based on what I’ve seen with my own eyes, I seem to be able to affect people with my cooking.”

What? “Your cooking?”

She nodded. “Aside from running the Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen food truck during the week, I’m a personal chef. I seem to be able to change moods and lift hearts with my food.”

She glanced at him, and he tried to make his expression more neutral but the disappointment punching him in the stomach made that impossible.

“Not what you want to hear, I know,” she said. “But this is my family. This is me. I’m not saying I understand it or even want it, but I seem to have this...gift.”

He resumed walking, shoving his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “You made me a shrimp po’boy. What effect did that have on me?”

“I don’t think any. Which is unusual.”

He was disappointed. For a moment there, despite everything, he’d felt drawn to this woman. But here she was, spouting the same nonsense her mother had. He wanted to walk away, but he wasn’t going to just abandon her in the evening on the sidewalk, even in very safe Blue Gulch. He’d been raised to be a gentleman.

So he’d play along. Maybe he’d trip her up, get her to admit how ridiculous the idea was. Lifting hearts with her food? Lord. “So how do you set this up? You offer customers a chance to turn their frown upside down for an extra five bucks?”

She shot him a glare. “Did I say one word to you when you ordered? No. I don’t charge extra. I just get a sense of what someone needs and I infuse the food naturally. Maybe an insecure person will get a boost of confidence. A hurting person will feel a bit stronger.”

“And a pissed-off man like me, worried about my father wasting his time and energy on some crazy fortune? Why didn’t the po’boy change my mood?”

She bit her lip and looked down at the ground. “I really don’t know.”

“Shocker.”

“You don’t have to be rude,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

Right then, under the darkening sky, the combination of her hurt expression and how alone she seemed made him feel like a heel. “Sorry. I’m just...my father is new to me, Olivia. My whole life, until my mother died, my father was a stranger I barely saw. Work was the most important thing in his life. Now, he’s a different person. Kinder, interested in family, in people, in the community and world around him. I once thought he had no heart, and now he has too much heart. You see how he is with Danny.”

She tilted her head. “Can a person have too much heart? He’s wonderful with Danny. A dream grandpa.”

“All that extra heart means a lot more room to be hurt and easily swindled.” He stopped walking for a moment, struck by what he’d just said. He hadn’t realized how worried he was that his father would be hurt—not just swindled. The man who made Danny laugh and shout “yay!” whenever Carson mentioned they were going to see grandpa was not going to get that heart stepped on by a con artist.

“I think my mother meant every word of that fortune, Carson.”

Why was she so frustrating? Who cared if Madam Miranda believed in her phony “gift”? There was no such thing as predicting the future. There was probability and possibility and plain old-fashioned guesses. But there was no crystal ball. “Right, Olivia. So somewhere out there is a green-eyed woman named Sarah in a hair salon with some ridiculous blow-dryer tattoo. And she’s my supposedly my father’s second great love.”

Olivia nodded. She seemed about to say something, then looked away.

“Well, I’m not going to let my father go on some wild-goose chase and let some swindler snow my dad for his money. I finally have my dad. I’m not going to let him get hurt.”

“Or you could have a little faith, Carson Ford.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’d laugh but I don’t want to be rude again.”

She lifted her chin. “I live just down this street,” she said, pointing to Golden Way. “Please thank your father for his hospitality.” Then she stalked off.

He watched her walk to the second house on the left, a tiny yellow cottage with a white picket fence and a bunch of wind chimes. A black-and-white cat was sitting on the porch and wrapped around her legs, the yellow-brown cowboy boots. Olivia bent down and scratched the cat behind the ears, then picked it up and gave it a nuzzle before carrying it inside.

When the door closed, he felt strangely bereft, the lack of her so startling that he wanted to knock on the door and argue with her a little more just to be near her.

He had to clamp down on that feeling. He’d been through the wringer with his ex-wife and had no interest in feeling anything for a woman. Everything he had, all the mush and gush he had left, went to his son. Olivia Mack was likely in on her mother’s scam, though she did strike him as honest, and Carson considered himself a pretty good judge of character, of sizing someone up.

She wasn’t going to help dissuade his father from heartbreak and a big time-waster. Which meant he had to forget Olivia Mack and the way she got under his skin.

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