Baby Makes Three

“After the event you can walk away,” he told her. “And I imagine it would be best if you did.”

She dipped her pinkie in the red liquid and touched it to her tongue. “I imagine it would, too.” She hopped down from the counter and opened the cupboard to the left of the gas stove. She sprinkled the soup with balsamic vinegar and a couple of twists from the black-pepper grinder and tasted again. She nodded, so he guessed it was better.

“Staff?” she asked.

Gabe didn’t answer and her black eyes pinned him to the wall. “Staff?” she repeated.

“A young guy with some excellent past experience.” Gabe watched the wine in his glass instead of meeting her eyes and hoped that kid who’d been fired from McDonald’s could be trusted around knives and headstrong chefs.

“I’ll need more,” she said.

“You going to take the job?”

“Not so fast,” she said, pulling down the kosher salt from the cupboard and giving the soup a few hefty pinches. “What are you going to pay me?”

He braced himself. “Twenty—”

“Nope.”

“You’ll only be there two months.”

“I won’t be there at all for twenty grand.”

“Okay.” He sighed, having expected that. His budget for a far less experienced chef was forty grand for the year. He was blowing everything on this gamble—he’d have to take money from the landscaping funds to pay another chef when she left. “Thirty. For two months’ work, I won’t give you more.”

She tasted the soup again, nodded definitively and took it off the burner.

“Are you going to have any?” Gabe asked, gesturing to the heavy pot.

“Nope. And I won’t go to your inn for thirty grand, either.”

“Thirty-five and some shares in the place.”

Her eyes burned fever bright. He knew what shares represented. Income. Success. And after two months she wouldn’t have to work for it.

It would help, maybe after they split ways again. Make it so she wouldn’t have to work at a terrible job or share her house with a stranger.

“You know it’s a good deal. I’ve never had a restaurant not turn a profit.”

She rubbed her forehead and he knew he had her. It was just a matter of sealing the deal.

“It would be a fresh start, Al.”

Her nickname warmed the air.

“It hardly seems fresh.” She laughed. “You’re my ex-husband and this is an old plan of ours. It feels like trouble.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” He laughed, too. “But you’d have total run of the kitchen.”

She scoffed. “Right.”

“I’m serious, I’ll be very busy—”

“Getting in my way.” She looked at him for a brief moment and all the problems in their relationship—the fights and clashing egos—for some reason, in this room with the wine, he felt…nostalgic for them. Those nights when he made her so mad she threw things at him, broke plates against the floor and ruined meals with her temper. The long days when he wouldn’t talk to her, giving her a silent treatment so cold and deep that the only way to thaw both of them…

She cleared her throat, seeming uncomfortable, as if she’d been thinking the same thing. “I’ll do it.”

Gabe felt both jubilant and wary. Is this the right thing? Am I making a deal with the devil? “I’m so glad.”

“But—” she held up a finger “—I’m out of there the second that wedding is over and I run the kitchen. Not you.”

He nodded, stood and held out his hand.

“I’m serious, Gabe. I won’t have you trying to take things over. You hired me to be executive chef—”

“I promise.” He put his hand on his chest and bowed his head slightly. “I absolutely promise to stay out of your way as long as you promise to try to be a team player. My dad and Max—”

“Your dad and Max are there?” she asked, bright joy filtering through the dark clouds on her face.

“They are and they’ll be very glad to see you.”

She smiled and held out her hand. “I can be a team player.”

“And I can stay out of your way.”

They shook on it and Gabe had to wonder who was going to break their promise first.

PATRICK MITCHELL watched his oldest son walk away whistling.

Whistling! And after the bomb Gabe had just laid on them, watching him whistle was akin to watching him hit himself in the head with a ball-peen hammer.

“Alice?” Patrick, incredulous, turned to his youngest son. “Max? Alice was your idea?”

Max ignored him, or pretended to, and poured more eggshell paint in the trays. He practiced being oblivious as though there was a contest.

“Son.” Patrick tried again as Max dipped his roller in the paint and began applying their last coat on the last wall of the kitchen. “I leave you alone with him for ten minutes and this is what you do? Are you trying to ruin this inn?”

“He needed a chef.” Max shrugged, but there was a smile on his lips. “Alice is a chef.”

Patrick nodded. “She is, sure. But she’s also pure trouble for that boy.”

“I thought you liked Alice,” Max said.

“I do. I love her like a daughter but they are trouble for each other and she is the last thing your brother needs.”

“Please.” Max looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but still that devil’s smile was on his lips. If the situation weren’t so dire, Patrick would be happy to see Alice. “They’re grown-ups. They can make it work. At least we’ll eat well while she’s here. I’m about a week away from liver failure after eating your cooking for the past few months.”

Patrick’s mouth dropped open. “Where did I go wrong?” He pretended to be upset, when really these past few months had been the happiest of his life. This teasing was their old shtick. Kept them from ever having to address anything head-on—such as emotion. Such as the past. “I’m supposed to be growing senile on a porch somewhere with grandkids on my knee. Not working manual labor for one son and roommates with the other.”