Turning Up the Heat: A Sizzling Modern Romance Novel

30. Kelsey

The New Yearrolled around with me in San Francisco at a trendy party and Oskar working at Mesa where Talia, Kurt, Josh, and Sergio had all gathered. I did wish I could have been there with them, but I was also grateful to have some space.

Oskar and I had been texting and calling. Not as much as we did before Christmas, but I told him I loved him every time we got off the phone.

Because I did.

But damn, he’d really pissed me off.

I was sitting in a Japanese fusion restaurant in the Mission District the Friday after New Year’s Day when I realized it was the fourth restaurant I’d reviewed in that location since I had been working at the Journal. While I remembered being there, the food was only memorable in one of the restaurants; the others all sort of blurred together.

I picked up my phone at the restaurant and called Stan. “Hey. Do you have time to talk?”

“About work stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m listening.”

I started reading more online,magazines, newspapers, some subscription services.

Freelance food writers were working everywhere, collaborating on promotional projects, signing book deals, building newsletters, showing up at the same restaurants and openings I was invited to.

One writer from LA I’d been following for years was no longer on staff at the Times and even had a podcast. I hadn’t even realized she’d moved.

I started writing down numbers.

Working freelance meant having no salary, no health insurance, and no travel or dining stipend, all of which were pretty big considerations. It also meant I would be able to live where I wanted, write what I wanted, and have the opportunity to sell my work to anyone who wanted to buy it, with potentially greater income.

While the idea of working for myself scared me, I also knew it was something that a lot of people did every day. It would also give me the time and opportunity to explore some of the book ideas I had tossed around over the years.

I didn’t talk to Oskar about it. This was something I needed to figure out myself, and he’d been frustrated when things didn’t work out like we wanted last time. I was hesitant to get his hopes up.

We didn’t bring up the situation on the phone. I got frustrated with him, feeling like he was rushing me, and he felt like I was dragging my feet. So we stopped talking about it. I knew it wasn’t healthy to avoid it, but I hated fighting. The tension when we talked now was palpable.

I was having dinner with Stan and Hanna, talking to her about some of my concerns with the changing publishing world and how it was going to affect staff writers like me.

She asked, “So what does Oskar think about all this? He’s plugged in to the national and international scene with all his contacts from school. What did he say?”

I hesitated to answer. Hanna was pretty good about keeping our friendship independent of Oskar’s and my relationship, but she was still his sister.

“I haven’t really talked to him about the freelance thing yet.”

She looked at me blankly. “Why not?”

I winced. “We had a fight on Christmas about it.”

“So he doesn’t know you’re thinking about going freelance at all?”

“You know Oskar—he’ll jump all over the idea and want me to do it yesterday. I just need some time to think about it and what it would mean for my life and my finances and my career. He just… charges ahead with everything.”

“Yes, he does.” She was holding something back, which was rare for Hanna.

I studied the grain of Stan’s new dining table and swirled my wine. “We’ve been fighting a lot every time I mention work or moving. He’s so impatient, Hanna. I know it’s only because he loves me and wants us to be together, but I feel really overwhelmed.”

I saw Hanna’s eyebrows knit together. “So Oskar doesn’t know you’re looking into freelance work at all?”

I shook my head. “No, not really.”

“So he just thinks you’re dragging ass on finding a solution to the problem and not doing anything?”

“Wait, that’s not…” I froze.

The last time we talked about it, I told him that Octavia had okayed five days in February for me to travel down to San Luis Obispo, and we hadn’t mentioned my work since.

Hanna sipped her wine. “Men are usually self-centered and selfish?—”

“Thank you, Hanna,” Stan called from the kitchen where he was making a salad.

“Except for you, obviously.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “But Oskar cut his work schedule way back and gave Victor a raise so he could travel up here more.”

I actually leaned down, banging my head on the table a little.

While I had been doing my research, lining up my ducks, and holding back telling him—thinking that Oskar would run away with the possibilities of my working freelance—he thought I’d been doing…

Nothing.

Hanna lifted an eyebrow. “If you were my girlfriend, I’d be mad.”

Oskar had been working less. He had been spending more time up here with me and Hanna and making an effort to get to know Stan. I knew he had been busting his ass helping Josh at the winery.

She put her hand on my forehead. “Kelsey, I’ll be extremely displeased if you damage my new dining table.”

I squinted at her out of the corner of my eye. “Don’t you mean Stan’s dining table?”

“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “I have no interest in denying the obvious, unlike some people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her eyes followed Stan as he walked into the dining room and put a salad on the table.

He winked at Hanna. “Dinner should be ready in about five minutes. Could you pour me a glass of wine?”

“Yes.” Hanna smiled at him.

Stan leaned down to kiss her lightly, then whispered in her ear.

She nodded, and he walked back to the kitchen. “Stan says I should back off and let you come to your own realizations, but I don’t really like waiting any more than Oskar does.”

“I’ve figured that out.”

“So here are my thoughts, which you should pay attention to. You and Oskar are perfect for each other. I don’t really know what you think you should wait for, and I’m not saying this because he’s my brother. Don’t you think you two will end up married with a small brood of children eventually?”

Trust Hanna to cut to the chase.

“Maybe.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Fine. Probably. I just?—”

“Then why the hell are you acting like you’re unsure of things? It only wastes time. That’s probably why Oskar’s frustrated.”

I didn’t really know what to say. If I was honest with myself, she was completely right.

“You know I’m right.”

Freaking mind-reading Olsons.

Stan walked into the dining room then, giving Hanna the evil eye as he set a roasted chicken on the table. He had obviously heard most of the conversation, and he gave me a sympathetic look.

He sat next to her and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “It’s good to know you take my advice to heart.”

Hanna feigned a look of innocence… badly. “What?”

I was standing nextto my grandmother as we pulled the long, bare shoots of the vines away from the thick trunks. We worked silently in the grey morning, counting out the leaf nodes that would produce new growth in the spring before cutting away the dead wood.

Pull, count, cut, toss; pull, count, cut, toss.

As we worked, the grapevines slowly lost their wild appearance, becoming more and more bare as we worked down the row. The pile of dead shoots grew behind us as we concentrated on our work.

“Why do we have to cut so much?”

My grandmother’s long grey hair was tucked under a broad-brimmed hat, and she was bundled with a thick woolen scarf to keep the chill of the fog away from her neck and face.

“You won’t get any good fruit if you leave all this dead wood on the vine.”

We worked our way silently down the row.

Pull, count, cut, toss. The curved pruning knives in our hands made quick and silent work of the old shoots.

We worked our way up the hill, finally reaching a familiar stretch of fence where young grapevines crawled up, still clinging to a few dry leaves. They were smaller than the other vines, and the shoots were thin and delicate.

“Do we cut these too?”

“Yep.” She bent down toward the new vines, reaching for a long, bare shoot.

I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “But they need those. They’re too young. Won’t they die without them?”

She looked at me then, her eyes twinkling under the brim of her hat.

“They’ve got good roots, Kelsey.” She kicked around the crumbled earth at the base of the small vines. “See? Look at the base there. They only look like new vines. Don’t you remember?”

I shook my head, and tears came to my eyes as I thought about the tender young vines facing cold nights without their shoots protecting them.

“They’re not really new.” She crouched down. “Look at the base here; it’s grafted onto this rootstock. These are strong roots; they’ve been growing here for years. The vines on top were just grafted this year, but the roots are deep.”

She smiled and reached over to cut away the tangled shoots on the new vines. “They’re not going to grow right unless you cut the old stuff away. See?” She patted my knee. “That’s the only way they’ll grow the direction they’re meant to.”

I feltthe old horse under me a moment before the smells of green grass and eucalyptus reached my nose. My grandpa rode in front of me as we made our way around the edges of the ranch, checking fences.

“Let’s head over to Perdida Creek.” He squinted into the morning sun. “I think some of the cows calved around there.”

I nodded silently as I rode on my old horse Willow over rocky hills dotted with oak trees. “Is the creek running?” It was a seasonal creek, only running in the spring and early summer.

He nodded. “Ayep. That’s why the herd’s down there. We need to bring a truck out. There’s some junk in the bottom of the creek we gotta get rid of.”

I nodded and kept my eyes on the path, watching for rattlesnakes.

We were standingby the creek, staring at what was left of my father’s brown pickup truck, twisted and bent, rusting in the bottom of the creek. The muddy water flowed past it, the ruined metal making small, swirling eddies as the current passed around and over the wreck.

In the background, I could hear the low sounds of the cows along with the quiet sucking of the calves as they nursed.

I nodded to the wreck. “How are we going to get that out of here?”

My grandpa walked around the old truck to get a better look. “It’s old. It should break up pretty easy.”

“It’ll take a few trips.”

He patted the hood of the pickup. “It’s got to be done. Otherwise it’s gonna put rust in the pond. The herd will get sick.”

She turned awayfrom me to stir the boysenberry jam bubbling on the stove. “Kelsey, I’m going to get the jars lined up. Can you skim the foam off that jam before we can it?”

“Sure, Grandma.”

“This was your father’s favorite, you know. He loved boysenberries.”

“Do you miss him?”

“I miss them all.” She smiled wistfully. “But I was lucky to have them when I did.”

“But you lost them.”

She hummed as she lined up the clear glass jars along the counter where they sparkled as the sun hit them. She counted them silently, and her strong, wrinkled hands reached down toward the steaming dishwasher to grab more. “Course I did. You don’t get to keep things forever, you know. That’s why you don’t waste time, Kelsey. You tend to dawdle, dear. Still do.”

I skimmed the foam from the top of the jam. “Am I wasting time?”

She carefully watched me. “What do you think? You know your own mind.”

I stared at her. “I don’t want to forget you.”

She lifted the ladle, scooping hot jam into the waiting jars. “Write it down, dear. You’ve always written everything down.”

“You told the best stories. I can’t tell stories like you.”

“Sure you can.” She grabbed a jar lid from the boiling water with a pair of chopsticks and placed it carefully on the waiting jar. Her hands ignored the burn as she tightened the ring and flipped the small jar over to seal on the counter. “You’re my granddaughter, aren’t you? You’ll know when you’re ready.”

I woke suddenly,sitting up in my empty bed and looking out at the dull grey skies covering San Anselmo that morning. I could smell the fragrance of boysenberry jam in the air.

I was waitingfor Felipe and Oskar in a coffee shop in Noe Valley a few days later. They were visiting a butcher shop that had just opened up, and I needed another coffee if I was going to listen to the ins and outs of bone marrow for an hour.

I liked bone marrow, but I couldn’t talk about it for more than ten minutes.

I heard tapping on the window, and when I looked up, I saw Austin Smith’s smiling face through the window. I smiled back and waved him inside.

I hadn’t heard a word from him in months, so it actually felt nice to see him. I’d forgotten he lived in Noe Valley. I kept a bright smile plastered on as he entered the shop and walked over to my table.

His hair was even puffier than I remembered. He was wearing a pair of slouchy oversize jeans, an Animals Are Friends, Not Food shirt, and a Patagonia vest.

Was Austin in his hippy era?

“Kelsey!” He smiled. “What a nice surprise. What are you doing in my neighborhood?

“I forgot about you.” I caught myself. “I mean—I forgot you lived in this neighborhood. How are you?” I motioned to the chair opposite mine, and he took a seat.

“I’m excellent, thank you. I’ve been meaning to call you. I’m sure you’ve noticed that the charitable contributions in your name have lagged, and I wanted to explain.”

“Excuse me?”

Wait.

Had Austin been responsible for all those strange charities? That did not sound right. My fuckery detector—finely honed after years of living with Josh—started to go off. “You were sending money to those charities?”

“Yes, of course,” he continued. “Your friend suggested it, and I had no idea how fulfilling it would be. I can see why you’re so passionate about nonprofits and getting involved.”

“My friend. Right.” I was nodding and smiling.

Though I did contribute to regular charities, only the animal shelter could be considered local, and I hadn’t even heard of most of the organizations I had received cards from. Rutabagas? Heterochromia Iridum? Save the Sea Lions?

Austin was still talking. “…it’s just that when I finally got involved—really involved—with BAOARR, I realized how much I was missing in my life.”

“Bore?”

“Of course. Bay Area Obscure Animal Rescue and Refuge. It’s an extraordinary organization. Just the other day, Sunflower was working with an interesting couple who does chameleon rescue.”

“Chameleon rescue?” This had to be Josh. Possibly Felipe. I would suspect Oskar, but he had never even met Austin.

Austin was still talking. “As you can imagine, chameleons are hard to find. And I told Sunflower I’d be able to redesign the website to accept donations, but obviously that would be taking a more active role in the organization.”

“That’s… fascinating?” I had no idea what he’d just told me, but he looked pleased.

“Once Sunflower and I became involved, I felt it was inappropriate to continue making donations in your name. But you’ll be happy to know that I’m much more involved with the day-to-day operations of the organization. Their website is more streamlined. Meeting Sunflower has been the most rewarding part.”

“Sunflower?” How on earth did they even get this idea? I doubt Josh would have sought Austin out on his own. Had Austin been in contact with him?

Austin was still talking, his puffy hair lifting in the breeze, one flap of it standing at attention like a sail catching wind. “I know this must be shocking for you, but I think it’s for the best. I truly think that Sunflower and I may be soulmates.”

“Soulmates?” I seemed to have been reduced to one-word responses in the weirdest conversation Austin and I had ever had. And that was saying something.

Austin had found his soulmate. That was a strange and somewhat disturbing thought, but then I’d never heard Austin talk this much. Sunflower must be good for him.

“This must be a shock. Can I buy you another cup of coffee?”

I nodded. “Coffee? Sure. Coffee sounds good, Austin.”

He smiled softly. “It’s the least I can do.”

I narrowed my eyes and watched him walk to the counter. Were those feather earrings?

He brought me another coffee and sat across from me. Austin looked really, really happy. I had never seen him this happy when we were together, and how awesome was that? Despite the fuckery that my brother, probably Felipe, and other unknown coconspirators had put him through, he’d found his soulmate.

I decided then and there that he was also going to remain blissfully ignorant.

I smiled at him and reached across to squeeze his hand. “I’m really happy for you. We just weren’t meant to be, Austin. Sunflower sounds wonderful.”

He smiled, and his eyes were beaming. “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

I spit out my coffee a little, quickly picking up a napkin to dab at my shirt. Thank God I was wearing black. “Wow, that’s… Wow. That’s fast, isn’t it?”

“You know, Kelsey” —his forehead wrinkled earnestly— “when you find your passion, why wait? When you find your soulmate, what’s the point in wasting time?”

I frowned a little. “That’s actually insightful.” I was shocked and more than a little confused that the universe had decided to send this particular messenger.

The dream of my grandparents days before.

Austin’s happy face.

I took a deep breath and smiled, feeling absolutely clear for the first time in months.

Austin and I spent a little more time chatting and catching up before I turned toward the door, hearing the bell ding. I saw Oskar and Felipe walk in, laughing at something.

I glanced at Austin. This should be interesting.

My two guys stood there, mouths gaping in tandem when they spotted me and Austin.

“Oskar!” Austin stood up with a smile.

“Austin?” Felipe glanced at me.

“Oskar?” I looked at Oskar.

“Austin!” Oskar gave him a huge smile.

“Felipe?” I glared at Felipe.

“Kelsey…?” Felipe’s eyes went wide and pleading.

“Austin?” I turned to him.

“Kelsey.” Oskar bent down to kiss me right on the mouth.

I nodded. “Oskar.”

Yeah. This was all Oskar, and Felipe had been dragged in. Probably not all that unwillingly no matter what his expression was saying.

Austin looked confused. “Kelsey?” He looked at Felipe, then at Oskar.

Oskar sat in my chair and pulled me onto his lap. “Good to see you, Austin.”

Felipe pulled a chair over to sit next to us. “Kelsey, I can explain.”

“But do you want to?” I looked at Austin. “When people are happy?”

Austin murmured, “I have no idea what’s going on.” He looked at Oskar, then at Felipe. “So you and Felipe…?”

“Yes,” Oskar said. “Very close.”

Austin looked at me. “And Kelsey?”

Oskar put an arm around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. “Love, right?”

Austin frowned and nodded. “Right.”

The bell at the door chimed, and a thin woman with black hair, kohl-lined eyes, and black-and-green hair walked into the coffee shop. “Austin?”

“Sunflower!” He stood up. “You’re here.”

“Sunflower?” I blinked. Sunflower was dressed in a black coat, oversized plaid pants, and Doc Martens.

“So not what I was expecting,” Oskar murmured.

“Same.”

Austin was all smiles. “Sunflower, these are some old friends of mine—Kelsey, Oskar, and Felipe.”

Sunflower nodded. “Cool. Nice to meet you.” She looked at the three of us. “Wow. You guys are beautiful. Love is love, right?”

I blinked. Wait. Did she think…?

“Love is love.” Austin waved and pulled his confused girlfriend toward the door. “Come by for the street fair next week.” He glanced at Sunflower. “We’re working at the BAOARR booth.”

I watched them leave, then turned to Oskar, who was nuzzling my neck.

He smiled innocently. “You won’t believe the bones we found at the butcher.”