Chapter 14
I hadn’t expected to enjoy myself so much with Charles.
I mean, I’d enjoyed myself plenty in our first encounter, but as company went, he was brilliant too.
He had this calmness about him. An ease that lifted some of the burden I had heaped on myself these last few weeks, fretting about money, ACE , and London.
Things didn’t feel so insurmountable when I was with him.
Still, there was that lingering hesitation that we were doing something illicit.
And that if and when we got caught, I’d have hell to pay with his mother.
Though it was difficult to feel guilty when we were having so much fun together.
After all, there was no rule against friendship, right?
Now I was strangely looking forward to dinner.
After I got back to the house with the new provisions, I jumped right back in the kitchen to get started.
Tonight, I would really aim to impress, with a venison carpaccio, beet salad, saffron ravioli with wild mushrooms, and my classic mini carrot cake for dessert.
The first step was prepping my pasta dough.
A tip I’d picked up from watching my favorite TV chef, Marcus Lee, was throwing a little turmeric in there for that perfect deep yellow color.
Once it was prepped and resting in the fridge, I readied my carpaccio.
Using a beautiful venison loin, I trimmed the fat, sinew, and silver skin, then wrapped it in plastic wrap and popped it in the freezer to harden for a couple of hours.
That gave me time to roast the mushrooms, then cool them for my ravioli and roll out my dough.
The key to any dinner service was timing, knowing exactly when to start my sauce so it was working while I built my ravioli, then taking my loin out to slice. I had all the plates spinning in my head, right on time, until Ali strode into the kitchen twenty minutes before service was due to start.
“Ravioli,” she said apprehensively, eyeing the stove while I dressed and composed the beet salads on each plate. “Hmm.”
“What?” I said, dread growing in my gut. “What’s wrong with ravioli? Does Mrs. Hawthorne not eat pasta?”
A preposterous thing to say, but people were picky and I’d long ago stopped trying to reason with their stomachs.
“No, no,” Ali said, forcing some lightness in her voice in a way that wasn’t easing my nerves at all.
“What?” I snapped too forcefully. “Tell me.”
“There will be three more for dinner,” she said, and I watched the regret form on her face. “Friends of Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne.”
“And I’m just hearing this now?” My voice was bordering on shrill while my hands hung in midair, stained red from the beets.
“I only just found out myself.”
Really, it wasn’t her fault. And a part of me wondered if this was intentional. Like some sick test from Mrs. Hawthorne to break me. Spring three extra guests on me at the last minute to throw my whole meal into chaos, and watch what happened.
This must’ve been how she’d chased off the last chef. Only I wasn’t in a position to quit. Which meant now I had to make more dough, sauté more mushrooms, and build ravioli for three more people. I had plenty of ingredients, but precious little time.
“Is there anything I can do?” Ali offered, sympathetic.
“No,” I snapped too harshly. “I need to work.”
I’d never moved so fast in my life. Tossing mushrooms in a pan, then pivoting to combining eggs and flour.
Giving my dough barely any time to rest while I started on another sauce and sliced off some more loin.
What began as a perfect dinner was now a rush job.
I was barely taking my hands off each plate before the waitstaff took them away.
When I’d sent out the last piece of carrot cake—slicing the pieces extra thin to make it stretch—I sunk to the floor and gulped down an entire bottle of water.
“Anything?” I asked Ali when she came to check on me.
“Mrs. Hawthorne remarked that the portions of cake seemed ‘on the stingy side’,” she said tightly.
I sensed she was reluctant to admit as much. Knowing it only drove the knife in further.
“Great.” Maybe if I’d had some warning, I could have made more.
“And she reiterated that she told you this job would require flexibility, and you should expect to be on your toes.”
Wonderful. This service just kept getting better.
Like Ali read the defeat on my face, she offered me a sympathetic smile. “Really, don’t take it to heart. Mrs. Hawthorne can be far more forgiving than she lets on.”
I chuckled, grabbing us another couple of water bottles from the fridge. “I find that hard to believe.”
“No, really.” She took the bottle I offered her and leaned against the island. “When I started, I almost didn’t last the month.”
I gulped down half the bottle, sweating from all sorts of uncomfortable places. “What happened?”
Ali cringed with embarrassment. “It was Independence Day weekend and I’d driven six hours in holiday traffic to open the beach house in the Hamptons for their arrival.
Stocked the kitchen, made the beds. Everything they’d require.
Then I waited at the airport for their plane to land, until I got an angry phone call demanding to know why I was late. ”
I stared at her, puzzled and waiting for the punchline.
“They had touched down in Martha’s Vineyard an hour ago!”
“No!” I gasped.
“Trust me, I got an earful. I thought she’d fire me on the spot.”
“But you’re still here.”
She nodded, tucking a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. “She simply told me to get on a flight to the island and we proceeded on. There were a few difficult days, but ultimately, Mrs. Hawthorne gave me the opportunity to prove myself.”
“Teachable moment, huh?”
“Exactly.” Ali straightened and tucked the loose ends of her shirt into her waistband. “In good news, the family will be out again tomorrow. You’ll have the day off.”
Then she left me to sulk.
I was utterly defeated as I cleaned the kitchen and washed the dishes. Part of me expected to get a termination letter under my door the next morning. Be out by noon. But the order to pack up my stuff never came.
As I lay in bed well after ten the next morning, without even showering or brushing my teeth yet, full-on wallowing, there was a sudden knock at my door. I thought about ignoring it. Pretending I wasn’t home. But they kept knocking.
“Yeah, okay,” I called. “I’m coming.”
I glanced out the front window and saw Charles standing on the other side.
Holy shit.
I hid behind the door. Hair greasy. Breath atrocious. In my very least attractive pajamas.
“What do you want?” I shouted through the door.
He was supposed to be gone all day. What the hell was he doing outside my cottage?
“Aren’t you going to open the door?” he answered.
“No.”
“No?”
“No!”
Again, he knocked. Louder. “Elle, come on. Open up.”
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to invite you on a little excursion,” he said. “Come on, at least open the door.”
Ugh, this was stupid. Yelling at each other through the door. I felt like an idiot.
“I’m not decent, so I’m going to unlock the door, but you have to promise to wait ten seconds before you come in.”
“I mean, it’s not really anything I haven’t seen,” he teased.
“Ten seconds!” I shouted back. “Promise!”
I pictured that crooked smirk he made when he found me difficult. “Fine. I promise.”
Tentatively, I unlocked the deadbolt, then sprinted to my bedroom and slammed the door shut.
I didn’t wait to hear the front door open before I got in the shower to wash my hair and then out to brush my teeth and get dressed.
After I’d blow-dried my hair, part of me hoped he might’ve gotten bored and left, but no.
When I walked out of my bedroom, in a cute sweatshirt and my most flattering pair of jeans, he was still sitting on my couch, dressed in only a casual pair of house sweats, like he’d just woken up himself.
“So,” he said, totally undeterred. “Got any plans today?”
Only if sulking counted as plans. “Not really.”
“Great.” He jumped to his feet. “Then we’re hitting the slopes. I’ve got a whole day planned. It’s time to introduce you to what we call fun around here.”
“A whole day, huh? That seems like a big step.”
“What’s wrong? Don’t think I can hold your interest?”
I shrugged.
Charles flashed a crooked smile. “Is that a dare?”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m going to have to pass.”
His face creased with concern. “What’s wrong? You’re giving me less shit than usual.”
I debated how honest I wanted to be with him. In the end, I suppose I felt we had built a certain level of trust. I mean, if he’d wanted to rat me out to his mom, he would’ve done so by now.
“Your mom’s not too impressed with me,” I said, crossing the room to sink into the couch beside him. “I kind of botched brunch the other day, and I guess she wasn’t thrilled with dinner last night, either.”
“Seriously? I thought dinner was fantastic. That ravioli was unreal.”
“Yeah?” My little culinary heart went pitter-patter at the compliment. “Well, your mom definitely didn’t think so.”
“She’s just enjoying torturing you. Plus, she has impossible standards. Don’t take it personally,” he said, turning on the couch to face me.
“Kind of hard not to.”
My food was an extension of myself. Every plate I sent out was like a chunk of me I passed around for praise or ridicule. Which more than once made me wonder why I chose this life for myself. And the answer was always that I just wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.
“I think it was growing up a pro athlete,” Charles said, leaning his head on the hand he had propped up on the couch cushion.
“My grandparents had her on ski teams from the time she was five years old. They were relentless. Always training and pushing her to be better. Nothing was ever good enough.”
“Sounds rough,” I agreed.
Pressure could really mess with a person, turn them into something ugly. It was a defense mechanism. I’d seen plenty of it in kitchens. Maybe even succumbed myself once or twice. Where we didn’t bend, we broke.
“Don’t get me wrong. My grandparents are great people.
But as parents, I think they did a number on her.
Got wrapped up in it, you know? My mom, she really doesn’t mean it, I think, but she tends to take it out on everyone else.
Like, she never pushed Amelia and me into sports or whatever when we were kids, but it’s always been next to impossible to get a compliment out of her.
Trust me, I know how tough it is feeling like nothing you can ever do is good enough. ”
Much as he smiled through the words, the pain in them was evident.
I sensed he’d spent a life searching for her approval, and always falling just short.
Still, I knew how much she cared for him.
Mrs. Hawthorne wouldn’t be so adamant about these upcoming events being perfect if it didn’t mean a lot to her to honor her son.
“So . . .” I said, my resistance faltering. I guess I just wanted to make Charles smile. “Hitting the slopes, huh?”
It worked.