A Cookbook Conspiracy (21 page)

I turned to see what he was looking at. “Oh, you mean those little notations? They’re
all through the book. They look like hieroglyphics, don’t they?”

“Yes,” he said, frowning.

“Do you think they mean something?”

“I don’t know.” He turned to another page that had similar symbols drawn up and down
the margins.

“I wonder if it’s something that cooks have always done,” I
mused. “You know? Like, maybe they mean something specific in cooking terms.”

“Maybe,” he murmured, still staring at the pages.

“I wouldn’t really know, having barely managed to concoct something that resembles
pudding.” I rested my head on his shoulder. “That concludes my cooking expertise.”

But Derek had tuned me out to scrutinize another page. When he turned it upside down
and continued staring, I sat back. “I know you. You’re serious. You think those little
squiggles actually mean something, don’t you? Some sort of code? But how can that
be? This book was written hundreds of years ago.”

He blew out a breath, then pointed to the page. “This group of symbols definitely
looks like some sort of classic code.”

“A secret recipe, maybe.”

“I doubt it.”

I glanced more closely at the page. Numerous odd-looking characters were lined up
neatly in the margins. They resembled the type of signs and symbols I’d seen in photographs
of the walls of the pyramids. Hieroglyphics. Except here in the margins, it looked
more like doodling. There were squares and triangles, astrological signs, crescent
moon shapes pointed in different directions, an eyeball or two, a few infinity signs,
oddly shaped stars, dots and dashes. And numbers. Lots of numbers in random order.

Now I was frowning. “Maybe Obedience was making notes for the next edition but wanted
to keep her revisions a secret.”

He glanced up and stared at me almost as intently as he’d studied the book. “No honor
among cooks? So she created a code to keep from having her recipes stolen? Perhaps.”

“What else could it be?”

“Probably nothing.”

“But you don’t look convinced.”

He shrugged. “No, your theory is as good as any. It’s just that…Well, it’s nothing.
Yet.” He resumed his study of the
pages, continuing to turn them upside down and sideways. After several long minutes,
he set the pages down on the table, pushed his chair back, and managed to stand with
me still in his arms.

“Is it bedtime?” I asked, in the mood for romance after cuddling in his arms all this
time.

“Not quite,” he said.

I could tell he was distracted, especially when he tipped me until I was standing
with both feet on the floor. So much for cuddling.

“Do you mind if I make a quick phone call?” Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed
the rest of the cookbook pages and walked toward his office in the second bedroom.

I laughed as I stared at his back. “Oo-kay.” The romance was over, apparently.

He stopped, chuckled sheepishly, and returned to plant a quick, hard kiss on my lips.
“Forgive me, love. I need to call my brother Dalton.”

“Oh.” I felt instant guilt for teasing him. “Is he all right?”

“Yes, he’s fine.” He looked preoccupied and he was still clutching the cookbook pages.
“But I have a few questions for him, and he’s going to want to see this.”

“How fun. Does he like to cook?”

“No, he likes to solve puzzles. He’s a cryptographer with MI6.”

“Huh. My mistake.”

He chuckled again. “It’ll only take a few minutes and I’ll be back to help you with
the dishes.”

“Sounds perfect.”

I finished the dishes, changed into my pajamas, washed my face and brushed my teeth.
Derek was still on the phone, so I sat down to watch some TV.

At some point, Derek woke me up. My head full of fuzz, I looked around and realized
I’d fallen asleep on the couch. “Your brother. What happened?”

“I’m sorry, love. My phone call took longer than I thought it would.”

“That’s okay.” I rubbed my eyes. “It’s time for bed.”

“Yes, it is.” He picked me up in his arms again and carried me into the bedroom.

“That’s nice,” I mumbled, my mouth pressed up against his shirt. “Mm, you smell good.”

He didn’t reply, but I felt him smile.

As we got into bed, he said, “Do you mind a houseguest for a few days?”

“Guess not,” I said, half asleep already. “Whoozit?”

“My brother, Dalton.”

*   *   *

L
ate the next afternoon, Dalton Stone arrived on my doorstep carrying a steel briefcase
and a small duffel bag slung over his shoulder. His jacket was wrinkled, his hair
was mussed, and he was in desperate need of a shave.

I hadn’t met Dalton Stone before, but I knew this was him—and not just because Derek
was standing there as well. No, I knew because despite his disheveled appearance,
Dalton could’ve been Derek’s twin. Both men were pure male, formidable, and simply
gorgeous. I found myself struggling for breath just staring at the two of them.

Like his brother, Dalton was tall and muscular, with dark brown hair and dark blue
eyes. Looking into those eyes, I could tell that, also like Derek, Dalton Stone was
capable of killing a man with his bare hands if he had to. He stared back at me, piercing
me with his narrowed gaze. I would have shivered in fear if I hadn’t already been
on the receiving end of that same look from Derek more than once. Instead, I smiled
at him.

“Brooklyn, I presume?” Dalton said in that same clipped British accent I found so
sexy and alluring and charming and dangerous and—

“Darling, are you all right?” Derek asked.

I blinked. “What? Yes. Fine. Good. Dalton, I’m so happy to
meet you.” I wrapped him in a big hug before pulling him into my house. “Come in,
come in. How did you get here so fast? Do you need help with your bags? You must be
starving. I thought we’d have cheeseburgers tonight. I don’t know what Derek’s told
you about my cooking, but I do make a really good cheeseburger.”

He turned and grinned at Derek. “Isn’t she lovely?”

“Yes, she is,” Derek said. “And her cheeseburgers are quite respectable.”

I frowned at him. “Respectable?”

“Fantastic,” he amended with a smile.

“That’s better.”

Dalton looked at me. “I’m not saying I’m famished, but if you’ve got a decent ale
to go with that burger, I might have to marry you.”

I glanced at Derek, who rolled his eyes. “Feel free to ignore him.”

“Impossible,” I muttered, and turned to Dalton. “It’s Derek’s ale, so you’ll have
to take up that offer with him.”

Dalton snorted and the brothers insulted each other mildly as I led the way through
the house to the second bedroom. Dalton even walked like Derek, I noticed. It was
more of a prowl than a walk, really, as though there might be enemies lurking behind
every chair.

“How did you arrive so quickly?” I asked again as Dalton plopped his duffel bag on
one of the chairs in the corner of the bedroom. He unzipped it and rummaged through
the jumble of clothing.

“Hitched a ride on a friend’s private jet.”

I nodded, impressed. “You have nice friends.”

“They’re useful, anyway,” he said, and dragged his hand through his hair in a weary
gesture. His hair was longer than Derek’s and tended to flop onto his forehead. It
was adorable, but I preferred Derek’s cleaner, close-cropped look.

Derek leaned against the doorjamb with his arms crossed.
“Darling, the
friend
he’s talking about is our brother Duncan’s wife.”

There were five Stone brothers altogether. If the others were as irresistible as these
two, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to handle all five of them together. “Your brother’s
wife owns a private jet?”

“Several, actually,” Dalton said, as he roamed the room, perused the closet, and hung
up his jacket. “Daphne’s family owns the company that makes the jets.”

“That’s handy, isn’t it,” I said.

“Indeed,” Derek murmured, and pulled me close to him. He eased his arm around my shoulder
and I leaned into him as we watched Dalton pull clothes and toiletries from his bag.

“I had holiday time coming,” Dalton said, “so I rearranged a few things and flew here
straightaway. I can’t wait to get my hands on that code.”

“It can wait,” Derek said. “Finish unpacking.”

I was starting to detect some subtle differences between the brothers. While both
men were complex and, yes, dangerous, Dalton was a few years younger and seemed a
bit more tightly wound. He still had a few rough edges, while Derek had a smooth,
classic style that I found infinitely more appealing.

Dalton zipped up his bag and stowed it behind the chair. Then he rubbed his hands
together briskly. “That’s enough tidying up. Let me see those codes.”

“You’re welcome to rest a while before dinner,” I said.

“That’s kind of you, Brooklyn, but I’d prefer to get to work.”

Good. Derek had been waiting to see if Dalton agreed with his theory or not, so the
sooner they started, the better.

“I’ll get the pages for you,” I said.

Earlier that morning, over coffee and toast, Derek had filled in a few blanks about
his brother’s visit. He’d already explained that Dalton worked as a cryptographer
in a highly secretive section of MI6, Britain’s intelligence service. Dalton dealt
with
espionage and terrorist cells, but he also enjoyed tracking down the latest conspiracy
theories and the crackpots who believed in mayhem in the name of some obscure ideology.
Dalton was brilliant at his job and had broken dozens of complicated codes over the
past few years.

“Dalton was the one responsible for foiling a major bombing attempt on Buckingham
Palace last month,” Derek had said at breakfast, his voice revealing his pride.

I thought for a minute. “I don’t remember hearing about a bombing attempt on Buckingham
Palace.”

“Exactly,” he had said, without explaining further.

I led Dalton out to the kitchen bar, where I’d left the copied pages of the cookbook.
“Here you go.”

He took one look at the pages and turned to Derek. “Where’s the book?”

“I told you, the book was stolen,” Derek said mildly.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“Of course I did,” Derek told him. “I don’t make mistakes like that. You simply don’t
remember.”

“Maybe you told me,” Dalton muttered as he riffled through the pages brusquely. “But
damn it, how was I supposed to remember every detail of our conversation? You woke
me out of a sound sleep.”

“I sent you a photo as well.”

“It was fuzzy.”

Derek snorted. “Your brain is fuzzy, mate.”

“Hell.” Dalton paced a few steps back and forth. “Shit, I should’ve—”

“Language,” I said cheerily, sounding like my mother. “Besides, the book might not
be stolen.”

Both of them turned to me and all that combined energy caused my throat to dry up.
I swallowed carefully. “It might still be somewhere in Baxter’s restaurant. We never
got the chance to
search the kitchen thoroughly, so I thought I might do it when we go there for dinner
tomorrow night. Can you work off the copies until then?”

“I’m going with you,” Dalton said immediately.

I’d lost the train of thought somehow. “Going…where?”

“To dinner. Tomorrow night. I’ll help you search.”

“Um, okay,” I said slowly. “I’ll call my sister and let her know.”

“In other words, you’re not invited,” Derek said, glowering at his brother. “But behave
yourself and we might finagle an extra invitation.”

Dalton replied with a grumble, “I’ll behave as long as we can find that damn book.”
With that, he sat down at the bar and pored over the copies of the cookbook pages.

I turned to Derek. “I’d better give Tom a call to see if he or one of his crew saw
the book while they were cleaning up.”

“Good idea, love.” Derek squeezed my shoulder before giving his brother a sharp look.
Then he walked into the bedroom office to finish some work.

I headed for my studio to make the call to Tom, hoping it wasn’t too late in the day.
I caught him just as he was leaving.

“Nope, didn’t see anything like you’re describing,” he said after I explained what
I wanted.

“Did you clean the entire restaurant or just the kitchen?” I asked.

“We concentrated on the kitchen, of course,” he said. “But I always have my guys go
over every inch of floor space in the place because you never know if some material
got tracked out by the cops’ shoes. So let’s see, we got the restaurant itself, plus
the bathrooms, the private dining room, and that little office near the kitchen.”

“Good to know.” I was glad all over again that Tom was in charge of this kind of stuff.
I hadn’t been aware of the little office,
either, so I was doubly glad I’d called him. Had Baxter hidden the book in a desk
drawer in his office? Had the cops searched that room the other night?

After thanking Tom, I hung up the phone and tried to concentrate on my work. Surveying
the mess I’d made earlier of the
Jane Eyre
, I frowned at the dusty, peeling strips of leather that lay like wounded soldiers
around the ragged, stringy text block. I’d been in the midst of pulling out the loose
threads when Dalton arrived, so I continued the job for another hour before stopping.
I still needed to clean the individual signatures and resew the pages together, but
that would have to wait until tomorrow morning. I was too excited about Dalton’s visit
to work any more today. I laid a clean white cloth over everything and turned off
the lights.

Back in the kitchen, I retrieved three wineglasses from the cupboard and Derek went
to the hall storage closet to pick out an extra-nice bottle of wine.

Dalton looked up as I was wiping spots off the glasses. His lips curved in a smile
of apology. “I was a clod earlier. Forgive me. Jet lag is hideous, and when I get
focused on something, I tend to lose my ability to interact in polite society.”

“Don’t worry about it. Derek told me about your work as a cryptographer. It sounds
intriguing.” What could be more fun than spending one’s days solving puzzles? I often
did the same thing with the books I worked on. I liked puzzles.