Luscious (13 page)

She walked over to the sink where the strained beef stock was sitting in an ice bath. She couldn’t resist dipping a spoon into the still steaming liquid. She blew carefully, then sipped, amazed by the pure beef essence.

The flavors were all right there, but not overpowering. The stock had backbone, but would effortlessly adapt itself to a soup or risotto without adding aggressive notes of onion, celery, or carrot.

It was perfect. Inspiring, even.

It would make a beautiful soup. Suddenly she wanted to make a more elaborate dessert too, something to complement the
amaretti
cookies, something creamy, but light. Something…sexy? She let ideas play in her mind as she headed for the walk-in.

Ice cream? No, they’d had that last night and it wouldn’t have time to freeze.

As she passed the stairs, she noticed a pile of pumpkins in a basket on the floor. Would crème brûlée, a favorite at Chameleon, be too heavy after lasagna? The
zucche
would be delicious roasted, pureed, baked in the thinnest sheet of custard, and coated with an amber ice of caramelized sugar. Crème brûlée was easy to make, but did she have enough time to cook the pumpkins? She eyed the clock. Barely, but if she ran out of time they could eat them tomorrow.

Enough doubts. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It had been a long time since she had felt truly inspired to cook and she was going to go for it.

Swiftly, she attacked the pumpkins to get them ready for roasting. When they were in the oven, she cruised the walk-in, looking for inspiration for her soup. It needed to be gloriously simple, a soup that would tease the appetite but leave room for the substantial lasagna, something that would showcase the purity of the broth but also stimulate the imagination. Perhaps if she made an excellent soup, the peace between her and her mother would continue until the end of the week when she told her about Chameleon.

She felt chilled, although the walk-in was only forty degrees. Even if she made the best soup in Italy, her mother was not going to be happy with her. Resolutely, she focused on the joy again. Who wouldn’t be optimistic at the sight of the beautiful array of vegetables in the cooler? The radicchio looked like a bouquet of crumpled purple roses; so convoluted and crisp, it burst with life. The fennel fronds were soft and feathery. She wanted to brush them against her skin. Even the more common produce like celery and carrots seemed firmer, brighter and sharper. Her mother could write the book on fresh, local, and seasonal, that was for sure. She gathered what she needed and took it back to her station.

She worked slowly and deliberately, humming a bit as her knife worked through the vegetables to make the
battuto
, so much like the French
mirepoix
, but finer and with garlic, of course. The
battuto
reduced celery, carrot, and onion to their essences and then carried them through the dish. With guilt, she realized she hadn’t made one since her basic skills class at the Culinary Arts College.

As she chopped, a prickle of anxiety made her heart stutter in her chest. What if she couldn’t finish her soup in time? What if it was unremarkable? What if her custard scrambled? Or was pale and wan? Insipid? For a moment her knife stopped moving and she felt locked in place by the same kind of pressure that had paralyzed her in New York.
Stop
it. It’s just food
. No one was expecting anything of her. She could walk out of the kitchen right now having accomplished more than had been asked of her.

With surprise, she realized she didn’t want to leave. She
wanted
to cook. Her heart skipped another beat, but this time it was because of excitement. She began to chop again, remembering how much pleasure Sean had taken in the simple Italian meal last night. She wanted it to be her food that brought him pleasure.
Only
her
food?

No, not just her food. As soon as she got the custards in the oven, she would go to the tasting room and ask Gia to pair wines with tonight’s menu, although she was going to make sure they didn’t drink too much tonight.
Maybe
then
she
could
finally
get
laid.
The thought popped into her head and she froze, then she laughed, surprised she felt no panic.

She distinctly remembered the utter relaxation she had felt as she fit her body to his right before she fell asleep.
Right
before
you
used
him
as
a
bed, you mean
. If she had gotten any closer to him, they would have become one person.

Exactly. The beast with two backs.

She snorted. Naturally, the first bit of Shakespeare that came to her would be that one. Her hands had been busy with the knife while she was thinking, and the
battuto
was ready. She heated olive oil in the pan to fry the pancetta. When it was crispy, she removed it and began to sweat the vegetables. The fragrance of her childhood wrapped itself around her. She chopped fennel and more garlic, glorying in the beauty of the simple ingredients.

As she julienned the remaining carrots for the sheer pleasure of feeling her knife move, she felt an ease she hadn’t enjoyed for months, maybe years. She felt drunk with the joy of creating something without worrying about how much it was costing, how long it was taking, or if her time wouldn’t be better spent doing something else.

Keeping Chameleon in the black had slowly eaten away her joy for cooking. Making a dish for the pure luxury of the experience or the quality of the products had fallen off her radar when she was faced with the necessities of employee scheduling and calculating food costs and payroll. It hadn’t helped that after Marlene left the line and moved to the bakeshop, she’d been afraid to leave Keith alone. All the denial in the world couldn’t hide the fact that he couldn’t hit medium rare with a baseball bat. They had been racking up customer complaints right and left before she’d fired him.

Leaving all that carnage behind her was a revelation. Time, usually her biggest enemy in the kitchen, now felt like a welcome challenge. She felt energized by her race against the clock.

She added crushed red pepper flakes to the soup and stepped back to reach for a tasting spoon. Suddenly, she was fiercely glad she was alone. She could do this. She dipped the spoon into the soup, blew on it for the necessary seconds to avoid scalding her tongue, and then tasted it.

Perfetto
.

A smile curved her lips. It would be even better after it had a chance to simmer. Eagerly, she crossed the room to check on the squash. It was soft and smelled like caramelized sugar already, so she pulled it out of the oven to cool a bit. She rummaged in a drawer for a pencil and paper to make a few quick calculations. She would have to adjust her basic custard recipe to allow for the added liquid of the pumpkin puree.

Should she add some booze too? Amaretto would match the almond in the cookies. The custard would be rich, yet ephemeral, singing the top notes of spice and sweetness yet echoing comforting chords of crunchy caramelized sugar. It would need one more flavor, she decided, to even begin to compare with the complexity of Alessandro’s lavender ice cream.

She spun on her heel, searching the kitchen for inspiration. An herb? A spice? She walked over to the spice rack and searched the labels. Vanilla bean? Never a bad choice, but not what she needed tonight. Not fennel either; it might fight with the amaretto.

Star anise? Maybe. It might be too strong of a flavor. Or it could be perfect, providing an interesting counterpoint to the amaretto and almond. It was a risk.

She grabbed the container and headed for the stove, hoping Sean would make it back in time for dinner.

***

Sean pillowed his chin on his hands and stared across the piazza, admiring the elaborate frescoes painted on the buildings. He had switched from espresso to wine during lunch and the second glass had probably been a mistake. It was well past noon and warm enough to make him sleepy but not quite hot enough to make him sweat. The red and white striped umbrella above his table shaded him from the worst of the sun and the musicians continued to play, seemingly tireless.

He watched two men argue at a café across the piazza. The younger man looked exactly like Alessandro Bellin. He squinted and realized it was Alessandro.

He studied the men, taking note of the chef’s aggressive body language and the way his hands flashed in front of him as he spoke. The other man was much more relaxed, almost indolent. The man stood and leaned across the table, getting within a breath of the chef’s face. Sean’s fatigue disappeared. He wondered what the man was saying as Alessandro slowly drew an envelope out of his pocket and tossed it onto the table.

The older man picked up the envelope and tucked it into his jacket. He rose and flicked the back of his fingers under his chin in a broad arc. Sean had never seen anyone use that particular gesture but it looked insulting as hell, and it didn’t take years of observing people in the courtroom to know the chef had just lost that argument.

The older man turned his back and walked away. Before he had taken three steps, two men rose from the next table and followed him, one on each side. They were an intimidating trio, all in dark suits despite the heat of the day. In fact, they looked like Mafia gangsters as they cut across the piazza and disappeared into an alley.

He hesitated for a moment, pitting his dislike of the chef against his need to get back to the villa. Practicality won. He pushed away from his table, leaving enough euros to cover his bill. He crossed the piazza and stopped at Alessandro’s table. “Alessandro—I thought that was you.”

The chef nodded, not looking at all happy to see him.

Sean stuck with it. “If I had known you were coming this way I would have asked you for a ride to Padua. In fact, I was hoping you might be able to give me a ride back to the villa. I didn’t want to ask Mr. Marconi to wait for me. Big mistake, as it turns out. The shop girl wouldn’t sell me a phone, so my entire trip was wasted.”

Finally, Alessandro seemed to notice him. “Why wouldn’t she sell you a phone?”

“Because I didn’t bring my passport with me.” The disgust in his voice sparked a wry smile from Alessandro.

“Did you offer her
una
bustarella
?”

“A what?”

“A little envelope. A bribe. You’re in Italy, remember.”

The chef stood and walked away from the table, motioning for Sean to follow him. He seemed to know where he was going and led Sean right back to the same cell phone display he had visited earlier. Sean hung back, wondering if the girl would recognize him.

Alessandro greeted her and removed his own cell phone from his pocket. He held it up, smiling. The girl smiled back and handed him a box. Their conversation was fast and Sean wasn’t close enough to hear it. She blushed as she made change, darting quick glances through her thick, black eyelashes.

She did not ask for his
documenti
, he noticed sourly.

“
Ciao! Grazie!
” Alessandro blew her a kiss and walked over to Sean.

Alessandro led him away from the stall.

Sean gave him a hundred euro. “
Thank
you
. Is this enough?”

The chef nodded and tucked the bill into his pocket, handing over the bag containing the cell phone. “My car is this way.”

He followed Alessandro to a black Fiat parked on the sidewalk. Sean climbed into the low-slung car, tugged his new phone out of the bag, and swiftly unboxed it. He opened the directions. They were in Italian, of course.

“Let me help.” Alessandro took the phone out of his hand and snapped it together in two easy motions. After checking the number he’d been given, he dialed, listened for a few moments, and pressed several buttons.

“There.” Alessandro handed the phone back to him. “If you run out of minutes, it’s easy to buy more.”

“Thanks. I feel like an idiot.”

Alessandro shrugged. “It’s just technology. They make it difficult on purpose.”

Sean fiddled with his phone until he found his new number. Had he misjudged the chef? Alessandro was being awfully helpful. He began to compose a text to his mother and brother, almost dropping the phone as Alessandro pulled out into the street. Brakes screeched. The chef ignored the noise and accelerated until the Fiat hovered three inches from the bumper of the car in front of them. Funny, Sean hadn’t noticed the roads were this narrow when Mr. Marconi was driving.

He checked his seat belt as Alessandro zipped around the car in front of them and began gaining on his next target. At least they’d get back to the villa faster. Alessandro swerved around the next car, then took a hairpin turn at eighty kilometers an hour.

Sean swallowed a sigh of relief as the road straightened in front of them.

“Was that your family back in the piazza?” Sean asked.

For a long minute he thought the chef wasn’t going to answer him. “No,” Alessandro finally said.

Sean watched him. “My mistake—I thought you said you had a family emergency.”

“My business is none of yours.” The chef’s voice was cold, his expression imperious.

“I guess it just seems strange that you would take time off when guests are due to arrive, especially when Olivia has to cover for you.” Was Alessandro part of the staffing problems Gia had mentioned?

Sean felt the car accelerate. It was probably stupid to pick a fight with a guy driving a hundred and thirty kilometers per hour but he really didn’t care. Olivia’s parents may not have given him a warm welcome, but Villa Farfalla was charming and he wanted it to succeed for Olivia’s sake. “I wonder what Mr. and Mrs. Marconi would think about their chef sneaking off for a long lunch in Padua?”

Alessandro gave him a brief glare. “I’d prefer you not tell them.”

The chef wanted his silence? Well, he wanted something too. “Well I’d prefer you stay away from Olivia,” he warned.