I took a breath, held on to it for a moment, then let it out slowly. “A leave of absence.” Breathe in. Breathe out. “I work for myself. So a leave of absence means a leave of no more business. A leave of unemployment. A leave of, ‘hey, clients, get someone else to cook for you. I’ll be up to my elbows in tuna noodle casserole back home in Podunk.’ ”
“We don’t make that casserole anymore.”
“We have to discuss your selective hearing sometime,” I said as my phone vibrated with another text. “Mother, I have to go. We can—”
“We can’t talk about this later. I need to know if you can do this or not.”
“You cannot call me up out of the blue and ask me—”
“Wouldn’t be out of the blue if you called more often,” she sneaked in.
Breathe in. Breathe out. I suddenly understood the phrase “my blood was boiling”: I could feel bubbles of stress forming inside my veins, knocking around and heating me up from the inside. I was a little past simmer, getting close to parboil. Before I could go fork tender, I tried once more.
“Here’s the thing, Mom. I need you to be reasonable. I can’t do this every time you get into trouble or—”
“I’m not in trouble, Roxie. I’m—”
“Maybe not this time, but it’s the same thing, just dressed up in a package from CBS. It’s not going to work anymore.”
“I paid for your college, Roxie—two years at the American Culinary Institute. The least you could do is this.”
Okay. That’s it.
“You know what, Mom? No. I’m not doing it,” I said angrily, just as another freakin’ text came in. “And you only paid for ACI because you’d just won the lottery. And you’ve gone through the rest of that money already, which is ludicrous.”
She remained stubbornly silent. This was usually the point in the conversation where I’d cave. But not this time.
“Okay, Mom. While you’re figuring out the real meaning of life and jumping into a shark tank off the coast of South Africa with Aunt Cheryl—who can’t swim, by the way—I’ll be here. In Los Angeles. Working my ass off, trying to build a business and keep my own lights on so I don’t have to live in my car,” I snapped—as yet another text came in.
“You really think they’ll make us go in a shark tank?”
“Oh, go smoke a bowl, Mother!” I hung up, steaming, wondering how in the world she could be ludicrous enough to think I’d drop everything to go home and run her diner. Unbelievable. I had a life, I had clients, I had . . . good lord, another text?
I looked down at my phone, which showed six messages waiting for me. Nope, seven—another one just came in. What was going on? Opening the first, I saw it was from Shawna, a client.
Roxie: I won’t need you to cook for me next week.
Huh. That was weird. I opened the next bubble.
Sorry for the last-minute notice, but I’m going to have to cancel the meals you have planned for next week, and the week after that. I’ll contact you in the future, perhaps.
Wait, what? Miranda was another client. She’d been with me for a few months, referred by . . . Mitzi. Ah shit.
I opened the next text bubble. By the time I’d read them all, every single client Mitzi had referred to me had canceled. Backed out. Quit me.
Over B U T T E R???
Or maybe over the obscene finger gesture?
I fucking hate this town.
Referrals were everything in a town like this, and because of Mitzi St. Fucking Renee, I was now a culinary pariah. Vapid, plastically beautiful women with more money than actual God had had decided to make my career into a game of herd mentality. The few clients I had left only used me occasionally, for events or as their schedules allowed.
Though I loved California, I really was beginning to hate LA. The money was great here, but what it took to live here, to deal with these people—it was almost too much sometimes. And the money was only good . . . until it wasn’t. I’d just spent most of my savings on a new engine for the Jeep, and I was temporarily light in the cash-flow department.
All those clients, all those dependable dollars, gone in the span of one phone call. My stomach knotted at the thought of having to rebuild my business. A bubble of worry floated up as I mentally ran through my client list, wondering who might be able to use me on a more full-time basis.
Then my phone beeped with another text. Oh, God. Was someone else getting in on the butter gang bang?
I’ll be back in town the middle of next week. Let me know if you’re up for some company.
Thank God, it wasn’t culinary related. Although there was that one time with a jar of peanut butter . . . never mind that. I sighed as I let myself into my apartment. Mitchell was my . . . hmm. Not my boyfriend, that’s for sure. He was my . . . plaything. My latest in a string of men whom I enjoyed for the sexing, not for the vexing. Emotionally invested? No. Interested in long walks on the beach and a partner for life? I’ll pass. Sweaty, writhing, panting bodies a phone call away with a minimum of fuss and muss? Now you’re talking.
No how was your day, dear? No hey, Roxie, we’ll get through this hard time. The kind of hard time he’d bring would be me bent over the easy chair, one of his hands full of my hair and the other hand full of my . . . Too bad he wasn’t here tonight—I could use something to take the edge off. My brain was churning, my career was potentially imploding, and there was a guilt trip barreling west from Bailey Falls, New York.
I needed peace. I needed quiet. My eyes scanned my apartment—which I couldn’t afford unless I got every single one of my clients back—and settled on the Patrón. Besides peace and quiet, I needed a lime. . . .
Chapter 2
I woke up the next—hmm, let’s say afternoon, so I’m not a liar—with my face covered in lime pulp and stuck to my leatherette easy chair. I checked the clock. Nice—I’d managed almost four hours of tequila-assisted sleep. A good night, when I usually only averaged about three hours a night. Suffering from intermittent insomnia since grade school, I’d adapted to less sleep than your average chicken.
I stumbled to the kitchen, reached blindly for the coffee, refusing to think about being fired. For B U T T- —oh, forget it. Yawning as the coffee percolated, I scrambled eggs with some tomatoes, garlic, spinach, and a touch of crème fraîche. I grated a little pecorino over the finished product, snatched a piece of perfectly toasted challah bread from the toaster, then grabbed my coffee and went back to the leatherette.
As I munched, a tabloid magazine on the table caught my eye. My guilty pleasure. I propped them up on a recipe stand while I was cooking sometimes. As I deboned a roasting chicken, I’d catch up on who was boning who in Tinseltown. But this morning, I realized I knew the person on the cover. She was a client. And I’d like to think maybe a friend?
I first heard of Grace Sheridan when the entire world was focusing on her other half, Jack Hamilton. An incredibly good-looking young British actor, he’d been the darling of the media world for a few years now, and just as his star was beginning to really rise, the press was constantly speculating on who the hot new movie star might be dating. As the world discovered that this unidentified redhead was actually Grace Sheridan, an actress as well, the media flurry became a storm, especially when she announced to the world they were a couple by taking him by the hand and publicly claiming him as hers on a red carpet. I knew all of this from what I’d read online. But when she called me one day to ask me to cook for her while getting ready for a new season on her hit TV series, I began to know the woman behind the magazine covers.
She was funny. She was sweet. And she loved food. And—I was cooking for her later today. Crap! I’d completely forgotten about my actual existing client, one who was expecting me for dinner tonight. I took five minutes to scrub my face, pits, and bits, threw on some clean clothes, grabbed my knives, and raced to the market.