Dishing It Out

Dear Reader,

For those of you who have read my books, you might have noticed that I love food. My characters all share my food obsessions—they find comfort in chocolate and peanut butter, they recognize the beauty of bacon and they know that a Mi Fiesta burrito really is the perfect food. I know that this isn’t a healthy obsession. I have tried to cultivate the same feelings for carrots and apples, but frankly, they just aren’t as delicious.

For me, part of loving food comes from cooking and I learned from some great cooks over the years working as a waitress and prep cook. Those jobs also gave me a front-row seat for the theatrics of a professional kitchen. The romances, egos and creativity—there was never a dull moment. The seed for this story was born watching behind the scenes of a good brunch rush.

Since all the chefs I have known are passionate, creative and driven people and sparks always fly when they fall in love, Dishing It Out made perfect sense. Sparks certainly fly between Van MacAllister, my half-Scottish, half-Italian chef, and Marie Simmons—Anna’s sister from Pencil Him In, Flipside #15—a woman with a small, but growing, cooking empire to protect. I hope you enjoy their story!

Check out my Web site at www.molly-okeefe.com. You’ll find some of the recipes Van and Marie make in the book. And please share some of your favorites!

Happy reading,

Molly O’Keefe

“Look who’s on the cover of the Weekend Magazine.”

Marie looked at the magazine her producer Simon held up. Van MacAllister was staring at her in full-color, glossy arrogance.

“That’s great,” she lied, feeling certain she sounded convincing. “Good for him.” She tried to ignore the giant spike of irritation she always felt about Van. With his new restaurant across the street from her own, he had single-handedly made the past six months of her life even more strained and tiring.

“You’re not still upset about what he said in the Examiner, are you?” Simon asked.

“I’m not upset.” She shrugged and unclenched her fists. She’d sworn she wouldn’t wallow in her anger over him. “I mean, just because he called my bistro a ‘cute little coffee shop’ in an international paper, why would I be upset?” Marie felt a rant approaching and knew she had to stop before she scared Simon. “So why are we talking about Van?”

“This is big, Marie. Exciting.” Simon paused to grin outrageously. “Meet your new cohost!”

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Molly O’Keefe grew up reading in a small farming town outside of Chicago. She went to Webster University in St. Louis where she graduated with a degree in Journalism and English and met a Canadian who became her college editor, and later her husband and tennis partner. She spent a year writing for regional publications and St. Louis newspapers, before she began moving around the country and writing romance novels. At age 25, she sold her first book to Harlequin Duets, got married and settled down in Toronto, Canada. She and her husband share a cat and dreams of warmer climates.

Books by Molly O’Keefe

HARLEQUIN FLIPSIDE

15—PENCIL HIM IN

HARLEQUIN DUETS

62—TOO MANY COOKS

95—COOKING UP TROUBLE/ KISS THE COOK

To Sinead, Maureen, Mary, Michele, Susan and Teresa for the advice, food, booze, ideas, laughs, sympathetic ears and constant, steady and crucial support. You make this process a joy.

I can’t thank you enough, ladies.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

1

“CHOCOLATE IS SEXY,” Marie Simmons said, smiling into the eye of the camera. “It should taste good, smell good and yes—” she spooned berry coulis over the top of a gorgeous flourless chocolate cake “—feel good. Remind you of anything?” She arched an eyebrow and the studio audience laughed, giving her a few moments to stall. She shot the camera a smile and then scanned her workspace for the mint while she blathered on about sexy food. Mint! There it was, under the bowl of raspberries. She broke off some leaves and pressed it into the cake’s fudgy soft center.

Running out of time, she told herself. She’d have to scrap the homemade whipped cream, though it was gorgeous.

She lifted the warm cake, tilting it toward the audience and the camera. She smiled in what she hoped was a cool and confident manner. “Good food doesn’t just feed the body, it feeds the soul.”

She winked and the crowd cheered.

Martha Stewart ain’t got nothing on me! Marie howled inside of her head. She managed to keep herself from doing victory laps around the stage. Another great and mostly disaster-free segment of Soul Food done.

Marie caught sight of the floor manager, Roger, in the shadows past the lights, frantically gesturing for Marie to tilt the chocolate fondant up more so the camera could have a better angle. “Up,” he mouthed, lifting his hands in slow motion.

She shook her head. Any more angling and the cake would be all over the floor. But Roger was getting red in the face so she tilted the plate and hoped it would stick until the cameras were off.

I finally get a segment with no fires, short circuits, broken dishes or blood and I am going to ruin it by dropping a cake on the floor.

Roger yelled, “Cut!” and Marie sighed, putting the plate back on the counter. The miniature kitchen set that Soul Food called home was suddenly swarmed with men and women dressed in black, wearing little headsets. They had ninety seconds to clean her set, break it down and get it out of the way for the rest of the live morning show.

There was so little time or room for error. It reminded Marie of being in a kitchen during a dinner rush. Live TV was like jumping out of a plane, and sometimes cooking on live TV was like jumping out of a plane with a possibly faulty parachute.

Marie unhooked her mic, took off her apron and ran backstage, getting out of the crew’s way. Her segment producer and good friend, Simon, was waiting for her in the wings with a bottle of water and a giant grin.

“Great show, Marie!” he whispered.

“Thank you, Mr. Producer,” she said and, feeling a huge gust of affection for him, bent down to kiss his shiny bald head.

Good old Simon. Six months ago he turned his addiction to her lemon bars and lentil salad into a monthly gig on AMSF, the most popular morning show in the Bay Area. Three months ago, they gave her another half-hour slot and now she was on twice a month.

“Coming through!” A woman carrying a giant cat for the next segment came running past them.

Showbiz, Marie decided, is definitely for me.

She felt alive here, fully on top of her game. She didn’t feel like she was pretending under those bright lights. Even when things went wrong, like the grease fire two weeks ago, she felt in charge and in control. If not a little singed.

Almost unconsciously, she touched one of the bracelets she wore on her wrists, tracing the moons that were pressed into the silver. The bracelets were reminders of the lessons she had learned from those times she got more than a little singed by the choices she had made.

The music soared and the lights came up on the main stage where the hosts of AMSF were sitting at their desk.

“That woman could make popcorn sexy,” Rick Anderson, one of the hosts and general all around sleazebag, said, shaking his head. “I think I’m in love.”

Marie rolled her eyes at Simon.

“Well, her food is delicious,” Luanne, the other host, said in agreement. “That cake looked amazing.” The crowd made sounds of approval and Marie felt as if her feet had actually lifted off the ground.

I wonder if I can get a dressing room? Something with a star.

“Let’s go up to my office,” Simon whispered next to her ear. “I have something I want to talk to you about.” Marie nodded and followed him through the backstage maze, up some stairs to his small crowded office with a view of the parking lot two floors below.

Simon’s messy desk dominated the office and a bulletin board covered in colored index cards represented the different segments Simon produced for AMSF. Soul Food was yellow. She smiled and flicked one with her finger as she walked by.

“The show is popular, Marie. Very, very popular.” He smiled at her as he crossed the room to his chair.

“Good,” Marie said expansively. “Great!” She was a little in love with the world right now. Drunk with the taste of success. “That’s what you pay me the big bucks for.” Ha! Nothing funnier than jokes about being broke. Maybe if she made enough of them, Simon would get the hint and give her a raise.

She slid into one of the hard wooden seats across from his desk and smothered a yawn, fighting the exhaustion that was crowding the edges of her adrenaline high. What I wouldn’t give for about a gallon of coffee.

“How’s business?” Simon asked, disregarding her joke.

Marie started to take out the bobby pins that Hair and Makeup insisted she wear to keep her black curls out of the food. She was as hygienic as the next chef, but these bobby pins hurt. “Since Soul Food started going twice a month, brunches are lined up out the door on weekends and we’ve really picked up lunch hours. It couldn’t be better.”

Well, that was a lie, but Simon didn’t need to know about the girl she hired who had been skimming the till for three weeks. He also didn’t need to know about the broken dishwasher.

“You finally getting some sleep since you hired the new baker?”

“He quit.” Simon really didn’t need to know about that.

“Quit? But that guy was so excited.” Simon looked like a little dog when he was surprised. It was cute.

“Apparently, being a baker is exciting in theory but not so much in practice at three in the morning.” Marie shook out the bun her hair had been pressure-formed into and sighed happily.

Marie could have told the kid that baking wasn’t exactly exciting but she had just been happy to get another baker in the door. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, or something like that. “What can you do?”

“So you’re still doing it yourself?” Simon looked sympathetic as he sat down in front of his large window and leaned back in his seat. He probably hadn’t seen 3:00 a.m. in years, if ever. She knew he had to get up early for the show. But 5:00 a.m. was not 3:00 a.m. It was an ugly hour, and Marie had been getting to know it intimately for the last year.

“I am. You want to volunteer?” she asked, trying to keep things light. “We could tape it for the show. I think viewers would like to see my producer make scones.” Between Ariel the thief, the dishwasher on the fritz, her organic milk guy doubling his rates and the sleepless nights she’d been having lately, it was either keep things light or get dehydrated from all the bawling.

“Not on your life,” Simon laughed.

“That’s what everyone says.” Marie tried to push the sleeve of her deep purple chenille sweater up her arm so she could see her watch without him noticing. Simon liked a bit of production with his meetings. Fanfare and other time-consuming things. Normally, Marie didn’t mind obliging him, but right now, time was money and Simon wasn’t paying her enough to chitchat.

“Marie, our viewing audience loves you. People are looking for new gurus of food and style. You make having good taste seem simple and fun, and a little sexy, rather than stuffy or snobby. And of course,” he said, grinning, “your looks don’t hurt.”

What’s this? Compliments from Simon? “You feeling all right?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. Simon didn’t get warm and fuzzy for no good reason. The guy was a television producer. Behind the khaki pants and plaid shirts from the eighties, he was pretty slick.

“I,” he said, spreading his arms out wide, “we,” he corrected pointing at her, “are doing just fine.”

Marie’s bullshit detector went on high alert. Something is up.

“What’s going on, Simon?”

“Your ratings are way, way up. In fact you’ve surpassed…” Simon did a little drumroll with his fingers against the edge of his desk and Marie tried not to laugh at him. “Patrick and Ivan.”

“Really?” Patrick and Ivan had been ratings horses for almost a year. They were local celebrities. They had dressing rooms.

“When a cooking show beats out two gay interior designers you know you’re on to something,” he said in all seriousness.

“So you’ve brought me up here to tell me you’re giving me a raise?” she asked and she would be lying if she tried not to sound hopeful. It was all she could do not to sound desperate.

“Sorry,” Simon said, cringing. “No raise.”

“Then what, Simon? I’ve got to be back at the restaurant in an hour.”

“Well…” He paused and Marie rolled her eyes at his sense of drama. “You are going weekly.”

“Weekly?” Marie gasped, suddenly light-headed. She laughed, tried to control it, but couldn’t. Who cared about not having a baker? Or the broken dishwasher? She was going to be on television every week!

Simon leaned back in his chair looking gratified and a little smug.

“You said ‘no raise.’ I’m not doing double the work…”

He put up a hand to stop her. “Same fee per show so it’s sort of a raise.”

She would take it. She leaned back and felt like she could kiss the water-stained ceiling. She could kiss Simon and his filthy desk. A little more notoriety would bring more people into Marie’s Bistro, her bakery/bistro. More customers meant she could pay off her debts, the loan she had to take out last year, maybe even… “A vacation,” she breathed.

Since leaving France and the horrible mess she had made there two years ago, Marie had gotten her life under control, had forced herself to grow up, to be an adult. She’d taken on the responsibilities she normally ran from and this was going to be her reward. The bright and shiny beginning of her cooking empire.

“Simon,” Marie said, sitting up to look at him, feeling like she was made of fire, “I’ve got so many ideas, so many things we can do with the show.”

“Whoa, before you get carried away, there’s a minor change.” Simon started digging through the papers on his desk. “Where’d I put that thing?”

His distraction was making Marie nervous. But that could be because she was operating on forty seconds of sleep. “Simon, just tell me what’s going on.”

“Found it!” He reached to the floor, picked a stack of papers up and turned back around holding one of them out to her. “Look who is on the cover of the Weekend Magazine.”

She blinked at the sudden and unwelcome change of subject. Giovanni MacAllister was staring up at her in full eight and a half by eleven glossy from the weekend insert for the San Francisco Examiner.

“That’s great,” she lied, feeling certain she sounded convincing. “Good for him.” She attempted to ignore the giant spike of irritation she always felt whenever she thought about him. Van MacAllister owned Sauvignon, a new restaurant across the street from Marie’s. And the man had single-handedly made the last six months of her life even more strained and tiring than it had already been.

Calming thoughts, Marie, calming thoughts. She tried a yoga breath, opening up her chest and emptying her belly, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked.

Simon was watching her and Marie knew she wasn’t fooling him. “You’re not still upset about what he said in the Examiner, are you?” he asked. “It was one comment and he apologized.”

“I’m not upset.” Marie shrugged and had to relax her hands from the fists she was making.

“Good, because…”

“I mean, just because he called Marie’s Bistro a ‘cute little coffee shop’ in an international newspaper, why would I be upset?”

Not so good. She had promised herself and her sister, who was tired of hearing about it, that she would not wallow in her anger over Van MacAllister.

Simon winced. “Cute is not so bad….”

“Right.” She knew sarcasm was unbecoming, but sometimes it just felt so good. “Cute is fine. Just fine.”

“See…”

“If you’re a child!” You’re wallowing, Marie, she thought. And you’re scaring your producer.

A month ago, a reporter asked Van what he thought of Marie’s Bistro and he’d said, “You mean that cute little coffee shop across the street? It’s fine if you want a cookie.” Marie had been seeing various shades of red since.

“Didn’t he apologize?”

“He sent gift certificates for Sauvignon.” She shrugged, pretending to be nonchalant, but it was hard considering the apology was almost worse than the original insult. She crossed her legs, arranging her gray jersey skirt over her knees. “Moving on. Why are we even talking about him?”

“Well, we went there last night to see a band…”

“One of his blues bands?” she asked, surprising herself and Simon by nearly yelling.

“I think it was Dixieland jazz,” Simon said slowly.

“Whatever it was, you do mean the loud band with horns that played until 1:00 a.m. last night?” She leaned forward in her seat.

“There were horns.” He nodded, obviously not sure what he was agreeing to.

“Yeah, horns. 1:00 a.m. I live right across the street from him, Simon, and I have to get up at three to bake bread!” She was beginning to see the music as some sort of torture. “I haven’t had a decent three hours sleep in forever. But—” Again she reined herself in, and sat back in the chair. She took a deep breath, imagined waterfalls and waves on the beach and other things that were supposed to relax her but only made her have to go to the bathroom. “He’s got the zoning and licensing.” She shrugged. “What can you do?”

“I think the bands are all part of his mystique,” Simon said and Marie snorted. Mystique? Please.

The worst of it wasn’t the thing in the paper or the bands four nights a week. It was that he was in her kitchen. Her dream kitchen, with the old brass hood and the natural lighting. The restaurant space she wanted, had bid on and ultimately lost to Giovanni MacAllister, in an ugly blind bidding war.

So she had bought the place across the street with the smaller kitchen and faulty heating system, and had watched as Van did nothing to the building he’d bought. It had sat empty and vacant while she was sweating in the summer and freezing in the winter across the street, taking out loans and making no money in SoMa—the neighborhood south of Market Street—an untried part of the city.

Six months after she had opened, just as things were beginning to take off for her and the dicey warehouse neighborhood she called home, he had opened Sauvignon to almost instant success. And then he had called Marie’s Bistro a “cute little coffee shop” in the paper.

It was a one-two punch that Marie was having a hard time with.

“I can’t believe he’s on the cover of the Weekend Magazine.” She hated how she felt about this guy. He shouldn’t even register in her life among the blessings and happiness she had, but he did. He was a thorn in her side that she hated admitting to. That he bothered her so much bothered her.

“Marie, you were on the cover three weeks ago. They called you ‘the New Goddess of Good Taste.’”

“Yeah.” She smiled, remembering. “That was a good one.” She ran her finger over the edge of the magazine, feeling the staple and pressing her thumb against it, trying to squelch all the nasty feelings Van brought out in her. “But it took me a year. A year of freaking out every night.”

She didn’t talk about the doubt and some of the tears and the bone-deep desire she had almost every day to resort to her old ways and abandon the whole thing. Run off to a beach and sell oranges to tourists.

“Sauvignon has only been open six months.” She stopped herself before she started whining that things were unfair. Instead she looked down at Van’s arrogant face blown up and glossy.

He wasn’t handsome, at least not by her standards, and while the picture of him was flattering, he still wasn’t what she would call good-looking. His unsmiling craggy face was…interesting maybe. Perhaps some people could see past those tremendously overgrown eyebrows to the intense eyes beneath them, but she couldn’t get past her desire to find the nearest tweezers. His wild black hair with silver shot through it might be attractive. And the scar at his chin was…intriguing. Maybe. But the guy was not handsome.

“He’s got great press,” Simon said with a wry smile. Marie looked at the headline, having gotten caught up in the out-of-control eyebrows. Really, someone should have taken the guy in hand years ago.

“‘Van MacAllister,’” she read aloud. “‘A man’s man. Making haute cuisine rough, ready and masculine.’ Oh, give me a break,” she moaned. “What does that mean? Masculine haute cuisine?” Marie threw the magazine back on Simon’s desk and crossed her arms, dismissing Van MacAllister. “He’s grilling meat, Simon. Let’s not get carried away.”

“Well, some people might say you’re just baking bread.”

“Simon…”

“I’m not saying it.” He pressed his hands to his chest. “You have to admit, though, he’s become very popular.”

“I don’t have to admit anything,” she muttered. He stole my kitchen, made fun of me in the paper and is making it impossible for me to sleep. It’s amazing I haven’t killed the guy in his sleep. Which is no doubt peaceful and plentiful.

“You know what they’re calling us in the papers, don’t you?” she asked, quietly. This was the real rub, the coup de grâce in the bad vibes she felt for Van MacAllister.

Simon had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “Ah…” He cleared his throat and fiddled for a moment with a pen on his desk. “Hip meets homey.”

“That’s right and guess who’s homey?”

He pointed the end of the pen at her.

Marie had written polite but firm letters to the editor until her hand was numb, but the buzz kept building. She was hardly homey, unless one considered the French countryside home. Then, maybe she could be considered homey. But only if it were an outrageously classy, sensual home. That served Thai chicken salad and triple espressos and rhubarb-strawberry bars for dessert. Okay, maybe that is homey. But it’s rhubarb—it is hard to toughen up rhubarb.

“Why are we even talking about Van MacAllister?”

“Well,” he said, steepling his hands against his smiling lips and took a deep breath. “This really is so exciting.”

“What is?” Marie didn’t even try hiding her confusion and frustration. Simon pointed at the magazine.

“Meet your new cohost.”

2

“VERY FUNNY.” Marie laughed, a pop of incredulity that came from her gut. She stood to leave. “Are we done? Because I have to get back to the restaurant.”