“Can I get you some breakfast?” Star asked.
“I’m fine,” Georgia hastened to assure her. “I had a protein bar.” She’d stocked up on protein bars at the Dulles airport. Without being able to taste anything, she had little appetite but knew she needed to consume at least a modest quantity of calories just to keep up her energy. Protein bars, which the French chef in her shuddered to even consider food, were dense in nutrients. She could choke down a few bitter bites and call it a meal.
“Okay, if you’re sure.” Star looked doubtful at the mention of protein bars but didn’t press the matter, just gave Georgia directions and tossed her the keys to her old green Subaru Forester.
Georgia drove to the grocery store with the windows down, the air smelling of sweet green grass and evergreen trees. The island was sparsely populated, mostly just rolling fields and dense patches of evergreen forest with the occasional house in the distance. She passed only a few other cars, and the motorists all waved. She waved back, feeling her spirits lift. She hadn’t driven in years. In Paris, she took the Metro and didn’t even own a car. But there was a forgotten pleasure in driving with the wind blowing through her curls, the Grateful Dead’s greatest hits on the old CD player. She tried to switch to a radio station or stop the CD, but the CD player seemed jammed and the radio didn’t work. She shrugged and let the music play. The sense of freedom was intoxicating, just her and the steering wheel and Jerry Garcia’s voice and the gray ribbon of road rolling over the gentle hills. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so relaxed and free. She laughed out loud, surprising herself. She was even starting to look forward to the meal tonight.
In Friday Harbor, she found Kings Market easily enough and was pleased by the good selection of quality ingredients in the pint-size grocery store. She trailed her fingers over the French cheeses before choosing a Camembert. She had to make a couple of substitutions in ingredients for what she was going to make tonight. No fennel, but she found a surprisingly decent and affordable pinot noir from Burgundy and bought two bottles, one to cook with and one to drink with dinner. She didn’t know how adventurous Cole and Star were with food, so she decided to stick with iconic French dishes, nothing tooavant-garde. She’d leave the tête de veau (boiled cow’s head) for another day. The grocery total at the cash register was shockingly expensive, but she swallowed hard and paid. It was worth it. This was both a thank-you and a chance to prove herself. Neither of those came cheap.
12
Clad in aworn white cotton apron, Georgia was halfway through dinner prep by late afternoon. She was alone in the kitchen. Star was out making her visit to her client, and Georgia was enjoying the solitude. She had scrounged up enough pots and pans and kitchen instruments to make the dinner menu work and thankfully had her own knife kit with her to use. A chef never cooked without her own knives if she could help it. Now she was finally relaxing into familiar rhythms—chopping vegetables, cutting up a whole chicken and putting it to soak in a wine marinade. She had Édith Piaf warbling on her phone, a good pinot noir, and all the ingredients she needed. She was making magic in the kitchen.
Belting out the lyrics to the iconic “La Vie en rose” along with Edith and feeling a little homesick for Paris, Georgia cooked the bacon for the coq au vin in a cast-iron skillet until it sizzled brown and crispy. Faintly, she heard the kitchen door slam. She glanced up, expecting Star who had said she’d be home at about four, but instead, Cole stood in the doorway.
“That smells good,” he commented. He sounded almost pleasant. He was wearing the ridiculous orange rubber overalls again. How in the world did the man manage to still look good wearing international orange–colored rubber overalls that came up TO HIS CHEST? His very toned, muscular chest. Under the overalls, he was wearing a tight waffle weave shirt that showed off his physique. She was determined not to be intimidated byhis attitude or his sex appeal. She’d just been dating Paris’s sexiest chef, and look where that landed her.
Georgia shot Cole an arch look and said dismissively, “Of course it smells good. It’s bacon.” She scooped the bacon from the skillet and set it aside to cool, then started braising the chicken segments in the bacon grease.
She hoped he’d leave, but instead he walked around her, reached for a glass and filled it at the tap, then drank deeply. She ignored him, sautéing carrots and onion in the Dutch oven while the chicken cooked in the skillet. She added garlic to the vegetables and inhaled the aroma deeply. It was one of her favorite scents. Too bad this delectable meal was going to taste horrible to her. But if it tasted half as good as it smelled, it would be a success. She had a good feeling about it so far.
Edith was trilling in the background, accompanied by an accordion. Cole raised an eyebrow, and Georgia gave him the side-eye. “Let me guess, you don’t like French cabaret singers?”
“I didn’t say that.” He leaned against the sink, glass in hand, and looked amused. “It’s a nice change from the Grateful Dead or those ’60s social activist hippie feminist folk singers Star likes. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for protests and social activism, but there are just so many versions of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ with a tambourine accompaniment that a man can reasonably handle.” The corner of his mouth twitched up slightly.
Georgia grinned in spite of herself and poured some wine marinade over the vegetables. “Oh, and what would you prefer instead? Some nice Johnny Cash, maybe? Does hearing ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ bring back a wave of nostalgia for you? Remembering the good times you had in the pokey?” Her tone was gently ribbing.
Cole glanced at her, surprised, and then laughed. He had a deep laugh, a little rusty, as though he didn’t use it often. If hislaugh were a liquor, it would be rye whiskey, she thought, dark and warm and ragged with a little bite at the end. The thought came out of nowhere, and she brushed it away.
“Leonard Cohen, actually,” he said. “I like to listen to him while I’m whittling my shiv.” He glanced at her from under his brows, his face deadpan, but there was a twinkle in his eye.
Georgia snorted in amusement. He was funny and self-deprecating. She hadn’t expected that. She thought he’d leave, but he lingered, watching her. She found his gaze slightly unsettling. She nestled the chicken breasts and thighs in among the vegetables and tried to ignore the way his scrutiny made her pulse beat a little faster. She liked to be in control of her kitchen, not skittery under the gaze of a man dressed like a traffic cone.
“What made you want to become a chef?” he asked curiously.
Georgia considered her answer for a moment. “It was Julia Child,” she replied. “I was looking for a way out of my family’s ranch, and I found it through cooking. Julia inspired me. I adored her and wanted to be just like her. I used to watch her TV show every afternoon while I was supposed to be doing my homework.” Georgia said it lightly, but there was a note of wistfulness in her voice. She could picture young Georgia in her jeans and T-shirt, sitting cross-legged in front of the old television in the front room every afternoon after school, eating graham crackers and cold milk and soaking up every word Julia uttered. She’d finish her homework in record time, then sit close to the screen with the volume turned down low so she didn’t draw the notice of Aunt Hannah, who would switch off the TV and make her go out to do chores if she happened to walk into the room. Aunt Hannah disapproved both of watching TV during daylight hours and of Julia Child.
Georgia chopped a few sprigs of thyme, sprinkling them over the chicken and vegetables and covering the Dutch oven with the heavy lid. “Julia showed me a different life,” she said. “She opened the world for me, beyond the hardscrabble existence on a Texas cattle ranch, beyond the borders of my little dusty town. Julia showed me another way to see the world, full of possibility. She showed me that life could be enjoyed, not just endured.”
She glanced up. Cole was watching her silently. He took another sip of water. “All that from a cooking show?” His tone was mild, not mocking. He sounded like he genuinely wanted to know. Georgia nodded.
“I don’t know how much you know, but Star left us when I was five,” she said, surprising herself as she spoke. She never talked about Star. She’d been with Etienne for almost two years before she’d told him about her mother’s abandonment. It was still a sensitive subject, all these years later, but somehow she felt comfortable opening up to Cole about it. Maybe because they were here, with Star just on the other side of the yard. He was part of it now too. She tossed the chopped mushrooms into the skillet with the bacon grease and turned up the heat. “After she left, our house was... sad. The ranch was prosperous enough, but there wasn’t a lot of joy or laughter there. It was as though Star took all the happiness with her when she went. My dad worked long hours running the ranch. My aunt Hannah, my dad’s sister, helped raise me. I know she loved me, in her own way, but she wasn’t a particularly nurturing person.”
She pictured her aunt—the tall, spare figure standing ramrod straight, her character forged of equal parts duty and determination. Georgia knew her aunt had cared for her and worked hard to provide a safe, stable home for her. There were always morally sound library books in a bin by the sofa and simple,nutritious meals in her lunch box. She had a warm bath every night, and her hair was braided every morning. On Saturdays, they’d do a jigsaw puzzle together. Her aunt had done the best she could to raise a child she could not seem to understand. Yet Georgia had been lonely, so very lonely, from the age of five onward.
“My family can’t comprehend why I’m a chef,” Georgia said, stirring the mushrooms. “They couldn’t imagine why I’d want to go off to Paris to run my own restaurant. Julia was my inspiration. She gave me purpose, something to strive for. She showed me a different life.” She paused, feeling herself flush. “I know that must seem so pathetic.”
Cole cleared his throat. “Not pathetic. Understandable.”
Georgia glanced up, surprised. “When I was ten, I swore I would do what Julia had done, go to Paris, make a name for myself in the world of cooking. I wanted to follow in Julia’s footsteps. When I blew out the candles on Julia’s Queen of Sheba Chocolate Cake that I’d made for my birthday, I promised I’d have my own kitchen in a Paris restaurant one day.”
“And have you kept your promise?” Cole asked, looking interested.
Georgia hesitated. “Almost,” she said at last. “We’ll see.” She gave a small Gallic shrug.
Cole drained his glass and eyed her thoughtfully. “It’s rare to know from such a young age what you want out of life.”
“Yeah, well the alternative wasn’t great,” Georgia muttered. “Roping and castrating cattle or driving a combine. It wasn’t much of a choice for me. I picked what I wanted to do with my life, and I’ve spent every waking minute since that point trying to reach that goal.” She gave the mushrooms a stir. She was surprised by how long Cole was lingering. Maybe she’d misjudgedhim and Star had been right. Maybe he just took time to warm up to people. Maybe he was warming. “What about you?” she asked. “What did you want to be as a kid?”
