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Dev’s brows pinched together. “Something wrong?”
“Cooking,” Casey said glumly.
“What’s Sylvia got you whipping up today?”
“It’s actually her day off. I’m using it to practice, because goodness knows I need it.” He forced a laugh, although it was a pretty poor effort. “She’s been very patient with me, but I think she’s secretly appalled at what she’s undertaken.”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad.” Dev’s tone could only be described as hearty. “I mean, the summer kitchen is still standing. Which reminds me. I finished building that shelf unit. Would I disturb you if I came over and installed it today?”
“Not a bit.” I’ll be grateful for the distraction. “Come on over any time.”
Dev lifted his water bottle. “Thanks again for the water. Hope you put it on my Market account.”
Casey merely hummed in response, because of course he hadn’t, despite Dev’s insistence. The eye candy and the company more than compensated for the cost of the water. Casey needed the boost to face the ordeal ahead.
Dev loped off across the field toward his cottage, and Casey watched him go. Not only because the view was spectacular—and the meadow dotted with wildflowers wasn’t bad either—but because it meant he was free from the summer kitchen for a few more precious minutes.
That red door had started to loom in Casey’s nightmares since his first day, when Sylvia had conducted what she called some basic evaluations.
She’d had him dice an onion—and had to lead him to the eyewash station when he’d absently wiped his streaming eyes with an onion-tainted finger. When he’d tried caramel, it crystalized in the pan three times and burned on the fourth. A basic roux should have been simple, she’d said, but Casey managed to set off the kitchen’s smoke alarm. Twice.
On the bright side, Dev hadn’t been home to witness it, and the firefighters from the county station were very nice and not at all judgmental.
After his abysmal attempt at a galette de rois, she’d sat him down for a little chat.
“Casey.” She folded her hands on the marble pastry board, which was still littered with the remains of Casey’s puff pastry fail. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He grinned weakly. “Learning to cook?”
She studied her hands for a moment, sighed, and then met his eyes again. “My dear, there are people who are born to cook. People who can achieve reasonable competence. But you?”
“If we’re going all Shakespearean here, you could say I’ve had cooking thrust upon me.” He toyed with a scrap of pastry that resembled shoe leather. “I know I’ve got a lot to learn—”
“Sweetheart, you have everything to learn.”
“I know,” he said humbly.
She half stood and grasped his wrist with a floury hand. “Cooking at the Michelin level isn’t like the alphabet or basic math. For one thing, mastery and success aren’t as well-defined. For another, you can survive perfectly happily in the world without it. There’s no reason you should spend so much time and…” She let go and sat back on her stool with a sigh. “I probably shouldn’t say this because I need the tuition, but why spend so much money on something that you quite obviously hate? It might be better for you to call it a day and go home.”
Casey flailed, sending flour ploofing into the air like bleached dust motes. “No! I’ll try harder. I promise. I owe it to Uncle Walt to make the effort. He’s done so much for me, and my father’s death was devastating to him.”
“But not to you?” she asked gently.
He didn’t meet her eyes. “Of course to me. He was my father, after all.”
“Casey, you don’t have to pretend with me. I met the man, remember? I know what he was like. But why can’t your uncle reopen Chez Donatien with a different chef? Why do you have to be in the kitchen?”
Since Casey had no good answer to that, he’d simply hedged and promised to do better. Sylvia had agreed—albeit reluctantly—and set him on a course of basic kitchen skills that had lasted the first week. The second week, they’d worked on the same things he’d failed on that first day. He’d yet to produce an acceptable caramel or a puff pastry that actually puffed, but Sylvia had commended him on his knife skills, so that was something. And he’d managed to make a roux that wasn’t singed around the edges. Or at least not much.
Today, though, he was going to attempt one of his father’s recipes. He’d waited until Sylvia’s well-earned day off because she didn’t think he was ready yet. Well, Casey didn’t think he was ready either, but he wanted to see how not ready he was after two weeks of full kitchen immersion.
He let himself into the summer kitchen and took a deep breath. A whiff of burned sugar still lingered from yesterday’s caramel attempt, underlying the scents of vanilla, rosemary, and lemon cleanser.
When he’d stepped into the summer kitchen that first day, he’d been surprised it didn’t resemble any of his father’s restaurant kitchens in the least. Donald had always been adamant that there was only one way to outfit a kitchen properly. Sylvia apparently hadn’t gotten the steel slab memo or else had tossed it in the trash, because her school had a totally different vibe.
The countertops at the six student stations were a combination of end-grain butcher block and marble, which Sylvia said had been specially crafted from local materials. Each bench had a sink, a four-burner gas cooktop, a double oven—one with a broiler—and a grill, capped by a refrigerator at the end next to the wall. And those appliances? Rather than the brushed chrome Donald demanded, they were all coordinated in bright colors named for foods: peach, carrot, lavender, lemon, avocado, tomato. The stations were named for their colors too, ceramic plaques announcing Peach, Carrot, Lavender, Lemon, Avocado, and Tomato hanging above each fridge.
Casey imagined that serious cooking students, or even hobbyists who were in it for fun, would be thrilled with the setup. While it wasn’t as stark and intimidating as his father’s kitchens, it still made Casey’s belly clench. Because every one of those components—from the sink to the fridge—represented another place Casey could screw things up.
