“Gray salt it is.” Dev was still smiling as he located the brand he had in mind and plucked it off the shelf, then held it out for her to take. He angled his head to the kitchen wares aisle. He knew exactly where to look and made a beeline for a small bamboo box that was shaped like a cylinder. It had a lid that pivoted on a single point and slid sideways off of the box.
“Will this do?” He demonstrated the motion of the box.
He really liked it when she blushed. Her skin was the color of mid-coast eucalyptus trees when you peeled back the bark: light brown with undertones of butter cream. But it wasn’t so deep with pigment that you couldn’t see her flush.
“You know what else is good in bone broth?” she asked instead of answering. He liked how close they were standing and raised an eyebrow to invite her response. “Chives. They really bring out the flavor.”
He could have easily marched them to the produce section. Instead, he decided to dig for information.
“I take it you’re a chef?” The theory didn’t fit given the common knowledge she was some sort of writer, but she’d given him an opening and it was high time he asked.
“Me?” She seemed so surprised by the theory, she took a step back and issued a fast, “Oh, no.”
“Can I ask a question then?” He crossed his arms in front of him. “What the hell does someone who’s not a chef need sumac and pumpkin seed oil for?”
He threw his best disarming smile. It only made her blush more.
“Well … I don’t really use them to cook from scratch. I need them to add to the dishes I eat when I order out.”
“You use them to—” He cut himself off, shocked, confused and unable to think of an intelligent response.
“I mean, the food’s not bad…” she hedged. “It’s just … some of the dishes need a little something more.”
Dev took another few seconds to process all of this.
“So you don’t cook…” he trailed off slowly.
She shook her head, visibly self-conscious now. “No. Not really.”
“But you take food someone else already cooked and make it better…” he concluded.
She shrugged. “Pretty much.”
“And that’s why you had me scour half the state looking for sumac, because you wanted to fix your food.”
“Where the food is fixable, yes.” She seemed to say it as politely as she could.
“But sometimes it isn’t,” he prodded. She just sort of shrugged and shook her head.
“What do you think of the food at The Big Spoon?” he quizzed.
Since this was a small town and she might know he owned the place, his shot at an honest answer might be zero.
“The desserts are really good,” she offered. “I really like the coffee cake.”
Dev quelled the impulse to ask whether she liked it better before or after she added her own twist.
“So what, exactly, do you fix?”
Shea shrugged, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Soups. Salads. Anything that can be improved. A lot of times, I can taste what’s wrong and figure out what it needs. Either that, or just rethink the proportions.”
Dev just blinked back at her, never having imagined that any one person could be this intriguing. More than before, he wanted to know everything there was to be known about her.
“And something from one of the restaurants in town needs sumac?” He knew she wanted salt and chives for her broth, but he couldn’t seem to stop asking her questions.
“The aioli for the fried oysters at The Big Spoon is a little flat. The acidic flavor of the sumac will kick it up.”
An idea entered Dev’s head then—a crazy one that he had no idea whether she’d adopt because, technically, she didn’t know him very well. But it was such a great idea that his mouth ran ahead of his caution.
“I could really use you over at The Big Spoon.”
The expression on her face—what might have been annoyance at having been put on the spot—turned to confusion. “Wait … you work at The Big Spoon?”
This next part, Dev didn’t like saying out loud. It still wasn’t comfortable for him to admit that technically, he owned a good quarter of all the businesses in town.
It was mostly for the purpose of reviving them—buying them up so they wouldn’t go to outside developers or foreclosure to the bank. He wasn’t quite ready to share that fact with Shea.
“My sister does,” he hedged. “She’s the part-time head chef.”
Shea narrowed her eyes and threw him a suspicious look. “Head chefs aren’t supposed to be part time.”
“The Big Spoon’s her second job and she’s just filling in. She manages another restaurant, too. She’s been kind of struggling to make the menu over there work.”
Dev knew the explanation was cryptic and vague; from the look on her face, so did Shea. But it really was a longer story.
“There was a guy named Carl Jenkins—the guy who built The Big Spoon. The man was an icon in this town. You wouldn’t know it now, but The Spoon used to be a real destination. Every night, the place was packed. It had a real magic about it—it was a place where people came together.”
Shea looked like she knew what was coming so Dev didn’t beat around the bush. “About a year ago, he died. His wife went three months after him. Everyone’s tried to recreate his recipes, but the food hasn’t been the same. I’m asking because of your talent. I can’t say I understand how you do what you do, but it sounds like you have the kind of taste buds that can help.”
“I don’t know…” Shea looked apprehensive. “I mean—I’m sure I can make them better. But, without having tasted his cooking, there’s no way I could make them taste like his.”
Dev didn’t want to sound pushy—more like, not too proud to beg.
“We did find a recipe book. Only, it’s disorganized and incomplete and we don’t understand all of the proportions.”
The deer-in-the-headlights look on her face wasn’t very encouraging, though the shame was Dev’s—he didn’t feel good about practically cornering the poor woman. He’d do well to remember that she was a customer—quirky talent or not—on an innocent visit to the grocery store.
“Look,” he relented. “I know you barely know me and I’m really sorry to ask you like this. If the answer is no, it’s no. But if you’d even consider it, my sister could use your help.”
10
The Tasting
Shea
This is not a date. This is not a date. Going to dinner with a hot guy does not make it a date.
Shea hadn’t needed to remind herself of this fact on any of the occasions she’d called on friends to accompany her to a restaurant she planned to review. Technically, the dinner Dev had invited her to at The Big Spoon was business. But the fact that she was agonizing over her outfit and had deep-conditioned her hair proved otherwise. So did rifling through her makeup drawer until she found the gloss that made her lips more fabulous than they already were. So did spending twenty minutes choosing the perfect pair of glasses.