Beauty and the Feast

Beauty and the Feast - Julia Barrett




Acknowledgments


I would like to thank Resplendence Publishing and my editor, Chantal Depp for her hard work and wonderfully minute attention to detail.







Chapter One



“Jesus Christ, Jason! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Ah…ah…ah…” The teenager wiggled a finger. “You know how my mom feels about cussing.”
“Who cares how your mom feels about cussing? This is the fifth week in a row you’ve gotten me wet.”
Jason stood grinning at her, a hose with a spray nozzle in his hand. He waggled his eyebrows.
“That’s not the kind of wet I mean and you damn well know it,” Eva grumbled. “What are you doing home anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“I’m a senior,” Jason replied with a shrug, “I’ve already got my college acceptance. I’m free to do what I want.”
“Yeah, well, why does what you want have to include drenching me every Monday morning?”
“Because it’s a wet tee-shirt contest in my own yard. I mean, c’mon Eva, you’re hot. I’m eighteen years old and horny and you’re like, my fantasy.”
“Why can’t you look at me as more of a big sister?”
Jason snorted, “I don’t think so.” He waved the hose in Eva’s direction.
Eva jumped sideways. “Look, Jason, we’re going to have to come to some sort of arrangement.”
Without hesitation Jason replied, “I’m open to that.”
Eva rolled her eyes. The kid was quick and he had a one-track mind. “Not that sort of arrangement. Do you want me to complain to my bosses about this? I will and you know what they’ll do? They’ll send out Miriam. You want them to send out Miriam?”
Jason’s grin was replaced with a look of flat out horror. “Hell no! She’s old and blows her nose all the time and she cleans under my bed and her food tastes like crap.”
“Okay then,” Eva began, “If you don’t want Miriam, stop soaking me.”
Eva walked into the garage and opened a cabinet. She knew where Mrs. White kept her worn towels. Jason trailed behind her. Eva noticed the young man watching her as she toweled off. He grinned at her, unrepentant. She saw his eyes focus on her black bra beneath her white, now transparent, tee shirt.
Eva pointed an accusing finger at him. “Knock it off. Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“So how come you don’t turn the hose on her?”
“Are you kidding? She’d smack me up one side of the street and down the other.”
Eva gave the young man as stern a look as she could manage. “Then why would you treat me so disrespectfully?”
Jason pretended to consider her words for a moment. “I don’t know,” he answered with another shrug. “Like I said, you’re hot. And you put up with me.”
Eva sat down on a step to remove her shoes. Even her socks were wet. She decided it would be better to just work barefoot.
“Jason,” she said to the young man, “Get out of here. Go back to school.”
“Yes ma’am,” he replied agreeably. “Hey, leave my bed alone and don’t clean beneath it.”
“I never do,” said Eva with a sigh. “You want anything special for supper tonight?”
“Oh, yeah,” answered Jason. “Some of that spaghetti, you know, the stuff that takes all day to cook. The red stuff.”
“Bolognese?”
“Yeah, and I’ll eat a salad as long as you make it with real lettuce and creamy Italian.”
“Since when are you so picky about food?” asked Eva.
Jason winked at her. “Since you started cooking for us. And garlic bread. Remember the garlic bread. Like you made it last time, with lots of butter and parmesan cheese.”
“Anything else, your majesty?”
Jason ignored Eva’s sarcasm and he thought for a moment. “Brownies would be good. A big batch. The cream cheese kind. I can take some of those to practice this afternoon. Everyone on the soccer team is addicted to them.”
“All right,” sighed Eva. “Get out of here. I have to dry my clothes and do some grocery shopping. It’s a good thing your mom’s my only client today.”
Jason headed toward his car. Eva saw him turn back to look at her. She was still drying off her feet.
“Hey,” he called. “I’m sorry for spraying you. I’ll try to control my hormones in the future.”
Eva grinned crookedly at him. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Eva watched Jason drive away and then entered the White’s house through the garage and stopped in the laundry room. She stripped off her wet tee shirt and tugged down her soaked jeans. She threw them, along with her socks, into the dryer. She hoped they’d be reasonably dry within thirty minutes. She figured she had at least that long before Jason would dare show his face again.
Barefoot, wearing her old black lace pushup bra and boy shorts, Eva jogged through the family room and up the short flight of stairs into the kitchen. Eva always started in the kitchen. As far as she was concerned, a clean kitchen was the foundation of a clean home. She was obsessive about it. There was nothing more satisfying than thoroughly cleaning a kitchen. After her clothes were dry, she would tackle the rest of the house.
Eva snorted as she imagined exactly what Jason had stashed under his bed. The only girl in a family of five children, Eva had a pretty good idea of what she’d find if she dared to look under there. No way. Eva wouldn’t touch that shit with a ten-foot pole. After living so closely with growing teenage boys for so many years, Eva considered herself a bit of an expert on what young men kept under their beds. At least Jason was considerate enough to throw his dirty clothes in the hamper she’d stashed in his closet.
Eva finished in the kitchen. She returned to the laundry room and pulled her clothes out of the dryer. Her tee shirt and socks were completely dry, unfortunately, her jeans were still tacky. Nothing worse than hot, sticky, damp jeans. She wriggled her way into them, cursing Jason. Eva decided she’d better get started on the Bolognese sauce so it could cook slowly while she cleaned the rest of the house, washed the linens and watered the garden. She took a quick look in the pantry and in the fridge to make sure she had everything she needed for the brownies. After taking stock, Eva headed out to her car.
Mrs. White had contracted with ATAP for Eva’s services. ATAP stood for All Things to All People. It was an acronym the owners of the company, Tom and Marcus, had come up with one night while soused on chocolatinis. Eva, Miriam, Byron, Jose and Ruth were contracted out to pre-screened households to be all things, within reason, of course. Miriam worked as a housekeeper, seamstress, nanny, and she was frequently hired to provide companion care for shut-ins. She could cook in a pinch. Ruth’s area of expertise was interior design, but she could also hang a light fixture, paint, paper a wall, lay decorative tile, stencil, and texturize a ceiling if the occasion called for it. Bryon and Jose were gardeners, closet specialists and handymen. They could turn a vacant lot into something out of House Beautiful, but they could just as skillfully clean up the mess from a backed up septic tank.
Because of her degree from culinary school and her restaurant experience, Tom and Marcus had labeled Eva the chief cook and bottle washer. ATAP leased her out to families who required a cook and sommelier in addition to a housekeeper. Occasionally the company provided catering services for special events. Eva led the catering team, assisted by both Tom and Marcus, her fellow employees if necessary, and if additional help was needed, she contacted one of the local temp agencies.
Eva loved her job. After six years in the food business, she’d never worked with such agreeable people. She was much more accustomed to temperamental chefs who threw a raging tantrum at the drop of a single sprig of parsley. Jason’s wet tee shirt obsession aside, her assignments were generally fun, she was well paid, and the work varied enough that after nearly a year, Eva hadn’t once been bored. Quite the opposite. Tom and Marcus screened their clients well. Eva had never asked to be removed from a job. So far, she hadn’t received a single complaint from a client. She’d missed work only one week because she’d been sick with the flu. That was when Miriam had filled in for her, much to Jason’s dismay.
Eva smiled to herself as she pushed a cart down the produce aisle at the grocery store. Jason behaved a lot like her brothers had at eighteen, full of mischief and very full of himself. That reminded her that she needed to give her mom a call. Eva had been so busy she hadn’t been back to Iowa for a visit since she took the job. She’d grown up on a farm in Pottawattamie County. Her family still lived there. Her father worked hard to keep the family farm going, along with two of her brothers Asher and Levi, who owned homes nearby. Her mother worked as a labor and delivery nurse at the local hospital. Her two oldest brothers, David and Jared, had formed a partnership several years ago and they’d jointly purchased two thousand acres of farmland in southwest Iowa. They produced corn, soybeans and alfalfa, and thanks to Eva’s incessant nagging, grass fed beef cattle.
It came as no great shock to her family when Eva decided to apply to culinary school. She’d stopped eating red meat precipitously at the age of ten when she finally discovered what her family had been careful to keep from her, that the steers she raised ended up in the family freezer. Since her family stuck with a pretty traditional diet, consisting primarily of meat, potatoes, bread and seasonal vegetables, Eva eventually realized she’d need to learn about nutrition if she was going to eat anything besides peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the rest of her life. She did a lot of research about sources of complete proteins. Since the family raised their own chickens and Eva had her own milk cow, dairy and eggs weren’t a problem. Like most farm wives, Eva’s mother devoted a lot of space to a garden and her father kept several varieties of fruit trees, apple, plum, sour cherry and peach. Eva learned to can and pickle. She also began to bake her own bread and sneak whole grains and beans into the family’s favorite dishes.
When Eva had enrolled in the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, her family was supportive. She’d had to accustom herself to being far from everything rural and familiar. After graduation, Eva figured that as far as nouvelle cuisine went, California led the way, so she stuck around the Bay Area and cooked in a number of restaurant kitchens, ultimately ending up in the Napa Valley, working as a caterer and a personal chef. Eva met her current bosses when they’d hired her to cater a wine and cheese pairing for their marketing firm. The three had hit it off immediately, and when Tom and Marcus formed ATAP, Eva was the first person they contacted. She signed on without hesitation.
The White family was among her regular clients. For a very generous monthly fee, Eva cleaned their home, did their laundry, and she provided them with three well-balanced suppers each week. Taking Jason’s prodigious appetite into consideration, she made sure to cook enough so there would be plenty of leftovers for the next day. The White’s fridge was now stocked with healthy snacks and their pantry filled with ingredients for quick and easy meals. And of course, Jason and his sweet tooth got his beloved double batch of cream cheese brownies or chocolate chip cookies at least once a week. His other favorite was Eva’s homemade granola. She whipped it up every Friday so he could carry a big bag with him to his weekend soccer tournaments.
Eva went through the checkout line. She used a company check to pay for the groceries. She drove back to the White’s and started the Bolognese sauce. Eva had no problem multi-tasking. She left the sauce on simmer. She hummed one of her favorite songs as she beat up the brownie batter, poured it into a buttered pan, and put the pan into a preheated oven. She’d already thrown in a load of washing and stripped the beds.
While she worked, Eva mentally reviewed Tuesday’s schedule. The Reardon’s would be first for a quick cleaning. She’d complete their grocery shopping for the week, and then head to Sam’s in the afternoon for meal prep. Wednesday she’d return to the White’s, and she had another client scheduled, her once a week, Mrs. Elkins. She’d plan, shop, prepare and freeze a week’s worth of suppers for the elderly woman. Stuff she could easily heat up in the microwave. Her kids paid the monthly fees to ATAP; they were hoping to keep their mother in her own home as long as possible. Miriam kept the place clean and tidy and ran errands for Mrs. Elkins. She was perfectly willing to do the cooking, but the elderly woman preferred Eva’s lighter meals. Eva had a full schedule on Thursday with her repeat visits to the Reardon’s for another quick housecleaning and Sam’s for another meal prep. On Friday she’d make a return visit to the White’s. Friday was usually a busy day, as Dr. and Mrs. White frequently entertained over the weekend and a special request was often waiting for Eva when she arrived. Usually it had to do with food and wine pairing. And dessert. Always dessert.
But it was a lot better than waking up at three a.m. as she’d done when she’d worked as a pastry chef, or working until long after midnight as she had when she’d been on the line. It was a whole lot better than having a plate of food shoved in your face like one irate chef had done to her when she’d been a new graduate and she’d accidentally overcooked a steak. Eva hurried to toss the towels into the dryer and the sheets into the wash. She heard the imaginary timer go off in her head and she knew it was time to check the brownies and stir the pasta sauce. If she was lucky, Jason would go out to lunch with his buddies. If she wasn’t, they’d show up within the hour, expecting a meal. She wondered if she should get something ready to grill just in case. The boys seemed to like her specialty—shredded pork on barbecued focaccia with bread and butter pickles and lots of dipping sauce. Eva pulled open the freezer. It was best to be prepared.
* * * *
“Marcus, listen to this. Come over here.” Tom pressed the number one on his cell phone to replay the message. He handed the phone to his partner.
Marcus listened closely, his eyes opening wide. He held the phone away from his ear and pointed it at Tom. “Is this who I think it is? Gabriel Abbott’s assistant? The little lady you were schmoozing at the Wine Auction last week?” He pressed ‘one’ to repeat the message. “This is great,” he said, his smile widening as he listened, “This is exactly what we were hoping for. At last. Finally, someone in the business is taking notice. This could open a lot of doors.”
“Gabriel Abbott,” breathed Tom. “Did you hear her? A little job for Gabriel. All she has to say is Gabriel. She doesn’t even have to say Gabriel Abbott or Gabriel Vineyards. She could probably even shorten his name to Gabe and I think everyone in the wine industry would know exactly who she was talking about.”
“So what do you think?” asked Marcus. “You want to call her back or shall I? Or should we let Eva handle things from beginning to end?”
“I’ll call,” said Tom. “She left the message on my phone. But once I get the information, Eva can handle the details. God, I can’t believe it. Gabriel Abbott’s assistant. This is perfect.”
Marcus added, “You mean we better be perfect.”
Tom winked. “That’s why we hired Eva.”
* * * *
Eva finished up at the White’s a little later than she’d expected. Jason and his buddies had indeed appeared, hungry for lunch and eager to flirt with her. Eva fed them and tolerated their teasing and clumsy advances. After they’d headed back to school, she finished up the laundry, re-made the beds, and completed her housekeeping chores. By the time the house was spotless, the Bolognese had nearly finished cooking. Eva prepared the salad, with lettuce as requested, and she placed it in the fridge along with a separate container of homemade creamy Italian dressing. Jason preferred soft Italian bread for his garlic bread. Eva sliced a long loaf lengthwise, spread both sides generously with a mixture of butter, olive oil, and roasted garlic, sprinkled some parmesan cheese over everything and finished with smoked paprika. She stuck the two halves together and wrapped them in foil, ready to go into the oven. She’d already put the pan of brownies into the freezer in order to cool them quickly so she could cut them into individual squares. Now she removed the pan, cut the brownies, and wrapped each square separately in clear plastic wrap, placing them in a freezer bag. She returned them to the freezer. That was the only way she could think of to discourage Jason from eating them all in one sitting.
She left the Bolognese in the Dutch oven in which she’d cooked it and placed it in the extra refrigerator in the garage. She filled a large pot with cold water, tossed in a few handfuls of salt, and set it on the stove. She opened a big box of dried pasta and left the long, thin spaghetti in a ceramic bowl next to the pot. She grated some parmesan cheese into a plastic container, slapped a lid on it, and placed it next to the salad. Eva gave the kitchen a quick clean up. Lastly, she opened the wine cabinet and chose a medium body cabernet, something spicy, peppery, light on the tannins. She left the bottle on the kitchen table alongside a small vase of flowers picked from the garden she’d watered. Mrs. White could take it from there.
On the drive home, Eva stopped by her neighborhood market to pick up some eggs and unsalted butter. She’d harvested three bushel baskets of lemons from her lemon tree the previous day and she wanted to make as much lemon curd as she could stand to make in one evening. The jars were already washed and sterilized. Now all she had to do was juice a whole lot of lemons. Whatever she didn’t turn into lemon curd, she’d freeze. There was nothing Eva hated more than wasted food. Like the White’s, she kept an extra fridge and a separate deep freeze in her garage. Eva had learned from her mom that one could never have too much cold storage.
Eva set her bag down on the kitchen table and kicked off her shoes. The hardwood floor felt wonderfully cool beneath her bare feet.
Eva untwisted the elastic band that kept her long, dark, auburn hair out of her way. She shook her head and sighed with pleasure as her thick hair tumbled past her shoulders. The gentle waves reached the middle of her slender back. She could smell the Bolognese sauce and the roasted garlic she’d spread on the garlic bread. It was funny how cooking smells didn’t seem to linger on her clothes, but her hair always managed to get itself perfumed with her main dishes. In this case, the smell was red and meaty, a bit on the piquant side from the wine she’d used in the sauce.
Eva closed her eyes and let the rich, dark fragrance drift over her for a moment before she walked to the back of the bungalow toward her tiny bedroom and bath, stripping off her clothes along the way. A meal meant so much more to Eva than merely shoveling something edible into her mouth with a fork. Food wasn’t merely sustenance. Great food should be like great sex. Nuanced. Seductive. Smooth. Satisfying. The more care used in preparation, the deeper the flavor, the more lingering the outcome. To Eva, cooking was like sexual foreplay, and if done right, it could lead to…well, the results could be quite unforgettable.
It’s too bad, Eva thought with a rueful smile as she stepped beneath the hot water. If only a man could be so delicious, so savory, so slow, so sensual. Eva had never met a man who could cook in bed as well as she could in the kitchen. Thanks to her big brothers, until she left home no boy had ever gotten close enough to say more than one word to her. Since then, Eva had been involved in a few casual relationships, but her experience with the opposite sex, aside from her brothers, her bosses and co-workers, and kids like Jason, was limited. The thought of being with a man, a real man, made her nervous. Still, Eva stood beneath the cascade of water and allowed herself to indulge in a little fantasy about what kind of world hers would be if she ever did allow herself to become close to someone. Someone who tasted every bit as good as the food she prepared.