A little wryly, Derek smiled. “Instinct. Frankly, I’ve never seen Dalton behave this way—”
“Savannah’s never done anything like this before either. For heaven’s sake, she’s still letting him pet her head!”
Derek laughed and squeezed my hand. “Let’s sit down.”
“I’m concerned,” I whispered as we walked to our places at the table. I chose to sit directly across from my sister and Dalton to keep an eye on them. But now that I was stuck watching them coo and giggle at each other, I realized that it wasn’t my best idea ever. How had this happened?
My sister was practically purring with every stroke of Dalton’s fingertips along her shaved head.
“It’s just a passing fancy, darling,” Derek said quietly, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me or himself. “Dalton will only be here a few days.”
“But Savannah is vulnerable.”
“Everyone is vulnerable, love,” he countered.
“Everyone isn’t my sister.”
“I do understand,” Derek whispered, leaning in close to my ear. “I’m fairly protective of your family myself. But this is my brother, not some stranger off the street. Let’s just take a wait-and-see attitude, shall we?”
Not like we had much choice, so I nodded and squeezed his hand back.
I tried to mope, but it wasn’t a comfortable state for me. So I drank a little wine and tried to get my sister’s attention, to no avail. Savannah was still too enraptured by Dalton to notice a little thing like her own flesh and blood. Then I suddenly wondered if I had had the same blurry look the first time I saw Derek. Well, wouldn’t that be humiliating to discover?
I nibbled on a few grilled artichoke leaves and tried to zing Dalton with threatening glares, but he didn’t notice.
When Savannah lifted some delectable bits of Colette’s sausage and polenta onto her fork and held it up to Dalton’s lips for him to taste, I reached the limit of my endurance and had to look away. My sister was on her own for now.
We would talk later.
I forced myself to smile and listen and react to other conversations. Gradually I joined the party. As dish after dish was served and the meal progressed and the wine flowed, I shook off most of my tension and managed to enjoy myself—as long as I ignored the flirting and cooing across from me. The food was spectacular, after all. Impossibly, each dish was more phenomenal than its predecessor. And as each one was presented, the chef who was responsible for it received our grateful applause as he or she explained the concept, the ingredients, and the reason why he or she was dedicating it to Baxter.
Derek and I carried on a lively exchange with those seated closest to us, mainly Kevin, Margot, Montgomery, and Peter. Dalton and Savannah occasionally added a word to the conversation, but those moments were few and far between. It was as if they’d been bewitched. I considered asking my mother to work up a magic spell to bring them both back to earth.
Kevin and the others regaled us with more funny kitchen stories. One involved a famous cooking show chef who specialized in Italian cuisine. His wife was allergic to everything and could eat only egg noodles with a dash of bland vegetable oil. Kevin said that everyone on the staff knew when the chef was cheating on his wife because he would whip up two orders of extra-spicy pasta puttanesca before taking off for his illicit dates.
As Kevin spoke, Peter cast so many surreptitious glances her way that I started to wonder if he might still be in love with her. I hoped so. They had been such a sweet couple back in Paris. I still didn’t understand why they’d ever broken up.
After Raoul’s dessert—a breathtaking chocolate cake alternately layered with almond meringue, praline buttercream, and chocolate ganache, served with homemade vanilla bean ice cream and hot fudge sauce—we relaxed with after-dinner drinks and coffee.
Without any planned agenda, the chefs began, one at a time, to stand and give a toast to honor Baxter. Most of their words were much kinder than Baxter deserved, but I suppose they were all keeping in mind the axiom that it was bad luck to speak ill of the dead. Some shared their memories of Paris and tales of horrific kitchen disasters. We laughed, we cried, but mostly we laughed.
Their words were so gracious and heartfelt. And yet…more than once during the speeches, I gazed at their faces and wondered which one of them had killed Baxter Cromwell.
I hoped and prayed that someone else entirely had done it.