“No. He said he didn’t know either, but maybe we could figure it out. And we did! If I do well in the judging tonight, Loren is the one who deserves all the credit.”
Hannah shook her head. “The two of you collaborated on the recipe. And Loren said he’d tried to make them, but he couldn’t do it without breaking the cookies. It sounds like a joint effort to me.”
“Me, too,” Michelle said. And then she looked slightly worried. “You didn’t tell the judges that, did you?”
“No. Loren told me not to say anything like that when the judges interviewed me, that as far as he was concerned, the idea for chocolate rosette cookies was mine since I was the one who’d made it work. He said that all he’d done was encourage me and that was what friends should do for each other.”
Hannah exchanged glances with Michelle. Brooke had been much more animated than usual when she’d talked about Loren, and she looked much happier than she had earlier in the competition. It sounded as if there might be a bit more than simple friendship involved in Brooke and Loren’s relationship. She gave a little nod to Michelle and got up to get herself a glass of water from the cooler at the far end of the greenroom.
“You like Loren, don’t you?” Michelle asked Brooke.
Hannah turned slightly, so that she could see Brooke’s face, and she saw the blush that began to color Brooke’s cheeks. If Delores had written this scene in one of her Regency romance novels, she would have described it as a telling blush.
“Yes, I do,” Brooke admitted. “He really helped me out.”
“Loren seems like a really nice guy,” Hannah said, walking back so that she could join the conversation. “He was very supportive when he helped you with the rosette cookies you made tonight.”
“That’s true, and he was also very supportive after . . .” Brooke stopped and took a deep breath. “I might as well tell you what happened. Maybe you can help me decide what I should do.”
“We’d be happy to try,” Hannah told her, and then she fell silent. It was a psychological tactic that had been used in one of the books Mike had given her to read. She glanced at Michelle, and Michelle gave her a slight nod to let her know that she’d realized what Hannah was doing.
There was a long silence. The only sound in the room was from the television monitor, and Hannah had deliberately turned down the volume.
The tension grew, and Hannah had almost come to the conclusion that the interviewing tactic she’d read about hadn’t worked when Brooke gave a deep sigh.
“Alain Duquesne was my father,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-six
Both Hannah and Michelle were shocked speechless for another long moment. This was a development that neither one of them had expected. Brooke’s statement had all the conversation-killing power of a bug bomb on a colony of ants.
Hannah was the first to recover. “Tell us about it,” she said.
“I didn’t know anything about it for years.” Brooke’s voice was shaky as she began to explain. “I always thought that my father was . . . my father. I had an older brother and a younger sister. There was no reason for me to doubt that it wasn’t true. Honestly . . .” she stopped and cleared her throat. “You’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know!”
“We believe you,” Hannah reassured her. “How did you find out that Chef Duquesne was your father?”
“My mother told me. It was after my older brother entered my name in the Dessert Chef Competition and the Food Channel sent me a letter saying that they’d chosen me as one of the contestants. My mother was . . .” Brooke stopped speaking and took a deep, shuddering breath. “She was in the hospice ward at the hospital, and I thought . . . I thought it would make her happy. And instead it . . . it really upset her!”
“Oh, Brooke. I’m so sorry.” Hannah moved over to give Brooke a hug. “But it really wasn’t your fault. How could you have guessed that telling your mother about the competition would upset her?”
“That’s true, but I still feel terrible about it. I would never have guessed that I had a different father. You see, my mother hadn’t told anyone. My brother didn’t know. My sister didn’t know. And my mother said that she’d never told my father. None of us knew. She was the only one who knew, and she would have kept that secret forever if I hadn’t been chosen as a contestant!”
Hannah gave Brooke another hug and moved back a bit. “What did your mother want you to do about all this?”
“She wanted me to make up some excuse to drop out of the competition. You see, it says right in the rules that relatives of the judges or the organizers are ineligible. And at the same time, she made me promise to keep her secret and never to tell my sister and brother that we had different fathers. She thought that if they knew, it would break up our family. And she said that when she was gone, the three of us would be the only family that was left and we would need each other.”