Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95256 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95256 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Anything I could do to increase Ellie’s chances of snagging that 30 Under 30 spot, I’d do it.
But before I did anything, I had to call my dad. We both had Monday nights off and usually spent them cooking together at my parents’ house, trying new ingredients, testing out recipes, coming up with fresh takes on traditional favorites, giving my mom a hard time, making her taste everything and tell us whose dish was better (she would never choose).
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get married—and it wouldn’t be until I was much older and too tired to do anything else—but if I did, I wanted the kind of marriage my parents had. It wasn’t that they always got along perfectly, like Ellie’s parents seemed to, but no matter how much they scrapped, at the end of the day they were always on the same side—usually it was them against me and my twin brothers, who were two years younger and ten times as rowdy. My poor mom had to put up with a lot of shit when we were kids, and my dad worked crazy restaurant hours, so she had to wrangle us on her own most of the time and take care of our baby sister too.
My dad knew it, and the only time he’d ever really get mad at one of us was if we’d done or said something that upset our mom. He was a guy’s guy, and he could be a real dick in the kitchen if things weren’t done exactly the way he wanted them, but he was madly in love with my mother and always had been. He said he knew he’d marry her the first day they met.
That was why last summer, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, he’d asked me to come home from L.A. and run the kitchen at his restaurant, Trattoria Lupo, for a few months. Lick My Plate had already finished filming, but I wouldn’t have hesitated anyway—I jumped on a plane, rented an apartment not far from the restaurant, and dedicated myself to his kitchen like it was my own.
Luckily, the cancer was non-invasive and treatable, but it was still a rough time. She’d needed surgery and radiation in order to lower the risk of recurrence. My dad wanted to focus solely on her, and she was overwhelmed trying to manage her health and get my younger sister—her name was Francesca, but we always called her Chessie—ready for her freshman year at Kalamazoo College.
Since my mother would have been livid if she’d known he asked me to come home—she didn’t want anyone to know about her diagnosis—I never said a word about it to anyone. I just said I was taking a break after the show wrapped in order to consider my next move. The offer from Ellie’s parents—who I called Uncle Lucas and Aunt Mia—to open Etoile had come just after my mom’s surgery. After talking it over with my mom and dad, and making sure the Fourniers knew I could only commit for six months, I decided to take it.
Although, if I accepted the new reality show I’d been offered, I’d have to get out of the contract at least a month early—that was one of the things making me hesitate about the contract. I didn’t want to go back on my word.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Pop.”
“Hey. We still on for tonight? I’m gonna kick your ass with a duck breast.”
I laughed. “You probably would, but I can’t make it tonight.”
“Scared I’ll beat you?”
“Listen, old man, I had a prawn and chive dumpling with sake butter and ponzu planned that was gonna make you weep.”
“Damn. That does sound good. Why can’t you make it?”
“I have to take Ellie up to Harbor Springs. She’s doing a private wine tasting at somebody’s vacation home, and she was planning to drive alone.”
“Tonight? There’s a huge storm coming.”
“I know. Believe me, I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen.” I explained who the host and hostess were and why Ellie was so determined to get there and impress them. “She’s convinced that somehow, tonight is going to change her life.”
My dad laughed. “Yeah, you can’t talk to a woman when she gets that in her head. Well, be careful. Leave early, go slow, and get off the road if it gets bad.”
“I will.”
“You give any more thought to that other TV offer yet?”
“Some.” I hesitated. “It would be a hard thing to walk away from.”
It was another cooking competition show, where experienced chefs would mentor attractive B-list celebrities who claimed to be clueless in the kitchen, and their meals would be judged by a panel of experts. It was called Hot Mess, and as ridiculous as the concept was, it would probably be a huge hit.
But the offer was to host the show, not appear as one of the mentor chefs or judges, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to move in that direction—away from the kitchen.