Chapter 1
“I LOOK LIKE A CHOCOLATE MERINGUE PIE,” KADY SAID AS SHE grimaced at her reflection in the tall three-sided mirror. With her dark hair and ivory skin above the absolute white of the frothy wedding dress, she did indeed remind herself of chocolate and whipped egg whites. Cocking her head to one side, she reconsidered. “Or maybe a chicken dumpling. I can’t decide which.”
From behind her, Debbie, who had been at cooking school with Kady, laughed softly, but Jane did not.
“I don’t want to hear another word like that,” Jane said sternly. “You hear me, Kady Long? Not one more word! You are absolutely gorgeous and you full well know it.”
“Gregory certainly knows it,” Debbie said, her eyes wide as she surveyed Kady in the mirror. As one of Kady’s two bridesmaids, she’d flown to Virginia from northern California the night before and had only met Kady’s fiancé this morning. She was still reeling from the experience. Gregory Norman was one terrific-looking man: his face and body all hard angles and planes, with dark hair and eyes that looked at a woman as though to say he’d very much like to make love to her. When he’d raised Debbie’s fingertips to his beautiful lips and kissed them, Debbie’s upper li
p had broken into a sweat.
“How can I walk down the aisle looking like this?” Kady asked, holding out what had to be fifty yards of heavy satin. “And look at these sleeves: they’re bigger than I am. And the skirt!” With horror in her eyes, she looked down at the acres of white satin puddling about her, a pearl encrusted border sparkling on the seven or so inches of hem that bent into an overflow on the floor.
“Any of these dresses can be altered,” said the tall, thin saleswoman, who with her stiff stance let Kady know that she didn’t appreciate having her bridal salon’s wares denigrated.
Kady hadn’t meant to give offense. “It’s not the dresses; it’s me. Why can’t the human body be like bread dough so we could shape it however we want? Add a little here, take a little off there.”
“Kady,” Jane warned. They had known each other all their lives, and she could not bear to hear Kady say anything derogatory about herself; she loved her too much to allow that.
But Debbie giggled. “Or as stretchy as pizza dough,” she said, looking at Kady in the mirror. “Then we could elongate what was too short, and leave lumps where we wanted them.”
When Kady laughed, Debbie was quite pleased with herself. They had gone to culinary school in New York together, but Debbie had always been in awe of Kady. While other students were trying to learn techniques and how to blend flavors, Kady just seemed to know. She could look at a recipe and tell how it was going to taste; she could eat a meal she hadn’t cooked, then later re-create it exactly. While other students were juggling recipe cards and trying to remember the difference between scones and biscuits, Kady threw things into a bowl, dumped them onto a sheet pan, put them into an oven, and they came out divine. Needless to say, at school Kady was the darling of all the teachers and the envy of every student. Debbie had been flattered beyond all reasoning when Kady had asked her if she’d like to go to a movie and thus started their friendship.
Now, five years later, both she and Kady were thirty years old. Debbie had married, had a couple of children, and her culinary talents were mostly directed toward peanut-butter sandwiches and barbecued steaks on weekends. But that’s not the way Kady’s life had gone. After school Kady had shocked—and horrified—all the other students and her teachers by accepting a job at a run-down steak house called Onions located in Alexandria, Virginia. Her teachers had tried to persuade her to accept one of the many job offers she received from fabulous restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and even Paris. But she’d turned them down flat. And everyone had said what a shame it was for someone with Kady’s talent to waste herself in that nothing little steak house.
But Kady had had the last laugh because she’d turned Onions into a three-star restaurant. People came from all over the world to eat at her tables. If a diplomat, jet-setter, or even an in-the-know tourist visited the eastern seaboard, he made sure he went to Kady’s Place, as it was affectionately known.
And what made the food world especially envious was that Kady had done it her way. She’d been determined to bring people to her food, not to the restaurant itself. Today, Onions was still in need of refurbishing; it was tiny, seating only twenty-five people at once, and it accepted no reservations. Nor did it have a menu. People came and stood in line and waited until a table was empty, then they ate whatever Kady had decided to cook that night.
Debbie would never forget the video on the six o’clock news that seemed to amuse Peter Jennings so much. In it was President Clinton waiting in line outside Onions, talking to the king of some African country, both of them surrounded by hungry tourists and locals, while Secret Service men looked on in wild-eyed fear, anticipating danger.
Now, as Debbie looked at Kady in her wedding dress, she saw only her talented, pretty friend. Besides being an extraordinary cook, Kady had one of the most beautiful faces she’d ever seen. As far as Debbie knew, Kady had no idea how to apply mascara, but then why should she when she had lashes that thick and that black? And long, thick hair so dark and shiny you could almost apply your lipstick in its reflection. “Good diet,” Kady always said, tongue in cheek, whenever anyone said she was pretty.
Although her face was exceptionally pretty, Kady had what the fashion magazines described as a “figure problem.”
Kady was about five feet two inches tall, had a size twelve top and bottom and a size four waist. In school she’d always worn her chef’s coat, a long, double-breasted jacket that went almost to her knees, completely concealing her waist, so she looked like a pretty face set atop a burrito. It wasn’t until a school Halloween party, when Kady had shown up dressed as a streetwalker, that anyone had seen her little waist—and had seen her exaggerated hourglass figure. After that night several of the male students had made passes at Kady, but later, after she’d corrected their soufflés and crepes, they left her alone. “Gets them every time,” Kady had whispered to Debbie, adding that she was waiting for a man she loved as much as she loved cooking.
And now she’d found him. Gregory Norman was the drop-dead gorgeous son of the widow who owned Onions, the woman who had so very wisely hired Kady. It was rumored that when Kady refused to allow the President of the United States into her restaurant ahead of a family of tourists from Iowa, Mrs. Norman had had to be revived with smelling salts. But later, after Mrs. Norman received a handwritten note from the President thanking Mrs. Norman and Kady for such a wonderful meal, Mrs. Norman had in turn thanked Kady by paying the extravagant bill for the white truffles Kady had ordered without one complaint, nor even a sarcastic remark. It was said that keeping her mouth shut had probably taken five years off Mrs. Norman’s life.
“You can’t wear that dress, that’s for sure,” Jane said in a no-nonsense way. “Actually, you can’t be seen in any of these.” As she spoke she glared at the saleswoman, daring her to comment. “Come on, get out of that thing, and let’s go to lunch.”
“I’ve heard of a new place about twenty miles—” Debbie began, but Jane halted her.
“Don’t even try. Our Kady will eat nowhere except at an American deli. No one else can cook food good enough for her, isn’t that right, Miss Picky?”
Kady laughed as she struggled out of the voluminous dress. “Delis have good, simple food. It is what it is.”
“Ha! You just don’t like anyone else’s cooking, that’s what. Come on, let’s go.”
Debbie was bewildered at the way Jane bossed Kady around, for to her, Kady was a bit of a celebrity, at least she was in the food world, since she was always being mentioned in those heavenly food magazines. “Food pornography,” as Kady called them. “Sinfully rich and sinfully delicious to our weight-conscious society.”