Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(48)

Now here he was, struggling to curb this urge to damn all good sense and unseat her from her pedestal.

Unlike her, the rest of her family was terrific. Even so, it was clear that the Raje blood wasn’t just thicker than water—it was thicker than glue. They seemed to share this bond, as though they were their own galaxy, an eternal, perfectly stable system no outside force could ever breach or unbalance.

It’s how families were supposed to be.

He tried not to think of his grandmother, who, after her son died, had thrown his widow and her two grandchildren out of their home.

Trisha Raje tucked the fluffy, pure white quilt around her sister and pushed her hair off her face, ignoring his presence in the room entirely.

“I’m sorry, I should have warned you not to unzip the food bag in front of me,” Nisha said with the sweet grace that seemed to characterize everyone in the family except the one glaring exception. “It has nothing to do with your cooking, of course. I seem to have caught this awful stomach bug and food smells are making me sick.”

Great. All that effort working on his preparations for days down the drain. “Please don’t apologize. It’s not your fault that you got sick. Rest now. We’ll figure the tasting out later.”

Nisha sank back into the cloud of pillows. Trisha took her wrist as if to check her pulse. No doubt to prove to him that he must never again forget about her being a doctor and whatnot.

He kicked himself for needling her. Because of course he’d offered to take Nisha to the doctor to get a rise out of her. Ah, sod it all, the satisfaction of seeing her turn shades was totally worth it.

With any luck, she was only here to check up on her sick sister and it was time for her to leave.

She settled in next to Nisha.

Well then, it was time for him to leave. “Just text me when you’re better, and I’ll be back with the sampling.”

The fund-raiser was a month away and he needed that much time for refinement and prep. Plus he had engagements on all the interim weekends so he had to work around those, too. Not that any of them mattered in the face of the fund-raising dinner, which was a two-hundred-person dinner at five thousand dollars a plate and was going to put a goodly dent in his financial troubles.

He hated being poor. Given how much experience he’d had with it early in life, he should be better at dealing with it. But ease spoiled you fast. You forgot how to deal with all the little compromises of poverty the moment you made any money at all. Andre had called this morning asking if he was interested in the position of executive chef that had just opened up at one of his Vegas restaurants. But even if leaving Emma right now were an option, the idea of working in a restaurant again made DJ sick.

He threw a despondent look at the door. In the kitchen sat the food he had spent days on. Being able to do this, to create food to fit an exact situation and an exacting audience—he wasn’t ready to give up on that dream yet.

“Oh, we are doing the tasting today,” Nisha said, sinking deeper into her bed. “Trisha will work on the menu with you.”

“No!” he said before he could stop himself. The urge to run for his life was overwhelming. “I mean that’s not necessary. Truly.”

He couldn’t bring himself to look at the woman in question, but something told him she was glowering at him. This was that pound of flesh thing happening to him again. “I’ll wait until you’re better. Really, I don’t mind cooking all the food again next week when you’re better.”

“You’d rather cook everything over again than have me taste it?” The haughty offense in Trisha’s tone wrapped up all the reasons why she was absolutely right. He would definitely rather cook the entire sampling menu ten times over than deal with her.

“I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant at all.” He met her gaze, reaching for all the politeness that had been drilled into him since birth and failing wholeheartedly. “I got the impression you’d rather not do this either.”

All her uppish airs intensified into a glare. He imagined her eyes turning into red lasers—and burning him down in one shot. “You’re right; I’d rather not. But I will if I must.”

Dear Lord, please, why? Why? He’d spent hours, no, weeks trying to get these recipes just right. No way was this . . . this . . . self-aggrandizing snob getting at his food with that attitude.

Nisha cleared her throat. “DJ, I’m sorry but I’m not going to be leaving the house for the next few weeks. I’m going to need you to help me out. Trisha is also going to have to go to San Francisco next week with you to review the arrangements at the ballroom.”

God, he hoped the groan that ripped through him hadn’t escaped. But the pissiness on Trisha Raje’s face told him it had.

Nisha turned to her sister. “Could you wait outside so I can talk to DJ for a moment?”

“Really? He’s the one who needs convincing?” Her whine befitted the brat she was. “You know what? Whatever. I’ll be outside digging into his precious food. I’m starving.”

“Please don’t touch my food.” The distress in his voice was pathetic, but he didn’t care.

She looked at him as though she wanted to flip him off. However, being Ms. Fancy Pants, she restrained herself.

Something he needed to start doing, too, and fast. “I mean, I’ll be out in a minute and we can do this right.”