A Forever Christmas(34)

Why did he have to ask her that?

If the short-order cook had asked her what went into making beef Stroganoff, she could have rattled it off from memory as if she was reading the recipe off a chalkboard. It just felt like second nature to her. Right now, she felt like a composite of a huge host of recipes, nothing more.

But the man had asked her something that she couldn’t answer. Something that brought her situation home to her again—that she didn’t know where home was. Or who represented home to her. She didn’t know anything, she thought in frustration.

The short-order cook just asked for the most elementary answer to the most elementary of questions, and she had nothing to offer him.

Nothing to offer herself.

It stood to reason that she had to have learned what she was doing in this kitchen somewhere—most likely a restaurant or some catering business or maybe even a doting mother or aunt had seen to her training—but exactly where she’d learned all this was utterly beyond her scope of knowledge.

Suppressing a sigh, she told him the truth. “I don’t know.”

Eduardo looked at her, equally suspicious and confused. Was she having fun at his expense? Did she think he was some foolish old man to be disrespected this way?

“What do you mean, you do not know? Of course you know. Why is it a secret? Did you learn to do this in prison?” he demanded, plucking the most unlikely setting out of the air. It was absurd and he knew it because no one taught anyone something even remotely sensually appealing in prison kitchens. From what he’d heard, it was all very utilitarian. If inmates weren’t poisoned, or made wretchedly sick by what they ate, that was considered a successful serving.

At a loss, wishing she could get used to this emptiness in her head, Angel raised her eyes to the man’s face and shrugged helplessly. “Because I don’t,” she told him.

“What, were you abducted by funny little green men and taken to their spaceship where they taught you all this?” he jeered, gesturing around at her handiwork. He was growing extremely annoyed that she didn’t think enough of him to share such an insignificant piece of information.

Angel sighed as she watched over three separate meals, one on the grill, two on the burners, all frying at the same time.

“It might as well have been for all I remember,” Angel confessed, shifting her eyes to his again. The cook seemed angry. Did he think she was lying to him? She didn’t want bad feelings between them. “I don’t remember anything,” she stressed. “Not my name. Not where I was three days ago. Not why I almost drove my car over the side of the ravine.”

Eduardo’s features softened as her words sank in. He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “You are that girl?” he asked, his inference clear. The story about the young woman Gabe had rescued from the car before it exploded into flames had practically been the exclusive topic of conversation at the diner yesterday.

“I am that girl,” she replied, none too happily.

Eduardo nodded, as if that was all he needed to know. Rather than remain standing off to the side, cynically observing her and searching for fault, Eduardo took his place beside her again and began helping her fill the orders in earnest.

He was not above frequently sneaking looks to see what she was doing. Eduardo discovered that seventy was not too old to learn a new trick or two. Very quickly, the meals that he was preparing began to take on a different, less hurried, more appetizing appearance.

“How’s it going in there?” Miss Joan called into the kitchen when the last of the orders were slid out onto the metal counter.

“Very well, thank you,” Angel replied, pleased. She smiled at Eduardo as if he had been the one to teach her rather than the other way around.

“I’m not hearing my angry cook picking on you,” Miss Joan said, lowering her voice a little as she came closer to the counter where pieces of paper with orders on them traded places with hot plates filled with hotter meals. “Did he give up and leave?”

“I am here, old woman. Why would I leave? You have not paid me for this week, and if I leave, you would keep the money I have earned,” he complained. But when he looked at Angel, the hint of a smile took root. He approved of her, but he wasn’t about to let Miss Joan know this.

“Just checking,” Miss Joan replied, doing her best to hide the chuckle she felt welling up in her throat.

The old SOB was staying, she thought with no small relief.

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