Waiting On You (Blue Heron #3)(92)

“Get out of my kitchen. And be careful.”

“No tuna for anyone!” she called as she left.

* * *

THE PROMISED RAIN started to fall around six.

The apartment was quiet; Rufus and she had gone for a run earlier, and her dog seemed to be in a coma, out cold in front of the couch. No music because Colleen needed to concentrate. She didn’t spend a lot of time cooking—what was the point of owning a chef-brother if you couldn’t eat for free? But for this night, she wanted to make her man a meal.

“If you can read, you can cook,” she repeated aloud, then surveyed the groceries she’d bought. Tonight’s menu was meant to impress, yes. To start, beet, almond and goat cheese salad, followed by braised scallops in a white wine reduction over celery root and potato puree and topped with fresh dill; a roasted carrot and parsnip side dish topped with freshly grated Romano cheese; and vanilla bean crème fraîche pudding topped with fresh raspberries.

She may have overcommitted.

Frowning, she checked the recipes she’d pulled up online. Damn. The carrot thing had to cook for three hours. Really? Were carrots worth cooking that long? Honestly, that smacked of hubris, didn’t it? I, the lowly carrot, formerly growing in the dirt, demand three hours in the oven.

Speaking of vegetables with attitude...the celery root was grotesque and vaguely homoerotic, somehow. The produce guy at the market had to show her where it was. Thirty-one years old, and Colleen had never seen a celery root before, despite having a twin who viewed cooking dinner on the same level as performing open-heart surgery on a child in the middle of a field after a plane crash.

Ah, well, time to get to work. Because raw seafood made her sick to her stomach, she figured she’d cook the scallops first. Melted the butter (not hard at all!), opened the container and dumped the nasty little creatures in. Speaking of nausea, she hadn’t talked to Faith in eighteen entire hours.

She found her phone, wandered out on the little balcony and called her pal. Faith and Levi’s house was on the next block, two houses down, so their backyards almost adjoined.

“Hey!” she said when Faith answered. “I’m looking at your house. If I get a telescope, I could totally spy on you two.”

“The good stuff happened an hour ago, the second that man walked through the door,” Faith said, a smile in her voice.

“Le sigh. How’s my godchild?”

“It’s official, by the way. We told my dad. There were tears.”

“Oh! You Hollands! Please ask your father to adopt me, since he threw me over for that slutty housekeeper.”

“I’m telling Mrs. J. you said that.”

“Don’t you dare.” She could hear Levi’s voice in the background.

“So what’s going on with you and Lucas?” Faith asked. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that you two were missing for an hour at the picnic yesterday.”

“Um...he’s coming here for dinner.”

“Is that code for sex?”

“Probably.” There was no probably about it. “Am I being stupid, Faith?”

There was a pause. “I can’t imagine you’d be stupid.”

“That pause concerns me.” She glimpsed Mr. Wong in the yard next door doing tai chi (or swatting a mosquito in slow motion). “I might be stupid. This isn’t a sure thing at all, him and me.”

“Is it ever? I mean, Jeremy and I were a sure thing.”

“Extenuating circumstances, pal.”

“And then, for a while, I thought Honor and Tom weren’t going to make it, and look at them. Hey, are you bringing Lucas to the wedding next weekend?”

“I don’t know. Should I?”

“Yes! So romantic! Levi, don’t you think Colleen should bring Lucas to Honor’s wedding? He does.”

There was a funny smell out here...someone was burning leaves or trash. “I should probably go,” Colleen said. “I have to do stuff. Food stuff. I also have to change into slutty underwear.”

“Have fun,” Faith said. “You’re not stupid.”

Colleen smiled. “Thanks, hon. Talk to you tomorrow.”

She turned, froze, then bolted.

It wasn’t leaves that were burning. It was scallops.

She yanked the frying pan off the burner. The smell was thick, but not quite acrid. More of a tarry, oily smell. “Sphincter,” she muttered.

Well, great chefs were innovators, right? She dumped the scallops onto a paper towel, let them cool a bit...crap, the carrots and parsnips needed to get cooking, didn’t they? She grabbed another pot, filled it with water, figuring she’d boil them a bit to soften, then roast them. Not to mention the stupid puree. Whose idea was this whole thing? Would it have been so hard to go to a restaurant?

She chopped the carrots and parsnips, figuring they’d cook faster that way, and threw them into the pot. Turned back to the scallops. She’d just trim off the burnt bottom edges. But wait, weren’t blackened scallops kind of good?

Time to call for backup. “Hey, Con,” she said.

“We’re slammed. What’s up?”

“Blackened scallops—delicious?”

“They’re great. Bye.”

Perfect! Necessity, the mother of invention.