Best Of Nora Roberts Books 1-6. Nora Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ her watch. The setup could be dealt with in time if she started immediately. Carlo would just have to be paged. “How do I call mall management?”

      “Oh, you can call from my office. Can I do anything?”

      Juliet thought of and rejected several things, none of which were kind. “I’d like some coffee, two sugars.”

      She rolled up her sleeves and went to work.

      By eleven, Juliet had the range, the island and the ingredients Carlo had specified neatly arranged. It had taken only one call, and some finesse, to acquire two vivid flower arrangements from a shop in the mall.

      She was on her third coffee and considering a fourth when Carlo wandered over. “Thank God.” She drained the last from the styrofoam cup. “I thought I was going to have to send out a search party.”

      “Search party?” Idly he began looking around the kitchen set. “I came when I heard the page.”

      “You’ve been paged five times in the last hour.”

      “Yes?” He smiled as he looked back at her. Her hair was beginning to stray out of her neat bun. He might have stepped off the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. “I only just heard. But then, I spent some time in the most fantastic record store. Such speakers. Quadraphonic.”

      “That’s nice.” Juliet dragged a hand through her already frazzled hair.

      “There’s a problem?”

      “Her name’s Elise. I’ve come very close to murdering her half a dozen times. If she smiles at me again, I just might.” Juliet gestured with her hand to brush it off. This was no time for fantasies, no matter how satisfying. “It seems things were a bit disorganized here.”

      “But you’ve seen to that.” He bent over to examine the range as a driver might a car before Le Mans. “Excellent.”

      “You can be glad you’ve got electricity rather than your imagination,” she muttered. “You have an interview at eleven-thirty with a food editor, Marjorie Ballister, from the Sun.”

      He only moved his shoulders and examined the blender. “All right.”

      “If I’d known it was coming up, I’d have bought a paper so we could have seen her column and gauged her style. As it is—”

      “Non importante. You worry too much, Juliet.”

      She could have kissed him. Strictly in gratitude, but she could have kissed him. Considering that unwise, she smiled instead. “I appreciate your attitude, Carlo. After the last hour of dealing with the inept, the insane and the unbearable, it’s a relief to have someone take things in stride.”

      “Franconi always takes things in stride.” Juliet started to sink into a chair for a five-minute break.

      “Dio! What joke is this?” She was standing again and looking down at the little can he held in his hand. “Who would sabotage my pasta?”

      “Sabotage?” Had he found a bomb in the can? “What are you talking about?”

      “This!” He shook the can at her. “What do you call this?”

      “It’s basil,” she began, a bit unsteady when she lifted her gaze and caught the dark, furious look in his eyes. “It’s on your list.”

      “Basil!” He went off in a stream of Italian. “You dare call this basil?”

      Soothe, Juliet reminded herself. It was part of the job. “Carlo, it says basil right on the can.”

      “On the can.” He said something short and rude as he dropped it into her hand. “Where in your clever notes does it say Franconi uses basil from a can?”

      “It just says basil,” she said between clenched teeth. “B-a-s-i-l.”

      “Fresh. On your famous list you’ll see fresh. Accidenti! Only a philistine uses basil from a can for pasta con pesto. Do I look like a philistine?”

      She wouldn’t tell him what he looked like. Later, she might privately admit that temper was spectacular on him. Dark and unreasonable, but spectacular. “Carlo, I realize things aren’t quite as perfect here as both of us would like, but—”

      “I don’t need perfect,” he tossed at her. “I can cook in a sewer if I have to, but not without the proper ingredients.”

      She swallowed—though it went down hard—pride, temper and opinion. She only had fifteen minutes left until the interview. “I’m sorry, Carlo. If we could just compromise on this—”

      “Compromise?” When the word came out like an obscenity, she knew she’d lost the battle. “Would you ask Picasso to compromise on a painting?”

      Juliet stuck the can into her pocket. “How much fresh basil do you need?”

      “Three ounces.”

      “You’ll have it. Anything else?”

      “A mortar and pestle, marble.”

      Juliet checked her watch. She had forty-five minutes to handle it. “Okay. If you’ll do the interview right here, I’ll take care of this and we’ll be ready for the demonstration at noon.” She sent up a quick prayer that there was a gourmet shop within ten miles. “Remember to get in the book title and the next stop on the tour. We’ll be hitting another Gallegher’s in Portland, so it’s a good tie-in. Here.” Digging into her bag she brought out an eight-by-ten glossy. “Take the extra publicity shot for her in case I don’t get back. Elise didn’t mention a photographer.”

      “You’d like to chop and dice that bouncy little woman,” Carlo observed, noting that Juliet was swearing very unprofessionally under her breath.

      “You bet I would.” She dug in again. “Take a copy of the book. The reporter can keep it if necessary.”

      “I can handle the reporter,” he told her calmly enough. “You handle the basil.”

      It seemed luck was with her when Juliet only had to make three calls before she found a shop that carried what she needed. The frenzied trip in the rain didn’t improve her disposition, nor did the price of a marble pestle. Another glance at her watch reminded her she didn’t have time for temperament. Carrying what she considered Carlo’s eccentricities, she ran back to the waiting cab.

      At exactly ten minutes to twelve, dripping wet, Juliet rode up to the third floor of Gallegher’s. The first thing she saw was Carlo, leaning back in a cozy wicker dinette chair laughing with a plump, pretty middle-aged woman with a pad and pencil. He looked dashing, amiable and most of all, dry. She wondered how it would feel to grind the pestle into his ear.

      “Ah, Juliet.” All good humor, Carlo rose as she walked up to the table. “You must meet Marjorie. She tells me she’s eaten my pasta in my restaurant in Rome.”

      “Loved every sinful bite. How do you do? You must be the Juliet Trent Carlo bragged about.”

      Bragged about? No, she wouldn’t be pleased. But Juliet set her bag on the table СКАЧАТЬ