The Cook's Secret Ingredient. Meg Maxwell

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СКАЧАТЬ Good food, comforting food, delicious food, made people happy. End of story.

      Olivia glanced out the window, grateful there was no one waiting and that she could take a break and have a po’boy herself. She was deciding between roast beef and grilled chicken when she realized that the stranger who’d been standing across the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop was still there, still watching her. At first she’d thought he was reading the chalkboard of menu items hanging from the outside of the food truck. But for twenty minutes?

      And he didn’t look particularly happy. Every time she caught his eye, which was every time she looked at him, he seemed to be glaring at her. But why? Who was he? Blue Gulch was a small town and if a six-two, very attractive man had moved in, Olivia would have heard about it from the grapevine. People chatted at the food-truck window as they passed the time until their orders were ready. Sometimes they talked out loud to her, sometimes she just heard snippets of conversation.

      Olivia couldn’t remember ever seeing the guy before. He stood to the side of the door of Blue Gulch Coffee in his dark brown leather jacket and jeans and cowboy boots, his thick brown hair lit by the sun, a large cup of coffee in his hand.

      Just as she decided on grilled chicken with pesto-dill sauce, he walked up to the food truck. Whoa, he was good-looking. All that wavy chestnut-brown hair, green-hazel eyes, a strong nose and jawline and one dimple in his left cheek that softened up his serious expression a bit. Late twenties, she thought, unable to stop staring.

      “May I help you?” Olivia asked, her Spidey senses going on red alert. This guy was seriously pissed off at something—and that something was her. Could you be angry at someone you’d never met? She tried to read him, to feel something, but her usual ability failed her.

      He glared at her. “I’ll have a sautéed-shrimp po’boy. Please.”

      She could tell that he’d struggled to add the please. “Coming right up.”

      He waited a beat, his eyes narrowed, then he glanced inside the truck, clearly trying to look around. For what?

      She got to work, adding the shrimp, coated with her homemade Cajun seasoning, into the frying pan, and realized she was getting absolutely nothing from him. No vibe, other than his anger. But suddenly, a feeling came over Olivia, a feeling she usually didn’t have to think so hard about. He was worried about someone, she realized. She had no idea who or why or what. She only knew the anger was masking worry.

      She dared a peek at him. He stood to the side of the window, staring at her, his expression unchanged. Is he worried about a relative? The thought flitted out of her head as quickly as it had come in. She wasn’t psychic. She couldn’t read minds. But sometimes a thought would drift inside her like smoke, sometimes so fleetingly she couldn’t grasp it.

      She slathered each side of the French roll with the rémoulade of mustard and mayonnaise and horseradish sauce, then layered the sautéed shrimp and added tomato slices and onion. She could feel “it’ll be okay” sparking from her fingers, infusing the po’boy.

      She handed him the yellow cardboard tray holding his sandwich. He nodded and thanked her, then moved a few feet over to a pub table that lined the edge of the grass.

      He shot another glare her way, then glanced left and right, up and down Blue Gulch Street. Was he waiting for someone? Watching for something? He’d been eyeing the truck for at least twenty minutes. He took a bite of the po’boy and she could tell, at least, that he liked the sandwich. He took another bite. No change in his expression. Then another. Still no change.

      He appeared at the window. Same expression. Same glare.

      The sautéed-shrimp po’boy hadn’t worked on him. According to the man’s face, it most certainly was not going to be okay.

      Huh. That was weird. And a first, really.

      “Are you the daughter of Miranda Mack?” he asked.

      She stiffened. “Yes,” she said, wondering what this was about.

      He looked around the inside of the narrow truck before his hazel eyes settled back on her. “So you just serve po’boys and cannoli out of the truck? Not fortunes, too?”

      Did he want his fortune told? Olivia didn’t get that sense from him at all. “I’m not a fortune-teller. Just a cook.”

      He stared at her. “Look, I’d appreciate it if you could settle a family problem your mother caused.”

      Uh-oh. She’d been here a time or two or three or four over the years. Sometimes her mother’s predictions upset her clients or their families, and when pleading with Miranda hadn’t helped, they’d come to Olivia, asking her to intervene, hoping she could convince her mother to change the fortune or “see” something else.

      He stepped closer. “Your mother told my father a bunch of nonsense about the second great love of his life, and now he’s traveling all over Texas to find this woman. I’d appreciate it if you could put an end to this...ridiculousness.”

      Oh, boy.

      “Mr....” she began, stalling.

      “My name is Carson Ford.”

      Olivia knew that name. Well, not Carson, but Ford. Her mother had mentioned a Ford. Edward or something like that.

      “My father is Edmund Ford,” he said, lowering his voice. “Suffice it to say he’s a bigwig at Texas Trust here in Blue Gulch. He’s also a vulnerable widower. Your mother told him that his second great love is a hairstylist named Sarah with green eyes. He’s now racing around to every hair salon in the county asking for Sarahs with green eyes. People are going to think he’s nuts. He’s had seven haircuts in the past two weeks.”

      Oliva froze. Hair salon. Sarah. Green eyes. That could only be one person.

      He narrowed his eyes at her. “She filled you in on this scam?”

      Olivia bit her lip. Her aunt, her mother’s sister who’d gotten into a terrible argument with Miranda five years ago and hadn’t been seen or heard from since, was named Sarah. And a hairstylist. With green eyes.

      What the heck was this? Oh, Mom, what did you do?

      He waited for her to respond, but when she didn’t, he said, “Look, will you please talk some sense into my father? Explain that your mother ran a good game, a scam, fed people what they wanted to hear for lots of money. My father can go back to his normal life and I can focus on my own. This is interfering with my job and people are counting on me.”

      She felt herself bristle at the word scam, but she ignored it. For now. “What is your job?” She hadn’t meant to ask that, but it came tumbling out of her mouth.

      “I’m a private investigator. I specialize in finding people who don’t want to be found—mostly of the criminal and/or fraudulent variety,” he added with emphasis.

      She stepped back, not expecting that. She didn’t know what she’d expected him to say he did for a living, but private investigator wasn’t it. Actually, she’d been thinking lawyer. Shark, at that.

      She herself had thought about hiring a private investigator to find her aunt when her own online searches had led nowhere. Suffice it to say, to use his own phrase, that Carson Ford would not be interested in СКАЧАТЬ