A Fine Romance by Christi Barth Page A

restaurant down in Champaign growing up. My grandmother switched out my pacifier for a wooden spoon before I was even on solid foods. I loved it. Loved it so much I refused to go away to college, even after I won a scholarship. But then, one fateful day, Dan Warrington walked in the door.”
    “Was he gorgeous and complicated?” Mira teased.
    “Right on both counts. Pretty soon I had to choose between my love of cooking and my love for Dan. They ran neck and neck for a while, but once he sweetened the deal with burn-up-the-sheets sex, the decision was easy.”
    Okay, she didn’t just like this woman. Mira had a full-blown girl crush on Helen. It took a certain fearlessness and self-assurance to mention premarital sex in a job interview. She took a pointed glance at Helen’s left hand, weighted down with what had to be a four-carat diamond. “Let me guess. You lived happily ever after?
    With a fond smile, Helen too looked down at her ring. “So far, anyway. I married him, moved to Chicago and had two beautiful babies. And before you ask why I’m boring you with my life story, my point is that I never stopped cooking.”
    Although Mira liked her, and the early restaurant experience was a plus, it sounded like she’d taken about a twenty-year break from creating enough food to satisfy throngs of customers. It would require all her delicacy to politely turn down this delightful woman. “While I don’t discount the enormous amount of work it takes to keep a family fed, it is different from the sort of cooking we’ll require here.”
    Helen shook her head and held up one hand, palm up, to stop Mira. “Don’t I know it! There’s more to my tale, I promise.”
    It would be important to report back to Ivy, and subsequently her mother, that she’d given Helen every opportunity. Mira nodded. “Go on.”
    “At first, my addiction to cooking drove all my friends nuts. Dan moves in a very socially aware group, shall we say.”
    Oh yes, Mira knew exactly the type. She’d grown up surrounded by people like that. People to whom status was practically a religion. For a while, as a teenager, it had been easy to get sucked into games of social excess. Easy to stop talking to a girl when she wore the wrong brand of shoe to school. Or shun a boy who couldn’t afford tickets to the hottest rock concert of the year. But in college, surrounded by people of so many different social strata, Mira came to her senses. She learned to judge people on who they were, not what they were worth. And most of all, she’d learned that distancing herself from her parents’ wealth made her a better person.
    With the demeanor of a stern teacher, Helen brandished her index finger. “Don’t get me wrong—I’ve made some great friends amidst Chicago’s elite. But people who are thoughtful and tell a wicked joke and helped nurse my daughter through chicken pox are often the same people who like to brag about how much they spent on the caterer, and who look down their noses at a batch of homemade cookies.” A smug smirk tightened her lips. “Or at least, they did until they tasted my cookies.”
    Mira crossed to the fridge and brought back two bottles of water. She liked where this story was headed. “Did you make them eat their words?”
    “Ha! Good one.” Helen took a long sip. After she recapped the bottle, she continued to run her finger around the cap. “I’ll never forget the first Junior League committee meeting I hosted. I talk a good game, but my stomach had about a hundred flocks of butterflies. Even though I’d dithered over the menu for weeks, sent Dan to work laden with some of my test runs for his staff, it is a whole different proposition to serve a score of people rather than the four of us.”
    “What did you make? When I think of a committee meeting, I envision pretzels, or maybe a plate of cookies.”
    A deep belly laugh rolled out, with the strength of the wake behind an ocean liner. “Well, that’s why you’re not