The Love Goddess' Cooking School by Melissa Senate Page B

the kitchen and its inner workings, you wanted to give me a lesson in my home. Like to familiarize me with how ovens work and what potato peelers are.”
    Holly raised an eyebrow.
    “Please, Holly. You don’t have to say anything if you’re not comfortable. But if my dad should say something that strikesyou as completely weird, even though you don’t know him very well, you could say something like, ‘Wow, it must be really hard to propose to a woman your daughter hates.’ And that will just get the conversation started. And he won’t be able to say, ‘When you’re an adult you’ll understand,’ because he’ll be talking to an adult. You.”
    “Mia, this is not my pla—”
    “Please, Holly. Just come over to teach me how a kitchen works, what to do if a pilot light goes out or whatever. Why I shouldn’t use a fork to stir scrambled eggs in a nonstick pan. That kind of stuff. I really need to learn.”
    Holly sighed. “Oh, fine. You do need some pointers. But I can’t promise you I’ll say anything at all about your father’s love life. That’s not my business.”
    Mia beamed. “Like sixish?”
    “Like sixish.” With that, Mia raced out. Holly watched her dash across the road and down the path toward the bay.
    Talk about sticky.
    Holly had sold three tagliatellis and three quarts of Bolognese sauce and had only one returned pumpkin ravioli (too toothsome). Progress. Despite how well the class had gone, she’d been expecting the phone to ring all day with at least one of her students dropping out and demanding his or her money back, but the phone remained blessedly silent while the front door chimes happily rang. Also progress.
    When the bell jangled again, Holly covered the minestrone soup she was attempting for the third time (too flavorless,despite all the herbs, and too thin), and headed into the foyer, prepared, she realized, to chat about today’s pasta special and what was still fresh and available from the past few days. She smiled at the strikingly pretty woman with long, red hair and dark blue eyes and the most translucent skin Holly had ever seen. The woman had been in a few times when her grandmother was alive, and Holly had noticed her at the funeral.
    “Hi,” she said. “I’m Francesca Bean. Tamara’s sister.”
    Tamara’s sister? Holly studied her face, and yes, there was the same aquiline nose and the elfin chin, but otherwise they looked nothing alike. “Oh, yes, the bride to be,” Holly said. “Congratulations!”
    “Thanks. In fact, my wedding is why I’m here. I’m getting married in six months, March twenty-first, the first day of spring, at the Blue Crab Cove Inn. And I’m in the process of arranging for a caterer. I was wondering if Camilla’s Cucinotta would like to prepare a tasting menu for my fiancé and me and our testers, aka our mothers who are footing the bill and insist on agreeing to the band, food, and photographer.”
    Holly’s mouth dropped open and she quickly shut it, reminding herself that appearing stunned that anyone, let alone someone planning a wedding lavish enough to be held at the Blue Crab Cove, which was one of the ritziest bed-and-breakfasts in southern Maine and accounted for most of the summer tourists, was not how to score this job.
    “I’m honored, Francesca,” Holly said. “But since I saw you at my grandmother’s funeral, I know you’re aware she’s passed on. I’m doing all the cooking for Camilla’s Cucinotta.”
    “I know. My sister told me all about you and the class lastnight. She said she had a blast and loved everything you all made.”
    Thank you, Tamara.
    “Your grandmother is the reason I’m marrying the guy of my dreams,” Francesca said. “I would have hired her to cater the wedding whether my mother or future mother-in-law approved or not, but now that she has passed, they raised a huge fuss at our wedding-agenda breakfast this morning when I said I’d like to give you a chance to cater. They insisted you