Bliss and the Art of Forever - Alison Kent Page 0,54
his jeans and she stopped. “I’m an educator. It comes with the territory.”
Elbows on his knees, he leaned forward, rubbing at the heel of one hand with the thumb of the other. “It’s less about where the money came from than where it didn’t.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I started making chocolates after Addy was born. I think I told you I was in San Francisco then.”
“Right. You were bartending. And living with the owners of the bar.”
“Lainie and Duke. They were both in the club. That’s where I met them. Lainie would watch Addy at night while I worked. Not a lot of watching to do when they’re that young. Or so according to Lainie. She said it was no big deal. Anyhow,” he said, lifting his gaze from his busy hands to look across the yard, “I was there with Addy during the day. We bunked in the living room. She had a playpen. I had the couch. I pretty much existed on catnaps. If she was quiet, I slept. When she wasn’t . . .”
He shook his head, as if reliving those days. “There were a lot of times she wasn’t. I walked her. I paced back and forth. I rocked her and bounced her. The TV was usually on, and I got hooked on cooking shows. Don’t ask me why. Maybe having a kid, that little baby girl, and wanting the best for her. No way was I going to be able to give her a good life if I didn’t change mine. Anyhow, I started thinking about what was in the formula I was feeding her. There was so much crap on the Internet about cow’s milk and soy and vegetable oil and all the chemical additives. Not that there was much I could do about what she was eating then. It’s not like I had the right equipment for breastfeeding. But how she ate later . . . that was going to be on me.”
“And that’s where the cooking shows came in.”
“I figure most parents start out swearing to do things right. Then the kids find out about Happy Meals. One day, she couldn’t have been but about four months old, I was sitting and rocking her and about to fall asleep, when this dude came on TV and started making candy. And not just chocolate bars but these exquisite little pieces of art.”
“Like you make for Bliss.”
He laughed. “I’m not sure anything I’ve ever created has come close to what I saw that day. He had a local shop, and I stopped by there on my way to the bar the next day. Spent about fifty bucks I couldn’t afford on the artisan chocolates he had on display. Took them back to the bar and when I wasn’t busy, I dissected them like you would a frog.”
“You didn’t eat them?”
“Oh, I ate them. Duke ate them. Lainie ate them. I told them what I’d paid for them. Asked if they’d mind me using their kitchen to see if I could make some of my own. I bought a couple of molds, some really crappy chocolate, though I didn’t know it at the time. It was a big fat fail. Spent two months researching and experimenting before I turned out something I was proud of. It was nothing compared to what I’d bought from the dude I’d seen on TV. Or compared to what I make now—”
“But you were on your way.”
“I was on my way to being on my way.”
A self-made man. A self-taught man. She pictured a younger Callum in his jeans and his boots and his T-shirts, cooing to a baby Adrianne while tempering chocolate. “How did you end up in Hope Springs?”
“Some shit happened,” he said. “With Addy’s mother. And I knew I had to get out of California or spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. Duke made it happen. Duke made all of it happen.”
“He gave you the money.”
“He gave me enough to get out of there and for a new start. It was a lot of money. A lot of money.” He went quiet, went back to worrying one hand with the other, frowning and shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have taken it. If not for Addy, I wouldn’t have. I mean, I don’t know all of what Duke was into, we didn’t talk about it, but it wasn’t hard to guess, since I was into some of it, too.”