Currant Creek Valley - By RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,47

town, wasn’t it?”

Alex regretted the dig as soon as she said it. Apparently she was still as bitchy as she had once been in high school in retaliation against Jill and her vicious cronies.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

Jill didn’t seem offended, for once. “Honey, I was glad that loser left. Without the extremely generous alimony my attorney insisted on, I wouldn’t be able to stay in that beautiful new house. I think I might have just enough of that bastard’s money set aside to add some new built-ins to my home office.”

If Alex knew Jill, she intended to get more out of Sam than some new cabinetry. She considered warning him that Jill could be, er, predatory, but decided he was a big boy. He could probably take care of himself. Maybe he liked slick, polished real estate agents better than frazzled, smart-mouthed chefs.

It wasn’t her business what he did, who he saw, where he lived. He had made that crystal clear by his echoing, cavernous silence.

CHAPTER NINE

“LESS THAN A WEEK before the restaurant opens. You’ve got to be going crazy making sure everything is ready. Are you certain there’s nothing I can do to help you?”

She smiled at Claire for her ever-ready willingness to help. She loved her friend dearly, even when she tried a little too hard.

“You’re doing it. I needed the distraction of some company and I needed taste testers. This is the perfect combination. Thanks so much for coming over on short notice.”

“Sign me up for taste testing and distracting anytime,” Maura piped in, smiling at Henry, who currently sat on Alex’s lap chortling away at Leo, who watched him out of careful eyes as the baby banged a wooden spoon on a plastic bowl Alex had sacrificed for the cause.

Maura seemed a different person than she had been a year ago, when she had been tangled up in grief and pain, closed off to all of them.

Married nearly a year and mother to the very adorable Henry, she glowed with happiness, and Alex couldn’t be happier for her. Her sister deserved to find joy again after the hell of losing a child.

“Are your nerves completely shot?” Mary Ella asked. “This is something you’ve wanted for so long and it’s almost here.”

Panic fluttered in her stomach with barbed wings. “You could say that. If I blow it, who knows when another chance like this might come along, right?”

“But you’re not going to blow it,” Claire insisted. “Everything will go perfectly. You’ll see.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. Every time she turned around, she remembered something else she needed to do before the Friday night.

The past three weeks had been a whirlwind of preparation, trying to make sure every detail was perfect. She had worked her last day at the resort restaurant more than a week ago and spent every waking moment since devoting all her energies to Brazen.

“You’re all coming, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Claire said firmly. “We already have reservations and are planning to drive over with Evie and Brodie. We better get a fantastic table, since we’re sitting with the owner.”

Those barbed wings flapped harder. She would not screw this up. She could do this. One of the first things she learned in culinary school had been that a good chef had confidence in herself and the unique gifts she had to offer.

She knew her food was good, but all the minutia was killing her.

It didn’t help that her two sous-chefs were engaged in a pissing contest that was beginning to affect morale among the rest of the crew. She had a meeting with both of them later to go over final details and she planned to rattle their cages a little, remind them she was in charge and refused to keep either of them on staff if they couldn’t figure out how to bury their differences and get along.

Should be a pleasant evening, all in all.

“You know I’ll be there,” Mary Ella declared. “Both Harry and I are eagerly anticipating it.”

“I’m coming,” Maura said. “Jack will even be there. He’s flying in from Singapore and should be home Friday afternoon. Should be just enough time to shower and shave.”

“He’s coming home just for my restaurant opening, I assume.”

Maura laughed. “I’m sure that was right at the top of his list while he was scheduling his trip dates.”

Maura’s husband always had several international projects spinning. Alex had been inclined to dislike the guy for abandoning her pregnant sister more than twenty years ago but Jack had managed