The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,21

some walking routes mapped out, or the broken places in her body were going to freeze solid. Stiffness and dull pain radiated from the hip joint, upward and through her belly. The drive had been too long.

Just a little longer, she said, to the fates who had overlooked her that long-ago night. Just let me make my mark and then the body can fall apart.

EIGHT

MAYAN HOT CHOCOLATE

6 cups milk

1 mild green chile, roasted, skinned, and chopped

1/2 vanilla bean, cut in half lengthwise

1/2 cup granulated raw sugar

3 oz. Mexican-style chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 tsp cinnamon

pinch salt

2 eggs

Stick cinnamon

Measure fresh cold milk into a heavy saucepan, and stir in the chile. Scrape the vanilla bean into the milk and break up the pod. Add sugar, chocolate, cinnamon, and salt. Heat over medium heat until the chocolate melts and the milk is steaming hot, but not boiling. Remove from the heat and strain, then pour it back into the saucepan.

Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl. Stir one cup of the hot milk mixture into the eggs and stir vigorously, then pour the milk-egg mixture back into the saucepan and beat with a whip or molinillo until it’s as foamy as a bubble bath. Pour into hefty mugs and garnish with cinnamon sticks. An excellent seduction drink.

NINE

Julian arrived at five minutes after seven. Although they had spoken several times via email and by phone, Elena hadn’t seen him since the morning in Vancouver when he’d offered her the job.

Before he showed up, Alvin paced the apartment with his mistress, psychic as always as she changed clothes three times, trying to decide whether she should be crisply businesslike, or friendly and female, or relaxed and earthy. She wished the apartment were more settled, that she had a sense of who Julian Liswood was, apart from being a really rich guy who was also her boss. That would make anyone nervous.

First she tried a white blouse and black slacks, and her favorite cheery chile pepper apron, her hair drawn out of sight into a braid. It looked so…severe.

She traded the girl-cook look for a yellow sundress with a thin white scarf, thinking to be a little arty, but that just looked like she was trying too hard to be French and cosmopolitan. And flirty. Finally, she ditched the dress and donned a turquoise T-shirt with a thin white sweater over it, and jeans. Earrings of silver, hair loose on her shoulders.

Voilà! Elena.

She and Alvin paced some more. She was too early. Picking up the phone, she punched in Mia’s number and got her voice mail—but of course it was quite late in London. “I’m totally nervous,” she said. “Julian is coming for dinner and I want to be brilliant.” She paused, imagining what Mia would say. “You’re right, I should just be myself, be friendly, use good manners. I can do that. Thanks.” Grinning, she hung up the phone, then impulsively dialed it again. “I really can’t wait for you to get here.”

Alvin suddenly jumped up and barked an alert. Elena took a breath, brushed a hand over her shirt. Alvin rushed to the door with her, one floppy black ear cocked, his eyes on her face, then the door: Is this what we’ve been waiting for?

She opened the door. There stood Julian, so elegantly hip in black jeans and a very thin linen shirt woven in tiny turquoise and lavender and green stripes that hung with casual artistry from his shoulders. They were wearing the same colors.

For a single frozen moment, she felt so nervous she couldn’t think of what to do next. He was so much more beautiful than she had allowed herself to remember, with a big armful of flowers in pink and orange, his eyes black and bottomless as he stood there against a peach sky—the prince arriving at the peasant daughter’s house.

And in that moment, as his eyes burned into her, touching her mouth as he bowed only slightly ironically, she saw that he’d thought about her, had spun visions of her in idle moments. “Hello, Elena. You look well.”

“Um. So do you. Come in.” She kept her eye on Alvin to see how he would react, and at first, it wasn’t very clear. Putting a hand on Julian’s arm, she said, “Alvin, this is my friend.”

Julian, obviously a dog person, held his hand out, palm down. “Hey, Alvin,” he said in a low, easy voice. Alvin snuffled his hand, his wrist, the outside seam of his pants, then gave a