Spooning Leads to Forking (Hot in the Kitchen #2) - Kilby Blades Page 0,1

The people in town were neighborly. But she was still new, and they were still strangers. Living under a false identity meant she needed to lay low.

“Handsome, rich, benevolent…” Kendrick began.

Shea smiled even as she rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

“But with a dark side, you know—maybe like a modern-day Robin Hood or a superhero assassin?”

Shea blinked. “Wow. I didn’t see that coming.”

He chuckled. “They never do.”

Kendrick was handsome and rich, not so much a badass as he was a bleeding-heart humanitarian type. Her best friend, Carrie, who always forgot names, called him the “hot computer geek.” Kendrick wouldn’t hurt a fly.

After picking up her coffee mug from where she’d set it on the wooden railing, Shea took a long, creamy sip before walking left. Where she’d first stood had given the head-on view of the mountains but her favorite place to stand was at the corner of the deck, where the aspen trees began. She was kind of in love with their spade leaves and their silver bark.

“Seriously, though ... how do you like the town? I know there’s not a whole lot there, but—I don’t know. There’s something about it.”

She didn’t want to complain. There was nothing wrong with Sapling. Sapling was exactly what it was supposed to be. It was she who was out of place; she who was used to a different cadence of life; she who had thought it a brilliant idea to fall off the map; she who hadn’t thought through what it would mean for a hot-shit food critic to move to a tiny town in the mountains with absolutely nothing to eat.

“It’s really clean,” she said, a positive note lifting her voice. “And the hiking is amazing. For the first time in a long time, I can breathe.”

She’d been thinking about that—about how, once you got used to a dirty place, it didn’t seem so dirty. Just like once you got used to a bad marriage, it didn’t seem so bad. Her marriage to Keenan had been bad enough for her to leave like she did. Attempting a normal existence over the last six weeks proved that her marriage had been worse than she thought.

But cryptic metaphors about clean air would have to do for now. Kendrick had never liked Keenan and she had yet to tell her friend about the divorce. The omission was one of her current half-truths. At least most of her half-truths nowadays didn’t involve dodging her closest friends. They were all about avoiding suspicion among people in town.

Sticking to her story about borrowing a house from a friend to write a script was easy. The tricky part was staying off the grid. Using her born name was Shea’s best shot at keeping her old self—Elle West—back in New York. Elle Winters was the name she’d chosen at eighteen when she’d moved there with dreams of cinematic fame. Here, she’d reverted to Shea Summers, her born name.

“I’m gonna make it up there,” Kendrick promised. “Someone has to make sure you don’t go crazy from the isolation. It’s a vacation house, not The Shining.”

Shea usually liked a good movie reference. The promise of a friendly face evoked enough sentimental emotion to head off what might have been a smile.

“I’d love that,” she replied only after she’d modulated her voice to sound normal.

“It won’t be for another month or two…” Kendrick warned.

“It’s your house.” Shea tried to make light. “Come whenever you want.”

Only after Kendrick promised that he would, and Shea promised to name a badass character after him did they hang up. Only then did she let herself wonder whether she could survive that long. She would have been crazy not to meticulously orchestrate her divorce from a man like Keenan. But had it really been better to move 1,800 miles away than to hide in plain sight?

Ten-minute limit, she scolded herself. That had been the deal. She’d wallow in self-pity for a maximum of ten minutes a day, then remind herself: Sapling was just a way station—her gateway to all the things she wanted. She’d be happy here because happiness was a choice and her joy didn’t belong to him. She’d be happy if she stuck to the plan.

2

The Plan

Shea

The plan was ambitious—audacious, some would say. Others might call it crazy and complex for all she was trying to achieve. Some people left bad marriages first and figured out the rest of their lives second, but Shea didn’t need all the Eat, Pray, Love. Living every day with what she