Читать книгу For Love Or Money - Tara Taylor Quinn - Страница 12

CHAPTER THREE

THE FAMILY SECRETS cooking show had been on for five years yet still received the highest ratings of any cooking show on television. But it wasn’t the program’s ratings that had prompted Janie to choose the best of the best in her attempt to give her son every shot at living a full and productive life. No, it had been desperation. And proximity. The show was local. And had run a contest before the Thanksgiving holiday that allowed people to just send in a recipe to compete.

She hadn’t had to audition to get a chance at being a contestant. She’d just had to print out her grandmother’s recipe for turkey dressing.

Even after she’d been notified she was a finalist, invited to be in the audience on Thanksgiving Day for the taping of the show, she hadn’t believed, that day in the studio, that she’d actually heard her name called.

It had been Dawson, sitting in her lap in the small, darkened studio, who’d recognized her name. His hoarse “Ma!” might have sounded like a very excitable grunt to everyone else there that day, but she’d heard her name. And his, too. “Me! Ma! Me!” Over and over again. As his butt bones dug into her thighs and his heels kicked new bruises into her shins.

Then she’d looked at the monitor, panning the audience for the day’s winner, and seen what Dawson had seen. His gargantuan grin, and her grimace of pain, splashed on national television.

Even now, six weeks later, she couldn’t believe she’d won. That in less than two hours she’d be in the studio, being filmed with the other candidates as they received a tour of their kitchens and instructions for the next four or five weeks of the competition. Four if none of her recipes won. Five if at least one did. Snippets of today’s pre-competition taping would be dubbed into shows in the weeks that followed.

So much had happened since she’d won the Thanksgiving competition.

She’d lost her job, but found another one making deliveries for a flower shop. She could work while Dawson was in preschool, and if there was an emergency, she could run by and pick him up. And she’d taken a second job with a political campaign, making cold calls to constituents from home. Neither paid very well. But both paid. And allowed her to attend every one of her son’s therapies.

A must if she was going to be able to repeat exercises at home.

Which was essential if any of it was going to be of benefit to her four-year-old son.

Pulling up in front of the house she’d felt more at home in than any other her entire life, Janie glanced at the car seat behind her. She hated to wake Dawson. He’d been fighting an ear infection and hadn’t been sleeping well.

But he loved Corrine and Joe Armstrong. And, by some miracle, they adored him back just as much. How she’d ever been blessed with such good friends, she had no idea, but...

The door to the ranch-style stucco home opened and Corrine came flying down the walk. “Hello, big boy,” she said, a huge grin on her face as she opened the back door. And then stopped when she saw Dawson asleep.

“You’re going to be late!” she said softly, but lacking none of the urgency, as she glanced at Janie.

“We had a rough night,” Janie told her friend quietly. “I hate to do this to you, Cor. You know if I had any other...”

“Shut your mouth right now,” Corrine said in a fierce whisper. “Before you say something I’ll regret. I’d have this boy, happily, every hour of every day, if it worked out that way. You know that. Is it just the ear infection?”

Because of Dawson’s narrow ear canals, he not only had tubes in his ears, but was prone to infection. Had had his share of them.

And then some.

“Yes,” Janie said, feeling her stomach relax for the first time that morning.

Joe appeared behind his wife. “I had to come out and wish you luck.”

Corrine picked up Dawson’s bag. “His medicine’s in there, right?” she said to Jane, who nodded.

Of course it was. This wasn’t the first time her friend, an attorney, had covered for her. It wasn’t even the tenth or twentieth.

And not just with Dawson. Though Corrine was a prosecutor, not a divorce attorney, she’d still done a lot of advising and behind-the-scenes work in Janie’s dealings with Dillon.

Joe glanced into the backseat, a grin on his face. And then, seeing the sleeping boy, exchanged places with Corrine. With expertise born from a lot of practice, he had Dawson’s restraints unfastened and had the boy on his shoulder without Dawson even so much as emitting a heavy breath.

These days, Corrine’s stockbroker husband was the only one who could get the boy out of his car seat without waking him. Of the three of them, he was the only one strong enough to lift Dawson’s bulky weight easily enough not to disturb him.

He wished her luck again and headed up to the house, where, Janie knew, he’d put the boy to bed in the room they kept for him.

His room, they all called it.

For a split second Janie longed to grab him back and hold on. Because life always felt better with Dawson by her side. Because she was nervous as heck and didn’t want to fail him.

Corrine ran around to Janie’s side of the car, pulling the door open. Janie tried not to hold on too tight when Corrine gave her the hug she’d been needing so badly.

“You’re going to do fine,” she assured her.

“I’m up against master chefs, Cor. With certifications and professional experience.”

“Your recipes are the best.”

“Dawson’s going to need a tutor over the summer if he has any hope at all of being integrated into a mainstream kindergarten class next year.”

She didn’t have any illusions where her son’s abilities were concerned—contrary to what his father thought. Dawson had challenges. But he’d been tested. Many times. He was high-functioning. Which meant that, with the right help, he could possibly grow up to be anything he wanted. Except maybe a professional athlete. Or a father.

“And Joe and I will help with that if it comes down to it...”

Janie shook her head. “I can’t keep taking from you guys. I’m—”

“Shh.” Cor’s finger was soft as it touched Janie’s lips. Reminding her, oddly, of her mother. A woman who’d turned to methamphetamine when her husband left her for another woman and her own job pressure and single motherhood had grown to be too much.

Janie hadn’t heard from her in years. Wasn’t even sure she was still alive.

“We’ll cross the summer’s bridge when we come to it,” Corrine said. “For now, let’s just think about today’s bridge. Today you go from a woman breaking her back to make ends meet to a TV star!”

“I’m not going to be a TV star.”

“That camera’s going to love you!” Corrine said.

“I’m too bony.” She had to go. And needed these few minutes. More than Corrine, her best friend since forever, probably knew.

“Good—you curled your hair,” Corrine was saying as she gave the long blond curls a fluff. “And that color looks good on your eyes. We chose well.”

They’d had a mani-pedi makeover session the day before.

“My clothes have no shape anymore.”

“You’re leggy and thin and there’s no hiding your shape up top. You’re star material.”

Janie laughed. Right. A girl who’d married, at nineteen, a guy she’d known for only six months, because she’d been so certain she’d found what would sustain her happiness for the rest of her life.

She had no formal training. No post–high school education.

And she couldn’t quite swallow the lump in her throat as she looked up at Corrine, who’d never forgotten her, or made her feel less, as she’d gone on to grad school and then passed the bar exam. “I need this so badly,” she said, blinking back tears. “If I win this, the money and prestige combined...added to a commercial packaging of my winning recipe... I could open my own catering business. It’s the answer to all of my prayers.”

“I know.” Corrine’s smile was...calm. Comforting. “Just be yourself, Janie. Life has a plan for you—you know that. Trust it to take care of you.”

Corrine was right. And speaking from experience. Even when it looked like Corrine and Joe—truly a couple meant to be together forever—had been on the verge of divorce, Corrine had trusted that all would be as it was meant to be. And now that they had found their way to a deeper, healthier marriage, with communication and utter honesty between them instead of walls, Corrine was even more of a pro in the trust department.

Janie, not so much.

“Be you,” Corrine said, giving her hand a squeeze as she stepped back from the car.

Be you. That was what Cor had said to her just before she’d walked down the aisle to marry Dillon. Be you. She’d said it to Corrine just a few short weeks later when her friend had moved from the apartment they’d shared into a dorm room because she’d no longer been able to afford the apartment on scholarship money.

“Be you,” Corrine had said when Janie had decided to have Dawson at the expense of her marriage. “Be you,” she’d whispered to her friend on Thanksgiving night when Corrine had called to tell her that she and Joe were getting back together.

Be you, she told herself as she pulled into the back lot of the small Palm Desert studio and parked her old station wagon next to all of the newer, fancier cars.

Be you. It was the only thing she knew how to do.

But wasn’t at all sure it would be even close to good enough.

* * *

“OKAY, YOU’VE GOT THIS. Just don’t forget to smile at the camera. Women get all gaga when you smile and Family Secrets has a lot of women judges.”

Backstage, in a private alcove she’d found for them, Kelsey was straightening the tie she’d insisted Burke wear for this pre-competition taping session.

As a sports medicine specialist, he favored collared polo shirts. But this was Kelsey’s deal and, so far, it had been a miracle worker.

In the two weeks since he’d won a spot as one of eight contestants on the show, Kelsey had been a different child.

He was lucky if she slept more than six hours a night. She’d brought home two major tests—both As. Was full of ideas every night when they got home, pulling out more and more of her mother’s recipes and making plans for packaging as he prepared one dish after another.

The grand prize included one of the winner’s recipes being commercially packaged and nationally distributed.

She’d held parties, inviting various friends over to taste his results. Making spreadsheets filled with opinions. Assessing. Analyzing.

Best of all, he’d seen her dancing in the kitchen again. Running through a routine.

And this morning he’d heard her singing in the shower.

“You’re going to win this, Daddy,” she reached up on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “I just know you are. We’re a family again, you and me and Mom. Just one more time. This is how we live without her. Keeping a piece of her alive.”

Claws squeezed his throat until drawing breath was painful. “Kels...” She was wise beyond her years. And...so fragile, too.

“Trust, Daddy,” she said, tears in her eyes as she lowered her heels to the floor and looked up at him. “Mom’s going to help you.”

“It doesn’t always work that way.”

“That’s what you said before the audition and look what happened.” Her expression dead serious, she waited with an expectant look on her sweet, tortured features.

He had to tell her that he might not win.

To make certain she understood that some things were out of their control. That maybe someone else had angels watching down on them, too.

And that sometimes, no matter how many angels you had, things didn’t happen as it seemed they should.

That he could let her down. Again.

Lil, the “entity” she wanted him to trust, was a case in point.

If everything had gone as it should, Lil would be standing there in the wings, getting ready to go on the show. Lil would be alive. In her daughter’s life.

Helping him raise her.

And neither of them would be worrying about a thirteen-year-old on the verge of clinical depression.

But...

“Okay.” He nodded. Gave her a big grin. “I’ll trust.”

She grinned then, too. Relief flooding into her expression. “Then everything will be fine. Just like at the audition. We’ll win.”

“Yes, ma’am, I believe we will,” he said as he heard all contestants being called to the green room.

“You promise,” Kelsey said as she turned to head out to her seat in the small, nearly empty studio auditorium.

“I promise.”

“You’ll trust.”

“Yes.”

As he turned to join the others whose dreams were going on the line that cool January Saturday, all Burke could see was those big blue eyes that compelled him to make promises he wasn’t sure he could keep.