“That’s exactly right. I was determined to show them all that I could do it. So anyway, back to my boyfriend, Ben. We’d been dating off and on since college. For most of the time, I was in culinary school and he was getting his law degree. After we moved in together, he started his new job and I began at Christie’s. We hardly saw each other, but it was okay. We were both young and ambitious and…” She shrugged. “It worked. At least I thought it did.”
She took a breath. “But last fall Lecki booked me for three weddings in ten days. He just kept telling the brides, ‘Oh, Casey can do that.’ Whatever those girls could come up with, he told me to do it. Port-wine sauce, check. Every chicken deboned, check. I had to do everything!
“I was working sixteen-hour shifts, with a full crew, but after the first wedding, two of my cooks came down with the flu. I knew they were lying. They were like me and exhausted.”
“You were gone so much that the boyfriend decided to leave? After which wedding?”
“Uh…” she said. “I don’t know when he left, because I didn’t notice that he wasn’t there. I was coming in at midnight and falling onto the bed. I thought he was asleep beside me. Each morning at six I’d take a three-minute shower and talk to him the whole time. He didn’t reply, but it was early and he’d never been a morning person.”
Tate glanced at her with lips that seemed to be holding in laughter. “He’d moved out?”
“Yeah.” For the first time, Casey began to see humor in it all. “After the reception of the third wedding, I collapsed onto a chair and I called him. He answered right away. I told him I was fed up with all that Lecki dropped onto me and that I wanted us to go on a long vacation to somewhere warm. We’d have two weeks of wine and moonlight and fabulous sex.”
“Sounds great to me.”
“That’s when he said, ‘Casey, I moved out of the apartment over a week ago, and last weekend I went out on a date with a paralegal. I like her a lot.’?”
Every time Casey thought about that night, about how bad she’d felt, tears had come to her, but when she looked at Tate, with his dancing eyes, she smiled. “It’s not funny. What kind of insensitive woman doesn’t notice that the man living with her has moved out? Gone. His closet was empty but I didn’t see it. And I’d been talking to him.”
Tate couldn’t hold his laughter in. “He must have been a real dud. He was so boring that you didn’t know when he wasn’t there.”
“Actually, he’s a tax attorney and he’s quite interesting.”
“Oh, in that case I understand. My tax attorney is fascinating. He’s always telling me I need to file document 8A6X-12, or whatever.”
Casey tried not to, but she laughed too. “So maybe sometimes his conversation did get a bit technical, but Ben was a good guy.”
“Sounds like it. Spontaneous and fun, was he?”
“Will you stop it?” When she made the mistake of slapping him on the shoulder, electricity shot through her body. She unclicked her seatbelt and moved back to the far side of the truck.
“Damn!” Tate said. “Maybe I should buy a lightning rod. So what happened after your jealous boyfriend ran away?”
“Ben was not jealous.”
“You, just a kid, single-handedly brought back an old restaurant to its current glory, and you could handle three weddings in ten days even when your staff was depleted. Unless he’s some legal phenomenon, he was jealous. Was he a genius, rapidly on his way to IRS heaven?”
“No,” Casey said. “He had some setbacks, but we agreed that he would eventually make partner.”
“While you were going straight up to success. Forget him. What did you do after you found out he was gone?”
She hesitated. “I took a look at my life and realized that I didn’t have one. I’d worked so hard to prove that I could bring the old restaurant back to life that I was left with only one friend and my mom. I called Mom. When I picked up the phone I was crying and at the lowest point of my life. I’d never felt so alone. But, as always, she helped me make a plan, and when I got off the phone I was smiling again. The next day I gave two weeks’ notice at the restaurant. I knew my sous chef could take over and would do a good job. I packed up everything I owned and I left.”
“And out of
everywhere in the world, you chose to go to Summer Hill, Virginia?”
“Yes and no. My mom suggested that it was time that I met my father, and he lives in Summer Hill.”
“Let me guess. Your mother had a torrid affair with Kit Montgomery.”
“Heavens, no! Kit isn’t my father. Dr. Chapman is. I’m a donor baby. I have eleven half siblings—that we know about, that is. There could be more.”
Tate gaped at her in astonishment. “Who— What—”
Smiling, Casey said, “Look, we’re here.”
“I want to hear more about this Dr. Chapman,” Tate said.