The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,1

know as well as I do that we built this menu and this kitchen together. It’s as much mine as it is yours.”

“Is it?” He raised his index finger. “One question, hmm?” When he got angry or excited or passionate, his speech slipped into the Russian accent he’d labored over many years to lose. “Whose name is on that door?”

She wiped her hands, heat in her throat. “Yours.”

He grabbed the paper, slapped it with the fingers of his other hand. It sounded like a gunshot. “And where is the chef of the Blue Turtle in the article?” His eyes, the color of cognac, burned with a yellow heat. “Hmm?”

“Isn’t it supposed to be about the restaurant?”

He gave her a withering look. The restaurant did not belong to him. The kitchen did.

“You told me to talk to her.” Elena shrugged. “I talked.”

A long, simmering silence hung between them, filled with the scent of onions and bruised garlic and the New Mexican chiles she’d asked to have imported. Feigning disdain for his tantrum, she turned the burner back on, pulled the pan back to the fire, and scraped the garlic into it. The back of her neck burned with satisfaction, with worry and loss, with desire. She could smell him over the food, a heady mix of sweat and spices, cigarettes and sex, which he’d not had with her. Beneath her armor, her flesh wept.

“It was revenge, Elena.”

Methodically, she swirled the garlic into the butter, and put the spoon down. Met his eyes.

The minute the reporter had come through the doors with her old-school feminist hair—steely, frizzled salt and pepper—Elena had known she had a chance to get back at Dmitri.

And more, she’d earned it. Not only had he seized the glory from their joint effort to create the menu and the environment of the Blue Turtle, but two months ago, he’d moved out of their shared apartment to live with a girl with breasts like fried eggs and the guileless hero worship only a twenty-three-year-old CIA graduate could afford.

That would be the Culinary Institute of America, not the Central Intelligence Agency.

The garlic could not be neglected. Elena stirred in fire-roasted Anaheim chiles, letting them warm slowly. The scent had zest, dampness, appetite to it. Even Dmitri could not resist bending toward it, inhaling it. She looked at the top of his head, the thick hair.

Looked away.

The interview might have started as revenge, but it had become something more as Elena let herself open up to the reporter, her sharp eyes, her sympathy. “She was a feminist, Dmitri,” she said in the calm voice she had cultivated, “a woman who wanted to do a story about a woman in a man’s world.” She adjusted the flame the tiniest bit. “I gave it to her. And it worked—the restaurant is on the front page of the Lifestyle section.”

“You’re fired,” he said, punching the air with a finger.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Oh, I assure you, I am not. When I come back here in an hour, I want you gone, not a trace.”

“Dmitri!”

He turned, crisp as a Cossack, and marched out of the kitchen.

Automatically, Elena pulled the skillet from the burner and stared after him, pursing her lips. He’d fired her in the past, when they’d had one of their spectacular fights, only to call an hour or a day later to beg forgiveness. He needed her, Elena knew. More than he had sense to realize.

And he would likely calm down this time, too. Call later and beg her to come back.

Luis, who had pretended not to watch the scene unfolding, tsked.

Elena, embarrassed, shook her head. “He’ll get over it.”

“Sí.”

But there was, suddenly, weariness in her. Too many fights, too many late nights spent trying to fix whatever it was that had gone wrong. She felt the exhaustion at the base of her neck, along the backs of her eyes. She lacked the energy to go another round with him. As much as she hated to start over—again!—this was broken. It was time to admit it.

She should never have begun. From the moment of their first meeting, she’d known that he was dangerous to her, a woman in a man’s world. For well over a year, she had resisted him, sticking to her unbroken rule to never sleep with a man who had power over her, and Dmitri was even more dangerous than most, a chef with a Russian accent and the mouth of a rock star, a man with that intelligent,