Chapter One

Im proud to say that after five years of virtual slavery, I am now allowed to make the soup on Wednesday nights for toile, my fathers restaurant. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Soup ranks fairly high in the kitchen pecking order, right up there with preparing the fish and working a stove. I started at the bottom, peeling potatoes and apples when I was ten. I graduated to dicing onions and garlic. Then I was given the challenge of doing things like stripping and cleaning baby artichokes, which are actually worse than the onions because artichoke hairs can give you an infection if they get embedded under your fingernailsask me how I know this. Despite the onions, garlic and artichoke hairs, I managed to stick with cooking long enough to make it to salad preponly to learn, the hard way, that bell pepper seeds on your cutting board make your knife slip. Seeing as how knives were obviously too dangerous for me, I was then demoted to melon-balling and pitting cherries. After another year of this, the chef who usually does the soup, Georges, took pity on me and let me watch him. Not cook with him. Watch him. Then I was allowed to make garnishes for him. Then add ingredients for him. Then make soup with him. And now, at long last, I have my own night. The slowest night of

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the week. On Wednesdays, I get to be soup girland Georges gets to be sous-chef and babysitter to the soup girlwho, for her first solo soup ever, has decided to make a tricky-but-hopefully-stunning wild morel with vegetable confetti and a veal infusion. Now, morels are rare wild mushrooms with caps like extremely delicate honeycombs that are almost impossible to clean. So, when Dad comes over and picks up a morel and taps on it, my already-pounding heart starts to sink. Sure enough, three miniscule grains of sand fall out. Dads face turns red. GEORGES! he yells. Oui, chef. Dad starts yelling at Georges in French. Im mostly fluent, so I can follow almost all of the bawling out my supervisor is getting. Georges gives me a sideways glare, then Dad turns his rage directly on me. You expect me to feed my customers sand? No. You want to go out into the dining room and explain to my customers why they have grit in their mouths? Ill reclean them. Yes, you will. Without water. And if you cant get it right, youll be sweeping floors. Oui, chef, I say, though hes my father. I call him this at work, just like everyone else. Georges comes over and hands me a toothpick. I use this to clean each honeycomb hole, and I have to do it carefully because the stupid things are insanely fragile, and we cant just wash the morels outoh nofor that would wreck their flavor. No bugs. No dirt. No gritand no water. I set to work. It takes a tedious two hours, then

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Georges spot-checks about fifty mushrooms and gives me a nod. Dad sees the nod and comes over. He checks a mushroomone single mushroomand no sand comes out. None. Huzzah. Took you long enough, he says. I breathe a sigh of relief. Im tired, but I still have to work seven more hours and then wait another extra hour or so for Dad to take me home. During the school year, I usually drive myself to and from work. But in the summertime, I tend to bum rides with my father. I have two reasons for thisone, to save the gas money. And two, because I like being with him on the drive home at night. Our restaurant is in Northampton, which is about forty miles from the southeast corner of Vermont, where we live. Lately its the only time Dad and I have alone together. Usually on these rides, he lets go of the strict chef thing and just unwinds by talking about his day how the new fish dish went, what other dishes he wants to try, and how much he wants to try to find certain ingredients, like tiny wild mignonette strawberries. Tonight though, when the time comes, I climb into the passenger seat and within five blocks my heads already leaning on the car window. Somethings happened I have to talk to you about, Dad says, waking me a little. What? I ask, inwardly cringing. This must be about cleaning the morels. Julian has been wounded in an IED explosion. Oh, I say, thrown. So Dads not mad at me? Then his words sink in. Sorry, Im so tired I cant think straight. Who is Julian again? Dad frowns at me. Estellas nephew. The one she

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raised since he was a boy. Hes a Marine in Afghanistan. Thats right. Dads new wife, Estella, raised her nephew alongside her son after her sister died. Ive met her son, Brandon, but not the nephew yet. How wounded is he? His legs are in very bad shape. Hes in critical condition. Thats terrible. It is. Theyre planning on airlifting him to a military hospital in Germany until hes stable enough to be sent to Bethesda. When he is, I want you to go down there with Estella to be with her and lend a hand. I blink. But I barely know Estella. And I dont know Julian at all. Dad holds the wheel and peers down the dark road. Estella cant be with Julian all the time. Shell need help and Brandon and I both have to work. Besides, itll be a good bonding experience for you two. What about my work? Ill get your shift covered. Wonderful, I think to myself. Fine, I say with a sigh. Look, just as a warning, Estella is extremely upset about this. Of course... First they hit one roadside bomb, then apparently as Julian was trying to pull the three others in the vehicle to safety, there was a second explosion. None of the others survived. Thats horrible. Yes. Dad looks far down the road, shakes his head and grows quiet. We both sit lost in thought and worry.

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When we reach the house, I see the light is still on in the kitchen. Estella is usually a very well-put-together ladymanicured and meticulously dressed, an elegant brunette with soft brown eyes and a figure Dad cant stop staring at. Now, of course, shes a complete mess, hunched at the kitchen table in one of Dads old bathrobes. Her shoulder-length hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes are red and bloodshot. The phone is next to the tissue box. I was thinking I might try to console her, but Dad makes a beeline for her and the two of them arent letting go of each other. So, I just tiptoe away. I brush my teeth, wash my face and hands, strip down to my undershirt and panties and climb into bed. Shelby, my little red-and-white spaniel, is already there waiting for me. I scoot her over a little, close my eyes and think of Estella crying for her nephew at the kitchen table. I think of this guy, Julian, possibly fighting for his life in the belly of a plane somewhere. Then suddenly, I hear yelling.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4592-5473-2 STIR ME UP Copyright 2013 by Sabrina Decker All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9. All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. and are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries. www.Harlequin.com