Chapter 5
Very hard.
That was the answer to her question. Cooking was very hard.
Ginny squinted and coughed as smoke bellowed out when she lowered the oven door. On instinct she began waving the potholder frantically in the air as she reached over the sink and opened the window then turned the vent fan on above the stove. When the air cleared she bent down and pulled out the glass pan of chicken from the rack. Her eyes were still watering but she could clearly see that it was black, not blackened like the recipe. Black. Burnt to a crisp. They looked like four hockey pucks in a dish.
Thankfully, she’d bought two additional packages of chicken for this very reason. It was a new recipe. Always a good idea to have backup.
“Arf!” Capone barked loudly as he sat waiting by her feet.
“I don’t think even you would want to eat this,” she told him as she shut the oven door and set the pan on top of the counter.
Using a spatula, she bent over and scraped the charred poultry off and tossed each piece in the trash causing her hair to fall in her face as she did. When she straightened she caught her reflection in the window and the image staring back at her caused her to laugh out loud. She looked like a hot mess and as anxious as she was for Dax to get home, she was happy that he wasn’t here to witness the disaster that was her current appearance and the state of dinner.
A quick glance at the time told her that she still had half an hour before he’d be home. All day the two of them had been exchanging messages. They weren’t flirty in any way, which was kind of disappointing, but she’d loved just hearing from him and answering him back. After months of thinking about him, wondering if he remembered her, writing him texts just to delete them before sending, it was a thrill to finally be in contact with him.
The messages had been kind of sweet, he’d told her that he had to go run a self-defense class but he would be home after that. A few hours later he texted to say that there was a situation that needed his attention and he was going to be longer than he’d thought. He’d also said to let him know if she needed anything so she could just stay home and rest after her long drive from Nashville. When she typed back that she’d already been to the grocery store, he asked if she would sit tight until he got home and said they needed to talk.
It was kind of cryptic but she wasn’t really thinking too much about it. Instead she was focusing on making dinner and even though it wasn’t going so well, she was enjoying every second of it. Cooking was something that she’d always liked to do but had never had the time. Her mom was a decent cook but hated being in the kitchen. Since it had always been just the two of them they usually just ate takeout. But the domestic act of making dinner had always drawn Ginny. To her it represented home. Family.
That’s what she’d always wanted. Growing up her and her mom had lived mainly in apartments and on buses. Then, this past summer Ginny had finally bought a small house in Nashville, but she’d only spent a total of three weeks in it. And now she’d decided to give it to her mom and Brad. The only reason she’d bought it in the first place was because her mom’s face had lit up like a Christmas tree when they’d walked through the door.
It was a French-style country home, one her mom had always dreamed of having. But the thing that had really closed the deal was that it had a sunroom. When Ginny was little, she and her mom used to go to open houses on weekends. They would always end the day at a fast food restaurant and discuss what they liked in each house and which one they would buy.
Those weekends were some of the happiest memories that she had of her childhood. During the week she was home schooled and in several classes every day. Singing. Dancing. Acting. Piano. Guitar. Her mom worked two jobs as a waitress and medical transcriptionist. She also volunteered at several of the studios that Ginny took classes in just to pay for them all.
But if she had Sundays off, they would go to open houses. They would pretend that they had the money to buy one and would go through and say what they liked and Ginny would always pick “her” room. So when the real estate agent showed her the French country cottage with the kitchen island, walk-in closet and large sunroom Ginny knew that it was her mom’s dream house. She didn’t hesitate on offering twenty thousand over the list price.
Since moving in, Ginny had never felt like she really belonged there. Now that her mom was married she wanted her to have the house with Brad. Her mom deserved to have her dream house and her dream man. Mona Valentine had sacrificed everything for Ginny’s success.
As she pulled the new packages of chicken from the fridge, she pictured her mom’s face when she got back from her honeymoon and Ginny handed her the title and deed. She rinsed and seasoned the chicken cutlets and after spraying the glass pan with oil she once again put the pan in the oven and adjusted the temperature to exactly what the recipe called for. She’d found the recipe online and in her first attempt she’d followed the advice of a commenter that had said you could cook the dish in half the time by upping the temp from 325 degrees to 450. Obviously, it hadn’t gone well.
“Okay, handsome. Salad is in the fridge. The rice is simmering and we have twenty minutes until the chicken is ready, do you think that’s enough time to take a shower?” She asked Capone who had been her shadow all day long.
“Arf!” he responded eagerly.
“I think so, too.” She reached down and rubbed the dog’s head.
As she was heading down the hall, her phone rang and her heart skipped a beat because she thought it was Dax. When she looked down she saw it was her mom. She’d missed two calls from her mom. Once, when she was taking a nap and another when she was at the grocery store. She knew if she didn’t answer now, her mom would keep calling and interrupt her evening with Dax.
“Hey, mama.” Hoping to cut the conversation short, she added, “I was just jumping in the shower.”
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day. You had me worried sick.”
Ginny inhaled slowly through her nose. She knew that her mom meant well, and it must be hard on her being halfway across the world, but it didn’t make her anxiety feel any less suffocating. “Sorry, I was taking a nap and then was at the grocery store. I’m making blackened chicken.”
She hoped the fact that she was cooking for the first time in a long time would distract her mom from the worry that she’d caused her.
“For whom?” her mom asked suspiciously.
Or not.
“For me,” Ginny responded immediately.
“Where are you staying that there is a kitchen? Are you at an extended stay?”
As a general rule Ginny hated lying. She had to pretend sometimes for her public persona, like her fake relationship with Derek St. James, but in her personal and professional life she made it a rule to always be truthful. Until now. “I’m at an Airbnb.”